The Wind Bloweth | Page 3

fat cattle would low with a foolish cry like a man wouldn't
be all there, and come home in the evenings to be milked, satisfied and
comfortable as a minister; wee calves shy as babies; donkeys with the
cross of Christ on their back; goats would butt you and you not looking;
hens a-cackle, and cocks strutting like a militiaman and him back from
the camp; quiet horses had the strength of twenty men, and scampering
colts had legs on them like withes. Up here was nothing, but you never
missed them.
The only thing to break the silence up here was the cry of an occasional
bird, the plaintive call of the plover, the barking of an eagle, the note of
the curlew, a whinny as of a horse of Lilliput, the strange noise a
pheasant makes and it rising from the heather: whir-r-r, like a piece of
elastic snapping. Barring these you'd hear nothing at all. And barring a

mountainy man or woman, and they cutting turf, you'd meet nothing
unless it were the sheep.
You'd never hear the sheep, and you coming; you'd turn a wee bluff in
the hill, and there they were looking, a long, solemn, grayish-white line,
with aloof, cold eyes. You could never faze them. They'd look at you
cool as anything, and "What license have you to be here?" you'd think
they were saying. Very stupid, but unco dignified, the sheep.
But up to the top of the mountain, where wee Shane was going, you'd
find no sheep; too bare and rocky there. There'd be nothing there but a
passing bird. On the top of the mountain was a little dark lake into
which you couldn't see more than a foot, though they said the depth of
it went down to the sea. There were no fish in it, people said, and that
was a queer thing, water without fish in it, wee Shane thought, like a
country without inhabitants. In the sea were a power of fish, and in the
rivers were salmon, long and thick as a man, and pike with snouts and
ominous teeth, and furry otters, about which there was great discussion
as to whether they were fish or animal ... In the lake in the
lowlands--Lochkewn, the Quiet Lake--were trout with red and gold and
black speckles; and perch with spiked fins; and dark roach were easy to
catch with a worm; and big gray bream were tasty as to bait, needing
paste held by sheep's wool; and big eels would put a catch in your
breath.
But in the lake on the mountain-top were no fish at all, and that was a
strange thing ...
There was another eery thing about the mountain, and a thing wee
Shane was slightly afraid of. Oftentimes you'd be sitting by that lake,
and sunlight all around you, and you'd turn to come down, and there'd
be a cloud beneath you, a cloud that rolled in armfuls of wool that
bound the mountain as by a ring; and the lonely call of a bird ... and
you'd feel shut off from the kindly earth, as if you were on another
planet maybe, or caught up into the air by some flying demon, and you
knew the world was spinning like a ball through the treeless fields of
space.

And what could a wee fellow do up there then but sit quiet and cry and
be terribly afraid? And your cry would be heard no more than the
whinnying of the curlew.... Or you might venture down through it, and
that was more terrible still, for the strange host of the air had their
domicile in the clouds, and there they held cruel congress, speaking in
their speechless tongue, and out of the clouds they took shape and
substance ... their cold, malevolent eyes, their smoky antennæ of
hands ... and nothing to turn to for company, not even the moody
badger or the unfriendly sheep. There was no going down. You must
stay there by the lake, and even then the cloud might creep upward
until it capped mountain and lake, and enveloped a wee fellow scared
out of his wits....
Nevertheless, he was going to the top of that mountain, clouds or no
clouds. For he had heard it said that the mirage of Portcausey was being
seen again--the Devil's Troopers, and the Oilean-gan-talamh-ar-bith,
the Isle of No Land At All, and the Swinging City, and they were to be
seen in the blue heat haze over the sea from the Mountain of Fionn....
And wee Shane was going to see it, clouds or no clouds, host or no host
of the air.
§ 2
He had won half-ways up the mountain now, and from the brae of
heather he could