Chapter VI: Canto THE SECOND

What time, forth sliding from the Eternal Gates,
The centuries three on earth had lived and died,
Thus spake Finola to her snowy mates,
‘No more in this soft haven may we bide:
The second Woe succeeds; that heavier toil
On Alba’s waves, the black sea-strait of Moyle.’

Then wept to her in turn the younger three;
‘Alas the sharp rocks and the salt sea-foam!
Thou therefore make the lay, ere yet we flee
From this our exile’s cradle, sweet as home!’
And thus Finola sang, while, far and near,
The men of Erin wept that strain to hear:

‘Farewell, Lough Darvra, with thine isles of bloom!
Farewell, familiar tribes that grace her shore!
The penance deepens on us, and the doom:
Farewell! The voice of man we list no more
Till he, the Tailkenn, comes to sound the knell
Of darkness, and rings out his gladsome bell.’

Thus singing, mid their dirge the sentenced soared
Heaven-high; then hanging mute on plumes outspread,
With downcast eye long time that lake explored;
And lastly with a great cry northward sped:
Then was it Erin’s sons, listening that cry,
Decreed: ‘The man who slays a swan shall die.’

Three days against the northern blast on-flying
To Fate obedient and the Will Divine,
They reached, what time the crimson eve was lying
On Alba’s isles, and ocean’s utmost line,
That huge sea-strait whose racing eddies boil
’Twixt Erin and the cloud-girt headland Moyle.[21]

There anguish fell on them: they heard the booming
Of league-long breakers white, and gazed on waves
Wreck-strewn, themselves entombed, and all-entombing,
Rolling to labyrinths dim of red-roofed caves;
And streaming waters broad, as with one will
In cataracts from gray shelves descending still.

There, day by day, the sun more early set;
And through the hollows of the high-ridged sea
Which foamed around their rocky cabinet
The whirlwinds beat them more remorselessly:
And winter followed soon: and ofttimes storms
Shrouded for weeks the mountains’ frowning forms.

In time all ocean omens they had learned;
And once, as o’er the darkening deep they roved,
Finola, who the advancing woe discerned,
Addressed them: ‘Little brothers, well beloved,
Though many a storm hath tried us, yet the worst
Comes up this night: now therefore, ere it burst

‘Devise we swiftly if, through God’s high Will,
Billow or blast divides us each from each,
Some refuge-house wherein, when winds are still,
To meet once more--low rock or sandy beach:’
And answer thus they made: ‘One spot alone
This night can yield us refuge, Carickrone.’

They spake, and sudden thunder shook the world,
And blackness wrapped the seas, and lightnings rent;
And each from each abroad those swans were hurled
By solid water-scud. Outworn and spent
At last, that direful tempest over-blown,
Finola scaled their trysting-rock--alone.

But when she found no gentle brother near,
And heard the great storm roaring far away,
Anguish of anguish pierced her heart, and fear,
And thus she made her moan and sang her lay:
‘Death-cold they lie along the far sea-tide:
Would that as cold I drifted at their side!’

Thus as she sang, behold, the sun uprose,
And smote a swan that on a wave’s smooth crest
Exhausted lay, like one by pitiless foes
Trampled, and looking but to death for rest:
He also clomb that rock, though weak and worn,
With bleeding feet and pinions tempest-torn.

Aodh was he! He couched him by her side;
Straight, her right wing, Finola o’er him spread:
Ere long beneath the rock Fiacre she spied,
Wounded yet more; yet soon he hid his head
’Neath her left wing, her nestling’s wonted place,
And slept content in that beloved embrace.

But still Finola mused with many a tear,
‘Alas for us, of little Conn bereft!’
Then Conn came floating by, full blithe of cheer,
For he, secure within a craggy cleft,
Had slept all night; and now once more his nest
He made beneath his snowy sister’s breast.

And as they slept she sang: ‘Among the flowers
Of old we played where princes quaffed their wine;
But now for flowery fields sea-floods are ours;
And now our wine-cup is the bitter brine:
Yet, brothers, fear no ill; for God will send
At last his Tailkenn, and our woes find end.’

And God, Who of least things has tenderest thought,
Looked down on them benignly from on high,
And bade that bitter brine to enter not
Their scars, unhealed as yet, lest they should die;
And nearer sent their choicest food full oft,
And clothed their wings with plumage fine and soft.

And ever as the spring advanced, the sea
Put on a kindlier aspect. Cliffs deep-scarred
To milder airs gave welcome festively
Upon their iron breasts and foreheads hard,
And, while about their feet the ripples played,
Cast o’er the glaring deep a friendlier shade.

And when at last the full midsummer panted
Upon the austere main, and high-peaked isles,
And hills that, like some elfin land enchanted,
Now charmed, now mocked the eye with phantom smiles,
More far round Alba’s shores the swans made way
To Islay’s beach, and cloud-loved Colonsay.

The growths beside their native lake oft noted
In that sublimer clime no more they missed;
Jewels, not flowers they found where’er they floated,
Emerald and sapphire, opal, amethyst,
Far-kenned through watery depths or magic air,
Or trails of broken rainbows, here and there.

Round Erin’s northern coasts they drifted on
From Rathlin isle to Fanad’s beetling crest,
And where, in frowning sunset steeped, forth shone
The ‘Bloody Foreland,’ gazing t’ward the west;
Yet still with duteous hearts to Moyle returned--
To love their place of penance they had learned.

One time it chanced that, onward as they drifted
Where Banna’s current joins that stormy sea,
A princely company with banners lifted
Rode past on snow-white steeds and sang for glee:
At once they knew those horsemen, form and face,
Their native stock--Tuatha’s ancient race!

T’ward them they sped: their sorrows they recounted:
The warriors could not aid them, and rode by:
Then higher than of old their anguish mounted;
And farther rang through heaven their piteous cry;
And when it ceased, this lay Finola sang
While all the echoing rocks and caverns rang:

‘Whilome in purple clad we sat elate:
The warriors watched us at their nut-brown mead:
But now we roam the waters desolate,
Or breast the languid beds of waving weed:
Our food was then fine bread; our drink was wine:
This day on sea-plants sour we peak and pine.

‘Whilome our four small cots of pearl and gold
Lay, side by side, before our father’s bed,
And silken foldings kept us from the cold:
But now on restless waves our couch is spread;
And now our bed-clothes are the white sea-foam:
And now by night the sea-rock is our home.’

Not less from them such sorrows swiftly passed
Since evermore one thought their bosoms filled--
That father’s home. That haunt, in memory glassed,
Childhood perpetual o’er their lives distilled:
And, coast what shore they might, green vale and plain
Bred whiter flocks, men said, more golden grain.

The years ran on: the centuries three went by:
Finola sang: ‘The second Woe is ended!’
Obedient then, once more they soared on high;
Next morn on Erin’s western coast descended,
While sunrise flashed from misty isles far seen,
Now gold, now flecked with streaks of luminous green.

And there for many a winter they abode,
Harbouring in precincts of the setting sun;
And mourned by day, yet sang at night their ode
As though in praise of some great victory won:
Some conqueror more than man; some heavenly crown
Slowly o’er all creation settling down.

There once--what time a great sun in decline
Had changed to gold the green back of a wave
That showered a pasture fair with diamond brine,
Then sank, anon uprising from its grave
Went shouldering onward, higher and more high,
And hid far lands, and half eclipsed the sky--

There once a shepherd, Aibhric, high of race,
Marked them far off, and marking them so loved
That to the ocean’s verge he rushed apace
With hands outspread. Shoreward the creatures moved;
And when he heard them speak with human tongue
That love he felt grew tenderer and more strong.

Day after day they told that youth their tale:
Wide-eyed he stood, and inly drank their words;
And later, harping still in wood and vale,
He fitted oft their sorrow to his chords;
And thus to him in part men owe the lore[22]
Of all those patient sufferers bare of yore.

For bard he was; and still the bard-like nature
Hath reverence, as for virtue, so for woe,
And ever finds in trials of the creature
The great Creator’s purpose here below
To lift by lowering, and through anguish strange
To fit for thrones exempt from chance or change.

There first the Four had met that sympathy
Yearned for so long: and yet, that treasure found,
So much the more ere long calamity
Tasked them, thus strengthened; tasked and closed them round,
And higher yet fierce winds and watery shocks
Dashed them thenceforth upon the pitiless rocks.

At last from heaven’s dark vault a night there fell
The direst they had known. The high-heaped seas
Vanquished by frost, beneath her iron spell
Abased their haughty crests by slow degrees:
The swans were frozen upon that ice-plain frore;
Yet still Finola sang, as oft before,

‘Beneath my right wing, Aodh, make thy rest!
Beneath my left, Fiacre! My little Conn,
Find thou a warmer shelter ’neath my breast,
As thou art wont: thou art my little son!
Thou God that all things mad’st, and lovest all,
Subdue things great! Protect the weak, the small!’

But evermore the younger three made moan;
And still their moans more loud and louder grew;
And still Finola o’er that sea of stone
For their sake fragments of wild wailings threw;
And ever as she sang, the on-driving snow
Choked the sweet strain; yet still she warbled low.

Then, louder when she heard those others grieve,
And found that song might now no more avail,
She said: ‘Believe, O brothers young, believe
In that great God, whose help can never fail!
Have faith in God, since God can ne’er deceive!’
And lo, those weepers answered: ‘We believe!’

So thus those babes, in God’s predestined hour,
Through help of Him, the Lord of Life and Death,
Inly fulfilled with light and prophet power,
Believed; and perfect made their Act of Faith;
And thenceforth all things, both in shade and shine,
To them came softly and with touch benign.

First, from the southern stars there came a breeze
On-wafting happy mist of moonlit rain;
And when the sun ascended o’er the seas
The ice was vanquished; and the watery plain
And every cloud with rapture thrilled and stirred:
And lo, at noon the cuckoo’s voice was heard!

And since with that rough ice their feet were sore
God for their sake a breeze from Eden sent
That gently raised them from the ocean’s floor
And in its bosom, as an ambient tent,
Held them, suspense: and with a dew of balm
God, while they slept, made air and ocean calm.

Likewise a beam auroral forth he sped
That flushed that tent aerial like a rose
Each morn, and roseate odours o’er it shed
The long day through. And still, at evening’s close,
They dreamed of those rich bowers and alleys green
Wherein with Lir their childish sports had been.

And thrice they dreamed that in the morning gray
They gathered there red roses drenched with dew:
But lo! a serpent ’neath the roses lay:
Then came the Tailkenn, and that serpent slew;
And round the Tailkenn’s tonsured head was light
That made that morning more than noonday bright.

Thus wrapt, thus kindled, in sublimer mood
Heaven-high they soared, and flung abroad their strain
O’er-sailing huge Croagh-Patrick swathed in wood,
Or Acaill,[23] warder of the western main,
Or Arran Isle, that time heroic haunt,
Since Enda’s day Religion’s saintlier vaunt.

And many a time they floated farther south
Where milder airs endear sea-margins bleak,
To that dim Head far seen o’er Shenan’s mouth,
Or Smerwick’s ill-famed cliff and winding creek,
Or where on Brandon sleeps Milesius’ son
With all his shipwrecked warriors round him--Donn.

The centuries passed: her loud, exultant lay
Finola sang, their time of penance done,
And ended: ‘Lo, to us it seems a day;
Not less the dread nine hundred years are run!
Now, brothers, homeward be our flight!’ And they
Chanted triumphant: ‘Home, to Finnahá!’

Up from the sea they rose in widening gyre,
And hung suspended mid the ethereal blue,
And saw, far-flashing in the sunset’s fire,
A wood-girt lake whose splendour well they knew;
And flew all night; and reached at dawn its shore--
Ah, then rang out that wail ne’er heard before!

There where the towers of Lir of old had stood
Lay now the stony heap and rain-washed rath;
And through the ruin-mantling alder-wood
The forest beast had stamped in mire his path;
And desolate were their mother’s happy bowers,
So fair of old with fountains and with flowers!

More closely drew the orphans, each to each:--
’Twas then Finola raised her dirge on high,
As nearer yet they drifted to the beach
In hope one fragment of past days to spy;
‘Upon our father’s house hath fallen a change;
And as a dead man’s face this place is strange!

‘No more the hound and horse; no more the horn!
No more the warriors winding down the glen!
Behold, the place of pleasaunce is forlorn,
And emptied of fair women and brave men;
The wine-cup now is dry; the music fled:
Now know we that our father, Lir, is dead!’

She sang, and ceased, though long the feathered throat
Panted with passion of the unuttered song:
At last she spake with voice that seemed remote
Like echoed voice of one the tombs among:
‘Depart we hence! Better the exile’s pain!’
And they: ‘Return we to rough waves again!’

Yet still along that silver mere they lingered
Oaring their weeping way by lawn and cape,
Till evening, purple-stoled and dewy-fingered,
O’er heaven’s sweet face had woven its veil of crape;
And tenderer came from darkening wood and wild
The voice far off of woman or of child.

And when, far travelling through the fields of ether,
The stars successive filled their thrones of light,
Still to that heaven the glimmering lake beneath her
Gave meet response, with music answering light;
For still, wherever sailed that mystic four,
With minstrelsy divine that lake ran o’er.

But when the rising sun made visible
The night-mist hovering long o’er banks of reed
They cast their broad wings on a gathering swell
Of wind that, late from eastern sea-caves freed,
Waved all the island’s oakwoods t’ward the West;
And seaward swooped at eve, and there found rest.

And since they knew their penance now was over,
Penance that tasks true hearts to purify,
Happier were they than e’er was mortal lover,
Happy as Spirits cleansed that, near the sky,
Feel, mid that shadowy realm expiatory,
Warm on their lids the unseen yet nearing glory.

Thenceforth they roamed no more, at Inisglaire
Their change awaiting. In its blissful prime
That island was, men say, as Eden fair,
The swan-soft nurseling of a changeful clime,
With amaranth-lighted glades, and tremulous sheen
Of trees full-flowered on earth no longer seen.

Not then the waves with that still site contended;
On its warm sandhills pansies always bloomed;
And ever with the inspiring sea-wind blended
The breath of gardens violet-perfumed;
And daisies whitened lawn and dell, and spread
At sunset o’er green hills their under-red,

Faint as that blush which lights some matron’s cheek
Tenderly pleased by gentle praise deserved--
That island’s winding coast from creek to creek
Like curves of shells with dream-like beauty swerved:
And midmost spread a lake; from mortal eyes
Vanished this day like man’s lost paradise.

Around that lake with oldest oakwoods shaded
Were all things that to eye are witching most,
Green slopes, dew drenched, and gray rocks ivy-braided;
Yet speechless was the region as a ghost:
No whisper shook those woods; no tendril stirred;
Nor e’er beside the cave was ripple heard.

A home for Spirits, not home for man, it seemed;
Or Limbo meet for body-waiting Souls--
Of such in Pagan times the poets dreamed--
That stillness which invests the unmoving poles
Above it brooded. In its circuit wide
A second Darvra lived--but glorified.

Upon its breast perpetual light there lay,
Undazzling beam, and uncreated light;
For lake and wood the sunshine drank all day,
And breathed it softly forth to cheer the night,
A silver twilight, pure from cloud or taint,
Like aureole round the forehead of a saint.

There dwelt those Swans; there louder anthems chanted;
There first they sang by day--rapt song and hymn,
Till all those birds the western coasts that haunted
Came flying far o’er ocean’s purple rim,
Scorning thenceforth wild cliff and beds of foam;
And made, then first, that sacred isle their home.

So passed three years. When dawned the third May morn
The Four, while slowly rose the kindling mist
Showing the first white on the earliest thorn,
Heard music o’er the waters. List, O list!
’Twas sweet as theirs--more sweet--yet terrible
At first; and sudden trembling on them fell.

A second time it sounded. Terror died,
And rapture came instead, and mystic mirth
They knew not whence: and thus Finola cried:
‘Brothers! the Tailkenn treads our Erin’s earth!’
And as the lifted mist gave view more large
They saw a blue bay with a fair green marge.

On that green marge there rose an Altar-stone:
Before it, robed in white, with tonsured head,
Stood up the kingly Tailkenn all alone:
Not far behind, in reverence, not in dread,
With low bent brows a princely senate knelt,
Girding that altar as with golden belt.

Marvelling, as on they sailed that Rite they saw:
But, when a third time pealed that Tailkenn’s bell,
They too their halleluias, though with awe,
Blended with his. The Ill Spirits heard their knell,
And shrieking fled to penal dungeons drear;
And straight, since now those blissful Four drew near,

Saint Patrick stretched above the wave his hand
And thus he spake--and wind and wave were stilled--
‘Children of Lir, re-tread your native land,
For now your long sea-penance is fulfilled!’
Then lo! Finola raised the funeral cry:
‘We tread our native land that we may die!’

And thus she made the lay, and thus she sang:
‘Baptize us, priest, while living yet we be!’
And louder soon her dirge-like anthem rang:
‘Lo, thus the Children’s burial I decree:
Make fair our grave where land and ocean meet;
And t’ward thy holy Altar place our feet.

‘Upon my left, Fiacre; upon my right
Let Aodh sleep; for such their place of rest,
Secured to each by usage and by right:
And lay my little Conn upon my breast:
Then on a low sand pillow raise my head,
That I may see his face though I be dead.’

She spake; and on the sands they stept--the Four--
Then lo, from heaven there came a miracle:
Soon as they left the wave, and trod the shore
The weight of bygone centuries on them fell:
To human forms they changed, yet human none;--
Dread, shapeless weights of wrinkles and of bone.

A moment prone the wildered creatures lay;
Then slowly up that breadth of tawny sand,
Like wounded beast that can but crawl, made way
With knee convulsed, and closed and clutching hand,
Nine-centuried forms, still breathing mortal breath,
Though shrouded in the cerements pale of death.

That concourse on them gazed with many a tear;
Yet no man uttered speech or motion made,
Till now the Four had reached that altar-bier,
Their ghastly pilgrimage’s goal, and laid
Before its base their bodies, one by one,
And faces glistening in the rising sun.

There lying, loud they raised the self-same cry,
As Patrick o’er them signed the conquering Sign,
‘Baptize us, holy Tailkenn, for we die!’
The saint baptized them in the Name Divine,
And, swift as thought, their happy spirits at last
To God’s high feast and singing angels passed.

Now hear the latest wonder. While, low-bowed,
That concourse gazed upon the reverend dead
Behold, like changeful shapes in evening cloud,
Vanished those time-worn bodies; and, instead,
Inwoven lay four children, white and young
With silver-lidded eyes and lashes long.

Finola lay, once more an eight years’ child:
Upon her right hand Aodh took his rest,
Upon her left Fiacre;--in death he smiled:
Her little Conn was cradled on her breast:
And all their saintly raiment shone as bright
As sea-foam sparkling on a moonlit night;

Or as their snowy night-clothes shone of old
When now the night was past, and Lir, their sire,
Upraised them from the warm cot’s silken fold,
And bade them watch the sun’s ascending fire,
And watched himself its beam, now here now there,
Flashed from white foot, blue eyes, or golden hair.

The men who saw that deathbed did not weep,
But gazed till sunset upon each fair face;
And then with funeral psalm, and anthems deep,
Interred them at that sacred altar’s base,
And graved their names in Ogham characters
On one white tomb; and, close beneath them, Lir’s.

Those Babes were Erin’s Holy Innocents,
And first-fruits of the land to Christ their Lord,
Though born within the unbelievers’ tents:
Figured in them the Gael his God adored,
That later-coming, holier Gael, who won
Through Faith the birthright, though the younger son.

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THE

FORAY OF QUEEN MEAVE

OR

‘THE TAIN BO CUAILGNÉ’

_FIVE FRAGMENTS OF AN ANCIENT IRISH EPIC_

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TO

SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON

THIS POEM IS DEDICATED,

IN TOKEN OF GRATITUDE

FOR ‘CONGAL,’ AND FOR MANY POEMS BESIDE,

THAT ILLUSTRATE ARIGHT

THE LEGENDS OF ANCIENT IRELAND.

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