Fantasy fiction; Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Mythology, Celtic -- Fiction
Costello went on towards the head of the procession, passing men who
looked at him with fierce eyes and only vaguely understanding what he
had heard, for now that he had lost the understanding that belongs to
good health, it seemed impossible that a gentleness and a beauty which
had been so long the world's heart could pass away. Presently he stopped
and asked again whose burying it was, and a man answered: 'We are
carrying Dermott's daughter Winny whom you murdered, to be buried in the
island of the Holy Trinity,' and the man stooped and picked up a stone
and cast it at Costello, striking him on the cheek and making the blood
flow out over his face. Costello went on scarcely feeling the blow, and
coming to those about the coffin, shouldered his way into the midst of
them, and laying his hand upon the coffin, asked in a loud voice: 'Who
is in this coffin?'
The three Old Dermotts from the Ox Mountains caught up stones and bid
those about them do the same; and he was driven from the road, covered
with wounds, and but for the priests would surely have been killed.
When the procession had passed on, Costello began to follow again, and
saw from a distance the coffin laid upon a large boat, and those about
it get into other boats, and the boats move slowly over the water to
Insula Trinitatis; and after a time he saw the boats return and their
passengers mingle with the crowd upon the bank, and all disperse by
many roads and boreens. It seemed to him that Winny was somewhere on the
island smiling gently as of old, and when all had gone he swam in the
way the boats had been rowed and found the new-made grave beside the
ruined Abbey of the Holy Trinity, and threw himself upon it, calling to
Oona to come to him. Above him the square ivy leaves trembled, and all
about him white moths moved over white flowers, and sweet odours drifted
through the dim air.
He lay there all that night and through the day after, from time to
time calling her to come to him, but when the third night came he had
forgotten, worn out with hunger and sorrow, that her body lay in the
earth beneath; but only knew she was somewhere near and would not come
to him.
Just before dawn, the hour when the peasants hear his ghostly voice
crying out, his pride awoke and he called loudly: 'Winny, daughter
of Dermott of the Sheep, if you do not come to me I will go and never
return to the island of the Holy Trinity,' and before his voice had died
away a cold and whirling wind had swept over the island and he saw many
figures rushing past, women of the Sidhe with crowns of silver and dim
floating drapery; and then Oona, but no longer smiling gently, for she
passed him swiftly and angrily, and as she passed struck him upon the
face crying: 'Then go and never return.'
He would have followed, and was calling out her name, when the whole
glimmering company rose up into the air, and, rushing together in the
shape of a great silvery rose, faded into the ashen dawn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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