The Celtic Twilight | Page 9

would drink it,
But, O King of Glory, dry the
roads before me,
Till I find the way to Ballylee.
There is sweet air on the side of the hill
When you are looking down
upon Ballylee;
When you are walking in the valley picking nuts and
blackberries, There is music of the birds in it and music of the Sidhe.
What is the worth of greatness till you have the light
Of the flower of
the branch that is by your side?
There is no god to deny it or to try
and hide it,
She is the sun in the heavens who wounded my heart.
There was no part of Ireland I did not travel,
From the rivers to the
tops of the mountains,
To the edge of Lough Greine whose mouth is
hidden,
And I saw no beauty but was behind hers.
Her hair was shining, and her brows were shining too;
Her face was
like herself, her mouth pleasant and sweet. She is the pride, and I give
her the branch,
She is the shining flower of Ballylee.
It is Mary Hynes, this calm and easy woman,
Has beauty in her mind
and in her face.
If a hundred clerks were gathered together,
They
could not write down a half of her ways.
An old weaver, whose son is supposed to go away among the Sidhe
(the faeries) at night, says, "Mary Hynes was the most beautiful thing
ever made. My mother used to tell me about her, for she'd be at every
hurling, and wherever she was she was dressed in white. As many as
eleven men asked her in marriage in one day, but she wouldn't have any
of them. There was a lot of men up beyond Kilbecanty one night,
sitting together drinking, and talking of her, and one of them got up and
set out to go to Ballylee and see her; but Cloon Bog was open then, and
when he came to it he fell into the water, and they found him dead there
in the morning. She died of the fever that was before the famine."
Another old man says he was only a child when he saw her, but he
remembered that "the strongest man that was among us, one John

Madden, got his death of the head of her, cold he got crossing rivers in
the night-time to get to Ballylee." This is perhaps the man the other
remembered, for tradition gives the one thing many shapes. There is an
old woman who remembers her, at Derrybrien among the Echtge hills,
a vast desolate place, which has changed little since the old poem said,
"the stag upon the cold summit of Echtge hears the cry of the wolves,"
but still mindful of many poems and of the dignity of ancient speech.
She says, "The sun and the moon never shone on anybody so handsome,
and her skin was so white that it looked blue, and she had two little
blushes on her cheeks." And an old wrinkled woman who lives close by
Ballylee, and has told me many tales of the Sidhe, says, "I often saw
Mary Hynes, she was handsome indeed. She had two bunches of curls
beside her cheeks, and they were the colour of silver. I saw Mary
Molloy that was drowned in the river beyond, and Mary Guthrie that
was in Ardrahan, but she took the sway of them both, a very comely
creature. I was at her wake too--she had seen too much of the world.
She was a kind creature. One day I was coming home through that field
beyond, and I was tired, and who should come out but the Poisin
Glegeal (the shining flower), and she gave me a glass of new milk."
This old woman meant no more than some beautiful bright colour by
the colour of silver, for though I knew an old man--he is dead
now--who thought she might know "the cure for all the evils in the
world," that the Sidhe knew, she has seen too little gold to know its
colour. But a man by the shore at Kinvara, who is too young to
remember Mary Hynes, says, "Everybody says there is no one at all to
be seen now so handsome; it is said she had beautiful hair, the colour of
gold. She was poor, but her clothes every day were the same as Sunday,
she had such neatness. And if she went to any kind of a meeting, they
would all be killing one another for a sight of her, and there was a great
many in love with her, but she died young. It is said that no one that has
a song made about them will ever live long."
Those who are much admired are, it is held, taken by the Sidhe, who
can use ungoverned feeling