THERE I dreamed, and I saw myself changing into a stag in dream, and I
felt in dream the beating of a new heart within me, and in dream I arched
my neck and braced my powerful limbs.
“I awoke from the dream, and I was that which I had dreamed.
“I stood a while stamping upon a rock, with my bristling head swung high,
breathing through wide nostrils all the savour of the world. For I had
come marvellously from decrepitude to strength. I had writhed from the
bonds of age and was young again. I smelled the turf and knew for the
first time how sweet that smelled. And like lightning my moving nose
sniffed all things to my heart and separated them into knowledge.
“Long I stood there, ringing my iron hoof on stone, and learning all
things through my nose. Each breeze that came from the right hand or the
left brought me a tale. A wind carried me the tang of wolf, and against
that smell I stared and stamped. And on a wind there came the scent of my
own kind, and at that I belled. Oh, loud and clear and sweet was the voice
of the great stag. With what ease my lovely note went lilting. With what
joy I heard the answering call. With what delight I bounded, bounded,
bounded; light as a bird’s plume, powerful as a storm, untiring as the
sea.
“Here now was ease in ten-yard springings, with a swinging head, with the
rise and fall of a swallow, with the curve and flow and urge of an otter
of the sea. What a tingle dwelt about my heart! What a thrill spun to the
lofty points of my antlers! How the world was new! How the sun was new!
How the wind caressed me!
“With unswerving forehead and steady eye I met all that came. The old,
lone wolf leaped sideways, snarling, and slunk away. The lumbering bear
swung his head of hesitations and thought again; he trotted his small red
eye away with him to a near-by brake. The stags of my race fled from my
rocky forehead, or were pushed back and back until their legs broke under
them and I trampled them to death. I was the beloved, the well known, the
leader of the herds of Ireland.
“And at times I came back from my boundings about Eire’, for the strings
of my heart were drawn to Ulster; and, standing away, my wide nose took
the air, while I knew with joy, with terror, that men were blown on the
wind. A proud head hung to the turf then, and the tears of memory rolled
from a large, bright eye.
“At times I drew near, delicately, standing among thick leaves or crouched
in long grown grasses, and I stared and mourned as I looked on men. For
Nemed and four couples had been saved from that fierce storm, and I saw
them increase and multiply until four thousand couples lived and laughed
and were riotous in the sun, for the people of Nemed had small minds but
great activity. They were savage fighters and hunters.
“But one time I came, drawn by that intolerable anguish of memory, and all
of these people were gone: the place that knew them was silent: in the
land where they had moved there was nothing of them but their bones that
glinted in the sun.
“Old age came on me there. Among these bones weariness crept into my
limbs. My head grew heavy, my eyes dim, my knees jerked and trembled, and
there the wolves dared chase me.
“I went again to the cave that had been my home when I was an old man.
“One day I stole from the cave to snatch a mouthful of grass, for I was
closely besieged by wolves. They made their rush, and I barely escaped
from them. They sat beyond the cave staring at me.
“I knew their tongue. I knew all that they said to each other, and all
that they said to me. But there was yet a thud left in my forehead, a
deadly trample in my hoof. They did not dare come into the cave.
“‘To-morrow,’ they said, ‘we will tear out your throat, and gnaw on your
living haunch’.”
