Ireland

by Frank Delaney

  “She looked fine,” said the young man. “She rode down through the White Valley two days ago on the same horse as Jem the handsome man. And they say she’s living in his house.”

  The embarrassment of that! There’s humiliation! But Leary knew like doom it was true. Nevertheless he thanked his searchers and fed them ale.

  Now there’s long been in Ireland a law we call “criminal conversation.” It applies where one man takes away another man’s wife. The injured party may sue for damages and is often very successful. It doesn’t, so far as I know, apply the other way round—sometimes Justice’s blindfold is too tight. “Criminal conversation”—that’s it, hardly criminal and a cause of great conversation.

  Leary decided he’d sue Jem for taking his wife. When that news spread, the buzz of the gossip could be heard on the moon. The case came forward for judging, a date was set, and everyone wanted to be at that trial.

  In those days, if you sued somebody, you had to plead your own case. Leary grew rightly worried at his lack of words. He reckoned that Jem and Gloria had a better chance of persuading a judge than he had, poor slob. Jem had a renowned sweet tongue, and Gloria had unusual and pretty speech.

  Like a lot of men who feel inadequate, Leary got occasional bouts of inspiration, and a few days before the trial was due to begin, he had a wonderful idea. He’d take advice on how to conduct the trial—but he wouldn’t ask a man. Who better to advise on the heart of a woman than another woman? And since judges are reckoned to be wise, a woman who also had that reputation would be doubly useful.

  Well, there lived all over the countryside in those days, and right up to my father’s time, a number of creatures who went under the description “Wise Woman.” They are thought to be the origins of midwives, and some confusion also exists as to whether they were what witches became.

  Certainly they helped to deliver babies into the world. The witch word clung to them because as part of their medical contribution they mixed potions and because they usually lived in peculiar circumstances, distant from the rest of the community. Also, to add to their impression of necromancy, many of them were believed to see into the future.

  Leary chose a woman who lived in a cave five miles away from his home. Bearing the gifts he had been told this woman liked—a pitcher of cream, a flitch of bacon, half a dozen duck eggs, and some red currants from his garden—he rode to the mouth of the cave. As he had been advised to do, he waited until she called him. He expected that he’d enter the cave, sit by her fire, and listen as the old hag crooned some strange melody and peered into a dish of mixed items.

  That isn’t at all what happened. The Wise Woman turned out to be forty years of age, with red, frizzy hair tied up behind her head in a yellow ribbon. Buxom and spotlessly clean, dressed in a gown a lady would have been honored to wear, she bustled out of the cave so lovely and spry that Leary asked himself why she had no husband.

  “I chose not to marry,” she said, answering his unspoken thought.

  I have to be careful what I think, thought Leary.

  “Yes, you have. Get down off that horse and talk to me. Aha! smoked bacon? I knew I’d get some this week”—and Leary unwrapped his parcel.

  “Now, you’ve come about your wife.”

  “Yes.”

  “You want me to help you with the trial?”

  “I hope you will.”

  “And I will,” said the Wise Woman. “Normally I’d never help a man oppose a woman. But in this case you’ve been treated disgracefully. You behaved better to that woman than most men—because most men are clods. Her kind of behavior gives all women a bad name and licenses others to do worse. But I can see that you want her back, and I’ll help you.

  She walked Leary round the corner of the crag to a beautiful divan under interlaced willows that grew out of the ground. From a silver pitcher she poured a blackberry drink. Leary drank it and felt better than he had for weeks.

  For the next three hours she schooled Leary in how to conduct his trial. He told her of his twin hopes—to win the judge’s verdict, and to make Gloria think him more valuable than Jem.

  I don’t want to spoil the story by telling you too much in advance, but I will tell you the most significant piece of advice the Wise Woman gave Leary.

  She said to him, “People can’t hear what one says. If you walk into that court and say to the judge, ‘Judge, I loved that woman and treated her well and this man took her away from me,’ the judge will think, I’ve heard all this before.

  “And if you look across the court at Gloria and say, ‘I love you and that’s why I asked you to be my wife and why I promised to cherish you,’ she’ll say to herself that she hears much sweeter words from Jem—and, no denying it, women do like sweet words, it’s one of the many paths to our general downfall.”

  Leary listened as he had never done; the blackberry drink helped him to concentrate.

  She said, “You’ve to devise a means of being heard. It’s like making up a different language. And I know you’re not good in the tongue department. But I’ll show you where you’ll get wonderful words.”

  Up she rose from her divan, took Leary’s hand, and led him out into the open air. She pointed to the sky.

  “There,” she said. “Up there. That’s where the words you need will come from, the words that’ll say what’s in your heart—that’s where they live.”

  Leary looked understandably puzzled, and the Wise Woman clarified what she meant.

  “Every word that was ever spoken or sung has gone out into the air. They’re all still up there. Oh, yes, they may be jumbled up but that’s the beauty of the thing. Since words have their own lives, they can choose which other words they’ll associate with. They’re always looking for a good home, and a poem is about as good a home as a word can get.”

  Leary looked doubtful. He looked very doubtful indeed.

  “But,” he said to the Wise Woman, “I’m a farmer. I’m not a poet.”

  “Huh-ho, my fine man, many’s the poet has been a farmer.”

  “But,” said Leary, “I’ve no turn for poetry.”

  “What do you think a poet needs?” she said. “You’re thinking a poet needs stanzas and rhymes and meters and cadences. No, no, that’s not how it works. By and large, words will arrange themselves, thank you very much. Yes, they may need a little help here and there to get settled into the right place in the right line and so on, but that’s easily learned. What a poem needs by way of a good home is a heart of fire and a spirit of honor. Poems won’t come to rest in a place of baseness. No self-respecting poem would think of entering a soul of perfidy.”

  Just as Leary was about to say, “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Wise Woman said to him, “You may not know what I’m talking about today, but you’ll recognize it when it happens.”

  He shook his head impatiently.

  “Don’t shake your head like that—it makes it difficult for me to pick up what you’re thinking,” she said.

  Leary rose, walked to the entrance, turned around, and held out his hands in a hopeless way.

  “I want you to listen very carefully to me,” the Wise Woman said. “The words you need will have to be expressed as poems. Listen out for a voice that’s sweet and strange. Listen out for a voice that has the heart’s own tune. Listen out for a voice without vanity or contempt. And think of all the wonderful words that must be up there—all of them can come to your aid, if you will only let them.”

  Leary said, “I never put too much store—”

  “—in words,” she said, finishing his sentence. “The point about words is—the better you use them, the stronger is the thought that wears them. You know what your thoughts are—you want to win back your wife. If you let the words of the skies come and help you, they’ll dress your thought so beautifully, so kindly, so tenderly, that people will stand aside in admiration and let you have what your heart wants.”

  Leary went away fuddled, not at all
sure of his course. He rode his horse over the mountain and watched the birds wheel in the sky and the rabbits scamper down the slopes. But he heard no voices, nothing but the wind muttering in the trees and the water blabbering in the streams.

  And his house felt lonelier than ever. Even though the old servant woman who never answered back made him a very fine supper of pork and cabbage with a pitcher of ale and apple tart with cream to follow, Leary still couldn’t cheer up.

  “Sir, a word to you?” she said as she cleared the kitchen table. Leary nodded.

  “The good heart,” said the old woman, “tells what matters.”

  Leary looked at her, trying to figure out what on earth she meant, but she went out of the kitchen, and he didn’t have the energy to follow her.

  That night he lay awake, irritated and sleepless. People were telling him things he didn’t understand. He tried to make sense of the Wise Woman’s advice—but it meant nothing to him. And he tried to interpret what his servant woman meant by “the good heart,” and he was baffled. The poor man tossed and turned and turned and tossed until the bedding resembled a hank of onions.

  For three days and three nights he got no rest. He stood out under the sun and he stood out under the stars, his ear cocked to the sky in the desperate hope that some sound, some whisper, some murmuring cloud, would provide him with the words he needed to win back his wife and the respect of his neighbors. But nothing came, even though he had sharpened his hearing to a point where he could hear the smoke leaving the chimney.

  Came the morning of the court, and he dressed in his finest tunic and his grandest boots. He looked exhausted as he mounted his horse. The servant woman stood by the door and said to him, “Sir, don’t forget—the good heart.” He was too tired to snap at her.

  The court lay twenty miles away, and he arrived in good time. As he rode into the town, he could see a crowd ahead of him outside the courthouse, and as he drew nearer, he saw that they had come there as Jem’s supporters. In the midst of them, joshing and jostling, stood Jem, smiling and glad-handing, all grinning, hand-rubbing, back-slapping, hail-fellow-well-met.

  Leary’s heart sank and then dropped to the bottom of the world—there was his Gloria, primped and preened on the steps of the court. But at the same time his heart raced; he still loved her. In fact, he loved her even more now that he had lost her, and in some strange way that he didn’t understand, he gladdened to that thought.

  Someone in the crowd saw him approach, and they began to mock him. Awkward Leary didn’t know what to do, and yet he had to brave them. He tied his horse to a tree and walked slowly to the courthouse. Jem stepped toward him.

  “My old friend,” he jeered. “Old friends share everything, don’t they?”—and he tried to throw an arm around Leary.

  At that moment something happened; some strange vapor came down into the air. Leary stopped where he stood, looked handsome Jem right in the eye, and began to speak. Now Leary was quite a well-known man in the neighborhood, and as I have said, nobody really liked him. He spoke little and smiled less, although in the sympathy that had risen for him in the Gloria business, a surprising number said he’d been a very obliging neighbor.

  Suddenly—and this is how they reported it afterward—Leary altered in front of their faces. A kind of light came into his eyes, and he seemed to grow taller. He looked up into the sky, so straight above his head that they thought he might topple backward. Then he opened his mouth to speak and surprised them all.

  “I think a friend’s a man of thought

  Who’ll always hold out his decent hand,

  To give as true friends surely ought.

  He’ll take away not a grain of my sand,

  Nor any blade of my greenest grass,

  Nor a leaf from any of my apple trees.

  He lets all slights and insults pass,

  And he says to his friend, ‘You are me.’”

  Jem stood back—or, rather, he fell back. He tried to make some joke of things, but he was stricken by the dignity and power with which Leary spoke and the light on Leary’s face. There was sudden quietness in the crowd.

  While Leary had been speaking, Gloria came forward. Like everyone else, she found Leary’s words and his sincere manner very moving. Jem attempted an answer, but he was tongue-tied. Gloria turned on her heel and ran into the court. Leary walked serenely after her.

  This courtroom could accommodate a crowd of about five hundred people. But that day, three times as many tried to get in. Criminal conversation always draws a big crowd. The clerk barked like a dog—he was a North Tipperary man and they sound like that over there.

  When the judge appeared, Leary stood in front of him as the plaintiff, and Jem came forward as the defendant.

  The judge summarized the case: “That you, Leary, complain you were damaged by him, Jem, on head of the fact that he lured your wife away, thereby denying you the pleasure and comfort of her company and the value she brought to your life.”

  Leary nodded, back to his old, somewhat dreary self again.

  The judge, who had white hair and looked a bit like a seagull, said, “And I have to determine two things here: one, did Jem entice your wife away from you? Two, if so, how much should he pay you—if anything? The ‘if anything’ part comes when we consider whether you behaved in any way to make your wife feel unhappy or seek what might have seemed to her more decent company.”

  Now the judge turned to Jem. “How do you intend to plead?”

  Jem looked at the body of the court where all his supporters sat, and he gave them a wink as broad as a gate.

  “Judge, I intend to plead with eloquence, style, and a little daring.”

  “That’s enough of that sort of chat in my court,” said the judge. “Do you contest this case?”

  “With a lion’s strength and a hero’s force,” said Jem.

  At Jem’s eloquence Leary’s heart sank again.

  The judge turned to Leary.

  “Were you ever married before?”

  “No, judge.”

  “Therefore you mightn’t have fully understood the nature and contract required of marriage?”

  Lo and behold—it happened again! Once more the strange, invisible vapor came down and enveloped Leary. People who had seen it out on the street trembled in wonder and leaned forward to hear what would come out of Leary’s mouth this time. Leary paused—and then words poured out of him like a stream of silver coins.

  “Of marriage? Judge, I want to say,

  It’s deep and homeward, safe and soft,

  As evening birds make to their loft,

  Or horses to their beds of hay.”

  The judge looked a little startled, but not dangerously so; judges in Ireland have a latitude other judges don’t have, probably because one or two of them have been poetic, even in their sentencing.

  Leary spoke in a steady and measured tone, his voice full of mellifluous inflections, and if it hadn’t been a place as serious as a court of law, it could well have been that people got mesmerized. They didn’t, as it happened, and he continued pleading his case.

  “Of women I knew nothing deep;

  I lived alone and worked my fields,

  And fed my cattle, milked their yields,

  And nightly, wearied, laid to sleep.

  But I believed that man needs more,

  And so I set myself to learn

  Of marriage, everywhere I turned,

  By watching couples evermore.

  I saw young men with beardless cheeks

  Dancing with their shining brides.

  I saw old gray-haired men besides

  Look fond as though they’d wed but weeks.

  And then I thought and thought so much

  Of what Life needs to make it pure,

  I understood man must be sure,

  Yet tender with his loving touch,

  And never coarse and never mere,

  Watchful that he do his duty,

  Husband, lover, to his
beauty,

  Trusted guardian of his dear.

  I thought and thought of how I might,

  Love a woman who would give,

  Her hand to me and come and live

  Beneath my roof from morn till night.

  I found a woman, sweet and pretty,

  Good of nature, clear of eye,

  Kind in spirit, soft of sigh,

  Who didn’t need me to be witty,

  Who knew that I could love with force,

  Who judged my feelings were sincere,

  Who sensed that I would hold her dear,

  Who saw I was an untapped source

  Of kindness, warmth and deep affection,

  Care and conscientious thought,

  Who believed a true man ought

  Give his wife his best protection.

  She married me, I married her,

  A day of days, the sun shone brighter,

  Our hearts, we found, were never lighter,

  And then I knew it—love’s the spur.”

  Jem began to fidget. For the first time, he saw that the case might go against him. He never expected such glory out of Leary’s mouth. Added to that, he saw Gloria staring at Leary, doe-eyed and transfixed.

  Jem raised his hand to get the judge’s attention. He didn’t have much to say to the judge, but he hoped to break Leary’s stride. The judge raised a hand to halt Leary and turned an inquiring eye on Jem.

  “This man is holding the floor for a long time,” said Jem. “Is nobody else to get a word in?”

  “You’re worried by his eloquence, aren’t you?” said the judge. “And you should be. You’ll get your turn—if you’ll want it by then.” And he said to Leary, “Carry on.”

  After a gulp of water from the leather flask he carried, Leary took up where he left off.

  “For the short time we were married,

  I did my best to love this girl,

  I never grizzled like a churl,

  And always made sure that I carried