OF COSTELLO THE PROUD, OF OONA THE DAUGHTER OF DER
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<strong>OF COSTELLO THE PROUD, OF OONA THE DAUGHTER OF DERMOTT, AND OF THE BITTER TOrong>Costello had e up from the fields and lay upon the ground before the door of his square tower, resting his head upon his hands and looking at the su, and sidering the ces of the weather. Though the s of Elizabeth and James, now going out of fashion in England, had begun to prevail among the gentry, he still wore the great cloak of the native Irish; and the sensitive outlines of his fad the greatness of his i body had a ingling of pride and strength which beloo a simpler age. His eyes wandered from the suo where the long white road lost itself over the south?western horizon and to a horseman who toiled slowly up the hill. A few more minutes and the horseman was near enough for his little and shapeless body, his long Irish cloak, and the dilapidated bagpipes hanging from his shoulders, and the rough?haired garron under him, to be seen distinctly in the grey dusk. So soon as he had e within earshot, he began g: Is it sleeping you are, Tumaus Costello, wheer meheir hearts on the great white roads?
Get up out of that, proud Tumaus, for I have news! Get up out of that, you great omadhaun! Shake yourself out of the earth, you great weed of a man!
Costello had risen to his feet, and as the piper came up to him seized him by the neck of his jacket, and lifting him out of his saddle threw him on to the ground.
Let me alone, let me alone, said the other, but Costello still shook him.
I have news from Dermotts daughter, Winny, The great fingers were loosened, and the piper rose gasping.
Why did you not tell me, said Costello, that you came from her? You might have railed your fill.
I have e from her, but I will not speak unless I am paid for my shaking.
Costello fumbled at the bag in which he carried his money, and it was some time before it would open, for the hand that had overany men shook with fear and hope. Here is all the money in my bag, he said, dropping a stream of Frend Spanish money into the hand of the piper, who bit the s before he would answer.
That is right, that is a fair price, but I will not speak till I have good prote, for if the Dermotts lay their hands upon me in any boreen after sundown, or in Cool?a?vin by day, I will be left to rot among the les of a ditch, or hung on the great sycamore, where they hung the horse?thieves last Beltaine four years. And while he spoke he tied the reins of his garron to a bar of rusty iron that was mortared into the wall.
I will make you my piper and my bodyservant, said Costello, and no man dare lay hands upon the man, or the goat, or the horse, or the dog that is Tumaus Costellos.
And I will only tell my message, said the other, flinging the saddle on the ground, in the er of the ey with a noggin in my hand, and a jug of the Brew of the Little Pot beside me, for though I am ragged ay, my forbears were well clothed and full until their house was burnt and their cattle harried seveuries ago by the Dillons, whom I shall yet see on the hob of hell, and they screeg; and while he spoke the little eyes gleamed and the thin hands ched.
Costello led him into the great rush?strewn hall, where were none of the forts which had begun to grow ong the gentry, but a feudal gauntness and bareness, and poio the ben the great ey; and when he had sat down, filled up a horn noggin a on the bench beside him, a a great black jack of leather beside the noggin, and lit a torch that slanted out from a ring in the wall, his hands trembling the while; and then turowards him and said: Will Dermotts daughter e to me, Duallach, son of Daly?
Dermotts daughter will not e to you, for her father has set women to watch her, but she bid me tell you that this day sennight will be the eve of St. John and the night of her betrothal to Namara of the Lake, and she would have you there that, when they bid her drink to him she loves best, as the way is, she may drink to you, Tumaus Costello, a all know where her heart is, and how little of gladness is in her marriage; and I myself bid you go with good men about you, for I saw the horse?thieves with my own eyes, and they dang the "Blue Pigeon" in the air. And then he held the y noggin towards Costello, his hand closing round it like the claw of a bird, and cried: Fill my noggin again, for I would the day had e when all the water in the world is to shrink into a periwinkle?shell, that I might drink nothing but Poteen.
Finding that Costello made no reply, but sat in a dream, he burst out: Fill my noggin, I tell you, for no Costello is so great in the world that he should not wait upon a Daly, even though the Daly travel the road with his pipes and the Costello have a bare hill, ay house, a horse, a herd of goats, and a handful of cows. Praise the Dalys if you will, said Costello as he filled the noggin, for you have brought me a kind word from my love.
For the few days Duallach went hither and thither trying to raise a bodyguard, and every ma had some story of Costello, how he killed the wrestler when but a boy by so straining at the belt that went about them both that he broke the big wrestlers back; how when somewhat older he dragged fierce horses through a ford in the Un for a wager; how when he came to manhood he broke the steel horseshoe in Mayo; how he drove many men before him through Rushy Meadow at Drum?an?air because of a malevolent song they had about his poverty; and of many another deed of his strength and pride; but he could find none who would trust themselves with any so passionate and poor in a quarrel with careful ahy persons like Dermott of the Sheep and Namara of the Lake.
Then Costello went out himself, and after listening to many excuses and in many places, brought in a big half?witted fellow, who followed him like a dog, a farm?labourer who worshipped him for his strength, a fat farmer whose forefathers had served his family, and a couple of lads who looked after his goats and cows; and marshalled them before the fire in the empty hall. They had brought with them their stout cudgels, and Costello gave them an old pistol apiece, ahem all night drinking Spanish ale and shooting at a white turnip which he pinned against the wall with a skewer. Duallach of the pipes sat on the ben the ey playing The Green Bunch of Rushes, The Un Stream, and The Princes of Breffeny on his old pipes, and railing now at the appearance of the shooters, now at their clumsy shooting, and now at Costello because he had er servants. The labourer, the half?witted fellow, the farmer and the lads were all well aced to Duallachs railing, for it was as inseparable from wake or wedding as the squealing of his pipes, but they wo the forbearance of Costello, who seldom came either to wake or wedding, and if he had would scarce have been patient with a scolding piper.
On the evening they set out for Cool?a?vin, Costello riding a tolerable horse and carrying a sword, the others uph?haired garrons, and with their stout cudgels uheir arms. As they rode over the bogs and in the boreens among the hills they could see fire answering fire from hill to hill, from horizon to horizon, and everywhere groups who danced in the red light ourf, celebrating the bridal of life and fire. When they came to Dermotts house they saw before the door an unusually large group of the very poor, dang about a fire, in the midst of which was a blazing cartwheel, that circular dance which is so ahat the gods, long dwio be but fairies, dano other in their secret places. From the door and through the long loop?holes oher side came the pale light of dles and the sound of ma dang a dance of Elizabeth and James.
They tied their horses to bushes, for the number so tied already showed that the stables were full, and shoved their way through a crowd of peasants who stood about the door, a into the great hall where the dance was. The labourer, the half?witted fellow, the farmer and the two lads mixed with a group of servants who were looking on from an alcove, and Duallach sat with the pipers on their bench, but Costello made his way through the dao where Dermott of the Sheep <s></s>stood with Namara of the Lake p Poteen out of a porcelain jug into horn noggins with silver rims.
Tumaus Costello, said the old man, you have done a good deed tet what has been, and to fling away enmity and e to the betrothal of my daughter to Namara of the Lake.
I e, answered Costello, because when iime of Costello De Angalo my forbears overcame your forbears and afterwards made peace, a pact was made that a Costello might go with his body?servants and his piper to every feast given by a Dermott for ever, and a Dermott with his body?servants and his piper to every feast given by a Costello for ever.
If you e with evil thoughts and armed men, said the son of Dermott flushing, no matter how strong your hands to wrestle and to swing the sword, it shall go badly with you, for some of my wifes have e out of Mayo, and my three brothers and their servants have e down from the Ox Mountains; and while he spoke he kept his hand inside his coat as though upon the handle of a on.
No, answered Costello, I but e to dance a farewell dah your daughter.
Dermott drew his hand out of his coat a over to a tall pale girl who was now standing but a little way off with her mild eyes fixed upon the ground.
Costello has e to dance a farewell dance, for he knows that you will never see one anain.
The girl lifted her eyes and gazed at Costello, and in her gaze was that trust of the humble in the proud, the gentle in the violent, which has beeragedy of woman from the beginning. Costello led her among the dancers, and they were soon drawn into the rhythm of the Pavahat stately dance which, with the Saraband, the Gallead, and the Morrice dances, had driven out, among all but the most Irish of the gentry, the quicker rhythms of the verse?interwoven, pantomimices of earlier days; and while they dahere came over them the unutterable melancholy, the weariness with the world, the poignant and bitter pity for one ahe vague anger against on hopes and fears, which is the exultation of love. And when a danded and the pipers laid down their pipes and lifted their horn noggins, they stood a little from the others waiting pensively and silently for the dao begin again and the fire in their hearts to leap up and to them anew; and so they danced and danced Pavane and Saraband and Gallead and Morrice through the night long, and many stood still to watch them, and the peasants came about the door and peered in, as though they uood that they would gather their childrens children about them long hence, and tell how they had seen Costello dah Dermotts daughter Oona, and bee by the telling themselves a portion of a romance; but through all the dang and piping Namara of the Lake went hither and thither talking loudly and making foolish jokes that all might seem well with him, and old Dermott of the Sheep grew redder and redder, and looked oftener and ofte the doorway to see if the dles there grew yellow in the dawn.
At last he saw that the moment to end had e, and, in a pause after a dance, cried out from where the horn noggins stood that his daughter would now drink the cup of betrothal; then Oona came over to where he was, and the guests stood round in a half?circle, Costello close to the wall to the right, and the piper, the labourer, the farmer, the half?witted man and the two farm lads close behind him. The old man took out of a niche in the wall the silver cup from which her mother and her mothers mother had drunk the toasts of their betrothals, and poured Poteen out of a porcelain jug and hahe cup to his daughter with the ary words, Drink to him whom you love the best.
She held the cup to her lips for a moment, and then said in a clear soft voice: I drink to my true love, Tumaus Costello.
And then the cup rolled over and over on the ground, ringing like a bell, for the old man had struck her in the fad the cup had fallen, and there was a deep silence.
There were many of Namaras people among the servants now e out of the alcove, and one of them, a story?teller and poet, a last remnant of the bardic order, who had a chair and a platter in Namaras kit, drew a Frenife out of his girdle and made as though he would strike at Costello, but in a moment a blow had hurled him to the ground, his shoulder sending the cup rolling and ringing again. The click of steel had followed quickly, had not there e a muttering and shouting from the peasants about the door and from those crowding up behind them; and all khat these were no children of Queens Irish or friendly Namaras ats, but of the wild Irish about Lough Gara and Lough Cara, who rowed their skin coracles, and had masses of hair over their eyes, ahe right arms of their children unchristehat they might give the stouter blows, and swore only by St. Atty and sun and moon, and worshipped beauty and strength more than St. Atty or sun and moon.
Costellos hand had rested upon the handle of his sword and his knuckles had grown white, but now he drew it away, and, followed by those who were with him, strode towards the door, the dancers giving way before him, the most angrily and slowly, and with gla the muttering and shouting peasants, but some gladly and quickly, because the glory of his fame was over him. He passed through the fierd friendly peasant faces, and came where his good horse and the rough? haired garroied to bushes; and mounted and bade his ungainly bodyguard mount also and ride into the narrow boreen. When they had gone a little way, Duallach, who rode last, turowards the house where a little group of Dermotts and Namaras stood o a more numerous group of trymen, and cried: Dermott, you deserve to be as you are this hour, a lantern without a dle, a purse without a penny, a sheep without wool, for your hand was ever niggardly to piper and fiddler and story?teller and to poor travelling people. He had not done before the three old Dermotts from the Ox Mountains had run towards their horses, and old Dermott himself had caught the bridle of a garron of the Namaras and was calling to the others to follow him; and many blows and mahs had been had not the trymen caught up still glowing sticks from the ashes of the fires and hurled them among the horses with loud cries, making all plunge and rear, and some break from those who held them, the whites of their eyes gleaming in the dawn.
For the few weeks Costello had no lack of news of Oona, for now a woman selling eggs or fowls, and now a man or a woman on pilgrimage to the Well of the Rocks, would tell him how his love had fallen ill the day after St. Johns Eve, and how she was a little better or a little worse, as it might be; and though he looked to his horses and his cows and goats as usual, the on and unely, the dust upon the roads, the songs of meurning from fairs and wakes, men playing cards in the ers of fields on Sundays and Saints
Days, the rumours of battles and ges in the great world, the deliberate purposes of those about him, troubled him with an inexplicable trouble; and the try people still remember how when night had fallen he would bid Duallach of the Pipes tell, to the chirping of the crickets, The Son of Apple,<samp>??</samp> The Beauty of the World, The King of Irelands Son, or some other of those traditional tales which were as much a pipers business as The Green Bunch of Rushes, The Un Stream, or The Chiefs of Breffeny; and while the boundless and phantasmal world of the legends was a?building, would abandon himself to the dreams of his sorrow.
Duallach would often pause to tell how some of the wild Irish had desded from an inparable King of the Blue Belt, or Warrior of the Ozier Wattle, or to tell with many curses how all the strangers and most of the Queens Irish were the seed of the misshapen and horned People from Uhe Sea or of the servile and creeping Ferbolg; but Costello cared only for the love sorrows, and no matter whither the stories wandered, whether to the Isle of the Red Lough, where the blessed are, or to the malign try of the Hag of the East, Oona alone eheir shadowy hardships; for it was she and no kings daughter of old who was hidden ieel tower uhe water with the folds of the Worm of Nine Eyes round and about her prison; and it was she who won by seven years of service the right to deliver from hell all she could carry, and carried away multitudes ging with worn fio the hem of her dress; and it was she who endured dumbness for a year because of the little thorn of entment the fairies had thrust into her tongue; and it was a lock of her hair, coiled in a little carved box, which gave so great a light that men threshed by it from sundown to sunrise, and awoke so great a wohat kings spent years in wandering or fell before unknown armies in seeking to discover her hiding?place; for there was y in the world but hers, nedy in the world but hers: and when at last the voice of the piper, growle with the wisdom of old romance, was silent, and his rheumatic steps had toiled upstairs and to bed, and Costello had dipped his fingers into the little delf font of holy water and begun to pray to Mary of the Seven Sorrows, the blue eyes and star?covered dress of the painting in the chapel faded from his imagination, and the brown eyes and homespun dress of Dermotts 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 fod, for Mary and for the Saints, and who, when the hour of their visitation arrives, e 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 taihese words in English: Tumaus Costello, my daughter is very ill. The wise woman from Knoa?Sidhe has seen her, and says she will die unless you e to her. I therefore bid you e to her whose peace you stole by treachery.? DERMOTT, THE SON OF DERMOTT.
Costello threw down his scythe, a one of the lads for Duallach, who had bee woven into his mind with Oona, and himself saddled his great horse and Duallachs garron.
When they came to Dermotts house it was late afternoon, and Lough Gara lay down below them, blue, mirror?like, aed; 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 wele Costello the Proud,
ahrew the door open, and they saw a ragged, dirty, very old woman, who sat upon the floor leaning against the wall. Costello khat 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 panion up a stair and down a long corridor to a closed door. She pushed the door open a 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 motioo him through the door to wake her, but he hushed his very breath, that she might sleep on, for his heart was full of t<tt></tt>hat ungovery which makes the fadi of the lover a shadow of the divi. Presently he turo Duallad said: It is nht that I stay here where there are none of her kindred, for the on 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 a beggar to wele you, it is Humble Costello he would have called you.
Then Costello mounted and Duallach mounted, but when they had ridden a little way Costello tightehe reins and made his horse stand still. Many minutes passed, and then Duallach cried: It is no wohat you fear to offet of the Sheep, for he has many brothers and friends, and though he is old, he is a strong man and ready with his hands, and he is of the Queens Irish, and the enemies of the Gael are upon his side.
And Costello answered flushing and looking towards the house: I swear by the Mother of God that I will never return there again if they do not send after me before I pass the ford in the Brown River, and he rode on, but so very slowly that the su down and the bats began to fly over the bogs. When he came to the river he lingered awhile upon the bank among the flowers of the flag, but presently rode out into the middle and stopped his horse in a foaming shallow. Duallach, however, crossed over and waited on a further bank above a deeper place. After a good while Duallach cried out again, and this time very bitterly: It was a fool who begot you and a fool who bore you, and they are fools of all fools who say you e of an old and ock, for you e of whey?faced beggars who travelled from door to door, bowing to gentles and t?men.
With bent head, Costello rode through the river and stood beside him, and would have spoken had not hoofs clattered on the further bank and a horseman splashed towards them. It was a serving?man of Dermotts, and he said, speaking breathlessly like one who had ridden hard: Tumaus Costello, I e to bid you again to Dermotts house. When you had gone, his daughter Winny awoke and called your name, for you had been in her dreams. Bridget Delahe Dummy saw her lips move and the trouble upon her, and came where we were hiding in the wood above the house and took Dermott of the Sheep by the coat and brought him to his daughter. He saw the trouble upon her, and bid me ride his own horse t you the quicker.
Then Costello turowards the piper Duallach Daly, and taking him about the waist lifted him out of the saddle and hurled him against a grey rock that rose up out of the river, so that he fell lifeless into the deep place, and the waters swept over the tongue which God had made bitter, that there might be a story in mens ears in after time. Then plunging his spurs into the horse, he rode away furiously toward the north?west, along the edge of the river, and did not pause until he came to another and smoother ford, and saw the rising moon mirrored ier. He paused for a moment irresolute, and then rode into the ford and ohe Ox Mountains, and down towards the sea; his eyes almost tinually resting upon the moon which glimmered in the dimness like a great white rose hung otice of some boundless and phantasmal world. But now his horse, long dark with sweat and breathing hard, for he kept spurring it to areme speed, fell heavily, hurling him into the grass at the roadside. He tried to make it stand up, and failing in this, went on aloowards the moonlight; and came to the sea and saw a ser lying there at anchor. Now that he could go no further because of the sea, he found that he was very tired and the night very cold, a into a shebeen close to the shore and threw himself down upon a bench. The room was full of Span<big>?</big>ish and Irish sailors who had just smuggled a cargo of wine and ale, and were waiting a favourable wind to set out again. A Spaniard offered him a drink in bad Gaelic. He drank it greedily and began talking wildly and rapidly.
For some three weeks the wind blew inshore or with too great violence, and the sailors stayed drinking and talking and playing cards, and Costello stayed with them, sleeping upon a ben the shebeen, and drinking and talking and playing more than any. He soon lost what little money he had, and then his horse, whie one had brought from the mountain boreen, to a Spaniard, who sold it to a farmer from the mountains, and then his long cloak and his spurs and his boots of soft leather. At last a gentle wind blew towards Spain, and the crew rowed out to their ser, singing Gaelid Spanish songs, and lifted the anchor, and in a little while the white sails had dropped uhe horizon. Then Costello turned homeward, his life gaping before him, and walked all day, ing in the early evening to the road that went from near Lough Gara to the southern edge of Lough Cay. Here he overtook a great crowd of peasants and farmers, who were walking very slowly after two priests and a group of well?dressed persons, certain of whom were carrying a coffiopped an old man and asked whose burying it was and whose people they were, and the old man answered: It is the burying of Oona, Dermotts daughter, and we are the Namaras and the Dermotts and their following, and you are Tumaus Costello who murdered her.
Costello went on towards the head of the procession, passing men who looked at him with fierce eyes and only vaguely uanding what he had heard, for now that he had lost the uanding that belongs to good health, it seemed impossible that a gentleness and a beauty which had been so long the worlds heart could pass aresently he stopped and asked again whose burying it was, and a man answered: We are carryits 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 scar></a>ly feeling the blow, and ing 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 distahe 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 mih the crowd upon the bank, and all disperse by many roads and boreens. It seemed to him that Winny was somewhere on the island smilily 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 e 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 callio e to him, but whehird night came he had fotten, worn out with hunger and sorrow, that her body lay in the earth beh; but only knew she was somewhere near and would not e to him.
Just before dawn, the hour when the peasants hear his ghostly voice g out, his pride awoke and he called loudly: Winny, daughter of Dermott of the Sheep, if you do not e 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 s of silver and dim floating drapery; and then Oona, but no longer smilily, for she passed him swiftly and angrily, and as she passed struck him upon the face g: Then go and never return.
He would have followed, and was calling out her name, when the whole glimmering pany rose up into the air, and, rushing together in the shape of a great silvery rose, faded into the ashen dawn.
Costello got up from the grave, uanding nothing but that he had made his beloved angry and that she wished him to go, and wading out into the lake, began to swim. He swam on and on, but his limbs were too weary to keep him afloat, and her anger was heavy about him, and when he had gone a little way he sank without a struggle, like a man passing into sleep and dreams.
The day a poor fisherman found him among the reeds upon the lake shore, lying upon the white lake sand with his arms flung out as though he lay upon a rood, and carried him to his own house. And the very poor lamented over him and sang the keen, and wheime had e, laid him in the Abbey on Insula Trinitatis with only the ruined altar between him ats daughter, and planted above them two ash?trees that in after days wove their braogether and miheir trembling leaves.
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