The stories I heard, and I young, were not of Little Rollo and Sir Walter Scott's, but the horrible tale of the Naked Hangman, who goes through the Valleys on Midsummer's Eve; of Dermot, and Granye of the Bright Breasts; of the Cattle Raid of Maeve, Queen of Connacht; of the old age of Cuchulain in the Island of Skye;
grisly, homely stories, such as yon of the ghostly foot-ballers of Cushendun, whose ball is a skull, and whose goal is the portals of a ruined graveyard; strange religious poems, like the Dialogue of Death and the Sinner:
Do thugainn loistin do gach deoraidh treith-lag --
I used to give lodging to every poor wanderer;
Food and drink to him I would see in want, His proper payment to the man requesting reckoning, Och! Is not Jesus hard if he condemns me!
All these stories, of all these people he told, had the unreal, shimmering quality of that mirage that is seen from Portrush cliffs, a glittering city in a golden desert, surrounded by a strange sea mist.
All these songs, all these words he spoke, were native, had the same tang as the turf smoke, the Gaelic quality that is in dark lakes on mountains summits, in plovers nests amid the heather. . .And to remember them now in New York, to see him. . .
Fifteen years had changed him but little: little more tremor and slowness in the walk, a bow to the great shoulders, an eye that flashed like a knife.
"And what do you think of New York, Malachi?"
"I was here before, your honor will remember. I fought at the Wilderness."
I forbore asking him what change he had found. I saw his quivering nostrils.
In a few days he would proceed south, when he had orientated himself after the days of shipboard.
That night it seemed every one chose to come in and cluster around the fire. Randall, the poet; and the two blond Danish girls, with their hair like flax; Fraser, the golfer, just over from Prestwick;
and a young writer, with his spurs yet to win; and this one. . .and that one.
They all kept silence as old Malach spoke, sportsmen, artists, men and women of the world; a hush came on them and their eyes showed they were not before the crackling fire in the long rooms but amazed in the Antrim glens.
Yes, old Malachi said, things were changed over there, and a greater change was liable. . .People whispered that in the Valley of the Black Pig the Boar without Bristles had been seen at the close of the day, and in Templemore there was a bleeding image, and these were ominous portents. . .Some folks believed and some didn't. . .
And the great Irish hunter that had won the Grand National, the greatest horse in the world. . .But our Man of War, Malachi?. .
Oh, sure, all he could do was run, and a hare or a greyhound could beat him at that; but Shawn Spadah, a great jumper him, as well as a runner; in fine, a horse. . .And did I know that Red Simon McEwer of Cushundall had gone around Portrush in eighteen consecutive fours?
. . .A Rathlin Islander had tried the swim across to Scotland, but didn't make it, and there was great arguing as to whether it was because of the currents or of lack of strength. . .There were rumblings in the Giants' Causeway. . .very strange. . .A woman in Oran had the second sight, the most powerful gift of second sight in generations. . .There was a new piper in Islay, and it was said he was a second McCrimmon. . .And a new poet had arisen in Uist, and all over the Highlands they were reciting his songs and his "Lament for the Bruce". . .Was I still as keen for, did I still remember the poems, and the great stories?. . .
"'Behold, the night is of great length,'" I quoted, "'Unbearable.
Tell us, therefore, of those wondrous deeds.'"
"If you've remembered your Gaidhlig as you've remembered your Greek!"
"It's a long time since you've had a story of me, twelve long years, and it's a long time before you'll have another, and I going away tomorrow. Old Sergeant Death has his warrant out for me this many a day, and it's only the wisdom of an old dog fox that eludes him;
but he'll lay me by the heels one of these days. . .then there'll be an end to the grand stories. . .So after this, if you're wanting a story, you must be writing it yourself. . .
"But before I die, I'll leave you the story of Marco Polo. There's been a power of books written about Marco Polo. The scholars have pushed up their spectacles and brushed the cobwebs from their ears, and they've said, 'There's all there is about Marco Polo.'
"But the scholars are a queer and blind people, Brian Oge. I've heard tell there's a doctor in Spain can weigh the earth. But he can't plow a furrow that is needful, for planting corn. The scholars can tell how many are the feathers in a bird's wing, but it takes me to inform the doctors why the call comes to them, and they fly over oceans without compass or sextant or sight of land.
"Did you ever see a scholar standing in front of a slip of a girl?
In all his learning he can find nothing to say to her. And every penny poet in the country knows.
"Let you be listening now, Brian Oge, and let also the scholars be listening. But whether the scholars do or not, I'm not caring.
A pope once listened to me with great respect, and a marshal of France and poets without number. But the scholars do be turning up their noses. And, mind you, I've got as much scholarship as the next man, as you'll see from my story.
"Barring myself, is there no one in this house that takes snuff?
No! Ah, well, times do be changing."
