Fantasy fiction; Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Mythology, Celtic -- Fiction
in love, who have no part in song, who have no part in wisdom, but dwell
with the shadows of memory where the feet of angels cannot touch you as
they pass over your heads, where the hair of demons cannot sweep about
you as they pass under your feet, I lay upon you a curse, and change you
to an example for ever and ever; you shall become grey herons and stand
pondering in grey pools and flit over the world in that hour when it is
most full of sighs, having forgotten the flame of the stars and not yet
found the flame of the sun; and you shall preach to the other herons
until they also are like you, and are an example for ever and ever; and
your deaths shall come to you by chance and unforeseen, that no fire of
certainty may visit your hearts."'
The voice of the old man of learning became still, but the voteen bent
over his gun with his eyes upon the ground, trying in vain to understand
something of this tale; and he had so bent, it may be for a long time,
had not a tug at his rosary made him start out of his dream. The old man
of learning had crawled along the grass, and was now trying to draw the
cross down low enough for his lips to reach it.
'You must not touch my blessed beads, cried the voteen, and struck
the long withered fingers with the barrel of his gun. He need not have
trembled, for the old man fell back upon the grass with a sigh and was
still. He bent down and began to consider the black and green clothes,
for his fear had begun to pass away when he came to understand that he
had something the man of learning wanted and pleaded for, and now that
the blessed beads were safe, his fear had nearly all gone; and surely,
he thought, if that big cloak, and that little tight-fitting cloak
under it, were warm and without holes, Saint Patrick would take the
enchantment out of them and leave them fit for human use. But the black
and green clothes fell away wherever his fingers touched them, and while
this was a new wonder, a slight wind blew over the pool and crumbled the
old man of learning and all his ancient gear into a little heap of dust,
and then made the little heap less and less until there was nothing but
the smooth green grass.
WHERE THERE IS NOTHING, THERE IS GOD.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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