And that is their story as I have heard it so far.

WORKHOUSE DREAMS

Last June I had a few free days, and I chose to spend them among the imaginative class, the holders of the traditions of Ireland, country people in thatched houses, workers in fields and bogs.

I was looking for legends of those shadow-heroes, Finn and his men, to help me in writing their story; and I heard many tales and long poems about fair-haired Finn, who ‘had all the wisdom of a little child’; and Conan of the sharp tongue, who was ‘some way cross in himself,’ and who had a briar on his shield; and their adventures beyond sea, and their hunting after deer that were ’as joyful as the leaves of a tree in summer time.’  But some of the people repeated verses by Raftery and Callinan and Sweeny, and some told stories of the kingdom of the Sidhe.

I spent three happy afternoons in a workhouse in my own county, but not in my own parish; and after we had spoken of the Fianna for a while, the old men began to tell me these long, rambling stories I am about to repeat.

We sat in a gravelled yard, where only the leaves of a few young sycamores told that spring had come.  Some of the old men sat on a bench against the whitewashed wall of a shed, in their rough frieze clothes and round grey caps, and others stood round, pressing closer and closer as their interest in the story grew.

Some of the stories were new to me; some I had heard in other versions; but all—­even those like the ‘Taming of the Shrew,’ which have, one must believe, been brought in from other countries—­have taken an Irish colouring.  I began to listen, half interested and half impatient; for I had never cared much for this particular kind of tale.

But as I listened, I was moved by the strange contrast between the poverty of the tellers and the splendours of the tales.  These men who had failed in life, and were old and withered, or sickly, or crippled, had not laid up dreams of good houses and fields and sheep and cattle; for they had never possessed enough to think of the possession of more as a possibility.  It seemed as if their lives had been so poor and rigid in circumstance that they did not fix their minds, as more prosperous people might do, on thoughts of customary pleasure.  The stories that they love are of quite visionary things; of swans that turn into kings’ daughters, and of castles with crowns over the doors, and lovers’ flights on the backs of eagles, and music-loving water-witches, and journeys to the other world, and sleeps that last for seven hundred years.

I think it has always been to such poor people, with little of wealth or comfort to keep their thoughts bound to the things about them, that dreams and visions have been given.  It is from a deep narrow well the stars can be seen at noonday; it was one left on a bare rocky island who saw the pearl gates and the golden streets that lead to the Tree of Life.