The Untilled Field

by George Moore

We should overtake Father MacTurnan in a minute or more. There was no time to hear the story, and I was sorry not to have heard the story of the playhouse from the car-driver. Father MacTurnan got up beside me, and told me we were about a mile from his house and that he had dinner for me. He was a tall, thin man, and his pale, wandering eyes reflected the melancholy of the distant mountains.

"I hope," said the priest, "that you're not wet; we have had some showers here."

"We were caught in a shower coming out of Rathowen, but nothing to signify."

Our talk then turned on the consecration of the cathedral. I told him everything I thought would interest him, but all the while I was thinking what kind of house he lived in; I had only seen mud huts for many a mile; presently he pointed with his umbrella, and I saw a comfortable whitewashed cottage by the roadside. The idea of the playhouse was ringing in my head, and I began to wonder why he did not train a rose-bush against its wall, and a moment after I felt that it was well that he did not—a rose-bush could only seem incongruous facing that waste hill. We passed into the house, and seeing the priest's study lined with books, I said, "Reading is his distraction," and I looked forward to a pleasant talk about books when we had finished our business talk; "and he'll tell me about the playhouse," I said. After dinner, when we had said all we had to say on the possibilities of establishing local industries, the priest got up suddenly,—I thought he was going to take a book from the shelves to show me, but he had gone to fetch his knitting, and, without a word of explanation, he began to knit. I saw that he was knitting stockings, and from the rapidity that the needles went to and fro I guessed that he knitted every evening. It may have been only my fancy, but it seemed to me that the priest answered the questions I addressed to him about his books perfunctorily; it even seemed to me that he wished to avoid literary conversation. Yielding to his wish, or what I believed to be his wish, I spoke of practical things, saying that the worst feature of the case was that the Irish no longer cared to live in Ireland.

"Even the well-to-do want to go away. The people are weary of the country; they have suffered too much. I think that they wish to lose themselves."

"It will be a pity," the priest said.

"A sort of natural euthanasia," I said. "A wish to forget themselves."

"It will be a pity," the priest said again, and he began to speak of the seventh century, when Ireland had a religion of her own, an art of her own, and a literature of her own.

We drew our chairs closer to the fire, and we spoke of the Cross of Cong and Cormac's Chapel, and began to mourn the race, as is customary in these times.

"The Celt is melting like snow; he lingers in little patches in the corners of the field, and hands are stretched from every side, for it is human to stretch hands to fleeting things, but as well might we try to retain the snow."