Messer Marco Polo | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Daniel A. Wentzell
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The Project Gutenberg Etext of Messer Marco Polo by Byrne BRIAN
OSWALD DONN-BYRNE

BRIAN OSWALD DONN-BYRNE
(1889-1928)
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR OF MESSER MARCO POLO
So Celtic in feeling and atmosphere are the stories of Donn Byrne that
many of his devotees have come to believe that he never lived
anywhere but in Ireland. Actually, Donn Byrne was born in New York
City. Shortly after his birth, however, his parents took him back to the
land of his forefathers. There he was educated and came to know the
people of whom he wrote so magically. At Dublin University his love
for the Irish language and for a good fight won him many prizes, first
as a writer in Gaelic and second as the University's lightweight boxing
champion. After continuing his studies at the Sorbonne and the
University of Leipzig, he returned to the United States, where, in 1911,
he married and established a home in Brooklyn Heights. He earned his
living, while trying to write short stories, as an editor of dictionaries.
Soon his tales began to attract attention and he added to his collection
of boxing prizes many others won in short-story contests. When
MESSER MARCO POLO appeared in 1921 his reputation in the
literary world was firmly established. Thereafter, whatever he wrote
was hailed enthusiastically by his ever-growing public, until 1928,
when his tragic death in an automobile accident cut short the career of
one of America's best-loved story-tellers.

MESSER MARCO POLO
The message came to me, at the second check of the hunt, that a
countryman and a clansman needed me. The ground was heavy, the day
raw, and it was a drag, too fast for fun and too tame for sport. So I
blessed the countryman and the clansman, and turned my back on the
field.
But when they told me his name, I all but fell from the saddle.
"But that man's dead!"
But he wasn't dead. He was in New York. He was traveling from the
craigs of Ulster to his grandson, who had an orange-grove on the Indian
River, in Florida. He wasn't dead. And I said to myself with impatience,
"Must every man born ninety years ago be dead?"
"But this is a damned thing," I thought, "to be saddled with a man over
ninety years old. To have to act as GARDE-MALADE at my age! Why
couldn't he have stayed and died at home? Sure, one of these days he
will die, as we all die, and the ghost of him will never be content on the
sluggish river, by the mossy trees, where the blue herons and the white
cranes and the great gray pelicans fly. It will be going back, I know, to
the booming surf and the red-berried rowan-trees and the barking
eagles of Antrim. To die out of Ulster, when one can die