Sgeul na Slí , A Tale of the Road
S geul na Slí , A Tale of the Road A h now, gather in close, a chairde, for I’ll spin ye a yarn, soft as turf-smoke and sharp as the wind off Carrauntoohil. ’Tis a tale of a soul’s wandering, a story of a man who set his face toward the Ever-Living Christ, and found that every footstep of his life, whether on stony boreen or soft meadow, was bend for bend a journey toward Himself. S ure wasn’t it known to him, as clear as a winter star, that long ago our first folk strayed from the good road, and all the misery of the world came spilling after them like sheep through a broken hedge? And so, says he, we’re free people, we can take the crooked tracks of our own stubbornness, fall flat on our faces, and carry the ache of our foolishness. Or we can turn, slow or sudden, and follow the Christ-path, the only one that leads us home. N ow this wise man spent many a dawn and dusk with the Gospel open before him, testing each thought against the living memory of the Church and the hard-won...