And Fair, Fierce Women

One day a woman that I know came face to face with heroic beauty, that
highest beauty which Blake says changes least from youth to age, a
beauty which has been fading out of the arts, since that decadence we
call progress, set voluptuous beauty in its place. She was standing at
the window, looking over to Knocknarea where Queen Maive is thought to
be buried, when she saw, as she has told me, "the finest woman you ever
saw travelling right across from the mountain and straight to her." The
woman had a sword by her side and a dagger lifted up in her hand, and
was dressed in white, with bare arms and feet. She looked "very strong,
but not wicked," that is, not cruel. The old woman had seen the Irish
giant, and "though he was a fine man," he was nothing to this woman,
"for he was round, and could not have stepped out so soldierly"; "she
was like Mrs.-----" a stately lady of the neighbourhood, "but she had
no stomach on her, and was slight and broad in the shoulders, and was
handsomer than any one you ever saw; she looked about thirty." The old
woman covered her eyes with her hands, and when she uncovered them the
apparition had vanished. The neighbours were "wild with her," she told
me, because she did not wait to find out if there was a message, for
they were sure it was Queen Maive, who often shows herself to the
pilots. I asked the old woman if she had seen others like Queen Maive,
and she said, "Some of them have their hair down, but they look quite
different, like the sleepy-looking ladies one sees in the papers. Those
with their hair up are like this one. The others have long white
dresses, but those with their hair up have short dresses, so that you
can see their legs right up to the calf." After some careful
questioning I found that they wore what might very well be a kind of
buskin; she went on, "They are fine and dashing looking, like the men
one sees riding their horses in twos and threes on the slopes of the
mountains with their swords swinging." She repeated over and over,
"There is no such race living now, none so finely proportioned," or the
like, and then said, "The present Queen[FN#7] is a nice, pleasant-
looking woman, but she is not like her. What makes me think so little
of the ladies is that I see none as they be," meaning as the spirits.
"When I think of her and of the ladies now, they are like little
children running about without knowing how to put their clothes on
right. Is it the ladies? Why, I would not call them women at all." The
other day a friend of mine questioned an old woman in a Galway
workhouse about Queen Maive, and was told that "Queen Maive was
handsome, and