Fantasy fiction; Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Mythology, Celtic -- Fiction
So he flung the bread and the strips of bacon among the beggars,
and they fought with many cries until the last scrap was eaten. But
meanwhile the friars nailed the gleeman to his cross, and set it upright
in the hole, and shovelled the earth in at the foot, and trampled it
level and hard. So then they went away, but the beggars stared on,
sitting round the cross. But when the sun was sinking, they also got up
to go, for the air was getting chilly. And as soon as they had gone a
little way, the wolves, who had been showing themselves on the edge of
a neighbouring coppice, came nearer, and the birds wheeled closer and
closer. 'Stay, outcasts, yet a little while,' the crucified one called
in a weak voice to the beggars, 'and keep the beasts and the birds from
me.' But the beggars were angry because he had called them outcasts, so
they threw stones and mud at him, and went their way. Then the wolves
gathered at the foot of the cross, and the birds flew lower and lower.
And presently the birds lighted all at once upon his head and arms and
shoulders, and began to peck at him, and the wolves began to eat his
feet. 'Outcasts,' he moaned, 'have you also turned against the outcast?'
OUT OF THE ROSE.
One winter evening an old knight in rusted chain-armour rode slowly
along the woody southern slope of Ben Bulben, watching the sun go down
in crimson clouds over the sea. His horse was tired, as after a long
journey, and he had upon his helmet the crest of no neighbouring lord or
king, but a small rose made of rubies that glimmered every moment to a
deeper crimson. His white hair fell in thin curls upon his shoulders,
and its disorder added to the melancholy of his face, which was the face
of one of those who have come but seldom into the world, and always for
its trouble, the dreamers who must do what they dream, the doers who
must dream what they do.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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