Stories of Red Hanrahan | Page 7

girl, they are my life and your life, they are
travelling and ever travelling through the skies as if under the one hood.
It was God made them for one another. He made your life and my life
before the beginning of the world, he made them that they might go
through the world, up and down, like the two best dancers that go on
with the dance up and down the long floor of the barn, fresh and
laughing, when all the rest are tired out and leaning against the wall.'
The old woman went then to where her husband was playing cards, but
he would take no notice of her, and then she went to a woman of the
neighbours and said: 'Is there no way we can get them from one
another?' and without waiting for an answer she said to some young
men that were talking together: 'What good are you when you cannot
make the best girl in the house come out and dance with you? And go
now the whole of you,' she said, 'and see can you bring her away from
the poet's talk.' But Oona would not listen to any of them, but only
moved her hand as if to send them away. Then they called to Hanrahan

and said he had best dance with the girl himself, or let her dance with
one of them. When Hanrahan heard what they were saying he said:
'That is so, I will dance with her; there is no man in the house must
dance with her but myself.'
He stood up with her then, and led her out by the hand, and some of the
young men were vexed, and some began mocking at his ragged coat
and his broken boots. But he took no notice, and Oona took no notice,
but they looked at one another as if all the world belonged to
themselves alone. But another couple that had been sitting together like
lovers stood out on the floor at the same time, holding one another's
hands and moving their feet to keep time with the music. But Hanrahan
turned his back on them as if angry, and in place of dancing he began to
sing, and as he sang he held her hand, and his voice grew louder, and
the mocking of the young men stopped, and the fiddle stopped, and
there was nothing heard but his voice that had in it the sound of the
wind. And what he sang was a song he had heard or had made one time
in his wanderings on Slieve Echtge, and the words of it as they can be
put into English were like this:
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.
And while he was singing it Oona moved nearer to him, and the colour
had gone from her cheek, and her eyes were not blue now, but grey
with the tears that were in them, and anyone that saw her would have
thought she was ready to follow him there and then from the west to the
east of the world.
But one of the young men called out: 'Where is that country he is
singing about? Mind yourself, Oona, it is a long way off, you might be
a long time on the road before you would reach to it.' And another said:
'It is not to the Country of the Young you will be going if you go with
him, but to Mayo of the bogs.' Oona looked at him then as if she would

question him, but he raised her hand in his hand, and called out
between singing and shouting: 'It is very near us that country is, it is on
every side; it may be on the bare hill behind it is, or it may be in the
heart of the wood.' And he said out very loud and clear: 'In the heart of
the wood; oh, death will never find us in the heart of the wood. And
will you come with me there, Oona?' he said.
But while he was saying this the two old women had gone outside the
door, and Oona's mother was crying, and she said: 'He has put an
enchantment on Oona. Can we not get the men to put him out of the
house?'
'That is a thing you cannot do, said the other woman,' for he is a