The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 5 (of 8): The Celtic Twilight and Stories of Red HanrahanYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
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The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 5 (of 8): The Celtic Twilight and Stories of Red Hanrahan
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
English literature -- Irish authors
A friend was once at a village near Sleive League. One day he was
straying about a rath called ‘Cashel Nore.’ A man with a haggard face
and unkempt hair, and clothes falling in pieces, came into the rath and
began digging. My friend turned to a peasant who was working near and
asked who the man was. ‘That is the third O’Byrne,’ was the answer. A
few days after he learned this story: A great quantity of treasure had
been buried in the rath in pagan times, and a number of evil faeries
set to guard it; but some day it was to be found and belong to the
family of the O’Byrnes. Before that day three O’Byrnes must find it and
die. Two had already done so. The first had dug and dug until at last
he got a glimpse of the stone coffer that contained it, but immediately
a thing like a huge hairy dog came down the mountain and tore him to
pieces. The next morning the treasure had again vanished deep into
the earth. The second O’Byrne came and dug and dug until he found the
coffer, and lifted the lid and saw the gold shining within. He saw some
horrible sight the next moment, and went raving mad and soon died. The
treasure again sank out of sight. The third O’Byrne is now digging. He
believes that he will die in some terrible way the moment he finds the
treasure, but that the spell will be broken, and the O’Byrne family
made rich for ever, as they were of old.
A peasant of the neighbourhood once saw the treasure. He found the
shin-bone of a hare lying on the grass. He took it up; there was a hole
in it; he looked through the hole, and saw the gold heaped up under the
ground. He hurried home to bring a spade, but when he got to the rath
again he could not find the spot where he had seen it.
DRUMCLIFF AND ROSSES
DRUMCLIFF and Rosses were, are, and ever shall be, please Heaven!
places of unearthly resort. I have lived near by them and in them,
time after time, and have gathered thus many a crumb of faery lore.
Drumcliff is a wide green valley, lying at the foot of Ben Bulben, the
mountain in whose side the square white door swings open at nightfall
to loose the faery riders on the world. The great Saint Columba
himself, the builder of many of the old ruins in the valley, climbed
the mountains on one notable day to get near heaven with his prayers.
Rosses is a little sea-dividing, sandy plain, covered with short grass,
like a green table-cloth, and lying in the foam midway between the
round cairn-headed Knocknarea and ‘Ben Bulben, famous for hawks’:
‘But for Benbulben and Knocknarea
Many a poor sailor’d be cast away,’
as the rhyme goes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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