At Swim-two-birds (12 page)

Hands were extended till they met, the generous grip of friendship in front of the fire.

All right, said Shanahan laughing in the manner of a proud peacock, don't shake the handle off me altogether. Gentlemen, you flatter me. Order ten pints a man till we celebrate.

My hard bloody Shanahan, said Lamont.

That'll do you now the pair of ye, said Shanahan. Silence in the court now.

The droning from the bed restarted where it stopped.

The stag of steep Slieve Eibhlinne,
the stag of sharp Slieve Fuaid,
the stag of Eala, the stag of Orrery,
the mad stag of Loch Lein.

Stag of Shevna, stag of Lame,
the stag of Leena of the panoplies
stag of Cualna, stag of Conachail,
the stag of two-peaked Bairenn.

Oh mother of this herd,
thy coat has greyed,
no stag is following after thee
without twice twenty points.

Greater-than-the-material-for-a-little-cloak,
thy head has greyed;
if I were on each little point
littler points would there be on every pointed point.

The stag that marches trumpeting
across the glen to me,
pleasant the place for seats
on his antler top.

After that song, the long one, Sweeny came from Fiodh Gaibhle
to Bean Boghaine, from there to Benn Faibhne and thence to Rath Murbuilg, attaining no refuge from the attention of the hag till he came to Dun Sobhairce in Ulster. Here he went before the hag and threw a leap from the precise summit of the dun. She followed him in swift course and dropped on the precipice of Dun Sobhairce till fine-pulp and small-bits were made of her, falling lastly into the sea, so that it was thus that she found death in her chase of Sweeny.

He then travelled and tarried in many places for a month and a fortnight, on smooth clean delightful hills and on delicate chill-breezed peaks for a fortnight and a month, making his abode in the hiding of tree-dumps. And in leaving Carrick Alaisdar, he delayed there till he had fashioned these staves as a farewell address, a valediction on the subject of his manifold sorrow.

Cheerless is existence
without a downy bed,
abode of the shrivelling frost,
gusts of the snowy wind.

Chill icy wind,
shadow of a feeble sun
the shelter of a sole tree
on a mountain-plain.

The bell-belling of the stag
through the woodland,
the climb to the deer-pass,
the voice of white seas.

Forgive me Oh Great Lord,
mortal is this great sorrow,
worse than the black grief –
Sweeny the thin-groined.

Carraig Alasdair
resort of sea-gulls,
sad Oh Creator,
chilly for its guests.

Sad our meeting
two hard-shanked cranes –
myself hard and ragged
she hard-beaked.

Thereafter Sweeny departed and fared till he had crossed the encompassing gullet of the storm-wracked sea till he reached the kingdom of the Britons and fell in with another of a like frenzy, a madman of Briton.

If you are a madman, said Sweeny, tell me your family name.

Fer Caille is my name, he answered.

And the pair of them made a peace and a compact together, talking with each other in a lay of generous staves.

Oh Sweeny, said Fer Caille, let the each watch the other since we love and trust in each; that is, he who shall first hear the cry of a heron from the blue-watered green-watered water, or the clear call of a cormorant, or leap of a woodcock from a tree, the note or the sound of a waking plover, or the crack-crackle of withered branches, or he who shall first see the shadow of a bird in the air above the wood, let him call warning and tell the other, so that the two of us can fly away quickly.

At the butt-end of a year's wandering in the company of each other, the madman of Briton had a message for Sweeny's ear.

It is true that we must part today, he said, for the end of my life has come and I must go to where I am to die.

What class of a death will you die? asked Sweeny.

Not difficult to relate, said the other, I go now to Eas Dubhthaigh and a gust of wind will get under me until it slams me into the waterfall for drowning, and I shall be interred in the churchyard of a saint, and afterwards I shall attain Heaven. That is my end.

Thereafter, on the recital of valedictory staves, Sweeny fared again in the upper air on his path across sky-fear and rain-squalls to Erin, dwelling here and there in the high places and in the low nestling in the heart of enduring oaks, never restful till he had again attained ever-delightful Glen Bolcain. There he encountered a demented woman till he fled before her, rising stealthily nimbly lightly from the summit of the peaks till he reached Glen Boirche. in the south and committed himself to these ranns.

Chill chill is my bed at dark
on the peak of Glen Boirche,
I am weakly, no mantle on me,
lodged in a sharp-stirked holly.

Glen Bolcaln of the twinkle spring
it is my rest-place to abide in;
when Samhain conies, when summer comes,
it is my rest-place where I abide.

For my sustenance at night,
the whole that my hands can glean
from the gloom of the oak-gloomed oaks –
the herbs and the plenteous fruits.

Fine hazel-nuts and apples, berries,
blackberries and oak-tree acorns,
generous raspberries, they are my due,
haws of the prickle-hawy hawthorn.

Wild sorrels, wild garlic faultless,
clean-topped cress,
they expel from me my hunger,
acorns from the mountain, melle-root

After a prolonged travel and a searching in the skies, Sweeny arrived at nightfall at the shore of the widespread Loch Ree, his resting-place being the fork of the tree of Tiobradan for that night It snowed on his tree that night, the snow being the worst of all the other snows he had endured since the feathers grew on his body, and he was constrained to the recital of these following verses.

Terrible is my plight this night
the pure air has pierced my body,
lacerated feet, my cheek is green –
O Mighty God, it is my due.

It is bad living without a house,
Peerless Christ, it is a piteous life!
a filling of green-tufted fine cresses
a drink of cold water from a clear rill.

Stumbling out of the withered tree-tops
walking the furze – it is truth –
wolves for company, man-shunning,
running with the red stag through fields.

If the evil hag had not invoked Christ against me that I should perform leaps for her amusement, I would not have relapsed into madness, said Sweeny.

Come here, said Lamont, what's this about jumps?

Hopping around, you know, said Furriskey.

The story, said learned Shanahan in a learned explanatory manner, is about this fellow Sweeny that argued the toss with the clergy and came off second-best at the wind-up. There was a curse – a malediction – put down in the book against him. The upshot is that your man becomes a bloody bird.

I see, said Lamont.

Do you see it, Mr Furriskey, said Shanahan. What happens? He is changed into a bird for his pains and he could go from here to Carlow in one hop. Do you see it, Mr Lamont?

Oh I see that much all right, said Lamont, but the man that I'm thinking of is a man by the name of Sergeant Craddock, the first man in Ireland at the long jump in the time that's gone.

Craddock?

That was always one thing, said Shanahan wisely, that the Irish race was always noted for, one place where the world had to give us best. With all his faults and by God he has plenty, the Irishman can jump. By God he can jump. That's one thing the Irish race is honoured for no matter where it goes or where you find it – jumping. The world looks up to us there.

We were good jumpers from the start, said Furriskey.

It was in the early days of the Gaelic League, said Lamont. This Sergeant Craddock was an ordinary bloody bobby on the beat, down the country somewhere. A bit of a bags, too, from what I heard. One fine morning he wakes up and is ordered to proceed if you don't mind to the Gaelic League Sports or whatever it was that was being held in the town that fine spring Sunday. To keep his eye open for sedition do you know and all the rest of it. All right. In he marches to do his duty, getting the back of the bloody hand from the women and plenty of guff from the young fellows. Maybe he was poking around too much and sticking his nose where It wasn't wanted…

I know what you mean, said Shanahan.

Anyway, didn't he raise the dander of the head of the house, the big man, the head bottle-washer. Up he came to my cool sergeant
with his feathers ruffled and his comb as red as a turkeycock and read out a long rigmarole in Irish to your man's face.

That'll do you, said the sergeant, keep that stuff for them that wants it. I don't know what you're saying, man.

So you don't know your own language, says the head man.

I do, says the sergeant, I know plenty of English.

Your man then asks the sergeant his business in Irish and what he's doing there in the field at all.

Speak English, says the sergeant.

So be damned but your man gets his rag out and calls the sergeant a bloody English spy.

Well maybe he was right, said Furriskey.

Shh, said Shanahan.

But wait till I tell you. The sergeant just looked at him as cool as blazes.

You're wrong, says he, and I'm as good a man as you or any other man,
says he.

You're a bloody English bags, says your man in Irish.

And I'll prove it, says the sergeant.

And with that your man gets black in the face and turns his back and walks to the bloody platform where all the lads were doing the Irish dancing with their girls, competitions of one kind and another, you know. Oh it was all the fashion at one time, you were bloody nothing if you couldn't do your Walls of Limerick. And here too were my men with the fiddles and the pipes playing away there at the reels and jigs for further orders. Do you know what I mean?

Oh I know what you're talking about all right, said Shanahan, the national music of our country, Rodney's Glory, the Star of Munster and the Rights of Man.

The Flogging Reel and Drive the Donkey, you can't beat them, said Furriskey.

That's the ticket, said Lamont. Anyway, didn't your man get into a dark corner with his butties till they hatched out a plan to best the sergeant. All right. Back went your man to the sergeant, who was taking it easy in the shade of a tree.

You said a while ago, says your man, that you were a better man than any man here. Can you jump?

I can not, says the sergeant, but I'm no worse than the next man.

We'll see, says your man.

Now be damned but hadn't they a man in the tent there from the county Cork, a bloody dandy at the long jump, a man that had a name, a man that was known in the whole country. A party by the name of Bagenal, the champion of all Ireland.

Gob that was a cute one, said Furriskey.

A very cute one. But wait till I tell you. The two of them lined up and a hell of a big crowd gathering there to watch. Here was my nice Bagenal as proud as a bloody turkey in his green pants, showing off the legs. Beside him stands another man, a man called Craddock, a member of the polis. His tunic is off him on the grass but the rest of his clothes is still on. He is standing as you find him with his blue pants and his big canal-barges on his two feet. I'm telling you it was something to look at. It was a sight to see.

I don't doubt it, said Shanahan.

Yes. Well Bagenal is the first off, sailing through the air like a bird and down in a shower of sand. What was the score?

Eighteen feet, said Furriskey.

Not at all man, twenty-two. Twenty-two feet was the jump of Bagenal there and then and by God the shout the people gave was enough to make the sergeant puke what was inside him and plenty more that he never swallowed.

Twenty-two feet is a good jump any day, said Shanahan.

After the cheering had died down, said Lamont, my man Bagenal strolls around and turns his back on the sergeant and asks for a cigarette and starts to blather out of him to his friends. What does my sergeant do, do you think, Mr Shanahan.

I'm saying nothing, said knowing Shanahan.

By God you're a wise man. Sergeant Craddock keeps his mouth shut, takes a little run and jumps twenty-four feet six.

Do you tell me that! cried Furriskey.

Twenty-four feet six.

I'm not surprised, said Shanahan in his amazement, I'm not surprised. Go where you like in the wide world, you will always find that the Irishman is looked up to for his jumping.

Right enough, said Furriskey, the name of Ireland is honoured for that.

Go to Russia, said Shanahan, go to China, go to France. Everywhere and all the time it is hats off and a gra-ma-cree to the Jumping
Irishman. Ask who you like they'll all tell you that. The Jumping Irishman.

It's a thing, said Furriskey, that will always stand to us – jumping.

When everything's said, said Lamont, the Irishman has his points. He's not the last man that was made now.

He is not, said Furriskey.

When everything had been said by Sweeny, said droning dark-voiced Finn, a glimmering of reason assailed the madman till it turned his steps in the direction of his people that he might dwell with them and trust them. But holy Ronan in his cell was acquainted by angels of the intention of Sweeny and prayed God that he should not be loosed from his frenzy until his soul had been first loosed from his body and here is a summary of the result. When the madman reached the middle of Slieve Fuaid, there were strange apparitions before him there, red headless trunks and trunkless heads and five stubbly rough grey heads without trunk or body between them, screaming and squealing and bounding hither and thither about the dark road beleaguering and besetting him and shouting their mad abuse, until he soared in his fright aloft in front of them. Piteous was the terror and the wailing cries, and the din and the harsh-screaming tumult of the heads and the dogsheads and the goatsheads in his pursuit, thudding on his thighs and his calves and on the nape of his neck and knocking against trees and the butts of rocks – a wild torrent of villainy from the breast of a high mountain, not enough resting for a drink of water for mad Sweeny till he finally achieved his peace in the tree on the summit of Slieve Eichneach. Here he devoted his time to the composition and recital of melodious staves on the subject of his evil plight.