"Then what is it? Please tell me. I must know."
"He says:
"The world conquers them all. The wind whirls like dust.
Alexander, Caesar, and the companies whom they led.
Tara is grass, and see how Troy is now!
And the English themselves, even they may die."
"How great!" she said. "How very great!" She turned to Shane, and as he
saw the dark imperious face, he knew intuitively he was speaking to the
Woman of Tusa hErin. She seemed puzzled for an instant. Something in
Shane's clothes, his carriage ...
"You don't look as if you understood Gaelic? How is it you can translate
this poem?"
"I knew it as a boy. My father was a Gaelic poet."
"Then you are Shane Campbell."
"And you are the woman of Tusa hErin!"
"You know Tusa hErin?"
"I know every blade of grass in the glens."
"If you are ever near Tusa hErin, come and see me."
"I should like to."
"Will you really?"
"Yes."
She left him as abruptly as she spoke to him, going over to the
ballad-monger. She left him a little dazed ... He was aware of vitality
... He was like a man on a wintry day who experiences a sudden shaft of
warm sun, or somebody in quiet darkness whose eye is caught by the
rising of the moon.
Section 6
As in a story from some old unsubtle book, in passing the gates of Tusa
hErin, he had gone into another world, a grave and courteous world, not
antique--that was not the word, but just older ... A change of tempo ...
A change of atmosphere ... The _Bois Dormant_, the Sleeping Wood of the
French fairy-tale?... Not that, for the Sleeping Wood should be a gray
wood, a wood of twilight, with the birds a-drowse in their nests ... And
here were clipped rich yew-trees, and turf firm as a putting-green's,
and rows of dignified flowers, like pretty gracious ladies; and a little
lake where a swan moved, as to music; and the sunshine was rich as wine
here ... all golden and green ... But the atmosphere? He thought of the
cave of Gearod Oge, the Wizard Earl in the Rath of Mullaghmast, and the
story of it ... A farmer man had noticed a light from the old fort, and
creeping in he had seen men in armor sleeping with their horses beside
them ... And he examined the armor and the saddlery, and cautiously half
drew a sword from its sheath ... And the soldier's head rose and:
"_Bhfuil an trath ann?_" his voice cried ... "Has the time come?" "It is
not, your Honor," the farmer said in terror, and shoved the sword back
and fled ... An old man said for a surety that had the farmer drawn the
blade from the scabbard, the Wizard Earl would have awakened, and
Ireland been free ... There was great beauty and great Irishness to that
story, but there was terror to it, and there was no terror on this sweet
place ...
He said: It is a trick of my head, an illusion that this is different.
Some shading that comes from the yews, some phenomenon of cliff and
water ... But even that did not circumscribe the rich grave look of
grounds and house. A song from "The Tempest" came to him:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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