THE PIPER OF KERIMOR. BY KENNETH MACNICHOL. Lommic ate enough for four men when he could get good food, and that was less often than the times when he could get no food at all. "Do you ever know when you have had enough?" asked one who had fed him. SOMETIMES the people of the shorter leg the required Kerimor called him Lommic distance. the Poet, but more often they called him simply Lommic the Fool. He was a poet because the laughter of God was in him and would not be denied. He was a fool because he did not know the measure of his own foolishness, and because he preferred his own wisdom to that of other men. There were many droll stories told about Lommic the Fool. His sayings, both wise and foolish, were often repeated so that people might laugh at him. "Oh, yes," Lommic answered. "When I hurt inside, then I have had enough." The peasant inhabitants of Kerimor found such remarks irresistibly comical. That was one reason why Lommic was always welcome in every gathering. They despised the fool and made great sport with him, but also they loved the music he made, the old stories he repeated, and the old ballads he sang to them. Lommic the Fool was much the best musician in the parish of Kerimor, so that no feast could be a success without him. When Lommic took the biniou under his arm he made the pipes sing and wail with a voice that was more than human. Never was dancing so frenzied as when Lommic the Piper played. Then the stolid peasants and fishermen forgot the dark curse that rests on the Celts of Brittany. It was as though the old pagan gods entered into them, attuned their feet to mad joy, and made them heedless of not three days finding many their mortality. But when good tunes in it. Lacking Lommic droned the bagpipes in a dirge, it was as though grey Brother Death peered in at every window. The people crossed themselves, and looked over their shoulders fearfully. In the hands of Lommic the flageolet became a sentient thing. He breathed his breath into it, and it sang softly and sweetly with the voice of a bird or a singing girl. But it was an eerie thing to hear that thin voice crying in the darkness as Lommic travelled the roads at night. Then the wailing of the flageolet told of secret, hidden matters apart from the world of men. There was madness in that music played out of the shadows which were in the mind of Lommic the Fool. It was very different when he took up the tambour and strode proudly along in the sunlight of the market-place before old Yan the Cryer, who had some simple announcement to make. How bravely the sticks clattered down on the throbbing sheepskin! A roll of thunder leaped from the heart of the drum, died away, and all in perfect time the sticks would begin dancing delicately with unexpected rhythms, curious pauses and hurried patterings, setting the feet of all the children to capering as they followed the grotesque antics of Lommic the Fool. There was music in the soul of the youth. Once, when a stranded sailor gave him a wheezy old concertina, he was other instruments, he could take a coarse grass blade between his thumbs and the heels of his hands, and make music on that, and it would be very good music, as any one must say when they had listened to it. There were those who said of Lommic that he did not belong to this world, and therefore they were a little afraid of him. In proof they would mention his red hair and his amber eyes, and they would cross themselves when he looked straightly at them. Others, who could not believe such nonsense, declared that the fool was no changeling. Perhaps he had, they said, been stolen by the korrigans, and had looked with baby eyes at the country under the hills. Of course, his mother would know the Spell of the Egg, which, in such instances, is always effective. The korrigans would, therefore, be forced to take away their own dark child, and to restore the infant Lommic to his parents. That explained why the child had left his wits and brought his gift away with him from the people under the hills. The truth was this: Lommic was the son of Rivod Marac, the fisherman, and his young wife, Amice, the daughter of Widow Kérity of Plouhars. Rivod was drowned at the fishing within two months of his marriage. Amice, who carried her love and her sorrow about with her, died as the standing. There was no conscious Both In truth, he could not perform even the easiest task without bungling. He could not milk a cow without spilling half of the milk. Set him to plough a furrow, and it took the course of a little boat in a heavy sea. When the fishing was good no man in Kerimor would have Lommic in his boat, for he could not help to raise a net without getting his feet entangled. But he could heal a sick cow with curious arts of his own underVOL. CCXVIII.-NO. MCCCXIX. He could talk to a vicious horse until the crea- 66 At "They are sweet weeds," he would say earnestly. Let them alone. They like to live. They flower so prettily." Presently, then, one learned to leave the fool to the care of God. This was his way of life: in the summer he was not often seen in the village, but went wandering here and there, calling at the outlying farms when hunger drove him back to humanity. Sometimes for days together he would perch on the cliffs or the dunes at one place or another, crouched with his chin in his hands, staring out over the waste of waters. He slept where his feet carried him, beside the sea or beneath the wide sky of the moors, more homeless than bird or rabbit, sheltering by a great stone or under a bush, careless of wind or rain. He slept when P one came as an enemy, and she, the traitress, opened the sea-gates with a stolen key of gold; how she fled and was overtaken by the rush of the unleashed flood; how only King Gralon escaped from doomed Ker-ys, being led in safety through the enchanted forest of Kranou to high Rumengol by blessed St Guennolé of Landévenec. sleep overtook him. By night and her many lovers; how or day, he awakened and moved when his loose-knit body was cured of the need for sleep. Through the rainy winter the village saw more of him, for then he loved a warm fire and a basin of steaming soup. It was then he would sing the new songs which wind and sea had taught him during the summer, but the people loved the old songs best. They could make nothing familiar of either the words or the music of his new songs. He knew all the old ballads, and these he would sing to them: songs made long ago by Guene hlan, the last pagan poet of the Bretons; the ballad of Conan Mériadec, that great chieftain who led his people from old Kernouaille over the sea waves into Armorica, which tells also of the loyalty of Fracan, his brother, and of the love of Guen, his wife; the ballad of Alain of Vannes, the warrior king, who first drove the Normans forth from Armorica. Of the bitter defeat of King Morvan he would sing, and of the merciless cruelty of Guy Eder, Baron of Fontenelle, and of the terrible bravery of heroic Jeanne la Flamme. When the fool raised his voice, time ceased to be; the past was present; the old days were come again into Brittany. The ballad he loved best and sang most often told of drowned Ker-ys, the City under the Sea; of the tragedy of King Gralon, that weak old man; of the beautiful wicked Ahès Sometimes the folk, listening with open mouths and wide eyes, would ask questions after Lommic fell silent. Then Lommic would weave many new stories in and out of the weft of that old tale, not knowing that he was weaving such stories as are precious to the makers of books. He told only the things which seemed real to him; therefore he had power to make his dreams live for a while in the minds of others. The people said of him that he had sipped moonwater from a fairy pool, and that his eyes had been washed with dew. That was why past, present, and future were all the same to him, and why he could see that which was hidden from them. She was a mighty sorceress," he would say of the Princess Ahès of Ker-ys. "When she tired of those whom she loved, she put her spells upon them. Upon some she would put a spell of forgetfulness, so that all the past was less than a dream to them. Upon others she would put a spell of undying memory, and then cast them forth from spoke softly and smoothly, for her, and these, wherever they went in the world, would be thinking of her and of no other. This was the greatest misery to them, but it was a part of her sad enchantments. She possessed a mirror, and she had but to breathe upon it, muttering the name of that one beneath her spell, and she would see in the mirror all that the wanderer saw. Thus she could go everywhere in the world without passing forth from her chamber. "There were those whom she changed into sea-birds for ever restless, and they are always seeking the lost love of Ahès, crying plaintively over drowned Ker-ys. There were those whom she changed into brown seals with sorrow-stricken eyes; they mourn terribly after her when the moon is round. Once, when a host of Normans sailed their dragon ships into the Rade d'Etel, thinking to possess Ker-ys from landward, word of that foray was brought to King Gralon, and he shook on his throne. Trembling, he called on his daughter to aid him, and that was a thing he had never done before, because he was sore afraid of her sorcery. She laughed, knowing that her woman's charms were stronger than all his army. Laughing, she painted her face, and draped herself in a silken mantle, and rode forth alone on a prancing white horse. 66 When she met the Norman chieftain followed by all his warriors, at first she |