The Willow
On the peridot green banks of Lough Erne, there grew a lonely willow. At daybreak it would shake its restless leaves, droplets of crystal dew showering the lake beneath. She would often sigh in annoyance, and roll and lash at the banks, but what she did not know was that the tree wept for her, for he had loved her hopelessly for many a long year.
In the light of the summer's day he would gaze at her with her gown of golden sunbeams, and at night when the firmament scattered her with a fine dusting of diamonds, he sighed for her beauty.
“I hear her sing upon the wind as she laps at the banks, and I know when she laments for there is turmoil in her depths. Yet she sees me not, nor knows the burden I carry, each thought I have for her is as countless as the leaves I bear, and when they fall, I weep.” As he spoke, a gale sprung up from across the sea. Like a brass tipped arrow, it shot across the heath, glanced the nearby forest of copper birch trees, and impaled the willow like an iron rod. His trunk cracked in two, and a pair of horseshoe bats fled in fright as he keeled over.
As the willow lay on the damp earth, he thought of the countless birds who had nested in his shady branches, of those silent evening hours when the faery folk had been on the move, their brightly coloured procession passing beneath his canopy. Of the chestnut haired, freckled child who had heard his weeping on the wind, and had tenderly placed a hand upon his grey bark, attempting to smooth out the furrows of worry. The willow had smiled then and swept away the tears, his delicate nectar calling to the honey bees who lighted upon his branches like dainty gold blossom. He thought as well of each May first, when those learned men, who had once crawled deep into the earth before returning full of understanding, had dressed in speckled cloaks, with golden clasps upon their ears, chanting as they lit the sacred fires of Lá Bealtaine. Blessed by incantations and ringed with troops of dancers and singers, the willow had watched the drovers lead their cattle between the purifying fires, until the melodious tones of the pastoral race had disappeared over the hillside. The badgers had then withdrawn from their sets into the ink-black night, still faintly lit by the dwindling fires, before the rains swept in and wafted the sweet scent of furze and gorse over him, and far away into the West.
The next morning, when the storm had fled in shame, a young woodcutter clad in a shaggy beaver cloak, and an axe slung across his back, happened to pass by. Malachi saw the willows broken body on the mossy bank, took pity on him, and removing his coarse mantle from his shoulders, took up his axe and began to chop.
“Please, let me die here, do not dismember me and take me from this place.” The willow pleaded with him.
The woodcutter seemed to sense a sighing on the wind, and compassionately laid a hand upon the bark and said,
“I will craft a thing of beauty from that which God has destroyed.” And satisfied with his work, he loaded up his mule and set off for home. He did not live far from the lake, and had wished for some time to make a boat so that he might sail across to his beloved on opposite shore. After three days and three nights, his boat was ready, sheathed in bullock hide, and complete with slender oars. It bore the carved name of his beloved, Flidas across the prow, and with his chest heaving with pride and expectation, he ran down to the lake, and launched the boat onto the olive green surface.
For nine weeks the woodcutter met with his beloved in the East, each journey seemingly more serene than the last, the boat of willow gliding proudly across the crystalline waters that lapped playfully at its hull. After a short while, the young woodcutter wrought a harp from the remnants of the pliant willow, and Flidas wove him a cloak of purest green fastened with copper fern leaves. They were married under a bower of lilac starflowers, on a balmy summer evening. A pair of swallows flew low over the settlement and on across the lake, the sinuous reeds tickling their forked tail feathers as they skimmed the sweet water, before alighting on the rail of the willow boat. Flidas's hazel eyes were as clear as the springs of the holy wells, her bouquet was threaded with delicate strands of lavender, and atop her red-gold hair she wore a circlet of willow wood entwined with violet balsam. The rushes rose pink buds bloomed in greeting, as the merry company toasted the couple by casting pebbles into the lake, as for the final time the boat whisked them away to their home on the northern shore.
Lost to the present moment the woodcutter forgot to tether the boat to the mooring, and when he ventured out the next day he found that the boat was gone. For during the still night it had silently sunk into the depths. The woodcutter mourned the loss of his old friend, but could not help smiling each time he passed the spot where he had found the willow, for now in exact the same place there grew a small sapling, whose silvery glasslike leaves would forever shimmer on the surface of the lake.
A story from 2015
Art: Edmund Dulac
