“I hear no sound at all.”
“It is most wonderful music. It filled the hearts of the Irish soldiers with courage, the like of which astonished mankind, and drove terror into the hearts of the invaders as they ran to the sea and got drowned. It fills me with courage now, and will instil valour into every Irish heart until the crack of doom. Don’t you hear it yet?”
“No, I hear nothing.”
“It grows fainter and fainter,” said Padna. “The army is now in the valley but ‘twill return when winter gives way to spring, and spring gives way to summer, and when summer gives way to autumn, and when All Souls’ Night will come again.”
“When the Christmas daisies wither, and when the daffodils and the bog lilies and the blue-bell and the hyacinth bloom again, and when the gooseberry and black-currant bushes are laden down with fruit, and when the green leaves turn to brown and the autumnal breeze scatters them on the roadside, we may be dead ourselves,” said Micus.
“Hush,” said Padna, “here come all the bards and minstrels that loved poor Granuaile, and sang her praises, on the mountain side, on the scaffold, behind prison bars, at home and in distant lands. At morning and at evening, at noon and at night, in early youth and at the brink of the grave. And sad they all look too,” said Padna.
“The world is a sad place for those who can see sorrow,” said Micus. “Granuaile herself is sad, because for centuries she has lived in sorrow. She weeps for her own sons and the sons of all nations. She wakes with a smile in the morning, but when the dark cloak of night is flung on the world, her eyes are always filled with tears. And when nobody does be looking, she weeps, and weeps, and weeps!”
“It is for the sins of men she weeps.”
“And for the contrariness of women.”
“And for the folly of children, whether they be grown up with beards upon their chins, or in their teens and staying up the nights writing love letters for their philandering sweethearts to laugh at and show to their worthless friends so that they may do likewise.”