The Crock of Gold
by James Stephens
BOOK I
THE COMING OF PAN
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
BOOK II
THE PHILOSOPHER'S JOURNEY
Chapter X
Chapter XI
BOOK III
THE TWO GODS
Chapter XII
BOOK IV
THE PHILOSOPHER'S RETURN
Chapter XIII
BOOK V
THE POLICEMEN
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
BOOK VI
THE THIN WOMAN'S JOURNEY AND THE HAPPY MARCH
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
CHAPTER VI
THE Thin Woman of Inis Magrath slept very late that
morning, but when she did awaken her impatience was so
urgent that she could scarcely delay to eat her breakfast.
Immediately after she had eaten she put on her bonnet
and shawl and went through the pine wood in the direction of Gort na Cloca Mora. In a short time she reached
the rocky field, and, walking over to the tree in the south-
east corner, she picked up a small stone and hammered
loudly against the trunk of the tree. She hammered in
a peculiar fashion, giving two knocks and then three
knocks, and then one knock. A voice came up from the hole.
"Who is that, please?" said the voice.
"Ban na Droid of Inis Magrath, and well you know
it," was her reply.
"I am coming up, Noble Woman," said the voice, and
in another moment the Leprecaun leaped out of the hole.
"Where are Seumas and Brigid Beg?" said the Thin Woman sternly.
"How would I know where they are?" replied the
Leprecaun. "Wouldn't they be at home now?"
"If they were at home I wouldn't have come here
looking for them," was her reply. "It is my belief that you have them."
"Search me," said the Leprecaun, opening his waistcoat.
"They are down there in your little house," said the
Thin Woman angrily, "and the sooner you let them up
the better it will be for yourself and your five brothers."
"Noble Woman," said the Leprecaun, "you can go
down yourself into our little house and look. I can't
say fairer than that."
"I wouldn't fit down there," said she. "I'm too big."
"You know the way for making yourself little," replied the Leprecaun.
"But I mightn't be able to make myself big again,"
said the Thin Woman, "and then you and your dirty
brothers would have it all your own way. If you don't
let the children up," she continued, "I'll raise the Shee
of Croghan Conghaile against you. You know what
happened to the Cluricauns of Oilean na Glas when they
stole the Queen's baby--It will be a worse thing than
that for you. If the children are not back in my house
before moonrise this night, I'll go round to my people.
Just tell that to your five ugly brothers. Health with
you," she added, and strode away.
"Health with yourself, Noble Woman," said the Leprecaun, and he stood on one leg until she was out of
sight and then he slid down into the hole again.
When the Thin Woman was going back through the
pine wood she saw Meehawl MacMurrachu travelling
in the same direction and his brows were in a tangle of perplexity.
"God be with you, Meehawl MacMurrachu," said she.
"God and Mary be with you, ma'am," he replied, "I
am in great trouble this day."
"Why wouldn't you be?" said the Thin Woman.
"I came up to have a talk with your husband about a particular thing."
"If it's talk you want you have come to a good house, Meehawl."
"He's a powerful man right enough," said Meehawl.
After a few minutes the Thin Woman spoke again.
"I can get the reek of his pipe from here. Let you
go right in to him now and I'll stay outside for a while,
for the sound of your two voices would give me a pain in my head."
"Whatever will please you will please me, ma'am,"
said her companion, and he went into the little house.
Meehawl MacMurrachu had good reason to be perplexed. He was the father of one child only, and she
was the most beautiful girl in the whole world. The
pity of it was that no one at all knew she was beautiful,
and she did not even know it herself. At times when
she bathed in the eddy of a mountain stream and saw
her reflection looking up from the placid water she
thought that she looked very nice, and then a great sadness would come upon her, for what is the use of looking
nice if there is nobody to see one's beauty? Beauty, also,
is usefulness. The arts as well as the crafts, the graces
equally with the utilities must stand up in the market-place and be judged by the gombeen men.
The only house near to her father's was that occupied
by Bessie Hannigan. The other few houses were scattered widely with long, quiet miles of hill and bog between them, so that she had hardly seen more than a
couple of men beside her father since she was born. She
helped her father and mother in all the small businesses
of their house, and every day also she drove their three
cows and two goats to pasture on the mountain slopes.
Here through the sunny days the years had passed in a
slow, warm thoughtlessness wherein, without thinking,
many thoughts had entered into her mind and many pictures hung for a moment like birds in the thin air. At
first, and for a long time, she had been happy enough;
there were many things in which a child might be interested: the spacious heavens which never wore the same
beauty on any day; the innumerable little creatures living among the grasses or in the heather; the steep swing
of a bird down from the mountain to the infinite plains
below; the little flowers which were so contented each in
its peaceful place; the bees gathering food for their
houses, and the stout beetles who are always losing their
way in the dusk. These things, and many others, interested her. The three cows after they had grazed for a
long time would come and lie by her side and look at
her as they chewed their cud, and the goats would prance
from the bracken to push their heads against her breast
because they loved her.
Indeed, everything in her quiet world loved this girl:
but very slowly there was growing in her consciousness
an unrest, a disquietude to which she had hitherto been
a stranger. Sometimes an infinite weariness oppressed
her to the earth. A thought was born in her mind and it
had no name. It was growing and could not be expressed. She had no words wherewith to meet it, to exorcise or greet this stranger who, more and more insistently and pleadingly, tapped upon her doors and begged
to be spoken to, admitted and caressed and nourished.
A thought is a real thing and words are only its raiment,
but a thought is as shy as a virgin; unless it is fittingly
apparelled we may not look on its shadowy nakedness:
it will fly from us and only return again in the darkness
crying in a thin, childish voice which we may not comprehend until, with aching minds, listening and divining,
we at last fashion for it those symbols which are its protection and its banner. So she could not understand the
touch that came to her from afar and yet how intimately,
the whisper so aloof and yet so thrillingly personal. The
standard of either language or experience was not hers;
she could listen but not think, she could feel but not
know, her eyes looked forward and did not see, her hands
groped in the sunlight and felt nothing. It was like the
edge of a little wind which stirred her tresses but could
not lift them, or the first white peep of the dawn which
is neither light nor darkness. But she listened, not with
her ears but with her blood. The fingers of her soul
stretched out to clasp a stranger's hand, and her disquietude was quickened through with an eagerness which
was neither physical nor mental, for neither her body
nor her mind was definitely interested. Some dim region between these grew alarmed and watched and
waited and did not sleep or grow weary at all.
One morning she lay among the long, warm grasses.
She watched a bird who soared and sang for a little time,
and then it sped swiftly away down the steep air and out
of sight in the blue distance. Even when it was gone the
song seemed to ring in her ears. It seemed to linger with
her as a faint, sweet echo, coming fitfully, with little
pauses as though a wind disturbed it, and careless, distant eddies. After a few moments she knew it was not
a bird. No bird's song had that consecutive melody, for
their themes are as careless as their wings. She sat up
and looked about her, but there was nothing in sight:
the mountains sloped gently above her and away to the
clear sky; around her the scattered clumps of heather
were drowsing in the sunlight; far below she could see
her father's house, a little grey patch near some trees--
and then the music stopped and left her wondering.
She could not find her goats anywhere although for a
long time she searched. They came to her at last of
their own accord from behind a fold in the hills, and
they were more wildly excited than she had ever seen
them before. Even the cows forsook their solemnity
and broke into awkward gambols around her. As she
walked home that evening a strange elation taught her
feet to dance. Hither and thither she flitted in front of
the beasts and behind them. Her feet tripped to a wayward measure. There was a tune in her ears and she
danced to it, throwing her arms out and above her head
and swaying and bending as she went. The full freedom
of her body was hers now: the lightness and poise and
certainty of her limbs delighted her, and the strength
that did not tire delighted her also. The evening was
full of peace and quietude, the mellow, dusky sunlight
made a path for her feet, and everywhere through the
wide fields birds were flashing and singing, and she sang
with them a song that had no words and wanted none.
The following day she heard the music again, faint
and thin, wonderfully sweet and as wild as the song of a
bird, but it was a melody which no bird would adhere to.
A theme was repeated again and again. In the middle
of trills, grace-notes, runs and catches it recurred with a
strange, almost holy, solemnity,--a hushing, slender
melody full of austerity and aloofness. There was something in it to set her heart beating. She yearned to it
with her ears and her lips. Was it joy, menace, carelessness? She did not know, but this she did know, that
however terrible it was personal to her. It was her unborn thought strangely audible and felt rather than understood.
On that day she did not see anybody either. She drove
her charges home in the evening listlessly and the beasts also were very quiet.
When the music came again she made no effort to discover where it came from. She only listened, and when
the tune was ended she saw a figure rise from the fold
of a little hill. The sunlight was gleaming from his arms
and shoulders but the rest of his body was hidden by the
bracken, and he did not look at her as he went away
playing softly on a double pipe.
The next day he did look at her. He stood waistdeep in greenery fronting her squarely. She had never
seen so strange a face before. Her eyes almost died on
him as she gazed and he returned her look for a long
minute with an intent, expressionless regard. His hair
was a cluster of brown curls, his nose was little and
straight, and his wide mouth drooped sadly at the corners. His eyes were wide and most mournful, and his
forehead was very broad and white. His sad eyes and
mouth almost made her weep.
When he turned away he smiled at her, and it was as
though the sun had shone suddenly in a dark place, banishing all sadness and gloom. Then he went mincingly
away. As he went he lifted the slender double reed to
his lips and blew a few careless notes.
The next day he fronted her as before, looking down
to her eyes from a short distance. He played for only
a few moments, and fitfully, and then he came to her.
When he left the bracken the girl suddenly clapped her
hands against her eyes affrighted. There was something
different, terrible about him. The upper part of his
body was beautiful, but the lower part.... She dared
not look at him again. She would have risen and fled
away but she feared he might pursue her, and the thought
of such a chase and the inevitable capture froze her blood.
The thought of anything behind us is always terrible.
The sound of pursuing feet is worse than the murder
from which we fly--So she sat still and waited but nothing happened. At last, desperately, she dropped her
hands. He was sitting on the ground a few paces from
her. He was not looking at her but far away sidewards
across the spreading hill. His legs were crossed; they
were shaggy and hoofed like the legs of a goat: but she
would not look at these because of his wonderful, sad,
grotesque face. Gaiety is good to look upon and an innocent face is delightful to our souls, but no woman can resist sadness or weakness, and ugliness she dare not resist. Her nature leaps to be the comforter. It is her
reason. It exalts her to an ecstasy wherein nothing but
the sacrifice of herself has any proportion. Men are
not fathers by instinct but by chance, but women are
mothers beyond thought, beyond instinct which is the
father of thought. Motherliness, pity, self-sacrifice
--these are the charges of her primal cell, and not
even the discovery that men are comedians, liars, and
egotists will wean her from this. As she looked at the
pathos of his face she repudiated the hideousness of his
body. The beast which is in all men is glossed by women;
it is his childishness, the destructive energy inseparable
from youth and high spirits, and it is always forgiven by
women, often forgotten, sometimes, and not rarely, cherished and fostered.
After a few moments of this silence he placed the reed
to his lips and played a plaintive little air, and then he
spoke to her in a strange voice, coming like a wind from
distant places.
"What is your name, Shepherd Girl?" said he.
"Caitilin, Ingin Ni Murrachu," she whispered.
"Daughter of Murrachu," said he, "I have come from
a far place where there are high hills. The men and
maidens who follow their flocks in that place know me
and love me for I am the Master of the Shepherds.
They sing and dance and are glad when I come to them
in the sunlight; but in this country no people have done
any reverence to me. The shepherds fly away when they
hear my pipes in the pastures; the maidens scream in
fear when I dance to them in the meadows. I am very
lonely in this strange country. You also, although you
danced to the music of my pipes, have covered your
face against me and made no reverence."
"I will do whatever you say if it is right," said she.
"You must not do anything because it is right, but
because it is your wish. Right is a word and Wrong is
a word, but the sun shines in the morning and the dew
falls in the dusk without thinking of these words which
have no meaning. The bee flies to the flower and the
seed goes abroad and is happy. Is that right, Shepherd
Girl?--it is wrong also. I come to you because the bee
goes to the flower--it is wrong! If I did not come to
you to whom would I go? There is no right and no
wrong but only the will of the gods."
"I am afraid of you," said the girl.
"You fear me because my legs are shaggy like the legs
of a goat. Look at them well, O Maiden, and know that
they are indeed the legs of a beast and then you will not
be afraid any more. Do you not love beasts? Surely
you should love them for they yearn to you humbly or
fiercely, craving your hand upon their heads as I do. If
I were not fashioned thus I would not come to you because I would not need you. Man is a god and a brute.
He aspires to the stars with his head but his feet are contented in the grasses of the field, and when he forsakes
the brute upon which he stands then there will be no
more men and no more women and the immortal gods
will blow this world away like smoke."
"I don't know what you want me to do," said the girl.
"I want you to want me. I want you to forget right
and wrong; to be as happy as the beasts, as careless as
the flowers and the birds. To live to the depths of your
nature as well as to the heights. Truly there are stars
in the heights and they will be a garland for your forehead. But the depths are equal to the heights. Wondrous deep are the depths, very fertile is the lowest deep. There are stars there also, brighter than the stars on
high. The name of the heights is Wisdom and the name
of the depths is Love. How shall they come together
and be fruitful if you do not plunge deeply and fearlessly? Wisdom is the spirit and the wings of the spirit,
Love is the shaggy beast that goes down. Gallantly he
dives, below thought, beyond Wisdom, to rise again as
high above these as he had first descended. Wisdom is
righteous and clean, but Love is unclean and holy. I
sing of the beast and the descent: the great unclean
purging itself in fire: the thought that is not born in the
measure or the ice or the head, but in the feet and the
hot blood and the pulse of fury. The Crown of Life is
not lodged in the sun: the wise gods have buried it deeply
where the thoughtful will not find it, nor the good: but
the Gay Ones, the Adventurous Ones, the Careless
Plungers, they will bring it to the wise and astonish them.
All things are seen in the light--How shall we value that
which is easy to see? But the precious things which are
hidden, they will be more precious for our search: they
will be beautiful with our sorrow: they will be noble be-
cause of our desire for them. Come away with me,
Shepherd Girl, through the fields, and we will be careless and happy, and we will leave thought to find us when
it can, for that is the duty of thought, and it is more
anxious to discover us than we are to be found."
So Caitilin Ni Murrachu arose and went with him
through the fields, and she did not go with him because
of love, nor because his words had been understood by
her, but only because he was naked and unashamed.
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