The Slopes of Tara
Colum, Padraic
THE SLOPES OF TARA By PADRAIC COLUM A YOUNG crow perched on a branch outside, barked insistently into a human habitation. Perhaps the internal conditions aroused the young crow's indignation....
...And Farnie was born to no estate although he had the spirit and the manner of a noble...
...Then he shifted through the town, shy and curious...
...The young girl is like the shoot of briar," he said, "for a while she's free and lightsome, and in another while she's without freshness and near enough to the ground...
...He saw a few silent people on horseback, and then he was surrounded by a silent-footed pack...
...He worked to strengthen a fence, and then he brought a crowd of young cattle into a far pasture...
...Shaun remained near the door, and kept his eyes on the organ loft...
...But the garden was gone bade to the wild, and the house was an unsightly ruin...
...Shaun crouched down, and a company of riders drew toward him...
...The man at the door was short of figure, and ragged of garb...
...Her face was pale like a star in a lake, and her beautiful hair swept about her...
...It would be such a dance as he had never seen—the music was calling people out of the rath...
...And now the cattle graze upon the slopes of Tara...
...He took the rpad to the town, for he liked to draw away from the silence and the shadow, and his soul was lonely for some colored and wonderful experience...
...Shaun waited, and when the music stopped he knocked at the door...
...I found a plant with a grand flower to it," said Shaun, "and I'd have brought it to you only I thought you'd like to see it growing...
...As for Shaun, he went along the darkened road in a state of mind that was half satisfaction, half bewilderment...
...I saw you before, miss," he said to the girl as he was going out, "I saw you before, but you were far away...
...I'll bring it to you, root and all," he said, "and maybe you'll play for me...
...His gaze was restless, and his quickKever-moving glances reminded one of the looks of nature's smaller creatures, the rabbits and the squirrels...
...The door was opened readily, as though a visitor had been expected, and Nora Kavanagh, the friendly personage to whom Shaun was drawn, stood there...
...She was young, a girl just, and she had no riches, but she had a beauty like the beauty that went out of Ireland when the foreigners came in...
...He rose up and sidled to the door...
...He was the servitor who drove the swine into the woods, and she was the daughter of a prince, but still they were related...
...The tolling of the bell outside made Sh$un restless...
...It was the girl of his vision, and Shaun recovered his sense of actuality only when she turned away from him...
...Nora, knowing that she might not press him, let him go...
...He mixed the mortar with bullock's blood and new milk, so that the walls might stand for a thousand years...
...He saw one who came out...
...He lay on the ground and gave his mind to a familiar romance...
...But nobody could dance to that tune...
...Far away there was a rocky rise with some structure upon it...
...she was friendly to the odd characters that were about the place...
...their sayings and doings made a comedy that was always diverting to her...
...A woman took his fancy and she had Cromwell's spoils for her dowry...
...He went out and into the street...
...They were unenlightened...
...A man had sworn that his bride would have a turret out of which she could watch the ships on the seas of Ireland...
...First there came to him a woman who had two score town-lands...
...He looked rather ruffianly, but there was humor in his face, quick judgment, and some practical wisdom...
...She was not one of Shaun's admirations, but her friendly spirit made him devoted to her...
...Within, someone was playing on the violin...
...No woman who kissed his mouth could ever take the kiss of another man—no other kiss but Farnie's kiss could she take...
...Shaun regarded it, and spoke out of his constant meditation...
...She leaned forward in the chair Nora had given her, and she regarded the dreamer with friendly interest...
...Maybe Farnie's last love was like her, a slender girl with all her life in her face, and different from the fullblown beauties that Farnie had gathered in his day...
...she's a dear maid to me...
...The walls there were raised for the pleasure of a woman...
...There were damp places on the floor where the rain came through the thatch...
...Her beauty was part of his dream and his glory...
...He was being drawn to a place of friendliness, but for a long time the wild shyness of his nature kept him abroad...
...Before him were the lifeless grazing-tracts of the County Meath...
...Now, closing his door, he went off on his day's vocation...
...A rider turned his face to Shaun and cried out in a clear voice: "He has seen her, the man in the grass has seen her...
...It was fresh, slender, and green...
...He knew that he was under an enchantment, for the fields that he knew so well now had no mark, no boundary...
...There were few people in the chapel, and the candles on the altar were not yet lighted...
...He picked up his stick and rambled away...
...Before, when he was in this town, he had caught sight of a beauty, and he thought that the men here might have some tidings of her...
...He saw the violin that Nora had left down, and he brought his eyes to her face...
...The heads of the riders were bare, but across their brows there was a thin band of gold...
...And then the second woman died and Farnie's fancy was taken by another...
...And now my glass is run, And my hour it is come, And I must die for love and the height of loyalty I thought it was no harm To embrace her in my arms, And to take her from her parents...
...Woman had ceased to be an abstract creature, the ornament of the story, the spoil of the strong hand...
...The one who rode in front had on him the green mantle of a king...
...You must come in Shaun, I'm expecting someone else, but there's no one with me yet...
...Nora said: "Shaun, come in...
...The room was filled with smoke, and the occupant was eating his breakfast off the top of a cfecst...
...Somebody was playing for a dance...
...Now Farnie had seven score townlands, and all that he willed he could do, and all that he longed for he could possess...
...After a while the articulation of the crow took his interest, and he turned on the bird an eye that was remarkably like its own—a small, blue, penetrating eye...
...He shrank from the dogs, and the silent, stealthy forms slipping through the evening seemed like a terror that had missed him...
...Outside the town there were men in groups, and Shaun went up and stood amongst them...
...He made his way across the silent fields...
...He watched a soldier go into a house where there was a dance, and then he waited to speak with a ballad-singer, who had The Lament for Hugh Reynolds: By the loving of a maid, One Catherine McCabe, My life it is betrayed...
...And it was to pleasure her that Farnie built the turret that Shaun looked toward now...
...Then he went, and when she came back to the room with Nora, the girl felt somehow lonely after the strange little creature who had gone out...
...The ravens built in the tower now, he knew, but he did not moralize on this...
...He was seated on a box...
...There was a green rath with trees growing upon it...
...But it suddenly came over him that he must preserve the secret that he had—the secret of the beauty that he had seen...
...He said: "Miss Nora, I'm ashamed to go into your nice house...
...Formerly there had been a garden before the house that he was now the sole occupant of, and a cherry tree still growing showed that the place had once its grace and its cultivation...
...The music brought back to him the loneliness of the empty fields...
...He became shy and uneasy, because he saw himself as an unkempt creature...
...He finished his breakfast, put a cap on, and for a while surveyed the world from his doorway...
...A sudden wind rustled in the grass...
...The rosary began and went on to the litany, but there was no music from the organ...
...The wife who had brought him these riches died, but Farnie was not left long to himself...
...His gaze roved about the room...
...Then Shaun took up a handful of grass and threw it across his shoulder...
...The man at the door was a survival from a vanished population...
...a quick knock had come to the door, and Nora went to open it...
...Her brother would keep Farnie away, but one night be brought his horse under her window, and she came d©wn to him, and they rode away together...
...They played cards and they made jokes about one another, and they talked to him mockingly* He had been talking to this one and that one, and to the whole company of them...
...she's a dear maid to me...
...The tumble-down house was solitary...
...The tune ended suddenly...
...Near his path a shoot of briar raised itself in the air...
...Shaun stole away from the farmhouse where he had been given a meal...
...He refused to eat...
...There was a young girl there...
...Furze bushes grow upon the mounds that marked the banqueting hall of the kings, putting above the green their heaps of golden blossoms...
...At last he found himself before the place that he was drawn to—a trim house at the outskirts of the town...
...His cheek-bones were high, and his forehead projected, making a type that as some people think, shows a strong imagination, joined to an active and sanguine temperament...
...Then Farnie had blood-horses under him, and hounds to follow, and his own lands to ride across...
...His delight was in the splendor and success of that man who had brought the woman there...
...Between himself and the beautiful growing girl he felt the hundred ties of race...
...He watched the game they played and was silent, and when the game was finished he went from the men and into the chapel...
...But the clear voice that Shaun heard did not arouse the one who wore the green mantle...
...With bowed head the king rode on...
...There once the chiefs of the Fianna and the nobles of the royal house feasted to the espousals of Grania, the king's daughter, and Fionn, the great captain...
...He could win any woman, for he had "a diplume for coortin...
...Near the town he encountered part of a returning hunt...
...When she came in again she had another with her...
...The man's mind also had gone back from discipline...
...He got five score town-lands with that woman...
...The music that Nora had played seemed to come to him again as he crossed the fields...
...But the woman never climbed the stair within, and the couple never slept inside the walls...
...He was known by the name of Shaun, and he had employment on one of the grazing-tracts...
...He saw the landmarks, and the way through the night to his cabin...
...She brought him within and made him sit down...
...her hair was brighter and softer than the candles' flame...
...He said this although he wanted to meet with some friendliness that night...
...in one corner there was a bed with a ragged, miscellaneous covering...
...Over the fields grew the sadness of vanishing light...
...She took up the violin and began to play...
...The legend of the place was part of Shaun's dream...
...Others were coming out of the darkness, mounted on fine horses...
...The candles that had been lighted on the altar were quenched now, and the people began to leave, their devotions over...
...He heard a voice that called "Shaun, Shaun...
...Grania drugged the ale, and while the elders slept she offered herself for wife to each of the young men who were most spoken of— to Oscar, to Caoilte, and at last, to the most expert and the most beautiful of them all—to Dermott O'Duibhne...
...Then away the pair went together, and for long the wild and waste places of Ireland hid them from the wrath of Fionn...
...Once the district was inhabited, but the place had been cleared of men and women, and had been given over to cattle...
...Nora was neat and precise, rather like one of the friendly, witty nuns one often meets in Irish convents...
...The Sunday before he had heard a voice singing up there, and he had seen a face and figure between the lighted candles...
...April 21, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 657 Steadily they went through the grass while the pageant of sun, cloud, and shadow crossed the fields...
Vol. 3 • April 1926 • No. 24
