by George Moore
How much is the milk?
You’re heartily welcome to it, sir, the young woman answered. Sure, it was only a sup.
No, I must pay you.
But all my money had been left in Dundalk, and I stood penniless before these poor people, having drunk their milk.
My friend will come from the mountain to fetch his bicycle, and he will pay you. Again the young woman said I was welcome to the milk; but I didn’t know that AE had any money upon him, and it occurred to me to offer her my vest and drawers. She said she couldn’t think of taking them, eyeing them all the while. At last she took them and asked me to sit down and take the weight off my limbs. Thank you kindly, and, sitting on the proffered stool, I asked if they were Irish speakers.
Himself’s mother can speak it, and I turned towards the old woman who sat by the ashes of a peat fire, her yellow hands hanging over her knees, her thick white hair showing under a black knitted cap. Her eyes never left me, but she made no attempt to answer my questions. She’s gone a little bothered lately and wouldn’t know what you’d be asking for. I could make nothing of the younger women, the child and the grandmother only stared. It was like being in a den with some shy animals, so I left a message with them for AE, that I would bicycle on to Dundalk very slowly, and hoped he would overtake me. And it was about two hours after he came up with me, not a bit tired after his long walk, and very willing to tell me how he had had to rest under the rocks on his way to the summit, enduring dreadful thirst, for there was no rill; all were dry, and he had been glad to dip his hat into the lake and drink the soft bog water, and then to lie at length among the heather. So intense was the silence that his thoughts were afraid to move, and he had lain, his eyes roving over boundless space, seeing nothing but the phantom tops of distant mountains, the outer rim of the world, so did they seem to him. At each end of the crescent-shaped lake there is a great cairn built of cyclopean stones; and into one of these cairns he had descended and had followed the passage leading into the heart of the mountain till he came upon a great boulder, which twenty men could not move, and which looked as if it had been hurled by some giant down there.
Perchance to save the Druid mysteries from curious eyes, I said, and a great regret welled up in me that I had not been strong enough to climb that mountain with him. What have I missed, AE? Oh, what have I missed? And as if to console me for my weakness he told me that he had made a drawing of the cairn, which he would show me as soon as we reached Dundalk. All the while I was afraid to ask him if he had seen Finn, for if he had seen the hero plunge into the lake after the queen’s white limbs, I should have looked upon myself as among the most unfortunate of men, and it was a relief to hear that he had not seen Finn. Such is the selfishness of men. He spoke of alien influences, and as we rode down the long roads under the deepening sky, we wondered how the powers of the material world could have reached as far as the sacred lake, violating even the mysterious silence that sings about the Gods. That the silence of the lake had been violated was certain, for the trance that was beginning to gather had melted away; his eyes had opened in the knowledge that the Gods were no longer by him, and seeing that the evening was gathering on the mountain he had packed up his drawings.
But the night will be starlit. If I had been able to get there I shouldn’t have minded waiting. Were you on the mountain, now, you would be seeing that horned moon reflected in the crescent-shaped lake. It was faint-hearted of you.
At that moment two broad backs bicycling in front of us explained the sudden withdrawal of the Gods. Our two Christian wayfarers had been prowling about Slievegullion, and our wheels had not revolved many times before we had overtaken them.
We meet again, sir, and your day has been a pleasant one, I hope?
It has been very hot, he answered, too hot for Slievegullion. We couldn’t get more than half-way. It was my friend that sat down overcome by the heat.
AE began to laugh.
What is your friend laughing at?
And the story of how my strength had failed me at the third wall was told.
I quite sympathise with you, said the one that had been overcome like myself by the heat. Did the poet get to the top?
Yes, he did, I replied sharply.
And did the view compensate you for the walk?
There is no view, AE answered; only a rim of pearl-coloured mountains, the edge of the world they seemed, and an intense silence.
That isn’t enough to climb a thousand feet for, said the chubbier of the two.
But it wasn’t for the view he went there, I replied indignantly, but for the Gods.
For the Gods!
And why not? Are there no Gods but yours?
My question was not answered, and at the end of an awkward silence we talked about the wonderful weather and the crops, the ministers showing themselves to be such good fellows that when we came to the inn AE proposed we should ask them to dine with us. A supper of ideas indeed it was, for before our dish of chops came to table they had learnt that Slievegullion was the most celebrated mountain in all Celtic theology. The birthplace of many beautiful gospels, AE said, leaning across the table, so deep in his discourse that I could not do else than insist on his finishing his chop before he unpacked his portfolio and showed the drawing he had made of the crescent-shaped lake. He ate for a little while, but it was impossible to restrain him from telling how Finn had seen a fairy face rise above the waters of the lake and had plunged after it. Whether Finn captured the nymph, and for how long he had enjoyed her, he did not tell, only that when Finn rose to the surface again he was an old man, old as the mountains and the rocks of the world. But his youth was given back to him by enchantment, and of the adventure nothing remained except his snow-white hair, which was so beautiful, and became him so well, that it had not been restored to its original colour. It was on this mountain that Cuchulain had found the fabled horse, Leath Macha, and he told us, in language which still rings in my memory, of the great battle of the ford and the giant chivalry of the Ultonians. He spoke to us of their untamable manhood, and of the exploits of Cuchulain and the children of Rury, more admirable, he said, as types, more noble and inspiring than the hierarchy of little saints who came later and cursed their memories.
This last passage seemed to conciliate the Presbyterians; they looked approvingly; but AE’s soul refuses to recognise the miserable disputes of certain Christian sects. He was thinking of Culain, the smith, who lived in the mountain and who forged the Ultonians their armour. And when that story had been related he remembered that he had not told them of Mananaan Mac Lir, the most remote and most spiritual of all Gaelic divinities, the uttermost God, and of the Feast of Age, the Druid counterpart of the mysteries, and how any one who partook of that Feast became himself immortal.
It is a great grief to me that no single note was taken at the time of that extraordinary evening spent with AE in the inn at Dundalk, eating hard chops and drinking stale beer. The fare was poor, but what thoughts and what eloquence! A shorthand writer should have been by me. She is never with us when she should be. I might have gone to my room and taken notes, but no note was taken, alas!... A change came into the faces of the Presbyterians as they listened to AE; even their attitudes seemed to become noble. AE did not see them; he was too absorbed in his ideas; but I saw them, and thought the while of barren rocks that the sun gilds for a moment. And then, not satisfied with that simile, I thought how at midday a ray finds its way even into the darkest valley. We had remained in the valley of the senses — our weak flesh had kept us there, but AE had ascended the mountain of the spirit and a Divine light was about him. It is the mission of some men to enable their fellows to live beyond themselves. AE possesses this power in an extraordinary degree, and we were lifted above ourselves.
My memory of that evening is one which Time is powerless to efface, and though years have passed by, the moment is remembered when AE said that a religion must always be exotic which makes a far-off land sacred rather than the e
arth underfoot; and then he denied that the Genius of the Gael had ever owed any of its inspiration to priestly teaching. Its own folk-tales — our talk is always reported incorrectly, and in these memories of AE there must be a great deal of myself, it sounds indeed so like myself, that I hesitate to attribute this sentence to him; yet it seems to me that I can still hear him speaking it — the folk-tales of Connaught have ever lain nearer to the hearts of the people than those of Galilee. Whatever there is of worth in Celtic song and story is woven into them, imagery handed down from the dim Druidic ages. And did I not hear him say that soon the children of Eri, a new race, shall roll out their thoughts on the hillsides before your very doors, O priests! calling your flocks from your dark chapels and twilit sanctuaries to a temple not built with hands, sunlit, starlit, sweet with the odour and incense of earth, from your altars call them to the altars of the hills, soon to be lit up as of old, soon to be blazing torches of God over the land? These heroes I see emerging. Have they not come forth in every land and race when there was need? Here, too, they will arise. My ears retain memories of his voice, when he cried, Ah, my darlings, you will have to fight and suffer; you must endure loneliness, the coldness of friends, the alienation of love, warmed only by the bright interior hope of a future you must toil for but may never see, letting the deed be its own reward; laying in dark places the foundations of that high and holy Eri of prophecy, the isle of enchantment, burning with Druidic splendours, bright with immortal presences, with the face of the everlasting Beauty looking in upon all its ways, Divine with terrestrial mingling till God and the world are one.
But how much more eloquent were thy words than any that my memory recalls! Yet sometimes it seems to me that thy words have floated back almost as thou didst speak them, aggravating the calumny of an imperfect record. But for the record to be perfect the accent of thy voice and the light in thine eyes, and the whole scene — the maculated tablecloth, the chops, everything would have to be reproduced. How vain is art! That hour in the inn in Dundalk is lost for ever — the drifting of the ministers to their beds. Faint, indeed, is the memory of their passing, so faint that it will be better not to attempt to record it, but to pass on to another event, to the portrait which AE drew that evening; for, kept awake by the presences of the Gods on the mountain, he said he must do a portrait of me, and the portrait is a better record of the dream that he brought down with him from the mountain than any words of mine. It hangs in a house in Galway, and it is clearly the work of one who has been with the Gods, for in it my hair is hyacinthine and my eyes are full of holy light. The portrait was executed in an hour, and even this work could not quell AE’s ardour. He would have sat up till morning had I allowed him, telling me his theory of numbers, but I said:
Suppose we reserve that theory for tomorrow? Sufficient for the day is the blessing thereof.
V
A SUSPICION STOPS my pen that I am caricaturing AE, setting him forth not unlike a keepsake hero. It may be that this criticism is not altogether unfounded, and to redeem my portrait I will tell how I saw AE roused like a lion out of his lair. A man sitting opposite to him in the railway carriage began to lament that Queen Victoria had not been received with more profuse expressions of loyalty; AE took this West Briton very gently at first, getting him to define what he meant by the word loyalty, and, when it transpired that the stranger attached the same meaning to the word as the newspapers, that, for him, as for the newspapers, a queen or king is a fetish, an idol, an effigy, a thing for men to hail and to bow before, he burst out into a fiery denunciation of this base and witless conception of loyalty, as insulting to the worshipped as to the worshipper. The man quailed before AE’s face, so stern was it; AE’s eyes flashed, and righteous indignation poured from his lips, but never for one instant did he seek to abase his foe. Whilst defending his principles, he appealed to the man’s deeper nature, and I remember him saying: In your heart you think as I do, but, shocked at the desire of some people to affront an aged woman, you fall into the other extreme, and would like to see the Irish race dig a hole and hide itself, leaving nothing of itself above ground but an insinuating tail.
My ears retain his words, and I can still hear our goodbye at the corner of Hume Street. We had been with the Gods for four days, if not with the Gods themselves at least with our dreams of the Gods, and in my armchair in Ely Place I was born again to daily life in anguish and helplessness, even as a child is. The enchantment of the opiate is passing, I said. AE alone possesses the magic philter. He is an adept and can lead both lives, and is on such terms with the Gods that he can come and go at will, doing his work in heaven and on earth. Yesterday he was with Finn by the crescent-shaped lake on Slievegullion; tomorrow he will trundle his old bicycle down to the offices of the I.A.O.S. in Lincoln Place, to take his orders from Anderson.
But there must be some readers who cannot translate these letters into the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, and who know nothing of the Society, when it was founded, or for what purpose it exists, and the best story in the world becomes the worst if the narrator is not careful to explain certain essential facts that will enable his listeners to understand it.
Years ago the idea of co-operation overtook Plunkett in America. He had seen co-operation at work in America, or had read a book in America, or had spoken to somebody in America, or had dreamed a dream in America. Suffice it to say that he hurried home, certain of himself as the redeemer that Ireland was waiting for; and at more than a hundred meetings he told the farmers that through co-operation they would be able to get unadulterated manure at forty per cent less than they were paying the gombeen man for rubbish. At more than a hundred meetings he told the farmers that a foreign country was exploiting the dairy industry that rightly belonged to Ireland, and that the Dane was doing this successfully because he had learnt to do his own business for himself — a very simple idea, almost a platitude, but Plunkett had the courage of his platitudes, and preached them in and out of season, without, however, making a single convert. He chanced, however, on Anderson, a man with a gift of organisation and an exact knowledge of Irish rural life, two things Plunkett did not possess, but which he knew were necessary for his enterprise. Away they went together, and they preached, and they preached, and back they came together to Dublin, feeling that something was wanting, something which they had not gotten. What was it? Neither could say. Plunkett looked into Anderson’s eyes, and Anderson looked into Plunkett’s. At last Anderson said: The idea is right enough, but —
Plunkett had brought the skeleton; Anderson had brought the flesh; but the body lay stark, and all their efforts to breathe life into it were so unavailing that they had ceased to try. They walked round their dead idea, or perhaps I should say the idea that had not yet come to life; they watched by it, and they bemoaned its inaction night and day. Plunkett chanted the litany of the economic man and the uneconomic holding, and when he had finished Anderson chanted the litany of the uneconomic man and the economic holding, and this continued until their chants brought out of the brushwood a tall figure, wearing a long black cloak, with a manuscript sticking out of the pocket. He asked them what they were doing, and they said, Trying to revive Ireland. But Ireland is deaf, he answered, she is deaf to your economics, for you do not know her folk-tales, and cannot croon them by the firesides. Plunkett looked at Anderson, and took Yeats for a little trip on an outside car through a mountainous district. It appears that Plunkett was, unfortunately, suffering from toothache, and only half listened to Yeats, who was telling him across the car that he was going to make his speech more interesting by introducing into it the folk-tales that the people for generation after generation had been telling over their firesides. For example, he told how three men in a barn were playing cards, and so intently that they did not perceive that a hare with a white ear jumped out of the cards, and ran out of the door and away over the hills. More cards were dealt, and then a greyhound jumped out of the cards and ran out of the door after the hare. The story w
as symbolical of man’s desire; Plunkett understood co-operation, and Yeats may have mentioned the blessed word, but at the meeting it was a boar without bristles that rushed out of the cards, and went away into the East, rooting the sun and the moon and the stars out of the sky. And while Plunkett was wondering why this story should portend co-operative movement, a voice from the back of the hall cried out. The blessings of God on him if he rooted up Limerick. A bad day it was for us — and a murmur began at the back of the hall. Yeats’s allusion to the pig was an unfortunate one; the people had lost a great deal of money by following Plunkett’s advice to send their pigs to Limerick. It was quite true that Limerick gave better prices for pigs than the jobbers, but only for the pigs that it wanted. Yeats, however, is an accomplished platform speaker, and not easily cowed, and he soon recaptured the attention of the audience. We always know, he said, when we are among our own people. That pleased everybody; and Plunkett had to admit that the meeting had gone better than usual. A poet was necessary, that was clear, but he did not think that Yeats was exactly the poet they wanted. If they could get a poet with some knowledge of detail (Plunkett reserved the right to dream to himself), the country might be awakened to the advantages of co-operation.
I think I know somebody, Yeats answered, who might suit you. Plunkett and Anderson forthwith lent their ears to the story of a young man, a poet, who was at present earning his living as accountant in Pim’s. A poet-accountant sounds well, Plunkett muttered, and looked at Anderson, and Anderson nodded significantly; and Yeats murmured some phrase about beautiful verses, and seemed to lose himself; but Anderson woke him up, and said: Tell us about this young man. Why do you think he would suit us?
Well, said Yeats, his personal influence pervades the whole shop, from the smallest clerk up to the manager, and all eyes go to him when he passes. Plunkett and Anderson looked across the table at each other, and Yeats went on to tell a story, how a young man, a ne’er-do-well, had once seen AE crossing from one desk to another with some papers in his hand, and had gone to him, saying, Something tells me you are the man who may redeem me. Plunkett and Anderson frowned a little, for they foresaw a preacher; and Yeats, guessing what was in Anderson’s mind, said: What will surprise you is that he never preaches. The influence he exercises is entirely involuntary. He told the young man that if he came round to see him he would introduce him to new friends, and the young man came, and heard AE talking, and thenceforth beat his wife no more, forswore the public-house, and is now an admirable member of society.
