The Crock of Gold, James Stephens [best mobile ebook reader txt] 📗

“I wonder,” said Seumas, “who owns that cow.”

“Maybe,” said Brigid Beg, “nobody owns her at all.”

“The cow owns herself,” said the Thin Woman, “for nobody can own a thing that is alive. I am sure she gives her milk to us with great goodwill, for we are modest, temperate people without greed or pretension.”

On being released the cow lay down again in the grass and resumed its interrupted cud. As the evening had grown chill the Thin Woman and the children huddled close to the warm animal. They drew pieces of cake from their wallets, and ate these and drank happily from the vessel of milk. Now and then the cow looked benignantly over its shoulder bidding them a welcome to its hospitable flanks. It had a mild, motherly eye, and it was very fond of children. The youngsters continually deserted their meal in order to put their arms about the cow’s neck to thank and praise her for her goodness, and to draw each other’s attention to various excellences in its appearance.

“Cow,” said Brigid Beg in an ecstasy, “I love you.”

“So do I,” said Seumas. “Do you notice the kind of eyes it has?”

“Why does a cow have horns?” said Brigid.

So they asked the cow that question, but it only smiled and said nothing.

“If a cow talked to you,” said Brigid, “what would it say?”

“Let us be cows,” replied Seumas, “and then, maybe, we will find out.”

So they became cows and ate a few blades of grass, but they found that when they were cows they did not want to say anything but “moo,” and they decided that cows did not want to say anything more than that either, and they became interested in the reflection that, perhaps, nothing else was worth saying.

A long, thin, yellow-coloured fly was going in that direction on a journey, and he stopped to rest himself on the cow’s nose.

“You are welcome,” said the cow.

“It’s a great night for travelling,” said the fly, “but one gets tired alone. Have you seen any of my people about?”

“No,” replied the cow, “no one but beetles to-night, and they seldom stop for a talk. You’ve rather a good kind of life, I suppose, flying about and enjoying yourself.”

“We all have our troubles,” said the fly in a melancholy voice, and he commenced to clean his right wing with his leg.

“Does any one ever lie against your back the way these people are lying against mine, or do they steal your milk?”

“There are too many spiders about,” said the fly.

“No corner is safe from them; they squat in the grass and pounce on you. I’ve got a twist, my eye trying to watch them. They are ugly, voracious people without manners or neighbourliness, terrible, terrible creatures.”

“I have seen them,” said the cow, “but they never done me any harm. Move up a little bit please, I want to lick my nose: it’s queer how itchy my nose gets”—the fly moved up a bit. “If,” the cow continued, “you had stayed there, and if my tongue had hit you, I don’t suppose you would ever have recovered.”

“Your tongue couldn’t have hit me,” said the by. “I move very quickly you know.”

Hereupon the cow slily whacked her tongue across her nose. She did not see the fly move, but it was hovering safely half an inch over her nose.

“You see,” said the fly.

“I do,” replied the cow, and she bellowed so sudden and furious a snort of laughter that the fly was blown far away by that gust and never came back again.

This amused the cow exceedingly, and she chuckled and sniggered to herself for a long time. The children had listened with great interest to the conversation, and they also laughed delightedly, and the Thin Woman admitted that the fly had got the worse of it; but, after a while, she said that the part of the cow’s back against which she was resting was bonier than anything she had ever leaned upon before, and that while thinness was a virtue no one had any right to be thin in lumps, and that on this count the cow was not to be commended. On hearing this the cow arose, and without another look at them it walked away into the dusky field. The Thin Woman told the children afterwards that she was sorry she had said anything, but she was unable to bring her self to apologise to the cow, and so they were forced to resume their journey in order to keep themselves warm.

There was a sickle moon in the sky, a tender sword whose radiance stayed in its own high places and did not at all illumine the heavy world below; the glimmer of infrequent stars could also be seen with spacious, dark solitudes between them; but on the earth the darkness gathered in fold on fold of misty veiling, through which the trees uttered an earnest whisper, and the grasses lifted their little voices, and the wind crooned its thrilling, stern lament.

As the travellers walked on, their eyes, flinching from the darkness, rested joyfully on the gracious moon, but that joy lasted only for a little time. The Thin Woman spoke to them curiously about the moon, and, indeed, she might speak with assurance on that subject, for her ancestors had sported in the cold beam through countless dim generations.

“It is not known,” said she, “that the fairies seldom dance for joy, but for sadness that they have been expelled from the sweet dawn, and therefore their midnight revels are only ceremonies to remind them of their happy state in the morning of the world before thoughtful curiosity and self-righteous moralities drove them from the kind face of the sun to the dark exile of midnight. It is strange that we may not be angry while looking on the moon. Indeed, no mere appetite or passion of any kind dare become imperative in the presence of the Shining One; and this, in a more limited degree, is true also of every form of beauty; for there is something in an absolute beauty to chide away the desires of materiality and yet to dissolve the spirit in ecstasies of fear and sadness. Beauty has no liking for Thought, but will send terror and sorrow on those who look upon her with intelligent eyes. We may neither be angry nor gay in the presence of the moon, nor may we dare to think in her bailiwick, or the Jealous One will surely afflict us. I think that she is not benevolent but malign, and that her mildness is a cloak for many shy infamies. I think that beauty tends to become frightful as it becomes perfect, and that, if we could see it comprehendingly, the extreme of beauty is a desolating hideousness, and that the name of ultimate, absolute beauty is Madness. Therefore men should seek loveliness rather than beauty, and so they would always have a friend to go beside them, to understand and to comfort them, for that is the business of loveliness: but the business of beauty—there is no person at all knows what that is. Beauty is the extreme