they must arrange things so the past comes true. But I have the feeling that the faeries are not as strictly bound by the laws of past and present as we are; that is why, in our world, they can be both future and past forms, because they can be whatever they have remembered they were, and whatever they hoped to become.
See? I said it made my head spin if I thought too long and hard about it.
July 22, 1913
Rathkennedy
Breffni
County Sligo
My Dearest Hanny,
A thousand and one apologies. It is much much too long since I last wrote to you, much less saw you. The fault, I fear, is entirely mine, and I cannot even plead having been up to the proverbials in work. Alas, I am purely and simply the world’s worst at writing letters.
Anyway, customary salutations to you, your health, your wealth, your happiness etc., and without further ado, I shall get down to the real meat of this epistle.
My dear Hannibal, you really must drop whatever you are doing at once and come up to Sligo. There is something happening here that is so extraordinary and exciting that—
I am getting ahead of myself. Much less confusing if I were to spell things out in the natural order in which they occurred. Freddie says I am always doing that, rushing off everywhere and nowhere at once.
As you may know, the other Constance, my cousin on the Gore-Booth side of the family, had invited William Butler Yeats up to Lissadell for a few weeks. Well, of course, what with us being Brethren in Arms of the Gaelic Literary League and Green Flag Nationalists, I couldn’t let the occasion go unmarked. So I had Beddowes and the boys from the estate buff up the brass work and slap a lick of paint on old Grania (you remember? The venerable family steam launch) and throw a little boating-party cum picnic cum poetry reading. Among the literati I’d invited was Caroline Desmond (yes, those Desmonds, though she has nothing to do with that contraption bobbing up and down in Sligo Bay) and her daughter Emily, already at her tender years an ardent admirer of Willie’s poetry and philosophy. Yes, contrary to what you may have read in the newspapers, there is some sanity and good taste in the household, needless to say, all firmly attached to the distaff. Well, the day went capitally. The weather was perfect, old Grania chugged along without bursting a boiler, no one decided to bless the lough with seasickness, Beddowes didn’t have to fish any of the old spinsters of the League out of the drink with a fishhook, Willie was his usual Olympian self, the wine was actually cool this time, no one was ill from overeating and heatstroke at the picnic on Innisfree, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary here, you are thinking. Patience, my dear Hanny. Patience. It wasn’t until Grania was within sight of the Rathkennedy landing stage that the maroon went up. Willie had, inevitably, gathered a small group of sycophants around him and was regaling them with some learned gobbledygook about Celtic mysticism and the New Age when out of absolutely nowhere, Hanny, this Desmond girl, little Emily, produced a set of photographs which she claimed show legendary creatures inhabiting the woods around her home. Well, of course, with the ensuing uproar, I had to see what the excitement was about. Poor Willie was almost apoplectic, and, well, I hesitate to use stronger words, bless me! if she wasn’t telling the truth. Ten photographs, and notes on where, when, and how taken, down even to the prevailing weather conditions! Some, I will admit, left a lot to the imagination—patches of shadow that could as easily have been the branches of trees as the antlers and spear points of the Wild Hunt of Sidhe which they were claimed to be. But others were less equivocal—two of a brazen hussy dressed only in leather straps, carrying a bow the size of herself, with a smile somewhere between the Giaconda’s and a Montgomery Street madam’s. More convincing yet, one showed a congregation of six little
See? I said it made my head spin if I thought too long and hard about it.
July 22, 1913
Rathkennedy
Breffni
County Sligo
My Dearest Hanny,
A thousand and one apologies. It is much much too long since I last wrote to you, much less saw you. The fault, I fear, is entirely mine, and I cannot even plead having been up to the proverbials in work. Alas, I am purely and simply the world’s worst at writing letters.
Anyway, customary salutations to you, your health, your wealth, your happiness etc., and without further ado, I shall get down to the real meat of this epistle.
My dear Hannibal, you really must drop whatever you are doing at once and come up to Sligo. There is something happening here that is so extraordinary and exciting that—
I am getting ahead of myself. Much less confusing if I were to spell things out in the natural order in which they occurred. Freddie says I am always doing that, rushing off everywhere and nowhere at once.
As you may know, the other Constance, my cousin on the Gore-Booth side of the family, had invited William Butler Yeats up to Lissadell for a few weeks. Well, of course, what with us being Brethren in Arms of the Gaelic Literary League and Green Flag Nationalists, I couldn’t let the occasion go unmarked. So I had Beddowes and the boys from the estate buff up the brass work and slap a lick of paint on old Grania (you remember? The venerable family steam launch) and throw a little boating-party cum picnic cum poetry reading. Among the literati I’d invited was Caroline Desmond (yes, those Desmonds, though she has nothing to do with that contraption bobbing up and down in Sligo Bay) and her daughter Emily, already at her tender years an ardent admirer of Willie’s poetry and philosophy. Yes, contrary to what you may have read in the newspapers, there is some sanity and good taste in the household, needless to say, all firmly attached to the distaff. Well, the day went capitally. The weather was perfect, old Grania chugged along without bursting a boiler, no one decided to bless the lough with seasickness, Beddowes didn’t have to fish any of the old spinsters of the League out of the drink with a fishhook, Willie was his usual Olympian self, the wine was actually cool this time, no one was ill from overeating and heatstroke at the picnic on Innisfree, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary here, you are thinking. Patience, my dear Hanny. Patience. It wasn’t until Grania was within sight of the Rathkennedy landing stage that the maroon went up. Willie had, inevitably, gathered a small group of sycophants around him and was regaling them with some learned gobbledygook about Celtic mysticism and the New Age when out of absolutely nowhere, Hanny, this Desmond girl, little Emily, produced a set of photographs which she claimed show legendary creatures inhabiting the woods around her home. Well, of course, with the ensuing uproar, I had to see what the excitement was about. Poor Willie was almost apoplectic, and, well, I hesitate to use stronger words, bless me! if she wasn’t telling the truth. Ten photographs, and notes on where, when, and how taken, down even to the prevailing weather conditions! Some, I will admit, left a lot to the imagination—patches of shadow that could as easily have been the branches of trees as the antlers and spear points of the Wild Hunt of Sidhe which they were claimed to be. But others were less equivocal—two of a brazen hussy dressed only in leather straps, carrying a bow the size of herself, with a smile somewhere between the Giaconda’s and a Montgomery Street madam’s. More convincing yet, one showed a congregation of six little
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