'AND FAIR, FIERCE WOMEN'
ONE day a woman that I know came face to face with heroic
beauty, that highest beauty which Blake says changes least from youth to age, a
beauty which has been fading out of the arts, since that decadence we call
progress, set voluptuous beauty in its place. She was standing at the window,
looking over to Knocknarea where Queen Maive is thought to be buried, when she
saw, as she has told me, 'the finest woman you ever saw travelling right across
from the mountain and straight to her.' The woman had a sword by her side and a
dagger lifted up in her hand, and was dressed in white, with bare arms and
feet. She looked 'very strong, but not wicked,' that is, not cruel. The old
woman had seen the Irish giant, and 'though he was a fine man,' he was nothing
to this woman, 'for he was round, and could not have stepped out so soldierly';
'she was like Mrs.-----' a stately lady of the neighbourhood, 'but she had no
stomach on her, and was slight and broad in the shoulders, and was handsomer than
any one you ever saw; she looked about thirty.' The old woman covered her eyes
with her hands, and when she uncovered them the apparition had vanished. The
neighbours were 'wild with her,' she told me, because she did not wait to find
out if there was a message, for they were sure it was Queen Maive, who often
shows herself to the pilots. I asked the old woman if she had seen others like
Queen Maive, and she said, 'Some of them have their hair down, but they look
quite different, like the sleepy-looking ladies one sees in the papers. Those
with their hair up are like this one. The others have long white dresses, but
those with their hair up have short dresses, so that you can see their legs
right up to the calf.' After some careful questioning I found that they wore
what might very well be a kind of buskin; she went on, 'They are fine and
dashing looking, like the men one sees riding their horses in twos and threes
on the slopes of the mountains with their swords swinging.' She repeated over
and over, 'There is no such race living now, none so finely proportioned,' or
the like, and then said, 'The present Queen is a nice, pleasant-looking woman,
but she is not like her. What makes me think so little of the ladies is that I
see none as they be,' meaning as the spirits. 'When I think of her and of the
ladies now, they are like little children running about without knowing how to
put their clothes on right. Is it the ladies? Why, I would not call them women
at all.' The other day a friend of mine questioned an old woman in a Galway
workhouse about Queen Maive, and was told that 'Queen Maive was handsome, and
overcame all her enemies with a bawl stick, for the hazel is blessed, and the
best weapon that can be got. You might walk the world with it,' but she grew 'very
disagreeable in the end--oh very disagreeable. Best not to be talking about it.
Best leave it between the book and the hearer.'
W.B.Yates 1902
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