The Crucifixion of the Outcast by W.B. Yeats

A man, with thin brown hair and a pale face, half ran, half walked, / along the road that wound from the south to the town of Sligo. Many / called him Cumhal, the son of Cormac, and many called him the Swift, / Wild Horse; and he was a gleeman, and he wore a short parti-coloured / doublet, and had pointed shoes, and a bulging wallet. Also he was of the / blood of the Ernaans, and his birth-place was the Field of Gold; but / his eating and sleeping places where the four provinces of Eri, and his / abiding place was not upon the ridge of the earth. His eyes strayed from / the Abbey tower of the White Friars and the town battlements to a row / of crosses which stood out against the sky upon a hill a little to the / eastward of the town, and he clenched his fist, and shook it at the / crosses. He knew they were not empty, for the birds were fluttering / about them; and he thought how, as like as not, just such another / vagabond as himself was hanged on one of them; and he muttered: 'If it / were hanging or bowstringing, or stoning or beheading, it would be bad / enough. But to have the birds pecking your eyes and the wolves eating / your feet! I would that the red wind of the Druids had withered in / his cradle the soldier of Dathi, who brought the tree of death out of / barbarous lands, or that the lightning, when it smote Dathi at the foot / of the mountain, had smitten him also, or that his grave had been dug by / the green-haired and green-toothed merrows deep at the roots of the deep / sea.'

While he spoke, he shivered from head to foot, and the sweat came out / upon his face, and he knew not why, for he had looked upon many crosses. / He passed over two hills and under the battlemented gate, and then round / by a left-hand way to the door of the Abbey. It was studded with great / nails, and when he knocked at it, he roused the lay brother who was the / porter, and of him he asked a place in the guest-house. Then the lay / brother took a glowing turf on a shovel, and led the way to a big and / naked outhouse strewn with very dirty rushes; and lighted a rush-candle / fixed between two of the stones of the wall, and set the glowing turf / upon the hearth and gave him two unlighted sods and a wisp of straw, / and showed him a blanket hanging from a nail, and a shelf with a loaf / of bread and a jug of water, and a tub in a far corner. Then the lay / brother left him and went back to his place by the door. And Cumhal the / son of Cormac began to blow upon the glowing turf that he might light / the two sods and the wisp of straw; but the sods and the straw would not / light, for they were damp. So he took off his pointed shoes, and drew / the tub out of the corner with the thought of washing the dust of the / highway from his feet; but the water was so dirty that he could not see / the bottom. He was very hungry, for he had not eaten all that day; so he / did not waste much anger upon the tub, but took up the black loaf, and / bit into it, and then spat out the bite, for the bread was hard and / mouldy.