by W. B. Yeats
OF COSTELLO THE PROUD, OF OONA THE DAUGHTER OF DERMOTT, AND OF THE BITTER TONGUE.
Costello had come up from the fields and lay upon the ground before thedoor of his square tower, resting his head upon his hands and lookingat the sunset, and considering the chances of the weather. Though thecustoms of Elizabeth and James, now going out of fashion in England, hadbegun to prevail among the gentry, he still wore the great cloak of thenative Irish; and the sensitive outlines of his face and the greatnessof his indolent body had a commingling of pride and strength whichbelonged to a simpler age. His eyes wandered from the sunset to wherethe long white road lost itself over the south-western horizon and toa horseman who toiled slowly up the hill. A few more minutes and thehorseman was near enough for his little and shapeless body, his longIrish cloak, and the dilapidated bagpipes hanging from his shoulders,and the rough-haired garron under him, to be seen distinctly in the greydusk. So soon as he had come within earshot, he began crying: 'Is itsleeping you are, Tumaus Costello, when better men break their heartson the great white roads? Get up out of that, proud Tumaus, for I havenews! Get up out of that, you great omadhaun! Shake yourself out of theearth, you great weed of a man!'
Costello had risen to his feet, and as the piper came up to him seizedhim by the neck of his jacket, and lifting him out of his saddle threwhim on to the ground.
'Let me alone, let me alone,' said the other, but Costello still shookhim.
'I have news from Dermott's daughter, Winny,' The great fingers wereloosened, and the piper rose gasping.
'Why did you not tell me,' said Costello, that you came from her? Youmight have railed your fill.'
'I have come from her, but I will not speak unless I am paid for myshaking.'
Costello fumbled at the bag in which he carried his money, and it wassome time before it would open, for the hand that had overcome many menshook with fear and hope. 'Here is all the money in my bag,' he said,dropping a stream of French and Spanish money into the hand of thepiper, who bit the coins before he would answer.
'That is right, that is a fair price, but I will not speak till I havegood protection, for if the Dermotts lay their hands upon me in anyboreen after sundown, or in Cool-a-vin by day, I will be left to rotamong the nettles of a ditch, or hung on the great sycamore, where theyhung the horse-thieves last Beltaine four years.' And while he spoke hetied the reins of his garron to a bar of rusty iron that was mortaredinto the wall.
'I will make you my piper and my bodyservant,' said Costello, 'and noman dare lay hands upon the man, or the goat, or the horse, or the dogthat is Tumaus Costello's.'
'And I will only tell my message,' said the other, flinging the saddleon the ground, 'in the corner of the chimney with a noggin in my hand,and a jug of the Brew of the Little Pot beside me, for though I amragged and empty, my forbears were well clothed and full until theirhouse was burnt and their cattle harried seven centuries ago by theDillons, whom I shall yet see on the hob of hell, and they screeching';and while he spoke the little eyes gleamed and the thin hands clenched.
Costello led him into the great rush-strewn hall, where were none of thecomforts which had begun to grow common among the gentry, but a feudalgauntness and bareness, and pointed to the bench in the great chimney;and when he had sat down, filled up a horn noggin and set it on thebench beside him, and set a great black jack of leather beside thenoggin, and lit a torch that slanted out from a ring in the wall, hishands trembling the while; and then turned towards him and said: 'WillDermott's daughter come to me, Duallach, son of Daly?'
'Dermott's daughter will not come to you, for her father has set womento watch her, but she bid me tell you that this day sennight will be theeve of St. John and the night of her betrothal to Namara of the Lake,and she would have you there that, when they bid her drink to him sheloves best, as the way is, she may drink to you, Tumaus Costello, andlet all know where her heart is, and how little of gladness is in hermarriage; and I myself bid you go with good men about you, for I saw thehorse-thieves with my own eyes, and they dancing the "Blue Pigeon" inthe air.' And then he held the now empty noggin towards Costello, hishand closing round it like the claw of a bird, and cried: 'Fill mynoggin again, for I would the day had come when all the water in theworld is to shrink into a periwinkle-shell, that I might drink nothingbut Poteen.'
Finding that Costello made no reply, but sat in a dream, he burst out:'Fill my noggin, I tell you, for no Costello is so great in the worldthat he should not wait upon a Daly, even though the Daly travel theroad with his pipes and the Costello have a bare hill, an empty house, ahorse, a herd of goats, and a handful of cows.' 'Praise the Dalys if youwill,' said Costello as he filled the noggin, 'for you have brought me akind word from my love.'
For the next few days Duallach went hither and thither trying to raisea bodyguard, and every man he met had some story of Costello, how hekilled the wrestler when but a boy by so straining at the belt that wentabout them both that he broke the big wrestler's back; how when somewhatolder he dragged fierce horses through a ford in the Unchion for awager; how when he came to manhood he broke the steel horseshoe in Mayo;how he drove many men before him through Rushy Meadow at Drum-an-airbecause of a malevolent song they had about his poverty; and of manyanother deed of his strength and pride; but he could find none whowould trust themselves with any so passionate and poor in a quarrel withcareful and wealthy persons like Dermott of the Sheep and Namara of theLake.
Then Costello went out himself, and after listening to many excuses andin many places, brought in a big half-witted fellow, who followed himlike a dog, a farm-labourer who worshipped him for his strength, a fatfarmer whose forefathers had served his family, and a couple of lads wholooked after his goats and cows; and marshalled them before the firein the empty hall. They had brought with them their stout cudgels,and Costello gave them an old pistol apiece, and kept them all nightdrinking Spanish ale and shooting at a white turnip which he pinnedagainst the wall with a skewer. Duallach of the pipes sat on thebench in the chimney playing 'The Green Bunch of Rushes', 'The UnchionStream,' and 'The Princes of Breffeny' on his old pipes, and railing nowat the appearance of the shooters, now at their clumsy shooting, andnow at Costello because he had no better servants. The labourer, thehalf-witted fellow, the farmer and the lads were all well accustomed toDuallach's railing, for it was as inseparable from wake or wedding asthe squealing of his pipes, but they wondered at the forbearance ofCostello, who seldom came either to wake or wedding, and if he had wouldscarce have been patient with a scolding piper.
On the next evening they set out for Cool-a-vin, Costello riding atolerable horse and carrying a sword, the others upon rough-hairedgarrons, and with their stout cudgels under their arms. As they rodeover the bogs and in the boreens among the hills they could seefire answering fire from hill to hill, from horizon to horizon, andeverywhere groups who danced in the red light on the turf, celebratingthe bridal of life and fire. When they came to Dermott's house they sawbefore the door an unusually large group of the very poor, dancing abouta fire, in the midst of which was a blazing cartwheel, that circulardance which is so ancient that the gods, long dwindled to be butfairies, dance no other in their secret places. From the door andthrough the long loop-holes on either side came the pale light ofcandles and the sound of many feet dancing a dance of Elizabeth andJames.
They tied their horses to bushes, for the number so tied already showedthat the stables were full, and shoved their way through a crowd ofpeasants who stood about the door, and went into the great hall wherethe dance was. The labourer, the half-witted fellow, the farmer andthe two lads mixed with a group of servants who were looking on from analcove, and Duallach sat with the pipers on their bench, but Costellomade his way through the dancers to where Dermott of the Sheep stoodwith Namara of the Lake pouring Poteen out of a porcelain jug into hornnoggins with silver rims.
'Tumaus Costello,' said the old man, 'you have done a good deed toforget what has been, and to fling away enmity and come to the betroth
alof my daughter to Namara of the Lake.'
'I come,' answered Costello, 'because when in the time of Costello DeAngalo my forbears overcame your forbears and afterwards made peace, acompact was made that a Costello might go with his body-servants and hispiper to every feast given by a Dermott for ever, and a Dermott withhis body-servants and his piper to every feast given by a Costello forever.'
'If you come with evil thoughts and armed men,' said the son of Dermottflushing,' no matter how strong your hands to wrestle and to swing thesword, it shall go badly with you, for some of my wife's clan have comeout of Mayo, and my three brothers and their servants have come downfrom the Ox Mountains'; and while he spoke he kept his hand inside hiscoat as though upon the handle of a weapon.
'No,' answered Costello, 'I but come to dance a farewell dance with yourdaughter.'
Dermott drew his hand out of his coat and went over to a tall pale girlwho was now standing but a little way off with her mild eyes fixed uponthe ground.
'Costello has come to dance a farewell dance, for he knows that you willnever see one another again.'
The girl lifted her eyes and gazed at Costello, and in her gaze was thattrust of the humble in the proud, the gentle in the violent, which hasbeen the tragedy of woman from the beginning. Costello led her among thedancers, and they were soon drawn into the rhythm of the Pavane, thatstately dance which, with the Saraband, the Gallead, and the Morricedances, had driven out, among all but the most Irish of the gentry, thequicker rhythms of the verse-interwoven, pantomimic dances of earlierdays; and while they danced there came over them the unutterablemelancholy, the weariness with the world, the poignant and bitter pityfor one another, the vague anger against common hopes and fears, whichis the exultation of love. And when a dance ended and the pipers laiddown their pipes and lifted their horn noggins, they stood a little fromthe others waiting pensively and silently for the dance to begin againand the fire in their hearts to leap up and to wrap them anew; andso they danced and danced Pavane and Saraband and Gallead and Morricethrough the night long, and many stood still to watch them, and thepeasants came about the door and peered in, as though they understoodthat they would gather their children's children about them long hence,and tell how they had seen Costello dance with Dermott's daughter Oona,and become by the telling themselves a portion of ancient romance; butthrough all the dancing and piping Namara of the Lake went hither andthither talking loudly and making foolish jokes that all might seemwell with him, and old Dermott of the Sheep grew redder and redder, andlooked oftener and oftener at the doorway to see if the candles theregrew yellow in the dawn.
At last he saw that the moment to end had come, and, in a pause aftera dance, cried out from where the horn noggins stood that his daughterwould now drink the cup of betrothal; then Oona came over to where hewas, and the guests stood round in a half-circle, Costello close tothe wall to the right, and the piper, the labourer, the farmer, thehalf-witted man and the two farm lads close behind him. The old man tookout of a niche in the wall the silver cup from which her mother and hermother's mother had drunk the toasts of their betrothals, and pouredPoteen out of a porcelain jug and handed the cup to his daughter withthe customary words, 'Drink to him whom you love the best.'
She held the cup to her lips for a moment, and then said in a clear softvoice: 'I drink to my true love, Tumaus Costello.'
And then the cup rolled over and over on the ground, ringing like abell, for the old man had struck her in the face and the cup had fallen,and there was a deep silence.
There were many of Namara's people among the servants now come out ofthe alcove, and one of them, a story-teller and poet, a last remnantof the bardic order, who had a chair and a platter in Namara's kitchen,drew a French knife out of his girdle and made as though he would strikeat Costello, but in a moment a blow had hurled him to the ground, hisshoulder sending the cup rolling and ringing again. The click of steelhad followed quickly, had not there come a muttering and shouting fromthe peasants about the door and from those crowding up behind them;and all knew that these were no children of Queen's Irish or friendlyNamaras and Dermotts, but of the wild Irish about Lough Gara and LoughCara, who rowed their skin coracles, and had masses of hair over theireyes, and left the right arms of their children unchristened that theymight give the stouter blows, and swore only by St. Atty and sun andmoon, and worshipped beauty and strength more than St. Atty or sun andmoon.
Costello's hand had rested upon the handle of his sword and his knuckleshad grown white, but now he drew it away, and, followed by those whowere with him, strode towards the door, the dancers giving way beforehim, the most angrily and slowly, and with glances at the muttering andshouting peasants, but some gladly and quickly, because the glory ofhis fame was over him. He passed through the fierce and friendly peasantfaces, and came where his good horse and the rough-haired garrons weretied to bushes; and mounted and bade his ungainly bodyguard mountalso and ride into the narrow boreen. When they had gone a little way,Duallach, who rode last, turned towards the house where a littlegroup of Dermotts and Namaras stood next to a more numerous group ofcountrymen, and cried: 'Dermott, you deserve to be as you are this hour,a lantern without a candle, a purse without a penny, a sheep withoutwool, for your hand was ever niggardly to piper and fiddler andstory-teller and to poor travelling people.' He had not done before thethree old Dermotts from the Ox Mountains had run towards their horses,and old Dermott himself had caught the bridle of a garron of the Namarasand was calling to the others to follow him; and many blows and manydeaths had been had not the countrymen caught up still glowing sticksfrom the ashes of the fires and hurled them among the horses with loudcries, making all plunge and rear, and some break from those who heldthem, the whites of their eyes gleaming in the dawn.
For the next few weeks Costello had no lack of news of Oona, for now awoman selling eggs or fowls, and now a man or a woman on pilgrimage tothe Well of the Rocks, would tell him how his love had fallen ill theday after St. John's Eve, and how she was a little better or a littleworse, as it might be; and though he looked to his horses and his cowsand goats as usual, the common and uncomely, the dust upon the roads,the songs of men returning from fairs and wakes, men playing cardsin the corners of fields on Sundays and Saints' Days, the rumours ofbattles and changes in the great world, the deliberate purposes of thoseabout him, troubled him with an inexplicable trouble; and the countrypeople still remember how when night had fallen he would bid Duallachof the Pipes tell, to the chirping of the crickets, 'The Son of Apple,''The Beauty of the World,' 'The King of Ireland's Son,' or some otherof those traditional tales which were as much a piper's business as'The Green Bunch of Rushes,' 'The Unchion Stream,' or 'The Chiefs ofBreffeny'; and while the boundless and phantasmal world of the legendswas a-building, would abandon himself to the dreams of his sorrow.
Duallach would often pause to tell how some clan of the wild Irish haddescended from an incomparable King of the Blue Belt, or Warrior of theOzier Wattle, or to tell with many curses how all the strangers and mostof the Queen's Irish were the seed of the misshapen and horned Peoplefrom Under the Sea or of the servile and creeping Ferbolg; but Costellocared only for the love sorrows, and no matter whither the storieswandered, whether to the Isle of the Red Lough, where the blessed are,or to the malign country of the Hag of the East, Oona alone enduredtheir shadowy hardships; for it was she and no king's daughter of oldwho was hidden in the steel tower under the water with the folds of theWorm of Nine Eyes round and about her prison; and it was she who wonby seven years of service the right to deliver from hell all she couldcarry, and carried away multitudes clinging with worn fingers to the hemof her dress; and it was she who endured dumbness for a year because ofthe little thorn of enchantment the fairies had thrust into her tongue;and it was a lock of her hair, coiled in a little carved box, which gaveso great a light that men threshed by it from sundown to sunrise, andawoke so great a wonder that kings spent years in wandering or fellbefore unknown armies in seeking to discover her
hiding-place; for therewas no beauty in the world but hers, no tragedy in the world but hers:and when at last the voice of the piper, grown gentle with the wisdom ofold romance, was silent, and his rheumatic steps had toiled upstairs andto bed, and Costello had dipped his fingers into the little delf font ofholy water and begun to pray to Mary of the Seven Sorrows, the blueeyes and star-covered dress of the painting in the chapel faded from hisimagination, and the brown eyes and homespun dress of Dermott's daughterWinny came in their stead; for there was no tenderness in the passionwho keep their hearts pure for love or for hatred as other men for God,for Mary and for the Saints, and who, when the hour of their visitationarrives, come to the Divine Essence by the bitter tumult, the Gardenof Gethsemane, and the desolate Rood ordained for immortal passions inmortal hearts.
One day a serving-man rode up to Costello, who was helping his two ladsto reap a meadow, and gave him a letter, and rode away without a word;and the letter contained these words in English: 'Tumaus Costello, mydaughter is very ill. The wise woman from Knock-na-Sidhe has seen her,and says she will die unless you come to her. I therefore bid you cometo her whose peace you stole by treachery.-DERMOTT, THE SON OF DERMOTT.'
Costello threw down his scythe, and sent one of the lads for Duallach,who had become woven into his mind with Oona, and himself saddled hisgreat horse and Duallach's garron.
When they came to Dermott's house it was late afternoon, and Lough Garalay down below them, blue, mirror-like, and deserted; and though theyhad seen, when at a distance, dark figures moving about the door, thehouse appeared not less deserted than the Lough. The door stood halfopen, and Costello knocked upon it again and again, so that a number oflake gulls flew up out of the grass and circled screaming over his head,but there was no answer.
'There is no one here,' said Duallach, 'for Dermott of the Sheep is tooproud to welcome Costello the Proud,' and he threw the door open, andthey saw a ragged, dirty, very old woman, who sat upon the floor leaningagainst the wall. Costello knew that it was Bridget Delaney, a deaf anddumb beggar; and she, when she saw him, stood up and made a sign tohim to follow, and led him and his companion up a stair and down a longcorridor to a closed door. She pushed the door open and went a littleway off and sat down as before; Duallach sat upon the ground also, butclose to the door, and Costello went and gazed upon Winny sleeping upona bed. He sat upon a chair beside her and waited, and a long time passedand still she slept on, and then Duallach motioned to him through thedoor to wake her, but he hushed his very breath, that she might sleepon, for his heart was full of that ungovernable pity which makes thefading heart of the lover a shadow of the divine heart. Presently heturned to Duallach and said: 'It is not right that I stay here wherethere are none of her kindred, for the common people are always ready toblame the beautiful.' And then they went down and stood at the door ofthe house and waited, but the evening wore on and no one came.
'It was a foolish man that called you Proud Costello,' Duallach criedat last; 'had he seen you waiting and waiting where they left none but abeggar to welcome you, it is Humble Costello he would have called you.'
Then Costello mounted and Duallach mounted, but when they had ridden alittle way Costello tightened the reins and made his horse stand still.Many minutes passed, and then Duallach cried: 'It is no wonder thatyou fear to offend Dermott of the Sheep, for he has many brothers andfriends, and though he is old, he is a strong man and ready with hishands, and he is of the Queen's Irish, and the enemies of the Gael areupon his side.'
And Costello answered flushing and looking towards the house: 'I swearby the Mother of God that I will never return there again if they do notsend after me before I pass the ford in the Brown River,' and he rodeon, but so very slowly that the sun went down and the bats began to flyover the bogs. When he came to the river he lingered awhile upon thebank among the flowers of the flag, but presently rode out into themiddle and stopped his horse in a foaming shallow. Duallach, however,crossed over and waited on a further bank above a deeper place. Aftera good while Duallach cried out again, and this time very bitterly: 'Itwas a fool who begot you and a fool who bore you, and they are fools ofall fools who say you come of an old and noble stock, for you come ofwhey-faced beggars who travelled from door to door, bowing to gentlesand to serving-men.
With bent head, Costello rode through the river and stood beside him,and would have spoken had not hoofs clattered on the further bank and ahorseman splashed towards them. It was a serving-man of Dermott's, andhe said, speaking breathlessly like one who had ridden hard: 'TumausCostello, I come to bid you again to Dermott's house. When you had gone,his daughter Winny awoke and called your name, for you had been in herdreams. Bridget Delaney the Dummy saw her lips move and the trouble uponher, and came where we were hiding in the wood above the house and tookDermott of the Sheep by the coat and brought him to his daughter. Hesaw the trouble upon her, and bid me ride his own horse to bring you thequicker.'
Then Costello turned towards the piper Duallach Daly, and taking himabout the waist lifted him out of the saddle and hurled him against agrey rock that rose up out of the river, so that he fell lifeless intothe deep place, and the waters swept over the tongue which God had madebitter, that there might be a story in men's ears in after time. Thenplunging his spurs into the horse, he rode away furiously toward thenorth-west, along the edge of the river, and did not pause until he cameto another and smoother ford, and saw the rising moon mirrored in thewater. He paused for a moment irresolute, and then rode into the fordand on over the Ox Mountains, and down towards the sea; his eyes almostcontinually resting upon the moon which glimmered in the dimness likea great white rose hung on the lattice of some boundless and phantasmalworld. But now his horse, long dark with sweat and breathing hard, forhe kept spurring it to an extreme speed, fell heavily, hurling him intothe grass at the roadside. He tried to make it stand up, and failing inthis, went on alone towards the moonlight; and came to the sea and saw aschooner lying there at anchor. Now that he could go no further becauseof the sea, he found that he was very tired and the night very cold,and went into a shebeen close to the shore and threw himself down upona bench. The room was full of Spanish and Irish sailors who had justsmuggled a cargo of wine and ale, and were waiting a favourable wind toset out again. A Spaniard offered him a drink in bad Gaelic. He drank itgreedily and began talking wildly and rapidly.
For some three weeks the wind blew inshore or with too great violence,and the sailors stayed drinking and talking and playing cards, andCostello stayed with them, sleeping upon a bench in the shebeen, anddrinking and talking and playing more than any. He soon lost what littlemoney he had, and then his horse, which some one had brought fromthe mountain boreen, to a Spaniard, who sold it to a farmer from themountains, and then his long cloak and his spurs and his boots of softleather. At last a gentle wind blew towards Spain, and the crew rowedout to their schooner, singing Gaelic and Spanish songs, and liftedthe anchor, and in a little while the white sails had dropped under thehorizon. Then Costello turned homeward, his life gaping before him, andwalked all day, coming in the early evening to the road that went fromnear Lough Gara to the southern edge of Lough Cay. Here he overtook agreat crowd of peasants and farmers, who were walking very slowly aftertwo priests and a group of well-dressed persons, certain of whom werecarrying a coffin. He stopped an old man and asked whose burying it wasand whose people they were, and the old man answered: 'It is the buryingof Oona, Dermott's daughter, and we are the Namaras and the Dermotts andtheir following, and you are Tumaus Costello who murdered her.'
Costello went on towards the head of the procession, passing men wholooked at him with fierce eyes and only vaguely understanding what hehad heard, for now that he had lost the understanding that belongs togood health, it seemed impossible that a gentleness and a beauty whichhad been so long the world's heart could pass away. Presently he stoppedand asked again whose burying it was, and a man answered: 'We arecarrying Dermott's daughter Winny whom you murdered, to be buried in theisland of the Ho
ly Trinity,' and the man stooped and picked up a stoneand cast it at Costello, striking him on the cheek and making the bloodflow out over his face. Costello went on scarcely feeling the blow, andcoming to those about the coffin, shouldered his way into the midst ofthem, and laying his hand upon the coffin, asked in a loud voice: 'Whois in this coffin?'
The three Old Dermotts from the Ox Mountains caught up stones and bidthose about them do the same; and he was driven from the road, coveredwith wounds, and but for the priests would surely have been killed.
When the procession had passed on, Costello began to follow again, andsaw from a distance the coffin laid upon a large boat, and those aboutit get into other boats, and the boats move slowly over the water toInsula Trinitatis; and after a time he saw the boats return and theirpassengers mingle with the crowd upon the bank, and all disperse bymany roads and boreens. It seemed to him that Winny was somewhere on theisland smiling gently as of old, and when all had gone he swam in theway the boats had been rowed and found the new-made grave beside theruined Abbey of the Holy Trinity, and threw himself upon it, calling toOona to come to him. Above him the square ivy leaves trembled, and allabout him white moths moved over white flowers, and sweet odours driftedthrough the dim air.
He lay there all that night and through the day after, from time totime calling her to come to him, but when the third night came he hadforgotten, worn out with hunger and sorrow, that her body lay in theearth beneath; but only knew she was somewhere near and would not cometo him.
Just before dawn, the hour when the peasants hear his ghostly voicecrying out, his pride awoke and he called loudly: 'Winny, daughterof Dermott of the Sheep, if you do not come to me I will go and neverreturn to the island of the Holy Trinity,' and before his voice had diedaway a cold and whirling wind had swept over the island and he saw manyfigures rushing past, women of the Sidhe with crowns of silver and dimfloating drapery; and then Oona, but no longer smiling gently, for shepassed him swiftly and angrily, and as she passed struck him upon theface crying: 'Then go and never return.'
He would have followed, and was calling out her name, when the wholeglimmering company rose up into the air, and, rushing together in theshape of a great silvery rose, faded into the ashen dawn.
Costello got up from the grave, understanding nothing but that he hadmade his beloved angry and that she wished him to go, and wading outinto the lake, began to swim. He swam on and on, but his limbs were tooweary to keep him afloat, and her anger was heavy about him, and whenhe had gone a little way he sank without a struggle, like a man passinginto sleep and dreams.
The next day a poor fisherman found him among the reeds upon the lakeshore, lying upon the white lake sand with his arms flung out as thoughhe lay upon a rood, and carried him to his own house. And the very poorlamented over him and sang the keen, and when the time had come, laidhim in the Abbey on Insula Trinitatis with only the ruined altar betweenhim and Dermott's daughter, and planted above them two ash-trees thatin after days wove their branches together and mingled their tremblingleaves.