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Title: The Twisting Of The Rope
Author: William Butler Yeats [
Titles by Yeats]
The Twisting Of The Rope
Hanrahan was walking the roads one time near Kinvara at the fall of
day, and he heard the sound of a fiddle from a house a little way off
the roadside. He turned up the path to it, for he never had the habit
of passing by any place where there was music or dancing or good
company, without going in. The man of the house was standing at the
door, and when Hanrahan came near he knew him and he said: 'A welcome
before you, Hanrahan, you have been lost to us this long time.' But
the woman of the house came to the door and she said to her husband:
'I would be as well pleased for Hanrahan not to come in to-night, for
he has no good name now among the priests, or with women that mind
themselves, and I wouldn't wonder from his walk if he has a drop of
drink taken.' But the man said, 'I will never turn away Hanrahan of
the poets from my door,' and with that he bade him enter.
There were a good many neighbours gathered in the house, and some of
them remembered Hanrahan; but some of the little lads that were in
the corners had only heard of him, and they stood up to have a view
of him, and one of them said: 'Is not that Hanrahan that had the
school, and that was brought away by Them?' But his mother put her
hand over his mouth and bade him be quiet, and not be saying things
like that. 'For Hanrahan is apt to grow wicked,' she said, 'if he
hears talk of that story, or if anyone goes questioning him.' One or
another called out then, asking him for a song, but the man of the
house said it was no time to ask him for a song, before he had rested
himself; and he gave him whiskey in a glass, and Hanrahan thanked him
and wished him good health and drank it off.
The fiddler was tuning his fiddle for another dance, and the man of
the house said to the young men, they would all know what dancing was
like when they saw Hanrahan dance, for the like of it had never been
seen since he was there before. Hanrahan said he would not dance, he
had better use for his feet now, travelling as he was through the
five provinces of Ireland. Just as he said that, there came in at the
half-door Oona, the daughter of the house, having a few bits of bog
deal from Connemara in her arms for the fire. She threw them on the
hearth and the flame rose up, and showed her to be very comely and
smiling, and two or three of the young men rose up and asked for a
dance. But Hanrahan crossed the floor and brushed the others away,
and said it was with him she must dance, after the long road he had
travelled before he came to her. And it is likely he said some soft
word in her ear, for she said nothing against it, and stood out with
him, and there were little blushes in her cheeks. Then other couples
stood up, but when the dance was going to begin, Hanrahan chanced to
look down, and he took notice of his boots that were worn and broken,
and the ragged grey socks showing through them; and he said angrily
it was a bad floor, and the music no great things, and he sat down in
the dark place beside the hearth. But if he did, the girl sat down
there with him.
The dancing went on, and when that dance was over another was called
for, and no one took much notice of Oona and Red Hanrahan for a
while, in the corner where they were. But the mother grew to be
uneasy, and she called to Oona to come and help her to set the table
in the inner room. But Oona that had never refused her before, said
she would come soon, but not yet, for she was listening to whatever
he was saying in her ear. The mother grew yet more uneasy then, and
she would come nearer them, and let on to be stirring the fire or
sweeping the hearth, and she would listen for a minute to hear what
the poet was saying to her child. And one time she heard him telling
about white-handed Deirdre, and how she brought the sons of Usnach to
their death; and how the blush in her cheeks was not so red as the
blood of kings' sons that was shed for her, and her sorrows had never
gone out of mind; and he said it was maybe the memory of her that
made the cry of the plover on the bog as sorrowful in the ear of the
poets as the keening of young men for a comrade. And there would
never have been that memory of her, he said, if it was not for the
poets that had put her beauty in their songs. And the next time she
did not well understand what he was saying, but as far as she could
hear, it had the sound of poetry though it was not rhymed, and this
is what she heard him say: 'The sun and the moon are the man and the
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
poet of the Gael, and you know well if you would put a poet of the
Gael out of the house, he would put a curse on you that would wither
the corn in the fields and dry up the milk of the cows, if it had to
hang in the air seven years.'
'God help us,' said the mother, 'and why did I ever let him into the
house at all, and the wild name he has!'
'It would have been no harm at all to have kept him outside, but
there would great harm come upon you if you put him out by force. But
listen to the plan I have to get him out of the house by his own
doing, without anyone putting him from it at all.'
It was not long after that the two women came in again, each of them
having a bundle of hay in her apron. Hanrahan was not singing now,
but he was talking to Oona very fast and soft, and he was saying:
'The house is narrow but the world is wide, and there is no true
lover that need be afraid of night or morning or sun or stars or
shadows of evening, or any earthly thing.' 'Hanrahan,' said the
mother then, striking him on the shoulder, 'will you give me a hand
here for a minute?' 'Do that, Hanrahan,' said the woman of the
neighbours, 'and help us to make this hay into a rope, for you are
ready with your hands, and a blast of wind has loosened the thatch on
the haystack.'
'I will do that for you,' said he, and he took the little stick in
his hands, and the mother began giving out the hay, and he twisting
it, but he was hurrying to have done with it, and to be free again.
The women went on talking and giving out the hay, and encouraging
him, and saying what a good twister of a rope he was, better than
their own neighbours or than anyone they had ever seen. And Hanrahan
saw that Oona was watching him, and he began to twist very quick and
with his head high, and to boast of the readiness of his hands, and
the learning he had in his head, and the strength in his arms. And as
he was boasting, he went backward, twisting the rope always till he
came to the door that was open behind him, and without thinking he
passed the threshold and was out on the road. And no sooner was he
there than the mother made a sudden rush, and threw out the rope
after him, and she shut the door and the half-door and put a bolt
upon them.
She was well pleased when she had done that, and laughed out loud,
and the neighbours laughed and praised her. But they heard him
beating at the door, and saying words of cursing outside it, and the
mother had but time to stop Oona that had her hand upon the bolt to
open it. She made a sign to the fiddler then, and he began a reel,
and one of the young men asked no leave but caught hold of Oona and
brought her into the thick of the dance. And when it was over and the
fiddle had stopped, there was no sound at all of anything outside,
but the road was as quiet as before.
As to Hanrahan, when he knew he was shut out and that there was
neither shelter nor drink nor a girl's ear for him that night, the
anger and the courage went out of him, and he went on to where the
waves were beating on the strand.
He sat down on a big stone, and he began swinging his right arm and
singing slowly to himself, the way he did always to hearten himself
when every other thing failed him. And whether it was that time or
another time he made the song that is called to this day 'The
Twisting of the Rope,' and that begins, 'What was the dead cat that
put me in this place,' is not known.
But after he had been singing awhile, mist and shadows seemed to
gather about him, sometimes coming out of the sea, and sometimes
moving upon it. It seemed to him that one of the shadows was the
queen-woman he had seen in her sleep at Slieve Echtge; not in her
sleep now, but mocking, and calling out to them that were behind her:
'He was weak, he was weak, he had no courage.' And he felt the
strands of the rope in his hand yet, and went on twisting it, but it
seemed to him as he twisted, that it had all the sorrows of the world
in it. And then it seemed to him as if the rope had changed in his
dream into a great water-worm that came out of the sea, and that
twisted itself about him, and held him closer and closer, and grew
from big to bigger till the whole of the earth and skies were wound
up in it, and the stars themselves were but the shining of the ridges
of its skin. And then he got free of it, and went on, shaking and
unsteady, along the edge of the strand, and the grey shapes were
flying here and there around him. And this is what they were saying,
'It is a pity for him that refuses the call of the daughters of the
Sidhe, for he will find no comfort in the love of the women of the
earth to the end of life and time, and the cold of the grave is in
his heart for ever. It is death he has chosen; let him die, let him
die, let him die.'
-THE END-
William Butler Yeats' short story: The Twisting Of The Rope
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