‘I will go into the town of Sligo and sing it in the street,’ said another of the boys.  ‘Do that,’ said Hanrahan, ’and go into the Burrough and tell it to Margaret Rooney and Mary Gillis, and bid them sing to it, and to make the beggars and the bacachs sing it wherever they go.’  The children ran out then, full of pride and of mischief, calling out the song as they ran, and Hanrahan knew there was no danger it would not be heard.

He was sitting outside the door the next morning, looking at his scholars as they came by in twos and threes.  They were nearly all come, and he was considering the place of the sun in the heavens to know whether it was time to begin, when he heard a sound that was like the buzzing of a swarm of bees in the air, or the rushing of a hidden river in time of flood.  Then he saw a crowd coming up to the cabin from the road, and he took notice that all the crowd was made up of old men, and that the leaders of it were Paddy Bruen, Michael Gill and Paddy Doe, and there was not one in the crowd but had in his hand an ash stick or a blackthorn.  As soon as they caught sight of him, the sticks began to wave hither and thither like branches in a storm, and the old feet to run.

He waited no longer, but made off up the hill behind the cabin till he was out of their sight.

After a while he came back round the hill, where he was hidden by the furze growing along a ditch.  And when he came in sight of his cabin he saw that all the old men had gathered around it, and one of them was just at that time thrusting a rake with a wisp of lighted straw on it into the thatch.

‘My grief,’ he said, ’I have set Old Age and Time and Weariness and Sickness against me, and I must go wandering again.  And, O Blessed Queen of Heaven,’ he said, ’protect me from the Eagle of Ballygawley, the Yew Tree of the Steep Place of the Strangers, the Pike of Castle Dargan Lake, and from the lighted wisps of their kindred, the Old Men!’

HANRAHAN’S VISION.

It was in the month of June Hanrahan was on the road near Sligo, but he did not go into the town, but turned towards Beinn Bulben; for there were thoughts of the old times coming upon him, and he had no mind to meet with common men.  And as he walked he was singing to himself a song that had come to him one time in his dreams: 

   O Death’s old bony finger
   Will never find us there
   In the high hollow townland
   Where love’s to give and to spare;
   Where boughs have fruit and blossom
   At all times of the year;
   Where rivers are running over
   With red beer and brown beer. 
   An old man plays the bagpipes
   In a gold and silver wood;
   Queens, their eyes blue like the ice,
   Are dancing in a crowd.

   The little fox he murmured,
   ‘O what of the world’s bane?’
   The sun was laughing sweetly,
   The moon plucked at my rein;
   But the little red fox murmured,
   ’O do not pluck at his rein,
   He is riding to the townland
   That is the world’s bane.’