THE CROCK OF GOLD

CONTENTS

BOOK I THE COMING OF PAN
BOOK II THE PHILOSOPHER'S JOURNEY
BOOK III THE TWO GODS
BOOK IV THE PHILOSOPHER'S RETURN
BOOK V THE POLICEMEN
BOOK VI THE THIN WOMAN'S JOURNEY AND THE HAPPY MARCH




BOOK I. THE COMING OF PAN



CHAPTER I

IN the centre of the pine wood called Coilla Doraca there lived not long
ago two Philosophers. They were wiser than anything else in the world
except the Salmon who lies in the pool of Glyn Cagny into which the nuts
of knowledge fall from the hazel bush on its bank. He, of course, is the
most profound of living creatures, but the two Philosophers are next to
him in wisdom. Their faces looked as though they were made of parchment,
there was ink under their nails, and every difficulty that was submitted
to them, even by women, they were able to instantly resolve. The Grey
Woman of Dun Gortin and the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath asked them the
three questions which nobody had ever been able to answer, and they were
able to answer them. That was how they obtained the enmity of these two
women which is more valuable than the friendship of angels. The Grey
Woman and the Thin Woman were so incensed at being answered that they
married the two Philosophers in order to be able to pinch them in bed,
but the skins of the Philosophers were so thick that they did not know
they were being pinched. They repaid the fury of the women with such
tender affection that these vicious creatures almost expired of chagrin,
and once, in a very ecstacy of exasperation, after having been kissed
by their husbands, they uttered the fourteen hundred maledictions which
comprised their wisdom, and these were learned by the Philosophers who
thus became even wiser than before.

In due process of time two children were born of these marriages. They
were born on the same day and in the same hour, and they were only
different in this, that one of them was a boy and the other one was a
girl. Nobody was able to tell how this had happened, and, for the first
time in their lives, the Philosophers were forced to admire an event
which they had been unable to prognosticate; but having proved by many
different methods that the children were really children, that what
must be must be, that a fact cannot be controverted, and that what
has happened once may happen twice, they described the occurrence
as extraordinary but not unnatural, and submitted peacefully to a
Providence even wiser than they were.