Shiana/Chapter 28
CHAPTER XXVIII.
WHENCE THE FAIRY MUSIC CAME.
Before the day had fully dawned the company had dispersed and the people had all gone home except the big tinker and the man of the fairy music and Michael and his mother. Those four were doing their best to tidy up the house and put everything back into its own place. The fairy music was troubling Michael's mind. He wanted very much to find out how that piper had got hold of it. He watched until he found an opportunity, and then he asked him the question.
"Listen, John," said he. "That was wonderful music that you played for us last night. I never heard the like of it. I don't believe there is another man in Ireland who could play such music."
John did not pretend to have heard him.
"I suppose," said Michael, "it isn't everybody that could acquire music of that kind at all. How did you manage to get it, John?"
"Ask something else, Michael," said John.
That did not put Michael off the subject. He waited until John had gone, and then he said to the big tinker, "Stop a bit, Patrick, and have something to eat, after the night's work."
Patrick did not think that would be in any way inconvenient to him, and he stayed.
By-and-by, when Patrick had eaten something, and when he had drunk another drop of wine, Michael said, in a careless sort of way, "Patrick, was not that music we heard last night wonderful! I never heard the like of it, and I have often heard beautiful music. If I hadn't been looking at him with my own eyes, and listening to him with my own ears, I would not believe that any mortal man could bring such music out of pipes."
"And he couldn't, either, unless he got help to it," said Patrick. "Didn't you notice the whirl-wind? And didn't you hear the human voices, and the crying, and the laughing, and the shrieking? No sooner did the music begin than they gathered into the house to us. I tell you I believe there were far more of them there, dancing to the music, than there were of ourselves. They began to go away when the time of cockcrow was drawing near to them. And see how the piper stopped exactly before the cock crew! It is a wonder to me that they do not carry the piper off with them. If I were in his place I would not play that music, however much I might be pressed to do it. It would be far better for him to have sense. 'The jar does not always come unbroken from the well.'
"I wonder where in the world he learnt that music, or how he got hold of it," said Michael.
"That question is often put to him," said Patrick, "and he never makes any answer but, 'Ask something else.'"
"I declare on my honour," said Michael, "that I asked him that question a while ago, and that that is exactly the answer he made me. 'Ask something else,' said he to me."
"I heard," said Patrick, "that the way of it was that he was coming home from Cork one night with a new set of pipes which he had bought, and that he went astray, although he knew the place perfectly. Coming on toward Dripsey Bridge was where he went astray. A bewilderment came upon him, and he found himself on the bank of a river, in a place his eye had never rested on! He examined the ground under his feet, and a hedge that was near him, and a cave that was in a rock there, to see if he knew them, and he did not know them. At that moment he heard, at the other side of the river, the most beautiful music he had ever heard. What do you say to him if he didn't fit up the new pipes and begin to play the same music, along with the musician at the other side! He always had great nerve. All the fairies in Ireland would not frighten him. In the twinkling of an eye the whole inch on the bank of the river was filled with people moving over and hither among each other as if it were some sort of dance they were going on with. Soon the music at the other side changed. When it did, the man at this side took up the change without stop or stumble, and without missing a beat. The music at the other side was changed a second time. Well became the man at this side, he took up the change the instant it was made.
"For every turn and change that took place in the music, a corresponding change took place in the movement of the people, or in the dancing, if it was dancing. Things went on in that way between them, at both sides of the river, until some time well on in the night. He does not remember how he parted with them, but when the daylight came he woke out of his sleep inside the eye of a lime-kiln which was there at the roadside, with the new pipes beside him. No sooner was he fully awake than he fixed the pipes on him and began to play the music again, exactly as he had played it during the night. He played it from beginning to end. again and again, and he put into it correctly every twist and turn and change, as they put them in it during the night for him when they were playing it on the other side of the river, until he knew it by heart and there was no fear of his ever forgetting any part of it. When he had satisfied his mind upon that, he stood up and came out of the limekiln and looked about him. The road and the fences were full of people all round the limekiln. They had been collecting there while he was playing the music so as to master it. According as one or two would come, they would stop to listen to the music, until the place was crowded with them. They were full of wonder and amazement, because they knew that people used to hear that same music often in the same place, at night; but that was the first time it had ever been heard during the day. When they saw 'Eerie John' coming out of the eye of the limekiln, and when they realised that it was he that had been playing the weird music, they shook their heads and said among themselves that he would not escape long without being carried off. He saluted them, and they saluted him, but none of them asked him what made him play that music. They were half afraid of him.
"He came home, and it was not long until he fell sick. No one expected that he would ever rise from that sickness. People said it was those for whom he had played the music that were taking him with them in order that they themselves should have a piper as good as the piper whom those at the other side of the river had, or perhaps better. But whatever was the reason, they failed to carry him off that time. He recovered in spite of them, and he has the music. And there you have the story just as I myself heard it, of how Eerie John got the fairy music. He only plays it very seldom, and that is very little wonder. If they come around him always as they came around him last night, it must be that they take great delight in the music he plays, and if they have that delight in the music, they will carry the musician off home with them sooner or later. It is not right for him to be playing that music at all. He has been often advised not to play it. I have given him that advice myself, but it was no use for me to give it. He would not say 'I will,' or 'I won't.' You could not make out what he intended to do. It is no harm to call him 'Eerie John.' I don't think he has a bit of fear of them."
"Perhaps, Patrick," said Michael, "that he knows himself that he need have no fear of them. Perhaps he has good friends among them, and that he is not in danger."
"Perhaps so," said Patrick, "But I would rather give myself up to God than that I should have anything at all to do with them or they with me. There was a time last night, when all the thunder and commotion was going on, when I promise you there was no place I wished so much to be in as at home. I took a look at the face of the musician and I almost thought it was not himself that was there at all. There was a kind of light in his eyes and in his face and round his mouth, that would make you think he was looking at them and that he recognised them!"
"Perhaps he was too," said Michael.
"Perhaps so," said Patrick. "But there's one thing certain; Eerie John is too eerie for me."