se he had been of great use. He was a standard, a great
ideal. Children who had seen him would remember him forever, and seek to
emulate the fire and strength of him, having him to measure by as the
mariner has the star.... In foreign countries they would tell tales of
him: There was once a great sportsman in the North of Ireland, Alan Donn
Campbell by name....

His father, too, who had been dead so long--mortality had not conquered
him. Once in Ballycastle Shane had seen a shawled girl look out to sea
with great staring eyes and a wry mouth, and, half whispered, staccato,
not quite sung, her fingers twisting her shawl, came a song from her
white mouth:

_Tiocfaidh an samhradh agas fasfaidh an fear;
Agas tiocfaidh an duilleabhar glas do bharr nan gcraobh.
Tiocfaidh mo chead gradhle banaghadh an lae,
Agas bvailfidh se port ciuin le cumhaidh 'mo dhiaidh._

The summer will come, and the little grass will grow;
And there will come a green thickness to the tops of the trees.
And my hundred loves will arise with the dawning of the day,
And he will strike a soft tune out of loneliness after me.

A queer stitch came in Shane's heart--a song his father made! And
following the stitch came a surge of pride. Those songs of his father!
The light minor he had heard, and the others--the surge of _An Oig-bhean
Ruaddh_, the Pretty Red Maiden:

"_Se, do bheatha is an tir seo"_.... A welcome before you into this
country, O sea-gull more lovely than the queen, than the woman of the
West, whom Naesi, son of Usnach, held in the harbor. I could destroy all
Ireland, as far as the Southern sea, but in the end I would be destroyed
myself, when my eyes would alight on the white swan with the golden
crown....

Or the despairing cry of his poem _Ig Cathair nan g Ceo_: "In the City
of the Fogs"--he meant London--

"_A athair nan gras tabhair spas o'n eag domh_--O Father of the Graces,
give me a little respite from death. Let the ax not yet strike my
forehead, the way a goat or a pig or a sheep is slain, until I make my
humility and my last repentance."

Shane wished to God he had known his father, that the man had been
spared a little until he could have loved him.... He had the only
picture of him left.... Great throat and pale, liquor-harried face,
burning eyes, and black tossing hair.... The bald-headed bankers might
shake their heads and say: He was no good ... he was a rake ... he drank
... his relations with women we