We think when we open our histories, we open the past. We open only such a small part of it! Great tracts disappear. Forgetfulness or secret taboos draw the dim curtains down, and hide from our sight awful thoughts, monstrous deeds, monstrous dooms....
Even now, in the bright lights and courage of the era we live in, there has been only one writer who has ventured to name Stroom and Graith.
His name was Dixon; he was at Oxford, in the fifties, with that undergraduate group which included Burne-Jones, William Morris, and on the outside, Rossetti. Where he found what so long had been hidden, even he does not say. But he wrote certain poems, in which Stroom and Graith, and the Agraffe appear.
This fact is recorded in only one book that I know of, and that is in the fifth volume of Mr. T. Humphry Ward's English Poets. When I opened this book, I read for the first time about Dixon. I also read one of his poems, which was wildish and weird:
"Go now from the shore, Far ruined: the grey shingly floor To thy crashing step answers, the doteril cries, And on dipping wing flies: 'Tis their silence!"
Not knowing what a doteril was, I looked to see if the editor had explained: but no, all he said was that Dixon was fond of such words.
He added that others such as Stroom, Graith, and Agraffe appeared in his poems.
But he didn't print those poems in this collection, or explain those strange names.
The sound of them fascinated me. I sat there and dreamed for a while; and it was out of these dreamings that I wrote that verse at the head of this essay. Some stern and vast mystery seemed to me about to enfold. What part the Agraffe played in it (a mediæval beast I imagined) I could not know, could not guess. But I pictured a strong-hearted Stroom to myself as some hero, waging far, lonely fights, against foes on the edge of the skies; and I dreamed of how Vega stood waiting, until Stroom married Graith, and of how at the height of his majesty she inflicted her doom--a succession of abhorrent rebirths as a grotesque little dwarf.
Still, these were only my imaginings, and I wanted the records. I sent to the public library, and got out all of Dixon they had. Great red and gold volumes. But the one that I wanted--not there.... I sent to several famous universities.... It was not to be found.