Baile And Aillinn
ARGUMENT. Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the
Master of Love, wishing them to he happy in his own land
among the dead, told to each a story of the others death, so
that their hearts were broken and they died.
I HARDLY hear the curlew cry,
Nor thegrey rush when the wind is high,
Before my thoughts begin to run
On the heir of Uladh, Buans son,
Baile, who had the honey mouth;
And that mild woman of the south,
Aillinn, who was King Lugaidhs heir.
Their love was never drowned in care
Of this or that thing, nrew cold
Because their hodies had grown old.
Being forbid to marry oh,
They blossomed to immortal mirth.
About the time when Christ was born,
When the long wars for the White Horn
And the Brown Bull had not yet e,
Young Baile Honey Mouth, whom some
Called rather Baile Little-Land,
Rode out of Emain with a band
Of harpers and young men; and they
Imagined, as they struck the way
To many-pastured Muirthemne,
That all things fell out happily,
And there, for all that fools had said,
Baile and Aillinn would be wed.
They found an old man running there:
He had ragged long grass-coloured hair;
He had khat stuck out of his hose;
He had puddle-water in his shoes;
He had half a cloak to keep him dry,
Although he had a squirrels eye.
<1O wandering hirds and rushy beds,
You put such folly in our heads
With all this g in the wind,
No on love is to our mind,
And our poor kate or Nan is less
Than any whose unhappiness
Awoke the harp-strings long ago.
Yet they that know all things hut know
That all this life give us is
A childs laughter, a womans kiss.
Who was it put so great a s
In thegrey reeds that night and morn
Are trodden and broken hy the herds,
And in the light bodies of birds
The north wind tumbles to and fro
And pinches among hail and snow?>1
That runner said: "I am from the south;
I run to Baile Honey-Mouth,
To tell him how the girl Aillinn
Rode from the try of her kin,
And old and young men rode with her:
For all that try had been astir
If anybody half as fair
Had chosen a husband anywhere
But where it could see her every day.
When they had ridden a little way
An old man caught the horses head
With: ""You must home again, and wed
With somebody in your own land.
A young man cried and kissed her hand,
""O lady, wed with one of us;
And when no face grew piteous
For ale thing she spake,
She fell and died of the heart-break.
Because a lovers heart s worn out,
Being tumbled and blown about
By its own blind imagining,
And will believe that anything
That is bad enough to be true, is true,
Bailes heart was broken in two;
And he, being laid upon green boughs,
Was carried to the goodly house
Where the Hound of Uladh sat before
The brazen pillars of his door,
His face bowed low to weep the end
Of the harpers daughter and her friend
For athough years had passed away
He always wept them on that day,
For on that day they had beerayed;
And now that Honey-Mouth is laid
Under a of sleepy stone
Before his eyes, he has tear