The Crock of Gold

The Crock of Gold

By James Stephens

The Crock of Gold is a novel written by James Stephens and published in 1912.

A mixture of philosophy, Irish folklore and the "battle of the sexes," it consists of 6 books, Book 1 - The Coming of Pan, Book 2 - The Philosophers Journey, Book 3 - The Two Gods, Book 4 - The Philosophers Return, Book 5 - The Policemen, Book 6 - The Thin Woman's Journey, that rotate around a philosopher and his quest to find Caitilin Ni Murrachu and deliver her from the god Pan and himself going through a catharsis. He himself is apprehended for murdering a philosopher friend and his wife who committed a peaceful suicide some months before, then whisked away by his wife the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath and the fairy folk, all the while encountering many notable characters, in particular Angus Og, and the Thin Woman's encounter with the Three Infinites.

'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.'