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"The road over there is the mearing." And soon after passing this road I noticed that although the land was certainly better than the land about Culloch, there seemed to be very few people on it; and what was more significant than the untilled fields were the ruins, for they were not the cold ruins of twenty, or thirty, or forty years ago when the people were evicted and their tillage turned into pasture, but the ruins of cabins that had been lately abandoned.
Another had three lives dropped in a lase for ever; another wanted a renewal; another a farm; another a house; and one expected my lard would make his son an exciseman; and another that I would make him a policeman; and another was racked, if I did not settle the mearing between him and Corny Corkran; and half a hundred had given in proposials to the agent for lands that would be out next May; and half a hundred more came with legends of traditionary promises from the old lord, my lordship's father that was: and for hours I was forced to listen to long stories out of the face, in which there was such a perplexing and provoking mixture of truth and fiction, involved in language so figurative, and tones so new to my English ears, that, with my utmost patience and strained attention, I could comprehend but a very small portion of what was said to me.
But its very success led to trouble, because on one side of a boundary fence there would be farmers who had purchased and whose annual instalments of purchase money were lower than the rents paid by their neighbours on the other side of the mearing.
The story runs how Joyce, knowing the feeling of the country was against him, tried to keep the peace. But the blood fever came on him again, and he called out his nearest neighbour, Browne of the Neale, the only friend he had in the world. Browne lived at Neale House, just over the border, in County Galway, so the gentlemen arranged to fight in a certain field near the mearing.
"Mother," cried Setanta," watch this stroke." He flung his ball into the air and as it fell met it with his hurle, leaning back and putting his whole force into the blow, and struck it into the clouds. It was long before the ball fell. It fell at his feet. "Mother," he cried again, "watch this stroke." He went to the east mearing of the spacious lawn and struck the ball to the west.
He leapt from the mearing and walked out into the field, his hands this time gripping the lapels of his coat, a cloud settling upon his brow. In the centre of the field he stood, his eyes still upon the cabin. What a mean, pokey, ugly little dirty hovel it was! The thatch was getting scraggy over the gables and sagging at the back. In the front it was sodden.
He walked his fields with his hands in his pockets and an easy, solid step upon the sod. He felt a bracing sense of security. Then he sat up on the mearing. The day was waning. It seemed to close in about his holding with a new protection. The mood grew upon him as the shadows deepened. A great peace came over him.
As the days went by it seemed as if he was beginning to belong to some world out of sight and misty, that has for its mearing the colours that are beyond all other colours and the silences that are beyond all silences of this world.
He walked down where the shadow of the mearing was faint upon the road. He turned up the boreen closed in by the still hedges. He stumbled over the ruts. He stood at the cabin door and looked up at the sky with soulless eyes. The animation, the inspiration, that had vivified his face since the building had been begun had died. The face no longer expressed the idealist, the visionary.
Go, ploughman, plough The mearing lands, The meadow lands: The mountain lands: All life is bare Beneath your share, All love is in your lusty hands. Up, horses, now! And straight and true Let every broken furrow run: The strength you sweat Shall blossom yet In golden glory to the sun. In 1917 Mr.
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