him; but tell me how many years has he, for I would put them in the
song?'

'O, he has years upon years. He is as old as you yourself, Red
Hanrahan.' 'As old as myself,' said Hanrahan, and his voice was as if
broken; 'as old as myself; there are twenty years and more between
us! It is a bad day indeed for Owen Hanrahan when a young girl with
the blossom of May in her cheeks thinks him to be an old man. And my
grief!' he said, 'you have put a thorn in my heart.'

He turned from her then and went down the road till he came to a
stone, and he sat down on it, for it seemed as if all the weight of
the years had come on him in the minute. And he remembered it was not
many days ago that a woman in some house had said: 'It is not Red
Hanrahan you are now but yellow Hanrahan, for your hair is turned to
the colour of a wisp of tow.' And another woman he had asked for a
drink had not given him new milk but sour; and sometimes the girls
would be whispering and laughing with young ignorant men while he
himself was in the middle of giving out his poems or his talk. And he
thought of the stiffness of his joints when he first rose of a
morning, and the pain of his knees after making a journey, and it
seemed to him as if he was come to be a very old man, with cold in
the shoulders and speckled shins and his wind breaking and he himself
withering away. And with those thoughts there came on him a great
anger against old age and all it brought with it. And just then he
looked up and saw a great spotted eagle sailing slowly towards
Ballygawley, and he cried out: 'You, too, eagle of Ballygawley, are
old, and your wings are full of gaps, and I will put you and your
ancient comrades, the Pike of Dargan Lake and the Yew of the Steep
Place of the Strangers into my rhyme, that there may be a curse on