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THE DOCTOR

A GOOD-NIGHT TALE Dermot was the ollave-leech, the head physician, to the High King of Ireland. A tract of land was his, a princely dwelling, and a seat of honour in the Banqueting Hall of Tara. Troops of pupils lived in his house and learned from him as he went visiting the sick; but for all that Dermot was a lonely man. In his youth ho had married a woman physician who shared his passion for healing. But one stormy day, when he was elsewhere, she had rowed out alone in a curragh to a sick child on an island and had been lost at sea. Since then his work was wife and child to Dermot. Alone in his house, studying his leech books, he lived; solitary in the midst of his scholars he moved, yet not so wholly aloof as not t-n value the honour in which everyone held him, and bo be cut to the quick when a younger leech came to Tara to dispute Dermot’s fame and take away his patients. Though the elder man knew the properties of every healing herb in Erin, the younger one was very skilful in the stitching of great wounds, the righting of disjointed limbs, and the setting of broken bones; and as, in those warlike days, wounds were much more common than disease, it was no wonder Conal got great praise and noble rewards from the chiefs and heroes.

After a while the jealousy which tore his heart in secret grew too much for Dermot to bear, and he retired to a solitary lake dwelling in the forest. A month passed by, and, as Dermot paced beneath the yews and noticed the wild birds eating the red flesh of the berries

and rejecting the poisonous seeds, a dark thought arose in him. “If I know every healing herb in Erin, so also do I know each plant of death. Why not return to Tara and get rid of Conal? Easy enough would it be to give him a fatal draught.” An hour passed while he groped among thicket and brake, and with his drug satchel packed with poisonous berry and herb, Dermot made his way back to Tara. As he neared home his one faithful follower came running over the lawn to meet him. “ O master, where have you been tarrying?” he cried. “An ollave-leech has no right thus to withdraw himself. The scholars remain untaught, the sick unvisited.” “ They have Conal,” Dermot said. “ That upstart is sick and near death,” said the other. “ The cough that troubles him in winter has gained on him and is getting the mastery.” “Lot him cure himself then!” said Dermot grimly. “He is so skilful with the knife; let him cut out his cough, as he does all other evil humours. Where is ho now?” “ He lies at the Hostel,” replied the other, “and the Brewy'is caring for him as if he were his own son.” “ I must go and see him,” said Dermot, quickening his pace. As Dermot came down the passage to the guest chamber where Conal was lodged and paused on its threshold, his ears were annoyed by a great din inside —the laughter of fools, the jingling of bells, the snarling of dogs—but loud above all the tumult rang the long, loose cough of the sick man. The ollave-leech opened the door and bent a withering glance round the sick room. It was packed with people listening to the king’s two jesters, one singing, the other tinkling the bells of the musical branch. On a couch by the fire lay Conal, a mere shadow of his cool, confident self, and on the heavy coverings that heaped his wasted limbs two wolfhound puppies romped and wrangled. Dermot advanced into the chamber, his dark face working with passion. “Out, the pack of you!” he exclaimed, then, as the room emptied rapidly, he shook an accusing forefinger at the Brewy. “ I wonder at

you, who yourself administer the lesser justice! Do you not remember the law of the prehon-judges, that neither may dogs, fools, nor talkative persons be admitted near the bedside of a man as sick as he is?” “ Wo sought but to divert him,” said the Brewy, standing his ground. “He stands in need of it, seeing that the death-keen will soon be raised for him.” “ That is no fit speech for the sick chamber,” returned Dermot, twitching aside the hide curtain that covered the window and letting in the air. “ Give up hope and life goes, too.” He sat down by the couch and laid his hand on ConaTe brow. “ Bring servants and a litter,” said ho. “He must be carried where I can tend him properly.” The Brewy stood hesitating. Dull as he was, in his heart lay a distrust of the king’s physician. “ It would be safer for the young leeoh_ to be nursed by his friend than his rival,” he muttered at last. “No, let me go with the master!” Conal broke in unexpectedly, clutching Dermot’s hand. “He will save me. Strength and confidence came into the room when he entered.”

With the bag full of poisons still swinging by his side, Dermot took Conal to a wattled house in the pine forest. A clear stream nan through the hut, and there was a doorway at each corner through which the four winds could play. Conal was laid on a bed of fresh rushes and hides and covered with light fleeces. With cream, butter, and honey his wasted frame was nourished.

Month in, month out, the old healer fought the fell disease, and when summer came he had stayed it. Conal was strong enough to leave the pinewood and come as a guest to Dermot’s house, 1 for by that time the elder man saw him as no rival, only

the sick youth whom he had saved. As the two stood in the hall together Dermot looked at Conal with a sudden keenness. _ “ Who is it of my acquaintance that you resemble?” he asked. “ There is a likeness to someone very familiar which has troubled me during your illness.” “ I will show you,” answered Conal, taking down a mirror of polished metal from its hook on the wall. They bent over it and it reflected the faces of the two leeches. One was young and fair, the other dark and lined, hut their features, down to the mole on each right cheek, were as alike as if cast in the same mould. “ How can this he?” asked Dermot. “ Who are your parents? What country do yon claim as birth place?” *“ I have neither parents nor country,” answered Conal. “ I was born at sea. The Welsh druids took me from tho arms of my dead mother lying in a curragh driven ashore. From the ornaments she wore they guessed her to be rich and wellborn; from the drug satchel at her side —which I carry on my girdle in remembrance of her—they knew her to be a woman physician. So they brought me up in her calling.” “ Show me the bag,” said Dermot, beginning to tremble. He took it in his hand, and as he looked at the familiar thing two unaccustomed tears forced themselves from his dark eyes. “ As well as my own I know this satchel. I gave it to your mother,” said he. “ Alas! for her hard fate and my long loneliness. I was with the king’s army when the summons came for help for a child stricken with the plague in the outer isles. The storm was so great no boatman would row her, but she knew no fear or pity for herself when a young thing’s life was in danger. Sou, the druids did well to bring you up as a leech, seeing that it was your mother’s calling and is your father’s.” In love and great harmony the longparted father and son practised the art of healing together in the dim past of Erin. Legend still tells of the wonderful feats of Conal, But always ho gave the greater praise to his father. “ My cures are of evils bare to tho eye and ready to the hand. His art is higher who fights the maladies that mock mankind unseen, wrapped like the fairy people in the veil of invisibility!” So said the young ollave-leech of tbo elder one. May the healing herbs of Erin breathe balm over their forgotten graves.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ESD19401004.2.16.11

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Evening Star, Issue 23698, 4 October 1940, Page 3

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,411

THE DOCTOR Evening Star, Issue 23698, 4 October 1940, Page 3

THE DOCTOR Evening Star, Issue 23698, 4 October 1940, Page 3

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