Chapter XI: Part 11

They sat in the house at Ballyshannon which he had graven of yew and thatched with gulls’ plumes, and they feasted upon new of all meats, and old of all liquors. As they drank high and deep, their plaited hair fell over the wine cups their fathers had taken out of the graves of the Danes. In face of O’Donnell himself sat the Joyless Jug. It was called so because it had been used to fetch water by the patron saint of all the O’Donnell’s. It never ran dry on O’Donnell’s table, and this by the marvelling was esteemed a miracle.

As the company peered through the lime-white arches of the hall into O’Donnell’s apple garden, they saw a strange gilly pricking the sour fruit with a javelin. O’Donnell sent a Saxon slave to bring him in. The stranger gave astonishment to them all. He wore patched hose over his swinging shanks, and a mantle that would have wrapped a mare and foal was gathered to his girdle. A naked sword trundled at his heel-tip, and he carried three charred javelins of holly. The puddle water splashed out of his deerskin brogues while his ear-tips peeped through his mantle hood.

“God save you and ripen your apples,” quoth he, and, as he smacked his lips, the wine leaped in their cups.

“And who and wherefrom and whither exactly art thou?” asked O’Donnell.

“My habits take me to Islay in Scotland one day, to the Island of Man another, and to Rathlin the next, for a ranting rambling rover I am.”

“Your name? and you are welcome,” said O’Donnell.

“The Gilly of the Gael.”

“It is enough; sit where you would drink, and drink where you sit.”

“Indeed,” said the Gilly, “I will sit, or I will sit not, as it pleases me. I would hear music to play the ache out of my legs and the water out of my shoes.”

O’Donnell called his harpers to play smooth and soothing strains out of their live harps. They were the pride and power of O’Donnell’s entertaining.

When the gilly had listened a while through his hood, he spoke to the harps: “I have never heard minstrelsy the like--not since I heard the musicians of Beelzebub tinkling iron with their sledgehammers on the nethermost ground-tier of Hell!”

He seized a harp himself, and shook the last melody out of it. Then he played to the gentry of Donegal and such music that all the women travailing in the town and the gallants gashed in battle lying within, were soothed to sleep and stupor.

“I perceive thou art an harmonious rogue,” said O’Donnell, and he forgave him the insult he had delivered upon the harps.

“One day I am sweet, one day I am bitter,” quoth the Gilly, “one morning under sun, one evening under moon, and here one day, and not here the next.”

O’Donnell saw a source of endless entertainment for the men of Ulster, and he told off twenty gallow-glasses, as they valued their straw and ale, to guard the gates, and he hid twenty horsemen in the apple grove.

But the Gilly was gilly to no Lord.

“Watch for me, ride for me,” cried he, “or I am clean away.” The gallow-glasses sprang to seize him leaving. But he passed them, and he ran through the horsemen, spearing their apples as he went. Then the riders rode each other down in tumult, and the gallow-glasses fell upon each other’s knives.

But the Gilly was gone--and he left a herb for their healing, a little bundle of starwort, with O’Donnell’s watcher on the hills.

* * * * *

At that time it chanced that the son of Desmond had gathered the men of South Munster to proclaim himself Desmond against his father. Hove the weird gilly within hearing;

“God save you, and keep sprigs to your trees!” he cried entering.

“And who art thou of all royal rascals and runners?”

“I am Duartane O’Duartane, runner to the King of Ireland,” he told him, “and I have run Ireland from the shelly shore of Sligo to the mud mountains of Thomond.”

“Play or be hung,” said Desmond, thinking the squelch of his brogues was all his music.

The Gilly would not play, but when they ridiculed him he caught the harp from a blind harper of Desmond so swiftly that the harper thought the wind had taken it. First he made the harp sound, and then to sing, and at last to speak. The harp said:

“The music is not more lasting than the harp that begot it, and the sprig is not stronger than the tree that grew it.”

“Thou art a traitor to thy clan,” cried the young Desmond to the harp, and his men-at-arms cut the harp-strings with their swords. The Gilly slipped aside and called out: “One day I am sweet, another I am sour, one day in North Donegal, one day in South Munster,” and away he vanished like a twang of his music.

It happed at the time of the Gilly’s raid and riot through Ireland that M’Keogh of Leinster, the hereditary crown-bearer and coroner to the MacMurrough, lay sick of a bog-palsy in his leg. The twelve royal physicians of Leinster were gathered about the one leg, for until he could walk the new MacMurrough might not come by his crown. To be crowned by a sick man was against the Brehon law of Ireland.

Swung the Weird Gilly to sight.

“Who art thou, watering my garden with thy brogues?” cried M’Keogh.

“A medical student picking plants,” answered the Gilly, “and if you promised to put away all niggardliness, I would heal the sorriness of your shank.”

“So be it,” said M’Keogh, and sent his gold robes to patch beggar’s rags at his gate.

The Gilly slit a leaf of nightwort with his javelin and dropped it then and there on M’Keogh’s leg. With that, M’Keogh’s leg rose under him and started to run out of the house, and M’Keogh with it, and the twelve royal leeches of Leinster running after. There was no catching him till he tired toward evening. When they brought him back he offered the Gilly his one daughter for wife.

“It is well,” said the Gilly, “be she foul or be she fair, she shall be mine.”

That night a banquet was spread with porridge for plenty and water for wine. But when the guests were gathered, a servant ran in crying:

“The foreign physician is over the hills and faster than a russet hare between a day and a night of March.”

“We knew he was a false rascal,” declared the twelve royal doctors of Leinster.

At this time it chanced that Conor of Connaught was preparing to avenge a foul insult done upon the dead and the living of his country. A Connaught crone had lent a basket to a hag of Munster and had received neither it nor its eric-price in return. Sped the Gilly within speech of them. He was crossing the ridge of Ireland that runs from Dublin to Galway.

“Who art thou, running with thy ribs wrapt up in a mantle?” asked Conor.

“I am the Gruesome Gilly and I run through Ireland to see good wars and fair fighting, and if you would have me now I will join gladly.”

“Will any hiring purchase you?” quoth Conor.

“Nothing unfair to be done to me,” answered the Gilly.

So he marched with the fighting men of Connaught and of Far-Connaught, till they overstepped the marches of Munster. Heaven gave them blessing, boon and victory, for they carried away two spotted cows from the Hag of Munster, and her one-horned bull, as a solace for the basket.

When the men of Munster learnt of the disgrace befallen them, they marched for half a day and half a night. But the Gilly kept them at bay with his javelins in one hand, while he drove along the cattle with the other. He kept running betwixt the prey and the pursuit till he was past the fords of the Shannon. It was the greatest cattle-spoil of the time, and gave hymning to harpers and piping to poets for a spring-tide.

When they came to Conor’s house, Conor drained the first flagon of wine and left the Gilly thirsty. “The drink goes with the deed,” said the Gilly, and, before the words were with Conor, he had disappeared.

At the same time, O’Kelly the King of the Kellies was bidding men to banquet. Came the Gilly within call.

“Art thou a Kelly of Munster or a Kelly of Leinster?” was all the O’Kelly would ask a stranger.

“I am neither, but a good conjurer,” said the Gilly, “and for five flagons I will prove the goodness of my art.”

“Prove,” said O’Kelly, and five hundred Kellies shouted “Prove!”

“I will wag one ear, while the other is still,” said the Gilly, and all the Kellies were silent for it seemed not easy to be done.

Then the man of tricks tied one ear with the end of his mantle and wagged the other. O’Kelly gave him five flagons full.

“I will show thee another,” said the Gilly, and pulling a long thread out of his mantle, he tossed it in a ball to the clouds. He drew his mantle over the end of the thread and a hare ran up and away to the clouds, and then a beagle, and then a dogboy, and, last of all, a fairy-woman. They listened to the merry hunting cry, until all had entered the mists. Then the Gilly reeled down the thread, and there was the hound picking the hare’s bones and the dogboy meshed in the hair of the fairy-woman. O’Kelly called for another trick.

“I know only one better,” said the Gilly, and vanished.

That day MacMurrough King of Leinster was banqueting in his house. There were sixteen harpers playing for him to choose which should be the choice harper of Leinster.

“Whence art thou?” asked MacMurrough.

“One day am I in Islay and another in Man, one day with the heat and the next with the cold, one day with Conor and another with Kelly,” answered the Gilly.

“How do my harpers harp with those of Conor and Kelly?” asked the King.

“There is no music I would compare them with,” said the Gilly, “except the melodious thunder of the Porters in the Pit.”

The King ordered him to be strung forthwith.

When they had gibbeted him on the crow’s perch, they returned and met him coming out of the King’s house. They ran back and found it was the King himself they had hung, and the Gilly had left a sliver of batsbane for his anointing before burial.

That time the Gilly was gone without saying farewell or fare-ill. Away he vanished with his roguery and ranting, with his wandering and his wizardry, as all magicians and artists, that shall be since or ever, must vanish and leave but a little breath of wonderment with the folk of the world.

OREMUS

JOHN LONG, LTD., PUBLISHERS, LONDON, ENGLAND, 1924
_Wyman & Sons, Ltd., Printers, London, Reading and Fakenham_

Transcriber’s Note:

Obvious errors in punctuation have been silently corrected in this version, but minor inconsistencies and archaic forms have been retained as printed.

The French in the Baudelaire prayer has been silently corrected.

The following changes have been made:

On page 102: belives _to_ believes On page 131: work _to_ word On page 184: or _to_ of On page 213: Spindlehorn _to_ Spindelhorn

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.