O woman with the wild thing's heart, Old sin hath set a snare for thee: In the forest ways forespent thou art, But the hunter Christ shall pity thee.

O woman spendthrift of thyself, Spendthrift of all the love in thee, Sold unto sin for little pelf, The captain Christ shall ransom thee.

O woman that no lover's kiss (Tho' many a kiss was given thee) Could slake thy love, is it not for this The hero Christ shall die for thee?

They were quiet for a while, and then Marsh turned to Henry and said, "Is that alien to you?"

"No," he answered, "but I did not say that it was all alien!..."

"Or this?" Marsh interrupted, taking up the ma.n.u.script again. "Galway sent these translations to me so that I might be the first to see them.

He always does that. This one is called 'Lullaby of a Woman of the Mountain.'"

Little gold head, my house's candle, You will guide all wayfarers that walk this country.

Little soft mouth that my breast has known, Mary will kiss you as she pa.s.ses.

Little round cheek, O smoother than satin, Iosa will lay His hand upon you.

Mary's kiss on my baby's mouth, Christ's little hand on my darling's cheek!

House, be still, and ye little grey mice, Lie close to-night in your hidden lairs.

Moths on the window, fold your wings, Little black chafers, silence your humming.

Plover and curlew fly not over my house, Do not speak, wild barnacle, pa.s.sing over this mountain.

Things of the mountain that wake in the night time, Do not stir to-night till the daylight whitens.

"That's alive, isn't it?" Marsh, now openly angry, demanded. "Do you think that song doesn't kindle the hearts of mothers all over the world?... I can imagine Eve crooning it to little Cain and Abel, and I can imagine a woman in the Combe crooning it to her child!..." The Combe was a tract of slum in Dublin. "It's universal and everlasting. You can't kill that!"

"Then why has it got lost?"

"It isn't lost--it's only covered up. Our task is to dig it out. It's worth digging out, isn't it? The people in the West still sing songs like that. Isn't it worth while to try and get all our people to sing them instead of singing English music-hall stuff?..."

2

It was in that spirit that Marsh started the Gaelic cla.s.s in Ballymartin. "And the Gaelic games," he said to Henry, "we'll revive them too!" Twice a week, he taught the rudiments of the Irish language to a mixed cla.s.s of boys and girls, and every Sat.u.r.day he led the Ballymartin hurley team into one of Mr. Quinn's fields....

There had been difficulty in establishing the mixed cla.s.ses. The farmers and the villagers, having first declared that Gaelic was useless to them--"they'd be a lot better learnin' shorthand!" said John McCracken--then declared that they did not care to have their daughters "trapesin' about the loanies, lettin' on to be learnin' Irish, an' them only up to devilment with the lads!" But Marsh overcame that difficulty, as he overcame most of his difficulties, by persistent attack; and in the end, the Gaelic cla.s.s was established, and the Ballymartin boys and girls were set to the study of O'Growney's primer. Henry was employed as Marsh's monitor. His duty was to supervise the elementary pupils, leaving the more advanced ones to the care of Marsh. It was while he was teaching the Gaelic alphabet to his cla.s.s, that Henry first met Sheila Morgan.

She came into the schoolroom one night out of a drift of rain, and as she stood in the doorway, laughing because the wind had caught her umbrella and almost torn it out of her hands, he could see the raindrops glistening on her cheeks. She put the umbrella in a corner of the room, leaving it open so that it might dry more quickly, and then she shook her long dark hair back and wiped the rain from her face. He waited until she had taken off her mackintosh and hung it up in the cloakroom, and then he went forward to her.

"Have you come to join the cla.s.s?" he asked, and she smiled and nodded her head. "It's a coa.r.s.e sort of a night," she added, coming into the cla.s.sroom.

He did not know her name, and he wondered where her home was. He knew everybody in Ballymartin, and many of the people in the country outside it, but he had never seen Sheila Morgan before.

"I thought I might as well come," she said, "but I'm only here for a while!"

Then she did not belong to the village. "Yes?..." he said.

"It's quaren dull in the country," she continued, "an' the cla.s.ses'll help to pa.s.s the time. I wish it was dancin', but!"

Dancing! They had not made any arrangements for dancing, though the Gaels were very nimble on their feet. He glanced at Marsh reproachfully.

Why had Marsh omitted to revive the Gaelic dances?

"Perhaps," he said to Sheila, "we can have dancing cla.s.ses later on...."

"I'll mebbe be gone before you have them," she answered.

"How long are you staying for?" he asked.

"I don't know. I'm stopping with my uncle Matthew ... it's him has Hamilton's farm ... an' I'm stoppin' 'til he knows how his health'll be.

He's bad...."

He remembered Matthew Hamilton. "Is he ill?" he said.

"Aye. He's been sick this while past, an' now he's worse, an' my aunt Kate asked me to come an' stop with them to help them in the house. He's not near himself at all. You'd think a pity of him if you seen the way he's failed next to nothin'.... Is it hard to learn Irish?"

"You'd better come an' try for yourself," he replied, and then he led her up to Marsh and told him that a new pupil had come to join the cla.s.s. There was some awkwardness about names.... "Och, I never told you my name," she said, laughing as she spoke. "Sheila Morgan!" she continued. "I live in County Down, but I'm stayin' with my uncle Matthew," she explained to Marsh.

"Do you know any Gaelic at all?" Marsh asked.

"No," she replied. "I never learned it. Are you goin' to have any dancin' cla.s.ses?"

Henry insisted that they ought to have had dancing cla.s.ses as well as a hurley team. "The hurley's all right for the boys," he said, "but we've nothing for the girls...."

"But you'd want boys at the dancin' as well," Sheila interrupted. "I can't bear dancin' with girls!"

"No, of course not," said Henry.

Marsh considered. "Who's to teach the dancing?" he asked, adding, "I can't!"

"I'd be willin' to do that," Sheila said. "Mebbe you'd join the cla.s.s yourself, Mr. Marsh?"

Marsh laughed, but did not answer.

"It'll be great value," she went on. "There's nothin' to do in the evenin's ... nothin' at all ... an' it's despert dull at night with nothin' to do!..."

"I'll think about it," said Marsh. "You can begin your Gaelic study now," he added. "Mr. Quinn'll give you a lesson!..."

3

It was Jamesey McKeown who caused the decision to hold the dancing cla.s.ses to be made as quickly as it was. Jamesey was one of the pupils in the advanced section of the Gaelic cla.s.s ... a bright-witted boy of thirteen, with a quick, sharp way. One day, Marsh and Henry had climbed a steep hill outside the village, and when they reached the top of it, they found Jamesey lying there, looking down on the fields beneath. His chin was resting in the cup of his upturned palms.

"G.o.d save you, Jamesey!" said Marsh, and "G.o.d save you kindly!" Jamesey answered.

The greeting and the reply are not native to Ulster, but Marsh had made them part of the Gaelic studies, and whenever he encountered friends he always saluted them so. His pupils, falling in with his whim, replied to his salute as he wished them to reply, but the older people merely nodded their heads or said "It's a soft day!" or "It's a brave day!" or, more abruptly, "Morra, Mr. Marsh!" The Protestants among them suspected that the Gaelic salutation was a form of furtive Popery....