Newgrange 1901. "We'll seek the ancient divinities of the Gael together," was the promise of AE to George Moore - but at Whitsuntide when he, AE, would have four days' holiday. So, by bicycle to Amiens Street and train to Drogheda and then to the tombs. Moore loved the "blue stillness" of the sunny day "with no troublesome lark." At Newgrange a woman came out from a cottage and said she had orders to get promises from everyone not to write on the walls. A little to the left was the tumulus, "a small hill overgrown with hazel and blackthorn thickets with here and there a young ash coming into leaf. On all sides great stones stood ascend or had fallen, and I would have stayed to examine the carvings or the scratches with which these were covered, but AE pointed to the entrance of the temple - a triangular opening something no larger than a fox's or a badger's den: and I went down on my hands and knees, remembering that we had not come to Newgrange to investigate but to evoke. And in the tumulus we remained upwards of an hour, and on leaving it we climbed through the thickets, plucking the tall grasses, mentally tired and humbled in spirit. The Gods had not answered our prayers. It could not have been because they deemed us unworthy that they had not shown themselves but because of some hostile presence. But we were alone. Could the Gods then be looking on me as hostile: If they did they must know very little of the human heart. The wisdom of the Gods may not be questioned; and I listened to a robin that was singing in a blackthorn, thinking the Druids had listened to it. And, stepping over the stones that our ancestors had placed so cunningly that they had lasted for four thousand years at least, I asked AE whence the stones had come, for we had not passed anything like a quarry since early morning."
They sat outside to eat some bread and butter and then AE began to sketch the stones. The whole expedition takes up some 40 pages of Moore's book Salve, from which these quotations are taken; Ave, Salve and Vale making up his trilogy Hail and Farewell. Salve, first published in 1912.
That night they dined in Drogheda with two Presbyterian ministers who had broken into the pilgrimage of AE and Moore more than once, and AE seemed to charm them. Writes Moore: "We had remained in the valley of our senses - our weak flesh had kept us there, but AE had ascended the mountain of the spirit and a Divine light was about him . . . we were lifted above ourselves."