THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS 
 BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
The Wind Among the Reeds 
 
TbeWlND AMONG 
 THE REEDS^^^ 
 
 WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 
 
 » 
 
 i UNIVER 
 
 \ or . ^. 
 
 LONDON . ELKIN MATHEWS 
 VIGO STREET • W . MDCCCCIII 
 
FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 WOff/Tf 
 
^1??^' 
 
 
 "*^ >f. /<f;i '^'''' 
 
 The Hosting of the Sidhe i 
 
 The Everlasting Voices . '^t^ . <^ . . . . 3 
 
 The Moods 4 
 
 Aedh tells of the Rose in his Heart . . 5 
 
 The Host of the Air . 7 
 
 Breasal the Fisherman 10 
 
 A Cradle Song . . . .^ . . 11 
 
 Into THE Twilight. .^^^/y<^*/ . ... 13 
 
 The Song of Wandering Aengus . . . . . 15 
 
 The Song of the old Mother 17 
 
 The Fiddler of Dooney 18 
 
 The Heart of the Woman . ... . . . 20 
 
 Aedh Laments the Loss of Love 21 
 
 Mongan laments the Change that has come 
 
 UPON him and his Beloved 22 
 
 V 
 
PACK 
 
 Michael Robartes bids his Beloved be at 
 
 Peace . --/ \*^'/^^^ 24 
 
 Hanrahan reproves the Curlew 26 
 
 Michael Robartes remembers forgotten 
 
 Beauty . 27 
 
 A Poet to his Beloved . : 7-j 29 
 
 Aedh gives his Beloved certain Rhymes . • . 30 
 
 To MY Heart, bidding it have no Fear . . 31 
 
 The Cap and Bells . . , . 32 
 
 The Valley of the Black Pig 35 
 
 Michael Robartes asks Forgiveness because 
 
 of his many Moods 37 
 
 Aedh tells of a Valley full of Lovers. . 40 
 
 Aedh tells of the perfect Beauty . , ' . 42 
 
 Aedh hears the Cry of the Sedge .... 43 
 Aedh thinks of those who have spoken Evil 
 
 of his Beloved 44 
 
 The Blessed 45 
 
 The Secret Rose 47 
 
 Hanrahan laments because of his Wander- 
 ings 51 
 
 The Travail of Passion 52 
 
 vi 
 
PAGE 
 
 The Poet pleads with his Friend for old 
 
 Friends 54 
 
 Hanrahan speaks to the Lovers of his Songs 
 
 IN coming Days . f^*. .^1 55 
 
 Aedh pleads with the Elemental Powers . 57 
 
 Aedh wishes his Beloved were dead ... 59 
 
 Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven . . 60 
 
 MONGAN thinks OF HIS PAST GREATNESS . . . 6l 
 
 Notes 65 
 
 vu 
 

 THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE 
 
 The host is riding from Knocknarea 
 And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare; 
 Caolte tossing his burning hair 
 And Niamh calling Awaj/, come away: 
 Empty your heart of its vtortal dream. 
 The winds awaken^ the leaves whirl rounds 
 Our cheeks are pale^ onr hair is tmboundy 
 Our breasts are heaving^ our eyes are a-gleam, 
 Our arms are waving^ our lips are apart; 
 And if auy gaze on our 7'iLshing bandy 
 We come between him and the deed of his 
 hand, 
 
 I T 
 
IVe come bctivecn Jiivi and the hope of his 
 
 heart. 
 The host is rushing 'twixt night and day, 
 And where is there hope or deed as fair? 
 Caolte tossing his burning hair, 
 And Niamh calling Away, come axuay. 
 % 
 
THE EVERLASTING VOICES 
 
 O SWEET everlasting Voices be still; 
 Go to the guards of the heavenly fold 
 And bid them wander obeying your will 
 Flame under flame, till Time be no more; 
 Have you not heard that our hearts are old, 
 That you call in birds, in wind on the hill. 
 In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore? 
 O sweet everlasting Voices be still. 
 
THE MOODS 
 
 Time drops in decay, 
 Like a candle burnt out, 
 And the mountains and woods 
 Have their day, have their day; 
 What one in the rout 
 Of the fire-born moods, 
 Has fallen away? 
 
AEDH TELLS OF THE ROSE IN HIS 
 HEART 
 
 All things uncomely and broken, all things 
 
 worn out and old, 
 The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak 
 
 of a lumbering cart, 
 The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing 
 
 the wintry mould. 
 Are wronging your image that blossoms a 
 
 rose in the deeps of my heart. 
 
 The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong 
 
 too great to be told; 
 5 
 
I hunger to build them anew and sit on a 
 
 green knoll apart, 
 With the earth and the sky and the water, 
 
 remade, like a casket of gold 
 For my dreams of your image that blossoms 
 
 a rose in the deeps of my heart. 
 
^€1.^' 
 (y-'' 
 
 THE HOST OF THE AIR 
 
 O'Driscoll drove with a song, ^^ 
 The wild duck and the drake, 
 From the tall and the tufted reeds 
 Of the drear Hart Lake. -.^ 
 
 And he saw how the reeds grew dark 
 At the coming of night tide, 
 And dreamed of the long dim hair 
 Of Bridget his bride. 
 
 He heard while he sang and dreamed 
 
 A piper piping away, 
 
 And never was piping so sad. 
 
 And never was piping so gay. 
 7 
 
And he saw young men and young girls 
 Who danced on a level place 
 And Bridget his bride among them, 
 With a sad and a gay face. 
 
 The dancers crowded about him, 
 
 And many a sweet thing said, 
 
 And a young man brought him red wine 
 
 And a young girl white bread. 
 
 But Bridget drew him by the sleeve. 
 Away from the merry bands, 
 To old men playing at cards 
 With a twinkling of ancient hands. 
 
 The bread and the wine had a doom, 
 
 For these were the host of the air; 
 
 He sat and played in a dream 
 
 Of her long dim hair. 
 8 
 
He played with the merry old men 
 And thought not of evil chance, 
 Until one bore Bridget his bride 
 Away from the merry dance. 
 
 He bore her away in his arms, 
 
 The handsomest young man there, 
 
 And his neck and his breast and his arms 
 
 Were drowned in her long dim hair. 
 
 O'Driscoll scattered the cards 
 
 And out of his dream awoke: 
 
 Old men and young men and young girls 
 
 Were gone like a drifting smoke; 
 
 Bnt he heard high up in the air 
 
 A piper piping away. 
 
 And never was piping so sad, 
 
 And never was piping so gay. 
 9 
 
BREASAL THE FISHERMAN 
 
 Although you hide in the ebb and flow 
 
 Of the pale tide when the moon has set, 
 
 The people of coming days will know 
 
 About the casting out of my net, 
 
 And how you have leaped times out of mind 
 
 Over the little silver cords, 
 
 And think that you were hard and unkind, 
 
 And blame you with many bitter words. 
 
 lO 
 
A CRADLE SONG 
 
 The Danann children laugh, in cradles of 
 
 wrought gold, 
 And clap their hands together, and half close 
 
 their eyes. 
 For they will ride the North when the ger- 
 
 eagle flies. 
 With heavy whitening wings, and a heart 
 
 fallen cold : 
 I kiss my wailing child and press it to my 
 
 breast, 
 
 And hear the narrow graves calling my child 
 
 and me. 
 
 I r 
 
 J 
 
Desolate winds that cry over the wandering 
 sea; 
 
 Desolate winds that hover in the flaming 
 West; 
 
 Desolate winds that beat the doors of 
 Heaven, and beat 
 
 The doors of Hell and blow there many a 
 whimpering ghost; 
 
 O heart the winds have shaken; the unap- 
 peasable host 
 
 Is comelier than candles before Maurya's 
 feet. 
 
 12 
 
INTO THE TWILIGHT 
 
 Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, 
 Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; 
 Laugh heart again in the gray twilight, 
 Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn. 
 
 Your mother Eire is always young, 
 Dew ever shining and twilight gray; 
 Though hope fall from you and love decay, 
 Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue. 
 
 Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill 
 
 For there the mystical brotherhood 
 
 Of sun and moon and hollow and wood 
 
 And river and stream work out their will; 
 
 13 
 
And God stands winding His lonely horn, 
 And time and the world are ever in flight; 
 And love is less kind than the gray twilight, 
 And hope is less dear than the dew of the 
 morn. 
 
 14 
 
THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS 
 
 I WENT out to the hazel wood, ^'^^-^ 
 
 Because a fire was in my head, 
 
 And cut and peeled a hazel wand. 
 
 And hooked a berry to a thread ; 
 
 And when white moths were on the wing, 
 
 And moth-like stars were flickering out, 
 
 I dropped the berry in a stream 
 
 And caught a little silver trout. 
 
 When I had laid it on the floor 
 
 I went to blow the fire a-flame. 
 
 But something rustled on the floor. 
 
 And someone called me by my name: 
 15 
 
It had become a glimmering girl 
 With apple blossom in her hair 
 Who called me by my name and ran 
 And faded through the brightening air. 
 
 Though I am old with wandering 
 Through hollow lands and hilly lands, 
 I will find out where she has gone, 
 And kiss her lips and take her hands; 
 And walk among long dappled grass, 
 And pluck till time and times are done, 
 The silver apples of the moon, 
 The golden apples of the sun. 
 
 i6 
 
i uHlVERSiYV j 
 
 THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER 
 
 I RISE in the dawn, and I kneel and blow 
 Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; 
 And then I must scrub and bake and sweep 
 Till stars are beginning to blink and peep; 
 And the young lie long and dream in their 
 
 bed 
 Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and 
 
 head, 
 
 And their day goes over in idleness, 
 
 And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress: 
 
 While I must work because I am old. 
 
 And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold. 
 17 
 
THE FIDDLER OF DOONEY 
 
 When I play on my fiddle in Dooney, 
 Folk dance like a wave of the sea; 
 My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet, 
 My brother in Moharabuiee. ( Mo^t^^"' 
 
 I passed my brother and cousin : 
 They read in their books of prayer; 
 I read in my book of songs 
 I bought at the Sligo fair. 
 
 When we come at *the end of time, 
 
 To Peter sitting in state, 
 
 He will smile on the three old spirits, 
 
 But call me first through the gate; 
 i8 
 
For the good are always the merry. 
 Save by an evil chance, 
 And the merry love the fiddle 
 And the merry love to dance: 
 
 And when the folk there spy me, 
 They will all come up to me, 
 With ' Here is the fiddler of Dooney ! 
 And dance like a wave of the sea. 
 
 19 
 
THE HEART OF THE WOMAN 
 
 O WHAT to me the little room 
 
 That was brimmed up with prayer and rest; 
 
 He bade me out into the gloom, 
 
 And my breast lies upon his breast. 
 
 O what to me my mother's care, 
 The house where I was safe and warm; 
 The shadowy blossom of my hair 
 Will hide us from the bitter storm. 
 
 hiding hair and dewy eyes, 
 
 1 am no more with life and death, 
 My heart upon his warm heart lies, 
 My breath is mixed into his breath. 
 
 20 
 
AEDH LAMENTS THE LOSS OF LOVE 
 
 Pale brows, still hands and dim hair, 
 I had a beautiful friend 
 And dreamed that the old despair 
 Would end in love in the end : 
 She looked in my heart one day 
 And saw your image was there; 
 She has gone weeping away. 
 
 21 
 
)^^^ 
 
 MONGAN LAMENTS THE CHANGE 
 THAT HAS COME UPON HIM AND 
 HIS BELOVED " ^^^^ ["* ^ "^ 
 
 Do you not hear me calling, white deer with 
 
 no horns ! 
 I have been changed to a hound with one red 
 
 ear; 
 I have been in the Path of Stones and the 
 
 Wood of Thorns, 
 For somebody hid hatred and hope and desire 
 
 and fear 
 Under my feet that they follow you night and 
 
 day. 
 
 22 
 
A man with a hazel wand came without sound; 
 
 He changed me suddenly; I was looking an- 
 other way; 
 
 And now my calling is but the calling of a 
 hound; 
 
 And Time and Birth and Change are hurry- 
 ing by. 
 
 I would that the boar without bristles had 
 come from the West 
 
 And had rooted the sun and moon and stars 
 out of the sky 
 
 And lay in the darkness, grunting, and turning 
 to his rest. 
 
 23 
 
MICHAEL ROBARTES BIDS HIS 
 BELOVED BE AT PEACE 
 
 I HEAR the Shadowy Horses, their long manes 
 a-shake, 
 
 Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes 
 glimmering white; 
 
 The North unfolds above them clinging, 
 creeping night. 
 
 The East her hidden joy before the morning 
 break. 
 
 The West weeps in pale dew and sighs pass- 
 ing away. 
 
 The South is pouring down roses of crimson 
 
 fire: 
 
 24 
 
O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless 
 
 Desire, 
 The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy 
 
 clay: 
 Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your 
 
 heart beat 
 Over my heart, and your hair fall over my 
 
 breast, 
 Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight 
 
 of rest. 
 And hiding their tossing manes and their 
 
 tumultuous feet. 
 
 25 
 
HANRAHAN REPROVES THE 
 CURLEW 
 
 O, CURLEW, cry no more in the air, 
 Or only to the waters in the West; 
 Because your crying brings to my mind 
 Passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair 
 That was shaken out over my breast: 
 There is enough evil in the crying of wind. 
 
 26 
 
MICHAEL ROBARTES REMEMBERS 
 FORGOTTEN BEAUTY 
 
 When my arms wrap you round I press 
 
 My heart upon the loveliness 
 
 That has long faded from the world; 
 
 The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled 
 
 In shadowy pools, when armies fled ; 
 
 The love-tales wove with silken thread 
 
 By dreaming ladies upon cloth 
 
 That has made fat the murderous moth; 
 
 The roses that of old time were 
 
 Woven by ladies in their hair, 
 
 The dew-cold lilies ladies bore 
 27 
 
Through many a sacred corridor 
 Where such gray clouds of incense rose 
 That only the gods' eyes did not close: 
 For that pale breast and lingering hand 
 Come from a more dream -heavy land, 
 A more dream-heavy hour than this; 
 And when you sigh from kiss to kiss 
 I hear white Beauty sighing, too, 
 For hours when all must fade like dew 
 But flame on flame, deep under deep, 
 Throne over throne, where in half sleep 
 Their swords upon their iron knees 
 Brood her high lonely mysteries. 
 
 28 
 
A POET TO HIS BELOVED 
 
 1 BRING you with reverent hands 
 The books of my numberless dreams ; 
 White woman that passion has worn 
 As the tide wears the dove-gray sands, 
 And with heart more old than the horn 
 That is brimmed from the pale fire of time 
 White woman with numberless dreams 
 I bring you my passionate rhyme. 
 
 29 
 
A^^ 
 
 AEDH GIVES HIS BELOVED CERTAIN 
 RHYMES 
 
 Fasten your hair with a golden pin, 
 And bind up every wandering tress ; 
 I bade my heart build these poor rhymes : 
 It worked at them, day out, day in. 
 Building a sorrowful loveliness 
 Out of the battles of old times. 
 
 You need but lift a pearl-pale hand, 
 
 And bind up your long hair and sigh; 
 
 And all men's hearts must burn and beat; 
 
 And candle-like foam on the dim sand. 
 
 And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky, 
 
 Live but to light your passing feet. 
 30 
 
\^\ 
 
 TO MY HEART, BIDDING IT HAVE 
 NO FEAR 
 
 Be you still, be you still, trembling heart; 
 Remember the wisdom out of the old days : 
 Htm who trembles before the flame and the floody 
 And the winds that blow through the starry ways, 
 Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood 
 Cover over and hide, for he has no part 
 With the proud, majestical mtdtitude. 
 
 31 
 
THE CAP AND BELLS 
 
 The jester walked in the garden : 
 The garden had fallen still ; 
 He bade his soul rise upward 
 And stand on her window-sill. 
 
 It rose in a straight blue garment, 
 When owls began to call : 
 It had grown wise-tongued by thinking 
 Of a quiet and light footfall ; 
 
 But the young queen would not listen ; 
 
 She rose in her pale night gown ; 
 
 She drew in the heavy casement 
 
 And pushed the latches down. 
 32 
 
He bade his heart go to her, 
 When the owls called out no more; 
 In a red and quivering garment 
 It sang to her through the door. 
 
 It had grown sweet -tongued by dreaming, 
 Of a flutter of flower-like hair; 
 But she took up her fan from the table 
 And waved it off on the air. 
 
 * I have cap and bells ' he pondered, 
 ' I will send them to her and die; ' 
 And when the morning whitened 
 He left them where she went by. 
 
 She laid them upon her bosom, 
 
 Under a cloud of her hair, 
 
 And her red lips sang them a love song: 
 
 Till stars grew out of the air. 
 3 33 
 
She opened her door and her window, 
 And the heart and the soul came through, 
 To her right hand came the red one, 
 To her left hand came the blue. 
 
 They set up a noise like crickets, 
 A chattering wise and sweet, 
 And her hair was a folded flower 
 And the quiet of love in her feet. 
 
 34 
 
THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 
 
 The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: 
 
 unknown spears 
 Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened 
 
 eyes, 
 And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the 
 
 cries 
 Of unknown perishing armies beat about my 
 
 ears. 
 We who still labour by the cromlec on the 
 
 shore, 
 
 The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks 
 
 drowned in dew, 
 
 35 
 
Being weary of the world's empires, bow down 
 
 to you 
 Master of the still stars and of the flaming 
 
 door. 
 
 3<5 
 
^ 
 
 MICHAEL ROBARTES ASKS FOR- 
 GIVENESS BECAUSE OF HIS 
 MANY MOODS 
 
 If this importunate heart trouble your peace 
 
 With words lighter than air, 
 
 Or hopes that in mere hoping flicker and 
 
 cease ; 
 ^Crumple the rose in your hair; 
 And cover your lips with odorous twilight 
 
 and say, 
 
 * O Hearts of wind-blown flame ! 
 
 ' O Winds, elder than changing of night and 
 
 day, 
 
 37 
 
' That murmuring and longing came, 
 
 ' From marble cities loud with tabors of old 
 
 * In dove-gray faery lands; 
 
 * From battle banners fold upon purple fold, 
 
 * Queens wrought with glimmering hands; 
 
 * That saw young Niamh hover with love-lorn 
 
 face 
 'Above the wandering tide; 
 ' And lingered in the hidden desolate place, 
 
 * Where the last Phoenix died 
 
 ' And wrapped the flames above his holy 
 
 head; 
 'And still murmur and long: 
 
 * O Piteous Hearts, changing till change be 
 
 dead 
 
 * In a tumultuous song:' 
 
 And cover the pale blossoms of your breast 
 38 
 
With your dim heavy hair, 
 And trouble with a sigh for all things long- 
 ing for rest 
 The odorous twilight there. 
 
 39 
 
AEDH TELLS OF A VALLEY FULL 
 OF LOVERS 
 
 I DREAMED that I stood in a valley, and amid 
 sighs, 
 
 For happy lovers passed two by two where I 
 stood; 
 
 And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily 
 out of the wood 
 
 With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream- 
 dimmed eyes: 
 
 I cried in my dream * O women bid the yoting 
 
 1)1 en lay 
 
 40 
 
* Their heads on your knees ^ and drown their eyes 
 
 with your hair, 
 
 * Or re^nembering hers they will find no other 
 
 face fair 
 
 * Till all the valleys of the world have been with- 
 
 ered away. ' 
 
 4T 
 
AEDH TELLS OF THE PERFECT 
 BEAUTY 
 
 O CLOUD-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes 
 The poets labouring all their days 
 To build a perfect beauty in rhyme 
 Are overthrown by a woman's gaze 
 And by the unlabouring brood of the skies : 
 And therefore my heart will bow, when dew 
 Is dropping sleep, until God burn time, 
 Before the unlabouring stars and you. 
 
AEDH HEARS THE CRY OF THE 
 SEDGE 
 
 I WANDER by the edge 
 
 Of this desolate lake 
 
 Where wind cries in the sedge 
 
 Until the axle break 
 
 That keeps the stars i7i their round 
 
 And hands hurl in the deep 
 
 The banners of East and West 
 
 And the girdle of light is unboundy 
 
 Your breast zvill not lie by the breast 
 
 Of your beloved in sleep. 
 
 43 
 
AEDH THINKS OF THOSE WHO HAVE 
 SPOKEN EVIL OF HIS BELOVED 
 
 Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair, 
 And dream about the great and their pride; 
 They have spoken against you everywhere, 
 But weigh this song with the great and their 
 
 pride; 
 I made it out of a mouthful of air, 
 Their children's children shall say they have 
 
 lied. 
 
 44 
 
THE BLESSED 
 
 CUMHAL called out, bending his head, 
 Till Dathi came and stood, 
 With a blink in his eyes at the cave mouth, 
 Between the wind and the wood. 
 
 And Cumhal said, bending his knees, 
 
 * I have come by the windy way 
 
 * To gather the half of your blessedness 
 
 * And learn to pray when you pray. 
 
 * I can bring you salmon out of the streams 
 
 * And heron out of the skies. * 
 
 But Dathi folded his hands and smiled 
 
 With the secrets of God in his eyes. 
 45 
 
And Cumhal saw like a drifting smoke 
 All manner of blessed souls, 
 Women and children, young men with books. 
 And old men with croziers and stoles. 
 
 'Praise God and God's mother,' Dathi said, 
 ' For God and God's mother have sent 
 ' The blessedest souls that walk in the world 
 'To fill your heart with content.* 
 
 ' And which is the blessedest,* Cumhal said, 
 
 * Where all are comely and good ? 
 
 ' Is it these that with golden thuribles 
 ' Are singing about the wood ? ' 
 
 * My eyes are blinking,' Dathi said, 
 
 ' With the secrets of God half blind, 
 
 ' But I can see where the wind goes 
 
 ' And follow the way of the wind ; 
 46 
 
* And blessedness goes where the wind goes, 
 'And when it is gone we are dead ; 
 
 *I see the blessedest soul in the world 
 *And he nods a drunken head. 
 
 ' O blessedness comes in the night and the day 
 
 * And whither the wise heart knows; 
 
 * And one has seen in the redness of wine 
 
 * The Incorruptible Rose, 
 
 * That drowsily drops faint leaves on him 
 ' And the sweetness of desire, 
 
 'While time and the world are ebbing away 
 
 * In twilights of dew and of fire. ' 
 
 47 
 
THE SECRET ROSE 
 
 Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose, 
 Enfold me in my hour of hours ; where those 
 Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre, 
 Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stir 
 And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep 
 Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep 
 Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves 
 
 enfold 
 The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and 
 
 gold 
 
 Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose 
 
 eyes 
 
 48 
 
Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder 
 
 rise 
 In druid vapour and make the torches dim; 
 Till vain frenzy awoke and he died ; and him 
 Who met Fand walking among flaming dew 
 By a gray shore where the wind never 
 
 blew, 
 And lost the world and Emer for a kiss; 
 And him who drove the gods out of their 
 
 liss, 
 And till a hundred morns had flowered red, 
 Feasted and wept the barrows of his dead; 
 And the proud dreaming king who flung the 
 
 crown 
 
 And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown 
 
 Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep 
 
 woods ; 
 
 4 49 
 
And him who sold tillage, and house, and 
 
 goods, 
 And sought through lands and islands num- 
 berless years. 
 Until he found with laughter and with tears, 
 A woman, of so shining loveliness, 
 That men threshed corn at midnight by a 
 
 tress, 
 A little stolen tress. I, too, await 
 The hour of thy great wind of love and hate. 
 When shall the stars be blown about the sky, 
 Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and 
 
 die.? 
 Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind 
 
 blows. 
 Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose.!* 
 50 
 
I 
 
 
 HANRAHAN LAMENTS BECAUSE OF 
 HIS WANDERINGS 
 
 WHERE is our Mother of Peace 
 Nodding her purple hood? 
 
 For the winds that awakened the stars 
 Are blowing through my blood. 
 
 1 would that the death-pale deer 
 Had come through the mountain side, 
 And trampled the mountain away, 
 And drunk up the murmuring tide; 
 For the winds that awakened the stars 
 Are blowing through my blood, 
 
 And our Mother of Peace has forgot me 
 
 Under her purple hood. 
 51 
 
THE TRAVAIL OF PASSION 
 
 When the flaming lute-thronged angelic door 
 is wide; 
 
 When an immortal passion breathes in mor- 
 tal clay; 
 
 Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited 
 thorns, the way 
 
 Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds in 
 palm and side, 
 
 The hyssop-heavy sponge, the flowers by 
 Kidron stream : 
 
 We will bend down and loosen our hair over 
 
 you, 
 
 52 
 
That it may drop faint perfume, and be 
 
 heavy with dew, 
 Lilies of death-pale hope, roses of passionate 
 
 dream. 
 
 53 
 
THE POET PLEADS WITH HIS FRIEND 
 FOR OLD FRIENDS 
 
 Though you are in your shining days, 
 
 Voices among the crowd 
 
 And new friends busy with your praise, 
 
 Be not unkind or proud, 
 
 But think about old friends the most: 
 
 Time's bitter flood will rise, 
 
 Your beauty perish and be lost 
 
 For all eyes but these eyes. 
 
 54 
 
HANRAHAN SPEAKS TO THE LOVERS 
 OF HIS SONGS IN COMING DAYS 
 
 O, COLLEENS, kneeling by your altar rails long 
 
 hence, 
 When songs I wove for my beloved hide the 
 
 prayer, 
 And smoke from this dead heart drifts 
 
 through the violet air 
 And covers away the smoke of myrrh and 
 
 frankincense ; 
 
 Bend down and pray for the great sin I wove 
 
 in song, 
 
 55 
 
Till Maurya of the wounded heart cry a sweet 
 
 cry, 
 And call to my beloved and me: * No longer 
 
 fly 
 'Amid the hovering, piteous, penitential 
 
 throng. * 
 
 56 
 
AEDH PLEADS WITH THE 
 ELEMENTAL POWERS 
 
 The Powers whose name and shape no living 
 
 creature knows 
 Have pulled the Immortal Rose; 
 And though the Seven Lights bowed in their 
 
 dance and wept, 
 The Polar Dragon slept, 
 His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering 
 
 deep to deep: 
 When will he wake from sleep? 
 
 Great Powers of falling wave and wind and 
 
 windy fire, 
 
 With your harmonious choir 
 57 
 
Encircle her I love and sing her into peace, 
 
 That my old care may cease; 
 
 Unfold your flaming wings and cover out of 
 
 sight 
 The nets of day and night. 
 
 Dim Powers of drowsy thought, let her no 
 
 longer be 
 Like the pale cup of the sea, 
 When winds have gathered and sun and moon 
 
 burned dim 
 Above its cloudy rim; 
 But let a gentle silence wrought with music 
 
 flow 
 Whither her footsteps go. 
 
 S8 
 
/i. 
 
 AEDH WISHES HIS BELOVED WERE 
 DEAD 
 
 Were you but lying cold and dead, 
 
 And lights were paling out of the West, 
 
 You would come hither, and bend your head, 
 
 And I would lay my head on your breast ; 
 
 And you would murmur tender words, 
 
 Forgiving me, because you were dead: 
 
 Nor would you rise and hasten away. 
 
 Though you have the will of the wild birds. 
 
 But know your hair was bound and wound 
 
 About the stars and moon and sun : 
 
 O would beloved that you lay 
 
 Under the dock-leaves in the ground, 
 
 While lights were paling one by one. 
 59 
 
AEDH WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS 
 OF HEAVEN 
 
 Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, 
 Enwrought with golden and silver light, 
 The blue and the dim and the dark cloths 
 Of night and light and the half light, 
 I would spread the cloths under your feet : 
 But I, being poor, have only my dreams; 
 I have spread my dreams under your feet ; 
 Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. 
 
 60 
 
MONGAN THINKS OF HIS PAST 
 GREATNESS 
 
 I HAVE drunk ale from the Country of the 
 
 Young 
 And weep because I know all things now: 
 I have been a hazel tree and they hung 
 The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough 
 Among my leaves in times out of mind : 
 I became a rush that horses tread : 
 I became a man, a hater of the wind, 
 Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his 
 
 head 
 
 6i 
 
Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the 
 
 hair 
 Of the woman that he loves, until he dies; 
 Although the rushes and the fowl of the air 
 Cry of his love with their pitiful cries. 
 
 ^.^'' y 
 
 62 
 
NOTES 
 
y..-.,t 
 
 
 
 The Hosting of the Sidhe. 
 
 The powerful and wealthy called the gods of 
 ancient Ireland the Tuatha De Danaan, or the 
 Tribes of the goddess Danu, but the poor called 
 them, and still sometimes call them, the Sidhe, 
 from Aes Sidhe or Sluagh Sidhe, the people 
 of the Faery Hi\ls, as these words are usually 
 explained. Sidhe is also Gaelic for wind, and 
 certainly the Sidhe have much to do with the 
 wind. They journey in whirling winds, the 
 winds that were called the dance of the daugh- 
 ters of Herodias in the Middle Ages, Hero- 
 dias doubtless taking the place of some old 
 goddess. When the country people see the 
 S 6S 
 
leaves whirling on the road they bless them- 
 selves, because they believe the Sidhe to be 
 passing by. They are almost always said to 
 wear no covering upon their heads, and to let 
 their hair stream out; and the great among 
 them, for they have great and simple, go much 
 upon horseback. If any one becomes too much 
 interested in them, and sees them over much, 
 he loses all interest in ordinary things. I 
 shall write a great deal elsewhere about such 
 enchanted persons, and can give but an exam- 
 ple or two now. 
 
 A woman near Gort, in Galway, says: 
 'There is a boy, now, of the Cloran's; but I 
 would n't for the world let them think I spoke 
 of him; it's two years since he came from 
 America, and since that time he never went to 
 Mass, or to church, or to fairs, or to market, 
 or to stand on the cross roads, or to hurling, 
 
 or to nothing. And if any one comes into the 
 66 
 
house, it 's into the room he '11 slip, not to see 
 
 them ; and as to work, he has the garden dug 
 
 to bits, and the whole place smeared with cow 
 
 dung ; and such a crop as was never seen ; and 
 
 the alders all plaited till they look grand: 
 
 One day he went as far as the chapel ; but as 
 
 soon as he got to the door he turned straight 
 
 round again, as if he hadn't power to pass it. 
 
 I wonder he would n't get the priest to read a 
 
 Mass for him, or something; but the crop he 
 
 has is grand, and you may know well he has 
 
 some to help him.' One hears many stories 
 
 of the kind; and a man whose son is believed 
 
 to go out riding among them at night tells me 
 
 that he is careless about everything, and lies 
 
 in bed until it is late in the day. A doctor 
 
 believes this boy to be mad. Those that are 
 
 at times *away,' as it is called, know all 
 
 things, but are afraid to speak. A countryman 
 
 at Kiltartan says, * There was one of the 
 67 
 
Lydons — John — was away for seven years, 
 lying in his bed, but brought away at nights, 
 and he knew everything; and one, Kearney, 
 up in the mountains, a cousin of his own, lost 
 two hoggets, and came and told him, and he 
 knew the very spot where they were, and told 
 him, and he got them back again. But they 
 were vexed at that, and took away the power, 
 so that he never knew anything again, no more 
 than another. ' This wisdom is the wisdom of 
 the fools of the Celtic stories, that was above 
 all the wisdom of the wise. Lomna, the fool 
 of Fiann, had so great wisdom that his head, 
 cut from his body, was still able to sing and 
 prophesy; and a writer in the 'Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica ' writes that Tristram, in the oldest 
 form of the tale of Tristram and Iseult, drank 
 wisdom, and madness the shadow of wisdom, 
 and not love, out of the magic cup. 
 
 The great of the old times are among the 
 68 
 
Tribes of Danu, and are kings and queens 
 among them. Caolte was a companion of 
 Fiann; and years after his death he appeared 
 to a king in a forest, and was a flaming man, 
 that he might lead him in the darkness. When 
 the king asked him who he was, he said, ' I am 
 your candlestick.' I do not remember where 
 I have read this story, and I have, maybe, half 
 forgotten it. Niam was a beautiful woman of 
 the Tribes of Danu, that led Oisin to the 
 Country of the Young, as their country is 
 called; I have written about her in *The 
 Wandering of Usheen ; ' and he came back, 
 at last, to bitterness and weariness. 
 
 Knocknarea is in Sligo, and the country 
 people say that Maeve, still a great queen of 
 the western Sidhe, is buried in the cairn of 
 stones upon it. I have written of Clooth-na- 
 Bare in *The Celtic Twilight' She 'went 
 all over the world, seeking a lake deep enough 
 
 69 
 
to drown her faery life, of which she had grown 
 weary, leaping from hill to hill, and setting up 
 a cairn of stones wherever her feet lighted, 
 until, at last, she found the deepest water in 
 the world in little Lough la, on the top of the 
 bird mountain, in Sligo. ' I forget, now, 
 where I heard this story, but it may have been 
 from a priest at Collooney. Clooth-na-Bare 
 would mean the old woman of Bare, but is 
 evidently a corruption of Cailleac Bare, the old 
 woman Bare, who, under the names Bare, and 
 Berah, and Beri, and Verah, and Dera, and 
 Dhira, appears in the legends of many places. 
 Mr. O' Grady found her haunting Lough Liath 
 high up on the top of a mountain of the Fews, 
 the Slieve Fuadh, or Slieve G-Cullain of old 
 times, under the name of the Cailleac Buillia. 
 He describes Lough Liath as a desolate moon- 
 shaped lake, with made wells and sunken pas- 
 sages upon its borders, and beset by marsh and 
 70 
 
heather and gray boulders, and closes his 
 * Flight of the Eagle ' with a long rhapsody 
 upon mountain and lake, because of the heroic 
 tales and beautiful old myths that have hung 
 about them always. He identifies the Cailleac 
 Buillia with that Meluchra who persuaded 
 Fionn to go to her amid the waters of Lough 
 Liath, and so changed him with her enchant- 
 ments, that, though she had to free him because 
 of the threats of the Fiana, his hair was ever 
 afterwards as white as snow. To this day the 
 Tribes of the Goddess Danu that are in the 
 waters beckon to men, and drown them in the 
 waters; and Bare, or Dhira, or IMeluchra, or 
 whatever name one likes the best, is, doubt 
 less, the name of a mistress among them. 
 Meluchra was daughter of Cullain ; and Cullain 
 Mr. O' Grady calls, upon I know not what 
 authority, a form of Lir, the master of waters. 
 The people of the waters have been in all ages 
 71 
 
beautiful and changeable and lascivious, or 
 beautiful and wise and lonely, for water is 
 everywhere the signature of the fruitfulness of 
 the body and of the fruitfulness of dreams. 
 The white hair of Fionn may be but another of 
 the troubles of those that come to unearthly 
 wisdom and earthly trouble, and the threats 
 and violence of the Fiana against her, a differ- 
 ent form of the threats and violence the coun- 
 try people use, to make the Tribes of Danu give 
 up those that are * away. ' Bare is now often 
 called an ugly old woman ; but Dr. Joyce says 
 that one of her old names was Aebhin, which 
 means beautiful. Aebhen was the goddess of 
 the tribes of northern Leinster; and the lover 
 she had made immortal, and who loved her 
 perfectly, left her, and put on mortality, to 
 fight among them against the stranger, and 
 died on the strand of Clontarf. 
 
 72 
 
* AEDH, ' * HaNRAHAN ' AND * MiCHAEL 
 ROBARTES ' IN THESE POEMS. 
 
 These are personages in * The Secret Rose ; * 
 but, with the exception of some of Hanrahan's 
 and one of Aedh's poems, the poems are not 
 out of that book. I have used them in this 
 book more as principles of the mind than as 
 actual personages. It is probable that only 
 students of the magical tradition will under- 
 stand me when I say that ' Michael Robartes * 
 is fire reflected in water, and that Hanrahan 
 is fire blown by the wind, and that Aedh, 
 whose name is not merely the Irish form of 
 Hugh, but the Irish for fire, is fire burning by 
 itself. To put it in a different way, Hanrahan 
 is the simplicity of an imagination too change- 
 able to gather permanent possessions, or the 
 adoration of the shepherds; and Michael 
 73 
 
Robartes is the pride of the imagination brood- 
 ing upon the greatness of its possessions, or 
 the adoration of the Magi; while Aedh is the 
 myrrh and frankincense that the imagination 
 offers continually before all that it loves. 
 
 Aedh pleads with the Elemental Powers. 
 
 MONGAN thinks OF HIS PAST GREATNESS. 
 
 Aedh hears the Cry of the Sedge. 
 
 The Rose has been for many centuries a sym- 
 bol of spiritual love and supreme beauty. The 
 Count Goblet D'Alviella thinks that it was 
 once a symbol of the sun, — itself a principal 
 symbol of the divine nature, and the sym- 
 bolic heart of things. The lotus was in some 
 Eastern countries imagined blossoming upon 
 the Tree of Life, as the Flower of Life, and 
 is thus represented in Assyrian bas-reliefs. 
 74 
 
Because the Rose, the flower sacred to the 
 Virgin Mary, and the flower that Apuleius' 
 adventurer ate, when he was changed out of 
 the ass's shape and received into the fellow- 
 ship of Isis, is the western Flower of Life, I 
 have imagined it growing upon the Tree of 
 Life. I once stood beside a man in Ireland 
 when he saw it growing there in a vision, that 
 seemed to have rapt him out of his body. 
 He saw the garden of Eden walled about, and 
 on the top of a high mountain, as in certain 
 mediaeval diagrams, and after passing the Tree 
 of Knowledge, on which grew fruit full of 
 troubled faces, and through whose branches 
 flowed, he was told, sap that was human souls, 
 he came to a tall, dark tree, with little bitter 
 fruits, and was shown a kind of stair or ladder 
 going up through the tree, and told to go up; 
 and near the top of the tree, a beautiful woman, 
 like the Goddess of Life associated with the 
 75 
 
tree in Assyria, gave him a rose that seemed to 
 have been growing upon the tree. One finds 
 the Rose in the Irish poets, sometimes as a 
 religious symbol, as in the phrase, * the Rose 
 of Friday, ' meaning the Rose of austerity, in a 
 Gaelic poem in Dr. Hyde's * Religious Songs 
 of Connacht;' and, I think, as a symbol of 
 woman's beauty in the Gaelic song, ' Roseen 
 Dubh;' and a symbol of Ireland in Mangan's 
 adaptation of ' Roseen Dubh, ' * My Dark Rosa- 
 leen,' and in Mr. Aubrey de Vere's * The 
 Little Black Rose. * I do not know any evi- 
 dence to prove whether this symbol came to 
 Ireland with mediaeval Christianity, or whether 
 it has come down from Celtic times. I have 
 read somewhere that a stone engraved with a 
 Celtic god, who holds what looks like a rose 
 in one hand, has been found somewhere in 
 England; but I cannot find the reference, 
 though I certainly made a note of it. If the 
 
 76. 
 
Rose was really a symbol of Ireland among the 
 Gaelic poets, and if * Roseen Dubh ' is really a 
 political poem, as some think, one may feel 
 pretty certain that the ancient Celts associated 
 the Rose with Eire, or Fotla, or Banba • — 
 goddesses who gave their names to Ireland ■ — 
 or with some principal god or goddess, for such 
 symbols are not suddenly adopted or invented, 
 but come out of mythology. 
 
 I have made the Seven Lights, the constel- 
 lation of the Bear, lament for the theft of the 
 Rose, and I have made the Dragon, the con- 
 stellation Draco, the guardian of the Rose, be- 
 cause these constellations move about the pole 
 of the heavens, the ancient Tree of Life in 
 many countries, and are often associated with 
 the Tree of Life in mythology. It is this 
 Tree of Life that I have put into the * Song 
 of Mongan ' under its common Irish form of 
 a hazel; and, because it had sometimes the 
 
stars for fruit, I have hung upon it * the 
 Crooked Plough ' and the ' Pilot ' star, as 
 Gaelic-speaking Irishmen sometimes call the 
 Bear and the North star. I have made it an 
 axle-tree in ' Aedh hears the Cry of the Sedge,' 
 for this was another ancient way of represent- 
 ing it. 
 
 The Host of the Air. 
 
 Some writers distinguish between the Sluagh 
 Gaoith, the host of the air, and Sluagh Sidhe, 
 the host of the Sidhe, and describe the host of 
 the air as of a peculiar malignancy. Dr. Joyce 
 says, * of all the different kinds of goblins . . . 
 air demons were most dreaded by the people. 
 They lived among clouds, and mists, and rocks, 
 and hated the human race with the utmost 
 malignity.' A very old Arann charm, which 
 contains the words * Send God, by his strength, 
 
 78 
 
between us and the host of the Sidhe, between 
 us and the host of the air,' seems also to dis- 
 tinguish among them. I am inclined, how- 
 ever, to think that the distinction came in 
 with Christianity and its belief about the 
 prince of the air, for the host of the Sidhe, as I 
 have already explained, are closely associated 
 with the wind. 
 
 They are said to steal brides just after their 
 marriage, and sometimes in a blast of wind. 
 A man in Galway says, * At Aughanish there 
 were two couples came to the shore to be mar- 
 ried, and one of the newly married women was 
 in the boat with the priest, and they going back 
 to the island ; and a sudden blast of wind came, 
 and the priest said some blessed words that were 
 able to save himself, but the girl was swept. ' 
 
 This woman was drowned; but more often 
 the persons who are taken ' get the touch, ' as it 
 is called, and fall into a half dream, and grow 
 79 
 
indifferent to all things, for their true life has 
 
 gone out of the world, and is among the hills 
 
 and the forts of the Sidhe. A faery doctor has 
 
 told me that his wife * got the touch ' at her 
 
 marriage because there was one of them wanted 
 
 her; and the way he knew for certain was, that 
 
 when he took a pitchfork out of the rafters, 
 
 and told her it was a broom, she said, * It is a 
 
 broom.' She was, the truth is, in the magical 
 
 sleep, to which people have given a new name 
 
 lately, that makes the imagination so passive 
 
 that it can be moulded by any voice in any 
 
 world into any shape. A mere likeness of 
 
 some old woman, or even old animal, some one 
 
 or some thing the Sidhe have no longer a use 
 
 for, is believed to be left instead of the person 
 
 who is *away;' this some one or some thing 
 
 can, it is thought, be driven away by threats, 
 
 or by violence (though I have heard country 
 
 women say that violence is wrong), which 
 80 
 
perhaps awakes the soul out of the magical 
 sleep. The story in the poem is founded on 
 an old Gaelic ballad that was sung and trans- 
 lated for me by a woman at Ballisodare in 
 County Sligo; but in the ballad the husband 
 found the keeners keening his wife when he got 
 to his house. She was * swept ' at once ; but 
 the Sidhe are said to value those the most 
 whom they but cast into a half dream, which 
 may last for years, for they need the help of a 
 living person in most of the things they do. 
 There are many stories of people who seem to 
 die and be buried — though the country people 
 will tell you it is but some one or some 
 thing put in their place that dies and is 
 buried — and yet are brought back afterwards. 
 These tales are perhaps memories of true awak- 
 enings out of the magical sleep, moulded by 
 the imagination, under the influence of a mysti- 
 cal doctrine which it understands too literally, 
 6 8i 
 
into the shape of some well-known traditional 
 tale. One does not hear them as one hears 
 the others, from the persons who are 'away,' or 
 from their wives or husbands; and one old 
 man, who had often seen the Sidhe, began one 
 of them with ' Maybe it is all vanity. * 
 
 Here is a tale that a friend of mine heard in 
 the Burren hills, and it is a type of all: — 
 
 * There was a girl to be married, and she 
 
 did n't like the man, and she cried when the 
 
 day was coming, and said she would n't go 
 
 alone: with him. And the mother said, " Get 
 
 into the bed, then, and I '11 say that you 're 
 
 sick." And so she did. And when the man 
 
 came the mother said to him, "You can't get 
 
 her, she 's sick in the bed." And he looked in 
 
 and said, "That 's not my wife that 's in the 
 
 bed, it's some old hag." And the mother 
 
 began to cry and to roar. And he went out 
 
 and got two hampers of turf, and made a fire, 
 82 
 
that they thought he was going to burn the 
 house down. And when the fire was kindled, 
 "Come out now," says he, "and we'll see who 
 you are, when I '11 put you on the fire." And 
 when she heard that, she gave one leap, and 
 was out of the house, and they saw, then, it 
 was an old hag she was. Well, the man asked 
 the advice of an old woman, and she bid him 
 go to a faery-bush that was near, and he might 
 get some word of her. So he went there at 
 night, and saw all sorts of grand people, and 
 they in carriages or riding on horses, and 
 among them he could see the girl he came to 
 look for. So he went again to the old woman, 
 and she said, " If you can get the three bits of 
 blackthorn out of her hair, you '11 get her 
 again." So that night he went again, and 
 that time he only got hold of a bit of her hair. 
 But the old woman told him that was no use, 
 and that he was put back now, and it might be 
 83 
 
twelve nights before he 'd get her. But on the 
 fourth night he got the third bit of blackthorn, 
 and he took her, and she came away with him. 
 He never told the mother he had got her; but 
 one day she saw her at a fair, and, says she, 
 " That 's my daughter ; I know her by the smile 
 and by the laugh of her," and she with a shawl 
 about her head. So the husband said, " You 're 
 right there, and hard I worked to get her." 
 She spoke often of the grand things she saw 
 underground, and how she used to have wine 
 to drink, and to drive out in a carriage with 
 four horses every night. And she used to be 
 able to see her husband when he came to look 
 for her, and she was greatly afraid he 'd get a 
 drop of the wine, for then he would have come 
 underground and never left it again. And 
 she was glad herself to come to earth again, 
 and not to be left there.' 
 
 The old Gaelic literature is full of the ap- 
 84 
 
peals of the Tribes of the goddess Danu to 
 mortals whom they would bring into their 
 country; but the song of Midher to the beau- 
 tiful Etain, the wife of the king who was 
 called Echaid the ploughman, is the type 
 of all 
 
 * O beautiful woman, come with me to the 
 marvellous land where one listens to a sweet 
 music, where one has spring flowers in one's 
 hair, where the body is like snow from head to 
 foot, where no one is sad or silent, where teeth 
 are white and eyebrows are black . . . cheeks 
 red like foxglove in flower. . . . Ireland is 
 beautiful, but not so beautiful as the Great 
 Plain I call you to. The beer of Ireland is 
 heady, but the beer of the Great Plain is much 
 more heady. How marvellous is the country I 
 am speaking of ! Youth does not grow old 
 there. Streams with warm flood flow there; 
 sometimes mead, sometimes wine. Men are 
 8s 
 
charming and without a blot there, and love is 
 not forbidden there. O woman, when you 
 come into my powerful country you will wear a 
 crown of gold upon your head. I will give you 
 the flesh of swine, and you will have beer and 
 milk to drink, O beautiful woman. O beau- 
 tiful woman, come with me ! ' 
 
 A Cradle Song. 
 
 Michael Robartes asks Forgiveness be- 
 cause OF HIS MANY MOODS. 
 
 I use the wind as a symbol of vague desires 
 
 and hopes, not merely because the Sidhe are in 
 
 the wind, or because the wind bloweth as it 
 
 listeth, but because wind and spirit and vague 
 
 desire have been associated everywhere. A 
 
 highland scholar tells me that his country 
 
 people use the wind in their talk and in their 
 
 proverbs as I use it in my poem. 
 86 
 
The Song of Wandering Aengus. 
 
 The Tribes of the goddess Danu can take all 
 shapes, and those that are in the waters take 
 often the shape of fish. A woman of Burren, 
 in Galway, says, ' There are more of them in 
 the sea than on the land, and they sometimes 
 try to come over the side of the boat in the 
 form of fishes, for they can take their choice 
 shape.' At other times they are beautiful 
 women; and another Galway woman says, 
 * Surely those things are in the sea as well as 
 on land. My father was out fishing one nigh\ 
 off Tyrone. And something came beside the 
 boat that had eyes shining like candles. And 
 then a wave came in, and a storm rose all in a 
 minute, and whatever was in the wave, the 
 weight of it had like to sink the boat. And 
 then they saw that it was a woman in the sea 
 
 87 
 
that had the shining eyes. So my father went 
 to the priest, and he bid him always to take a 
 drop of holy water and a pinch of salt out in 
 the boat with him, and nothing could harm 
 him.' 
 
 The poem was suggested to me by a Greek 
 folk song; but the folk belief of Greece is very 
 like that of Ireland, and I certainly thought, 
 when I wrote it, of Ireland, and of the spirits 
 that are in Ireland. An old man who was cut- 
 ting a quickset hedge near Gort, in Galway, 
 said, only the other day, * One time I was cut- 
 ting timber over in Inchy, and about eight 
 o'clock one morning, when I got there, I saw 
 a girl picking nuts, with her hair hanging down 
 over her shoulders; brown hair; and she had 
 a good, clean face, and she was tall, and noth- 
 ing on her head, and her dress no way gaudy, 
 but simple. And when she felt me coming 
 
 she gathered herself up, and was gone, as if 
 88 
 
the earth had swallowed her up. And I fol- 
 lowed her, and looked for her, but I never 
 could see her again from that day to this, never 
 again. ' 
 
 The county Gahvay people use the word 
 ' clean ' in its old sense of fresh and comely. 
 
 Michael Robartes bids his Beloved be 
 AT Peace. 
 
 November, the old beginning of winter, or 
 of the victory of the Fomor, or powers of death, 
 and dismay, and cold, and darkness, is asso- 
 ciated by the Irish people with the horse- 
 shaped Pucas, w^ho are now mischievous spirits, 
 but were once Fomorian divinities. I think 
 that they may have some connection with the 
 horses of Mannannan, who reigned over the 
 country of the dead, where the Fomorian 
 Tethra reigned also; and the horses of Man- 
 89 
 
nannan, though they could cross the land as 
 easily as the sea, are constantly associated with 
 the waves. Some neo-platonist, I forget who, 
 describes the sea as a symbol of the drifting 
 indefinite bitterness of life, and I believe there 
 is like symbolism intended in the many Irish 
 voyages to the islands of enchantment, or that 
 there was, at any rate, in the mythology out of 
 which these stories have been shaped. I follow 
 ' much Irish and other mythology, and the 
 magical tradition, in associating the North 
 with night and sleep, and the East, the place 
 of sunrise, with hope, and the South, the place 
 of the sun when at its height, with passion and 
 desire, and the West, the place of sunset, with 
 fading and dreaming things. 
 
 90 
 
MONGAN LAMENTS THE CHANGE THAT HAS 
 COME UPON HIM AND HIS BELOVED. 
 
 HaNRAHAN LAMENTS BECAUSE OF HIS WAN- 
 DERINGS. 
 
 My deer and hound are properly related to 
 the deer and hound that flicker in and out of 
 the various tellings of the Arthurian leg-ends, 
 leading different knights upon adventures, and 
 to the hounds and to the hornless deer at the 
 beginning of, I think, all tellings of Oisin's 
 journey to the country of the young. The 
 hound is certainly related to the Hounds of 
 Annwvyn or of Hades, who are white, and have 
 red ears, and were heard, and are, perhaps, still 
 heard by Welsh peasants following some fly- 
 ing thing in the night winds ; and is probably 
 related to the hounds that Irish country people 
 believe will awake and seize the souls of the 
 dead if you lament them too loudly or too soon, 
 91 
 
and to the hound the son of Setanta killed, on 
 what was certainly, in the first form of the tale, 
 a visit to the Celtic Hades. An old woman 
 told a friend and myself that she saw what she 
 thought were white birds, flying over an en- 
 chanted place, but found, when she got near, 
 that they had dog's heads; and I do not doubt 
 that my hound and these dog-headed birds are 
 of the same family. I got my hound and deer 
 out of a last century Gaelic poem about 
 Oisin's journey to the country of the young. 
 After the hunting of the hornless deer, that 
 leads him to the seashore, and while he is rid- 
 ing over the sea with Niam, he sees amid the 
 waters — I have not the Gaelic poem by me, 
 and describe it from memory — a young man 
 following a girl who has a golden apple, and 
 afterwards a hound with one red ear following 
 a deer with no horns. This hound and this 
 
 deer seem plain images of the desire of man 
 92 
 
which is for the woman,' and ' the desire of 
 the woman which is for the desire of the 
 ■man,' and of all desires that are as these. 
 I have read them in this way in ' The Wander- 
 ings of Usheen ' or Oisin, and have made 
 my lover sigh because he has seen in their 
 faces 'the immortal desire of immortals.' A 
 solar mythologist would perhaps say that the 
 girl with the golden apple was once the win- 
 ter, or night, carrying the sun away, and 
 the deer without horns, like the boar without 
 bristles, darkness flying the light. He would 
 certainly, I think, say that when Cuchullain, 
 whom Professor Rhys calls a solar hero, 
 hunted the enchanted deer of Slieve Fuadh, 
 because the battle fury was still on him, 
 he was the sun pursuing clouds, or cold, or 
 darkness. I have understood them in this 
 sense in ' Hanrahan laments because of his 
 wandering,' and made Hanrahan long for the 
 93 
 
day when they, fragments of ancestral dark- 
 ness, will overthrow the world. The desire of 
 the woman, the flying darkness, it is all one! 
 The image — across, a man preaching in the 
 wilderness, a dancing Salome, a lily in a girl's 
 hand, a flame leaping, a globe with wings, a 
 pale sunset over still waters — is an eternal act ; 
 but our understandings are temporal and 
 understand but a little at a time. 
 
 The man in my poem who has a hazel wand 
 may have been Aengus, Master of Love; and 
 I have made the boar without bristles come 
 out of the West, because the place of sunset 
 was in Ireland, as in other countries, a place 
 of symbolic darkness and death. 
 
 The Cap and Bells. 
 
 I DREAMED this story exa£tly as I have writ- 
 ten it, and dreamed another long dream after 
 94 
 
it, trying to make out its meaning, and whether 
 I was to write it in prose or verse. The first 
 dream was more a vision than a dream, for it 
 was beautiful and coherent, and gave me the 
 sense of illumination and exaltation that one 
 gets from visions, while the second dream was 
 confused and meaningless. The poem has 
 always meant a great deal to me, though, as is 
 the way with symbolic poems, it has not always 
 meant quite the same thing. Blake would have 
 said * the authors are in eternity, ' and I am 
 quite sure they can only be questioned in 
 dreams. 
 
 The Valley of the Black Pig. 
 
 All over Ireland there are prophecies of the 
 coming rout of the enemies of Ireland, in a 
 certain Valley of the Black Pig, and these pro- 
 phecies are, no doubt, now, as they were in the 
 95 
 
Fenian days, a political force. I have heard 
 of one man who would not give any money 
 to the Land League, because the Battle could 
 not be until the close of the century; but, as 
 a rule, periods of trouble bring prophecies 
 of its near coming. A few years before my 
 time, an old man who lived at Lisadell, in 
 Sligo, used to fall down in a fit and rave out 
 descriptions of the Battle; and a man in Sligo 
 has told me that it will be so great a battle 
 that the horses shall go up to their fetlocks in 
 blood, and that their girths, when it is over, 
 will rot from their bellies for lack of a hand to 
 unbuckle them. The battle is a mythological 
 battle, and the black pig is one with the bris- 
 tleless boar, that killed Dearmod, in Novem- 
 ber, upon the western end of Ben Bulben; 
 Misroide MacDatha's sow, whose carving 
 brought on so great a battle ; * the croppy black 
 sow, ' and * the cutty black sow ' of Welsh 
 
 96 
 
November rhymes (' Celtic Heathendom,* pages 
 509-516); the boar that killed Adonis; the 
 boar that killed Attis; and the pig embodi- 
 ment of Typhon ('Golden Bough,' II. pages 
 26, 31). The pig seems to have been origin- 
 ally a genius of the corn, and, seemingly be- 
 cause the too great power of their divinity 
 makes divine things dangerous to mortals, its 
 flesh was forbidden to many eastern nations; 
 but as the meaning of the prohibition was 
 forgotten, abhorrence took the place of rever- 
 ence, pigs and boars grew into types of evil, 
 and were described as the enemies of the very 
 gods they once typified (* Golden Bough,* II. 
 26-31, 56-57). The Pig would, therefore, be- 
 come the Black Pig, a type of cold and of winter 
 that awake in November, the old beginning of 
 winter, to do battle with the summer, and with 
 the fruit and leaves, and finally, as I suggest ; 
 and as I believe, for the purposes of poetry; 
 7 97 
 
of the darkness that will at last destroy the 
 gods and the world. The country people say 
 there is no shape for a spirit to take so danger- 
 ous as the shape of a pig ; and a Galway black- 
 smith — and blacksmiths are thought to be 
 especially protected — says he would be afraid 
 to meet a pig on the road at night; and another 
 Galway man tells this story : * There was a man 
 coming the road from Gort to Garryland one 
 night, and he had a drop taken; and before 
 him, on the road, he saw a pig walking; and 
 having a drop in, he gave a shout, and made a 
 kick at it, and bid it get out of that. And by 
 the time he got home, his arm was swelled 
 from the shoulder to be as big as a bag, and he 
 could n't use his hand with the pain of it. And 
 his wife brought him, after a few days, to a 
 woman that used to do cures at Rahasane. 
 And on the road all she could do would hardly 
 
 keep him from lying down to sleep on the grass. 
 98 
 
And when they got to the woman she knew all 
 that happened; and, says she, it 's well for you 
 that your wife didn't let you fall asleep on the 
 grass, for if you had done that but even for one 
 instant, you 'd be a lost man.' 
 
 It is possible that bristles were associated 
 with fertility, as the tail certainly was, for a 
 pig's tail is stuck into the ground in Courland, 
 that the corn may grow abundantly, and the 
 tails of pigs, and other animal embodiments of 
 the corn genius, are dragged over the ground 
 to make it fertile in different countries. Pro- 
 fessor Rhys, who considers the bristleless boar 
 a symbol of darkness and cold, rather than of 
 winter and cold, thinks it was without bristles 
 because the darkness is shorn away by the sun. 
 It may have had different meanings, just as the 
 scourging of the man-god has had different 
 though not contradictory meanings in different 
 epochs of the world. 
 
 99 
 
The Battle should, I believe, be compared 
 with three other battles; a battle the Sidhe 
 are said to fight when a person is being taken 
 away by them ; a battle they are said to fight 
 in November for the harvest ; the great battle 
 the Tribes of the goddess Danu fought, accord- 
 ing to the Gaelic chroniclers, with the Fomor 
 at Moy Tura, or the Towery Plain. 
 
 I have heard of the battle over the dying both 
 in County Galway and in the Isles of Arann, 
 an old Arann fisherman having told me that it 
 was fought over two of his children, and that 
 he found blood in a box he had for keeping fish, 
 when it was over; and I have written about it, 
 and given examples elsewhere. A faery doctor, 
 on the borders of Galway and Clare, explained 
 it as a battle between the friends and enemies 
 of the dying, the one party trying to take them, 
 the other trying to save them from being taken. 
 It may once, when the land of the Sidhe was 
 
 lOO 
 
the only other world, and when every man who 
 died was carried thither, have always accom- 
 panied death. I suggest that the battle be- 
 tween the Tribes of the goddess Danu, the 
 powers of light, and warmth, and fruitfulness, 
 and goodness, and the Fomor, the powers of 
 darkness, and cold, and barrenness, and bad- 
 ness upon the Towery Plain, was the estab- 
 lishment of the habitable world, the rout of the 
 ancestral darkness ; that the battle among the 
 Sidhe for the harvest is the annual battle of 
 summer and winter; that the battle among the 
 Sidhe at a man's death is the battle of life and 
 death; and that the battle of the Black Pig is 
 the battle between the manifest world and the 
 ancestral darkness at the end of all things; 
 and that all these battles are one, the battle 
 of all things with shadowy decay. Once a 
 symbolism has possessed the imagination of 
 large numbers of men, it becomes, as I believe, 
 
 lOI 
 
an embodiment of disembodied powers, and 
 repeats itself in dreams and visions, age after 
 age. 
 
 The Secret Rose. 
 
 I FIND that I have unintentionally changed 
 the old story of Conchobar's death. He did 
 not see the crucifixion in a vision, but was told 
 about it. He had been struck by a ball, made 
 of the dried brain of a dead enemy, and hurled 
 out of a sling; and this ball had been left in 
 his head, and his head had been mended, the 
 Book of Leinster says, with thread of gold be- 
 cause his hair was like gold. Keating, a writer 
 of the time of Elizabeth, says, * In that state 
 did he remain seven years, until the Friday on 
 which Christ was crucified, according to some 
 historians; and when he saw the unusual 
 changes of the creation and the eclipse of the 
 
 sun and the moon at its full, he asked of 
 102 
 
Bucrach, a Leinster Druid, who was along with 
 him, what was it that brought that unusual 
 change upon the planets of Heaven and Earth. 
 "Jesus Christ, the son of God," said the Druid, 
 "who is now being crucified by the Jews." 
 "That is a pity," said Conchobar; "were I in 
 his presence I would kill those who were put- 
 ting him to death." And with that he brought 
 out his sword, and rushed at a woody grove 
 which was convenient to him, and began to 
 cut and fell it ; and what he said was, that if 
 he were among the Jews that was the usage he 
 would give them, and from the excessiveness of 
 his fury which seized upon him, the ball started 
 out of his head, and some of the brain came 
 after it, and in that way he died. The wood 
 of Lanshraigh, in Feara Rois, is the name by 
 which that shrubby wood is called. * 
 
 I have imagined Cuchullain meeting Fand 
 'walking among flaming dew.' The story of 
 103 
 
their love is one of the most beautiful of our 
 
 old tales. Two birds, bound one to another 
 
 with a chain of gold, canae to a lake side where 
 
 Cuchullain and the host of Uladh was encamped, 
 
 and sang so sweetly that all the host fell into a 
 
 magic sleep. Presently they took the shape 
 
 of two beautiful women, and cast a magical 
 
 weakness upon Cuchullain, in which he lay 
 
 for a year. At the year's end an Aengus, 
 
 who w^as probably Aengus the master of love, 
 
 one of the greatest of the children of the 
 
 goddess Danu, came and sat upon his bedside, 
 
 and sang how Fand, the wife of Mannannan, 
 
 the master of the sea, and of the islands of 
 
 the dead, loved him ; and that if he would 
 
 come into the country of the gods, where 
 
 there was wine and gold and silver, Fand, 
 
 and Laban her sister, would heal him of his 
 
 magical weakness. Cuchullain went to the 
 
 country of the gods, and, after being for a 
 104 
 
month the lover of Fand, made her a promise 
 to meet her at a place called * the Yew at the 
 Strand's End,' and came back to the earth. 
 Emer, his mortal wife, won his love again, 
 and Mannannan came to * the Yew at the 
 Strand's End,' and carried Fand away. When 
 Cuchullain saw her going, his love for her fell 
 upon him again, and he went mad, and wan- 
 dered among the mountains without food or 
 drink, until he was at last cured by a Druid 
 drink of forgetfulness. 
 
 I have founded the man ' who drove the gods 
 out of their Liss,' or fort, upon something I 
 have read about Caolte after the battle of 
 Gabra, when almost all his companions were 
 killed, driving the gods out of their Liss, 
 either at Osraighe, now Ossory, or at Eas 
 Ruaidh, now Asseroe, a waterfall at Bally- 
 shannon, where Ilbreac, one of the children 
 
 of the goddess Danu, had a Liss. I am writ- 
 105 
 
ing away from most of my books, and have not 
 been able to find the passage; but I certainly 
 read it somewhere. 
 
 I have founded * the proud dreaming king ' 
 upon Fergus, the son of Roigh, the legendary 
 poet of ' the quest of the bull of Cualge, ' as he 
 is in the ancient story of Deirdre, and in 
 modern poems by Ferguson. He married 
 Nessa, and Ferguson makes him tell how she 
 took him * captive in a single look. ' 
 
 * I am but an empty shade, 
 Far from life and passion laid ; 
 Yet does sweet remembrance thrill 
 All my shadowy being still.' 
 
 Presently, because of his great love, he gave 
 
 up his throne to Conchobar, her son by another, 
 
 and lived out his days feasting, and fighting, 
 
 and hunting. His promise never to refuse a 
 
 feast from a certain comrade, and the mischief 
 
 that came by his promise, and the vengeance 
 1 06 
 
he took afterwards, are a principal theme of the 
 poets. I have explained my imagination of him 
 in ' Fergus and the Druid,' and in a little song 
 in the second act of ' The Countess Kathleen. ' 
 
 I have founded him * who sold tillage, and 
 
 house, and goods,' upon something in ' The 
 
 Red Pony,' a folk tale in Mr. Larminie's 
 
 * West Irish Folk Tales. ' A young man * saw 
 
 a light before him on the high road. When he 
 
 came as far, there was an open box on the road, 
 
 and a light coming up out of it. He took up 
 
 the box. There was a lock of hair in it. 
 
 Presently he had to go to become the servant 
 
 of a king for his living. There were eleven 
 
 boys. When they were going out into the 
 
 stable at ten o'clock, each of them took a light 
 
 but he. He took no candle at all with him. 
 
 Each of them went into his own stable. When 
 
 he went into his stable he opened the box. 
 107 
 
He left it in a hole in the wall. The light was 
 great. It was twice as much as in the other 
 stables. ' The king hears of it, and makes him 
 show him the box. The king says, * You must 
 go and bring me the woman to whom the 
 hair belongs.' In the end, the young man, 
 and not the king, marries the woman. 
 
 / ^ OF THL 
 
 or 
 
 V or 
 
 1 08 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 Of on the date to which renewed. Renewals only: 
 
 Tel. No. 642-3405 
 Renewals may be made 4 days prior to date due. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 
 d 
 
 
 General Library 
 LI)'2 1 A-20m-3, 73 University of California 
 
 (Q86778l0)476-A-31 Berkeley