Welsh Journals

I REMEMBER that many months ago, Mr. James Stephens said in a review of George BorrOWs Welsh Poems and Ballads that there were three kinds of authors the charlatan, the pedagogue and the grocer. I feel sure that he intentionally omitted to name a fourth tribe of scribblers-the vagabonds, for of them in this age, he himself bids well to be the Chief. No word has suffered more at the hands of the economic ages than this delightful word vagabond. Even those monuments of literary justice, the Etymological Dictionaries, must call him (in the end) "a worthless fellow merely because the legal humorists of the Middle Ages gave him in their enactments a bedfellow of the name of "rogue" who I am afraid had often been caught stealing. Although it is undoubtedly true that no one can be found to employ the vagabond as a clerk, he is no criminal. He is but a wanderer, a roving and (as the world thinks) foolish fellow, who, like the beasts of woods and fields will not concern himself with anything in the nature of a permanent abode and often prefers the company and intimacy of wild and free creatures to those of the tamed and caged beast called man." His worst sin is that he will never settle down his greatest glory that he always has his friends-the birds and beasts, the winds and clouds. The greatest of all the vagabonds was Saint Francis of Assisi, that almost roguish old saint who made peace with the fierce wolf of Agobio (and the treaty was never broken, I hear), who preached to the birds and (greatest of all the miracles) made the swallows stop their chattering. James Stephens is the vagabond, the tramp, in twentieth century literature. He is a true successor of St. Francis, though he must have been unfrocked for his heresy. The same note of love and under- standing of wild nature, the same sense of freedom and healthiness as one finds in The Little Flowers pervades Mr. Stephens' writings in prose and poetry. Both the work of the old mediaevalist and the revolutionary modernist are the work of some one kissed by the moon who has become simple and strange in consequence. That little poem The Snare dedicated (somewhat slily one would think), to A. E., might almost be T^ fmm doe Clay by James Stephens. Macmfflan & Co Also The Charwoman's Daughter; The Crock of Gold The Demi tjods, &c.. by the same author. THE LITERATURE OF VAGABONDAGE* called truly Franciscan in its spirit in so far as its sympathy with and love for life is concerned:- I hear a sudden cry of pain Now I hear the cry again, But I cannot tell from where Crying on the frightened air. Making everything afraid, As he cries again for aid And I cannot find the place Little one I Oh. little one Was this consciousness of the emotional unity of the whole living creation ever more elfishly described than in this picture (from The Charwoman's Daughter) of the eels in a Dublin pond:- On the shady side hundreds of eels were swim- ming about-they were most wonderful things some of them were thin like ribbons, and others were round and plump like thick ropes. They never seemed to fight at all, and although the ducklings were so tiny the big eels never touched any of them, even when they dived right down amongst them. Some of the eels swam along very slowly, looking on this side and on that as if they were out of work or up from the country, and others whizzed by with incredible swiftness. Mary Makebelieve thought that the latter kind had just heard their babies crying she wondered, when a little fish cried, could its mother see the tears when there was already so much water about, and then she thought that maybe they cried hard lumps of something that was easily visible. This is very near to my grey brother, the ass," and one is tempted to carry the comparison further. Mr. Stephens is frankly, joyously pagan, but St. Francis' theology has been grievously misrepresented by generations of learned biographers, and I am not There is a rabbit in a snare But I cannot tell from where. He is calling out for aid Making everything afraid. Wrinkling up his little face. And I cannot find the place Where his paw is in the snare I am searching everywhere.