Fantasy fiction; Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Mythology, Celtic -- Fiction
imagination, and the brown eyes and homespun dress of Dermott's daughter
Winny came in their stead; for there was no tenderness in the passion
who keep their hearts pure for love or for hatred as other men for God,
for Mary and for the Saints, and who, when the hour of their visitation
arrives, come to the Divine Essence by the bitter tumult, the Garden
of Gethsemane, and the desolate Rood ordained for immortal passions in
mortal hearts.
One day a serving-man rode up to Costello, who was helping his two lads
to reap a meadow, and gave him a letter, and rode away without a word;
and the letter contained these words in English: 'Tumaus Costello, my
daughter is very ill. The wise woman from Knock-na-Sidhe has seen her,
and says she will die unless you come to her. I therefore bid you come
to her whose peace you stole by treachery.-DERMOTT, THE SON OF DERMOTT.'
Costello threw down his scythe, and sent one of the lads for Duallach,
who had become woven into his mind with Oona, and himself saddled his
great horse and Duallach's garron.
When they came to Dermott's house it was late afternoon, and Lough Gara
lay down below them, blue, mirror-like, and deserted; and though they
had seen, when at a distance, dark figures moving about the door, the
house appeared not less deserted than the Lough. The door stood half
open, and Costello knocked upon it again and again, so that a number of
lake gulls flew up out of the grass and circled screaming over his head,
but there was no answer.
'There is no one here,' said Duallach, 'for Dermott of the Sheep is too
proud to welcome Costello the Proud,' and he threw the door open, and
they saw a ragged, dirty, very old woman, who sat upon the floor leaning
against the wall. Costello knew that it was Bridget Delaney, a deaf and
dumb beggar; and she, when she saw him, stood up and made a sign to
him to follow, and led him and his companion up a stair and down a long
corridor to a closed door. She pushed the door open and went a little
way off and sat down as before; Duallach sat upon the ground also, but
close to the door, and Costello went and gazed upon Winny sleeping upon
a bed. He sat upon a chair beside her and waited, and a long time passed
and still she slept on, and then Duallach motioned to him through the
door to wake her, but he hushed his very breath, that she might sleep
on, for his heart was full of that ungovernable pity which makes the
fading heart of the lover a shadow of the divine heart. Presently he
turned to Duallach and said: 'It is not right that I stay here where
there are none of her kindred, for the common people are always ready to
blame the beautiful.' And then they went down and stood at the door of
the house and waited, but the evening wore on and no one came.
'It was a foolish man that called you Proud Costello,' Duallach cried
at last; 'had he seen you waiting and waiting where they left none but a
beggar to welcome you, it is Humble Costello he would have called you.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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