by Bram Stoker
This last thought brought me up standing, and set me face to face with my baseless ill-humor. If I had never seen Andy, I should never have heard at all of Shleenanaher. I should not have known the legend — I should not have heard Norah’s voice.
“And so,” said I to myself, “this ideal fantasy — this embodiment of a woman’s voice — has a concrete name already. Aye, a concrete name, and a sweet one too.” And so I took another step on my way to the bog, and lost my ill-humor at the same time. When my cigar was half through and my feelings were proportionately soothed, I strolled into the bar and asked Mrs. Keating as to my companion of the morrow. She told me that he was a young engineer named Sutherland. “What Sutherland?” I asked, adding that I had been at school with a Dick Sutherland, who had, I believed, gone into the Irish College of Science.
“Perhaps it’s the same gentleman, sir. This is Mr. Richard Sutherland, and I’ve heerd him say that he was at Stephen’s Green.”
“The same man!” said I. “This is jolly! Tell me, Mrs.
Keating, what brings him here?”
“He’s doin’ some work on Knockcalltecrore for Mr. Murdock, some quare thing or another. They do tell me, sir, that it’s a most mystayrious thing, wid poles an’ lines an’ magnets an’ all kinds of divilments. They say that Mr. Murdock is goin’ from off his head ever since he had the law of poor Phelim Joyce. My! but he’s the decent man, that same Mr. Joyce, an’ the Gombeen has been hard upon him.”
“What was the lawsuit?” I asked. “All about a sellin’ his land on an agreement. Mr. Joyce borryed some money, an’ promised if it wasn’t paid back at a certain time that he would swop lands. Poor Joyce met wid an accident comin’ home wid the money from Galway an’ was late, an’ when he got home found that the Gombeen had got the sheriff to sell up his land on to him. Mr. Joyce thried it on the coorts, but now Murdock has got a decree on to him an’ the poor man’ll have to give up his fat lands an’ take the Gombeen’s poor ones instead.”
“That’s bad! When has he to give up?” “Well, I disremember meself exactly, but Mr. Sutherland will be able to tell ye all about it as ye drive over in the mornin’.”
“Where is he now? I should like to see him; it may be my old school-fellow.” “Troth, it’s in his bed he is; for he rises mighty arly, I can tell ye.”
After a stroll through the town (so-called) to finish my cigar I went to bed also, for we started early. In the morning, when I came down to my breakfast, I found Mr. Sutherland finishing his. It was my old school-fellow; but from being a slight, pale boy he had grown into a burly, hale, stalwart man, with keen eyes and a flowing brown beard. The only pallor noticeable was the whiteness of his brow, which was ample and lofty as of old.
We greeted each other cordially, and I felt as if old times had come again, for Dick and I had been great friends at school. When we were on our way I renewed my inquiries about Shleenanaher and its inhabitants. I began by asking Sutherland as to what brought him there. He answered:
“I was just about to ask you the same question. ‘What brings you here?’”
I felt a difficulty in answering as freely as I could have wished, for I knew that Andy’s alert ears were close to us, so I said:
“I have been paying some visits along the west coast, and I thought I would take the opportunity on my way home of investigating a very curious phenomenon of whose existence I became casually acquainted on my way here — a shifting bog.”
Andy here must strike in:
“Shure, the masther is mighty fond iv bogs, intirely. I don’t know there’s anything in the wurruld what intherests him so much.”
Here he winked at me in a manner that said as plainly as if spoken in so many words, “All right, yer’an’r, I’ll back ye up!”
Sutherland laughed as he answered: “Well, you’re in the right place here, Art; the difficulty they have in this part of the world is to find a place that is not bog. However, about the Shifting Bog on Knockcalltecrore, I can, perhaps, help you as much as any one. As you know, geology has been one of my favourite studies, and lately I have taken to investigate in my spare time the phenomena of this very subject. The bog at Shleenanaher is most interesting. As yet, however, my investigation can only be partial, but very soon I shall have the opportunity which I require.”
“How is that?” I asked. “The difficulty arises,” he answered, “from a local feud between two men, one of them my employer, Murdock, and his neighbor, Joyce.” “Yes,” I interrupted, “I know something of it. I was present when the sheriffs assignment was shown to Joyce, and saw the quarrel. But how does it affect you and your study?”
“This way: the bog is partly on Murdock’s land and partly on Joyce’s, and until I can investigate the whole extent I cannot come to a definite conclusion. The feud is so bitter at present that neither man will allow the other to set foot over his boundary, or the foot of any one to whom the other is friendly. However, to-morrow the exchange of lands is to be effected, and then I shall be able to continue my investiqation. I have already gone nearlvall over Murdock’s present ground, and after to-morrow I shall be able to go over his new ground — up to now forbidden to me.”
“How does Joyce take his defeat?”
“Badly, poor fellow, I am told; indeed, from what I see of him, I am sure of it. They tell me that up to lately he was a bright, happy fellow, but now he is a stern, hard-faced, scowling man — essentially a man with a grievance, which makes him take a jaundiced view of everything else. The only one who is not afraid to speak to him is his daughter, and they are inseparable. It certainly is cruelly hard on him. His farm is almost an ideal one for this part of the world; it has good soil, water, shelter, trees, everything that makes a farm pretty and comfortable, as well as being good for farming purposes; and he has to change it for a piece of land as irregular in shape as the other is compact; without shelter, and partly taken up with this very bog and the utter waste and chaos which, when it shifted in former times, it left behind.”
“And how does the other, Murdock, act?”
“Shamefully; I feel so angry with him at times that I could strike him. There is nota thing he can say or do, or leave unsaid or undone, that is not aggravating and insulting to his neighbor. Only that he had the precaution to bind me to an agreement for a given time, I’m blessed if I would work for him, or with him at all — interesting as the work is in itself, and valuable as is the opportunity it gives me of studying that strange phenomenon, the Shifting Bog.”
“What is your work with him,” I asked — ”mining, or draining, orwhat?”
He seemed embarrassed at myquestion. He “‘hum’d and ‘ha’d” — then with a smile he said quite frankly: “The fact is that I am not at liberty to say. The worthy Gombeen Man put a special clause in our agreement that I was not, during the time of my engagement, to mention to any one the object of my work. He wanted the clause to run that I was never to mention it; but I kicked at that, and only signed in the modified form.” I thought to myself, “More mysteries at Shleenanaher!”
Dick went on:
“However, I have no doubt that you will very soon gather the object for yourself. You are yourself something of a scientist, if I remember?” “Not me,” I answered, “my great aunt took care of that when she sent me to our old tutor — or, indeed, to do the old boyjustice, he tried to teach me something of the kind; but I found out it wasn’t my vogue — anyhow, I haven’t done anything lately.”
“How do you mean?” “I haven’t got over being idle yet. It’s not a year since I came into my fortune. Perhaps — indeed I hope — that I may settle down to work again.”
“I’m sure I hope so, too, old fellow,” he answered gravely. “When a man has once tasted the pleasure of real work, especially work that taxes the mind and the imagination, the world seems only a poor place without it.” “Like the wurrld widout girruls for me, or widout bog for his ‘an’r!” said Andy, grinning as he turned round on his seat.
Dick Suthe
rland, I was glad to see, did not suspect the joke. He took Andy’s remark quite seriously, and said to me:
“My dear fellow, it is delightful to find you so interested in my own topic.” I could not allow him to think me a savant. In the first place, he would very soon find me out, and would then suspect my motives ever after. And, again, I had to accept Andy’s statement, or let it appear that I had some other reason or motive — or what would seem even more suspicious still, none at all; so I answered: “My dear Dick, my zeal regarding bog is new; it is at present in its incipient stage, in so far as erudition is concerned. The fact is, that although I would like to learn a lot about it, I am at the present moment profoundly ignorant on the subject.” “Like the rest of mankind,” said Dick. “You will hardly believe that, although the subject is one of vital interest to thousands of persons in our own country — one in which national prosperity is mixed up to a large extent — one which touches deeply the happiness and material prosperity of a large section of Irish people, and so helps to mould their political action, there are hardly any works on the subject in existence.”
“Surely you are mistaken,” I answered. “No, unfortunately, lam not. There is a Danish book, but it is geographically local; and some information can be derived from the blue-book containing the report of the International Commission on turf-cuttinq, but the special authorities are scant indeed. Some day, when you want occupation, just you try to find in any library, in any city of the world, any works of a scientific character devoted to the subject. Nay; more; try to find a fair share of chapters in scientific books devoted to it. You can imagine how devoid of knowledge we are, when I tell you that even the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica does not contain the heading ‘bog.’” “You amaze me!” was all I could say. Then, as we bumped and jolted over the rough by-road, Dick Sutherland gave me a rapid but masterly survey of the condition of knowledge on the subject of bogs, with special application to Irish bogs, beginning with such records as those of Giraldus Cambrensis, of Dr. Boate, of Edmund Spenser, from the time of the first invasion, when the state of the land was such that, as is recorded, when a spade was driven into the ground a pool of water gathered forthwith. He told me of the extent and nature of the bog- lands, of the means taken to reclaim them, and of his hopes of some heroic measures being ultimately taken by Government to reclaim the vast Bog of Allen, which remains as a great evidence of official ineptitude. “It will be something,” he said, “to redeem the character for indifference to such matters so long established, as when Mr. King wrote two hundred years ago, ‘We live in an island almost infamous for bogs, and yet I do not remember that anyone has attempted much concerning them.’” We were close to Knockcalltecrore when he finished his impromptu lecture thus: “In fine, we cure bog by both a surgical and a medical process. We drain it so that its mechanical action as a sponge may be stopped, and we put in lime to kill the vital principle of its growth. Without the other, neither process is sufficient; but together, scientific and executive man asserts his dominance.” “Hear! hear!” said Andy. “Musha, but Docther Wilde himself (rest his sowl!) couldn’t have put itaisierto grip. It’s a purfessionalerthe young gintleman is, intirely!”
We shortly arrived at the south side of the western slope of the Hill, and, as Andy took care to inform me, at the end of the boreen leading to the two farms, and close to the head of the Snake’s Pass.
Accordingly, I let Sutherland start on his way to Murdock’s, while I myself strolled away to the left, where Andy had pointed out to me, rising over the slope of the intervening spur of the Hill, the top of one of the rocks which formed the Snake’s Pass. After a few minutes of climbing up a steep slope, and down a steeper one, I arrived at the place itself.
From the first moment that my eyes lit on it, it seemed to me to be a very remarkable spot, and quite worthy of being taken as the scene of strange stories, for it certainly had something “uncanny” about it.
I stood in a deep valley, or rather bowl, with behind me a remarkably steep slope of greensward, while on either hand the sides of the hollow rose steeply — that on the left, down which I had climbed, being by far the steeper and rockier of the two. In front was the Pass itself.
It was a gorge or cleft through a great wall of rock, which rose on the sea-side of the promontory formed by the Hill. This natural wall, except at the actual Pass itself, rose some fifty or sixty feet over the summit of the slope on either side of the little valley; but right and left of the Pass rose two great masses of rock, like the pillars of a giant gate-way. Between these lay the narrow gorge, with its walls of rock rising sheer some two hundred feet. It was about three hundred feet long, and widened slightly outward, being shaped something funnel-wise, and on the inner side was about a hundred feet wide. The floor did not go so far as the flanking rocks, but, at about two-thirds of its length, there was a perpendicular descent, like a groove cut in the rock, running sheer down to the sea, some three hundred feet below, and as far under it as we could see. From the northern of the flanking rocks which formed the Pass the rocky wall ran northward, completely sheltering the lower lands from the west, and running into a towering rock that rose on the extreme north, and which stood up in jagged peaks something like The Needles off the coast of the Isle of Wight.
There was no doubt that poor Joyce’s farm, thus sheltered, was an exceptionally favored spot, and I could well understand how loath he must be to leave it.
Murdock’s land, even under the enchantment of its distance, seemed very different, and was just as bleak as Sutherland had told me. Its south-western end ran down towards the Snake’s Pass. I mounted the wall of rock on the north of the Pass to look down, and was surprised to find that down below me was the end of a large plateau of some acres in extent which ran up northward, and was sheltered north and west by a somewhat similarformation of rock to that which protected Joyce’s land. This, then, was evidently the place called the Cliff Fields, of which mention had been made at Widow Kelligan’s.
The view from where I stood was one of ravishing beauty. Westward in the deep sea, under gray clouds of endless variety, rose a myriad of clustering islets, some of them covered with grass and heather, where cattle and sheep grazed; others were mere rocks rising boldly from the depths of the sea, and surrounded by a myriad of screaming wild-fowl. As the birds dipped and swept and wheeled in endless circles, their white breasts and gray wings varying in infinite phase of motion, and as the long Atlantic swell, tempered by its rude shocks on the outer fringe of islets, broke in fleecy foam and sent living streams through the crevices of the rocks and sheets of white water over the bowlders where the sea-rack rose and fell, I thought that the earth could give nothing more lovely or more grand.
Andy’s voice beside me grated on me unpleasantly:
“Musha! but it’s the fine sight it is intirely; it only wants wan thing.”
“What does it want?” I asked, rather shortly. “Begor, a bit of bog to put your arrum around while ye’re lukin’ at it,” and he grinned at me knowingly.
He was incorrigible. I jumped down from the rock and scrambled into the boreen. My friend Sutherland had gone on his way to Murdock’s, so calling to Andy to wait till I returned, I followed him.
I hurried up the boreen and caught up with him, for his progress was slow along the rough lane-way. In reality I felt that it would be far less awkward having him with me; but I pretended that my only care was for his sprained ankle.
Some emotions make hypocrites of us all!
With Dick on my arm limping along we passed up the boreen, leaving Joyce’s house on our left. I looked out anxiously in case I should see Joyce — or his daughter; but there was no sign of any one about. In a few minutes Dick, pausing for a moment, pointed out to me the Shifting Bog.
“You see,” he said, “those two poles? The line between them marks the mearing of the two lands. We have worked along the bog down from there.” He pointed as he spoke to some considerable distance up the Hill to the north
where the bog began to be dangerous, and where it curved around the base of a grassy mound, or shoulder of the mountain.
“Is it a dangerous bog?” I queried. “Rather! It is just as bad a bit of soft bog as ever I saw. I wouldn’t like to see anyone or anything that I cared for try to cross it!” “Why not?”
“Because at any moment they might sink through it; and then, good-bye — no human strength or skill could ever save them.”
“Is it a quagmire, then, or like a quicksand?”
“Like either, or both. Nay, it is more treacherous than either. You may call it, if you are poetically inclined, a ‘carpet of death!’ What you see is simply a film or skin of vegetation of a very low kind, mixed with the mould of decayed vegetable fibre and grit and rubbish of all kinds, which have somehow got mixed into it, floating on a sea of ooze and slime — of something half liquid, half solid, and of an unknown depth. It will bear up a certain weight, for there is a degree of cohesion in it; but it is not all of equal cohesive power, and if one were to step on the wrong spot — ” He was silent.
“What then?” “Only a matter of specific gravity! A body suddenly immersed would, when the airof the lungs had escaped and the rigor mortis had set in, probably sink a considerable distance; then it would rise after nine days, when decomposition began to generate gases, and make an effort to reach the top. Not succeeding in this, it would ultimately waste away, and the bones would become incorporated with the existing vegetation somewhere about the roots, or would lie among the slime at the bottom.”
“Well,” said I, “for real cold-blooded horror, commend me to your men of science.” This passage brought us to the door of Murdock’s house — a plain, strongly-built cottage, standing on a knoll of rock that cropped up from the plateau round it. It was surrounded with a garden hedged in by a belt of pollard ash and stunted alders. Murdock had evidently been peering surreptitiously through the window of his sitting-room, for, as we passed in by the gate, he came out to the porch. His salutation was not an encouraging one: “You’re somethin’ late this mornin’, Mr. Sutherland. I hope ye didn’t throuble to delay in ordher to bring up this sthrange gintleman. Ye know how particular I am about any wan knowin’ aught of me affairs.” Dick flushed up to the roots of his hair, and, much to my surprise, burst out quite in a passionate way: “Look you here, Mr. Murdock, I’m not going to take any cheek from you, so don’t you give any. Of course I don’t expect a fellow of your stamp to understand a gentleman’s feelings — damn it! how can you have a gentleman’s understanding when you haven’t even a man’s? You ought to know right well what I said I would do, I shall do I despise you and your miserable secrets and your miserable trickery too much to take to myself anything in which they have a part; but when I bring with me a friend, but for whom I shouldn’t have been here at all — for I couldn’t have walked — I expect that neither he nor I shall be insulted. For two pins I’d not set foot on your dirty ground again!” Here Murdock interrupted him: “Aisy now! Ye’re undher agreement to me; an’ I hould ye to it.”