The Celtic Twilight | Page 5

[Irish for doom] is over me," he repeated, and then went on to talk once
more of God and heaven. More than once also he said, waving his arm
towards the mountain, "Only myself knows what happened under the
thorn-tree forty years ago"; and as he said it the tears upon his face
glistened in the moonlight.
This old man always rises before me when I think of X-----. Both seek
--one in wandering sentences, the other in symbolic pictures and subtle
allegoric poetry-to express a something that lies beyond the range of
expression; and both, if X----- will forgive me, have within them the
vast and vague extravagance that lies at the bottom of the Celtic heart.
The peasant visionaries that are, the landlord duelists that were, and the
whole hurly-burly of legends--Cuchulain fighting the sea for two days
until the waves pass over him and he dies, Caolte storming the palace
of the gods, Oisin seeking in vain for three hundred years to appease
his insatiable heart with all the pleasures of faeryland, these two
mystics walking up and down upon the mountains uttering the central
dreams of their souls in no less dream-laden sentences, and this mind
that finds them so interesting--all are a portion of that great Celtic
phantasmagoria whose meaning no man has discovered, nor any angel
revealed.

VILLAGE GHOSTS
In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our
minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people
are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce.
Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge.
When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your
favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share
it. We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all
the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on
unchanging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all our
talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb
multitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering
through the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers
wrote across unexplored regions, "Here are lions." Across the villages
of fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us, we
can write but one line that is certain, "Here are ghosts."
My ghosts inhabit the village of H-----, in Leinster. History has in no
manner been burdened by this ancient village, with its crooked lanes,
its old abbey churchyard full of long grass, its green background of
small fir-trees, and its quay, where lie a few tarry fishing-luggers. In the
annals of entomology it is well known. For a small bay lies westward a
little, where he who watches night after night may see a certain rare
moth fluttering along the edge of the tide, just at the end of evening or
the beginning of dawn. A hundred years ago it was carried here from
Italy by smugglers in a cargo of silks and laces. If the moth-hunter
would throw down his net, and go hunting for ghost tales or tales of the
faeries and such-like children of Lillith, he would have need for far less
patience.
To approach the village at night a timid man requires great strategy. A
man was once heard complaining, "By the cross of Jesus! how shall I
go? If I pass by the hill of Dunboy old Captain Burney may look out on
me. If I go round by the water, and up by the steps, there is the headless
one and another on the quays, and a new one under the old churchyard
wall. If I go right round the other way, Mrs. Stewart is appearing at

Hillside Gate, and the devil himself is in the Hospital Lane."
I never heard which spirit he braved, but feel sure it was not the one in
the Hospital Lane. In cholera times a shed had been there set up to
receive patients. When the need had gone by, it was pulled down, but
ever since the ground where it stood has broken out in ghosts and
demons and faeries. There is a farmer at H-----, Paddy B----- by name-a
man of great strength, and a teetotaller. His wife and sister-in-law,
musing on his great strength, often wonder what he would do if he
drank. One night when passing through the Hospital Lane, he saw what
he supposed at first to be a tame rabbit; after a little he found that it was
a white cat. When he came near, the creature slowly began to swell
larger and larger, and as it grew he felt his