He saw then that the house was crowded with pale shadowy hands, and
that every hand was holding what was sometimes like a wisp lighted
for a marriage, and sometimes like a tall white candle for the dead.

When the sun rose on the morning of the morrow Winny of the Cross
Roads rose up from where she was sitting beside the body, and began
her begging from townland to townland, singing the same song as she
walked, 'I am beautiful, I am beautiful. The birds in the air, the
moths under the leaves, the flies over the water look at me. Look at
me, perishing woods, for my body will be shining like the lake water
after you have been hurried away. You and the old race of men, and
the race of the beasts, and the race of the fish, and the winged
race, are wearing away like a candle that has been burned out. But I
laugh out loud, because I am in my youth.'

She did not come back that night or any night to the cabin, and it
was not till the end of two days that the turf cutters going to the
bog found the body of Red Owen Hanrahan, and gathered men to wake him
and women to keen him, and gave him a burying worthy of so great a
poet.