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THE HIGH DEEDS OF FINN

AND OTHER BARDIC ROMANCES OF ANCIENT IRELAND

by

T. W. ROLLESTON

With an Introduction by Stopford A. Brooke, M.A. LL.D.

And with Sixteen Illustrations by Stephen Reid

New York
Thomas Y. Crowell & Company
Publishers







AR
CRAOIBH CONNARTHA NA GAEDHILGE
I NGLEANN FHAIDHLE BRONNAIM AN LEABHAR SEO:
BEANNACHT AGUS BUAIDH
LIBHSE GO DEO





Preface


The romantic tales here retold for the English reader belong neither
to the category of folk-lore nor of myth, although most of them
contain elements of both. They belong, like the tales of Cuchulain,
which have been similarly presented by Miss Hull,[1] to the bardic
literature of ancient Ireland, a literature written with an artistic
purpose by men who possessed in the highest degree the native culture
of their land and time. The aim with which these men wrote is also
that which has been adopted by their present interpreter. I have not
tried, in this volume, to offer to the scholar materials for the study
of Celtic myth or folk-lore. My aim, however I may have fulfilled it,
has been artistic, not scientific. I have tried, while carefully
preserving the main outline of each story, to treat it exactly as the
ancient bard treated his own material, or as Tennyson treated the
stories of the MORT D'ARTHUR, that is to say, to present it as a fresh
work of poetic imagination. In some cases, as in the story of the
Children of Lir, or that of mac Datho's Boar, or the enchanting tale
of King Iubdan and King Fergus, I have done little more than retell
the bardic legend with merely a little compression; but in others a
certain amount of reshaping has seemed desirable. The object in all
cases has been the same, to bring out as clearly as possible for
modern readers the beauty and interest which are either manifest or
implicit in the Gaelic original.

   [1] CUCHULAIN, THE HOUND OF ULSTER. By Eleanor Hull.

For stories which are only found in MSS. written in the older forms of
the language, I have been largely indebted to the translations
published by various scholars. Chief among these (so far as the
present work is concerned) must be named Mr Standish Hayes
O'Grady--whose wonderful treasure-house of Gaelic legend, SILVA
GADELICA, can never be mentioned by the student of these matters
without an expression of admiration and of gratitude; Mr A.H. Leahy,
author of HEROIC ROMANCES OF IRELAND; Dr Whitly Stokes, Professor Kuno
Meyer, and M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, whose invaluable CYCLE
MYTHOLOGIQUE IRLANDAIS has been much in my hands, both in the original
and in the excellent English translation of Mr R.I. Best. Particulars
of the source of each story will be found in the Notes on the Sources
at the end of this volume. In the same place will also be found a
pronouncing-index of proper names. I have endeavoured, in the text, to
avoid or to modify any names which in their original form would baffle
the English reader, but there remain some on the pronunciation of
which he may be glad to have a little light.

The two most conspicuous figures in ancient Irish legend are
Cuchulain, who lived--if he has any historical reality--in the reign
of Conor mac Nessa immediately before the Christian era, and Finn son
of Cumhal, who appears in literature as the captain of a kind of
military order devoted to the service of the High King of Ireland
during the third century A.D. Miss Hull's volume has been named after
Cuchulain, and it is appropriate that mine should bear the name of
Finn, as it is mainly devoted to his period; though, as will be seen,
several stories belonging to other cycles of legend, which did not
fall within the scope of Miss Hull's work, have been included here.[2]
All the tales have been arranged roughly in chronological order. This
does not mean according to the date of their composition, which in
most cases is quite indiscoverable, and still less, according to the
dates of the MSS. in which they are contained. The order is given by
the position, in real or mythical history, of the events they deal
with. Of course it is not practicable to dovetail them into one
another with perfect accuracy. Where a story, like that of the
Children of Lir, extends over nearly a thousand years, beginning with
the mythical People of Dana and ending in the period of Christian
monasticism, one can only decide on its place by considering where it
will throw most light on those which come nearest to it. In this, as
in the selection and treatment of the tales, there is of course room
for much difference of opinion. I can only ask the critic to believe
that nothing has been done in the framing of this collection of Gaelic
romances without the consideration and care which the value of the
material demands and which the writer's love of it has inspired.

T.W. ROLLESTON

   [2] There is one important tale of the Finn cycle, the _Pursuit
   of Dermot and Grania_, which I have not included. I have
   omitted it, partly because it presents the character of Finn in
   a light inconsistent with what is said of him elsewhere, and
   partly because it has in it a certain sinister and depressing
   element which renders it unsuitable for a collection intended
   largely for the young.




CONTENTS


   INTRODUCTION

      COIS NA TEINEADH


   BARDIC ROMANCES

         I. THE STORY OF THE CHILDREN OF LIR

        II. THE QUEST OF THE SONS OF TURENN

       III. THE SECRET OF LABRA

        IV. KING IUBDAN AND KING FERGUS

         V. THE CARVING OF MAC DATHO'S BOAR

        VI. THE VENGEANCE OF MESGEDRA

       VII. THE STORY OF ETAIN AND MIDIR

      VIII. HOW ETHNE QUITTED FAIRYLAND


   THE HIGH DEEDS OF FINN

        IX. THE BOYHOOD OF FINN MAC CUMHAL

         X. THE COMING OF FINN

        XI. FINN'S CHIEF MEN

       XII. THE TALE OF VIVIONN THE GIANTESS

      XIII. THE CHASE OF THE GILLA DACAR

       XIV. THE BIRTH OF OISÍN

        XV. OISÍN IN THE LAND OF YOUTH


   THE HISTORY OF KING CORMAC

       XVI. 1. THE BIRTH OF CORMAC

            2. THE JUDGMENT OF CORMAC

            3. THE MARRIAGE OF KING CORMAC

            4. THE INSTRUCTIONS OF THE KING

            5. CORMAC SETS UP THE FIRST MILL IN ERINN

            6. A PLEASANT STORY OF CORMAC'S BREHON

            7. THE JUDGMENT CONCERNING CORMAC'S SWORD

            8. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CORMAC

            9. DESCRIPTION OF CORMAC

           10. DEATH AND BURIAL OF CORMAC


   NOTES ON THE SOURCES

   PRONOUNCING INDEX




ILLUSTRATIONS


   "FINN HEARD FAR OFF THE FIRST NOTES OF THE FAIRY HARP" (Frontispiece)

   "THERE SAT THE THREE MAIDENS WITH THE QUEEN"

   "THEY MADE AN ENCAMPMENT AND THE SWANS SANG TO THEM"

   "BEAR US SWIFTLY, BOAT OF MANANAN, TO THE GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES"

   "THERE DWELT THE RED-HAIRED OCEAN-NYMPHS"

   "THEY ALL TROOPED OUT, LORDS AND LADIES, TO VIEW THE WEE MAN"

   "FERGUS GOES DOWN INTO THE LAKE"

   "A MIGHTY SHOUT OF EXULTATION AROSE FROM THE ULSTERMEN"

   "THEY ROSE UP IN THE AIR"

   "SHE HEARD HER OWN NAME CALLED AGAIN AND AGAIN"

   "AND THAT NIGHT THERE WAS FEASTING AND JOY IN THE LONELY HUT"

   "THEY RAN HIM BY HILL AND PLAIN"

   "DERMOT TOOK THE HORN AND WOULD HAVE FILLED IT"

   "'FOLLOW ME NOW TO THE HILL OF ALLEN'"

   "THEY RODE UP TO A STATELY PALACE"

   "THE WHITE STEED HAD VANISHED FROM THEIR EYES LIKE A WREATH OF MIST"




Introduction


Many years have passed by since, delivering the Inaugural Lecture of
the Irish Literary Society in London, I advocated as one of its chief
aims the recasting into modern form and in literary English of the old
Irish legends, preserving the atmosphere of the original tales as much
as possible, but clearing them from repetitions, redundant
expressions, idioms interesting in Irish but repellent in English,
and, above all, from absurdities, such as the sensational fancy of the
later editors and bards added to the simplicities of the original
tales.

Long before I spoke of this, it had been done by P.W. Joyce in his OLD
CELTIC ROMANCES, and by Standish O'Grady for the whole story of
Cuchulain, but in this case with so large an imitation of the Homeric
manner that the Celtic spirit of the story was in danger of being
lost. This was the fault I had to find with that inspiring book,[3]
but it was a fault which had its own attraction.

   [3] I gave this book--_The History of Ireland_ (HEROIC
   PERIOD)--to Burne-Jones in order to interest him in Irish myth
   and legend. "I'll try and read it," he said. A week afterwards
   he came and said--"It is a new world of thought and pleasure
   you have opened to me. I knew nothing of this, and life is
   quite enlarged. But now, I want to see all the originals. Where
   can I get them?"

I have only spoken of prose writing above. But in poetry (and in
Poetry well fitted to the tales), this work had already been done
nobly, and with a fine Celtic splendour of feeling and expression, by
Sir Samuel Ferguson.

Since then, a number of writers have translated into literary English
a host of the Irish tales, and have done this with a just reverence
for their originals. Being, in nearly every case, Irish themselves,
they have tried, with varying success, to make their readers realize
the wild scenery of Ireland, her vital union with the sea and the
great ocean to the West, those changing dramatic skies, that mystic
weather, the wizard woods and streams which form the constant
background of these stories; nor have they failed to allure their
listeners to breathe the spiritual air of Ireland, to feel its
pathetic, heroic, imaginative thrill.

They have largely succeeded in their effort. The Irish bardic tales
have now become a part of English literature and belong not only to
grown up persons interested in early poetry, in mythology and
folk-customs, but to the children of Ireland and England. Our new
imaginative stories are now told in nurseries, listened to at evening
when the children assemble in the fire-light to hear tales from their
parents, and eagerly read by boys at school. A fresh world of
story-telling has been opened to the imagination of the young.

This could not have been done in the right way if it had not been for
the previous work of Celtic scholars in Ireland, and particularly on
the Continent, in France and Germany. Having mastered medieval Irish,
they have translated with careful accuracy many of the ancient tales,
omitting and changing nothing; they have edited them critically,
collating and comparing them with one another, and with other forms of
the same stories. We have now in English, French, and German the exact
representation of the originals with exhaustive commentaries.

When this necessary work was finished--and it was absolutely
necessary--it had two important results on all work of the kind Mr
Rolleston has performed in this book--on the imaginative recasting and
modernizing of the ancient tales. First, it made it lawful and easy
for the modern artist--in sculpture, painting, poetry, or imaginative
prose--to use the stories as he pleased in order to give pleasure to
the modern world. It made it lawful because he could reply to those
who objected that what he produced was not the real thing--"The real
thing exists; you will find it, when you wish to see it, accurately
and closely translated by critical and competent scholars. I refer you
to the originals in the notes to this book. I have found the materials
of my stories in these originals; and it is quite lawful for me, now
that they have been reverently preserved, to use them as I please for
the purpose of giving pleasure to the modern world--to make out of
them fresh imaginative work, as the medieval writers did out of the
original stories of Arthur and his men." This is the defence any
re-caster of the ancient tales might make of the _lawfulness_ of his
work, and it is a just defence; having, above all, this use--that it
leaves the imagination of the modern artist free, yet within
recognized and ruling limits, to play in and around his subject.

One of those limits is the preservation, in any remodelling of the
tales, of the Celtic atmosphere. To tell the Irish stories in the
manner of Homer or Apuleius, in the manner of the Norse sagas, or in
the manner of Malory, would be to lose their very nature, their soul,
their nationality. We should no longer understand the men and women
who fought and loved in Ireland, and whose characters were moulded by
Irish surroundings, customs, thoughts, and passions. We should not see
or feel the landscape of Ireland or its skies, the streams, the woods,
the animals and birds, the mountain solitudes, as we feel and see
them in the original tales. We should not hear, as we hear in their
first form, the stormy seas between Scotland and Antrim, or the great
waves which roar on the western isles, and beat on cliffs which still
belong to another world than ours. The genius of Ireland would desert
our work.

And it would be a vast pity to lose the Irish atmosphere in the
telling of the Irish tales, because it is unique; not only distinct
from that of the stories of other races, but from that of the other
branches of the Celtic race. It differs from the atmosphere of the
stories of Wales, of Brittany, of the Highlands and islands of
Scotland. It is more purely Celtic, less mixed than any of them. A
hundred touches in feeling, in ways of thought, in sensitiveness to
beauty, in war and voyaging, and in ideals of life, separate it from
that of the other Celtic races.

It is owing to the careful, accurate, and critical work of continental
and Irish scholars on the manuscript materials of Irish Law, History,
Bardic Tales, and Poetry; on customs, dress, furniture, architecture,
ornament, on hunting and sailing; on the manners of men and women in
war and peace, that the modern re-teller of the Irish tales is enabled
to conserve the Irish atmosphere. And this conservation of the special
Irish atmosphere is the second result which the work of the critical
scholars has established. If the re-writer of the tales does not use
the immense materials made ready to his hand for illustration,
expansion, ornament and description in such a way that Ireland, and
only Ireland, lives in his work from line to line, he is greatly to be
blamed.

Mr Rolleston has fulfilled these conditions with the skill and the
feeling of an artist. He has clung closely to his originals with an
affectionate regard for their ancientry, their ardour and their
distinction, and yet has, within this limit, used and modified them
with a pleasant freedom. His love of Ireland has instilled into his
representation of these tales a passion akin to that which gave them
birth. We feel, as we read, how deep his sympathy has been with their
intensity, their love of wild nature, their desire for beauty, their
interest in humanity and in character, their savagery and their
tenderness, their fairy magic and strange imaginations that suddenly
surprise and charm. Whenever anything lovely emerges in the tale, he
does not draw attention to it, but touches it with so artistic a
pencil that its loveliness is enhanced. And he has put into English
verse the Irish poems scattered through the tales with the skill and
the temper of a poet. I hope his book will win what it deserves--the
glad appreciation of old and young in England, and the gratitude of
Ireland.

The stories told in this book belong to three distinct cycles of Irish
story-telling. The first are mythological, and are concerned with the
early races that are fabled to have dwelt and fought in Ireland Among
these the Tuatha De Danaan were the final conquerors, and held the
land for two hundred years They were, it is supposed, of the Celtic
stock, but they were not the ancestors of the present Irish. These
were the Milesians (Irish, Scots or Gaelic who, conquering the Tuatha
De Danaan, ruled Ireland till they were overcome by the English.) The
stories which have to do with the Tuatha De Danaan are mythical and of
a great antiquity concerning men and women, the wisest and the best of
whom became gods, and who appear as divine beings in the cycle of
tales which follow after them They were always at war with a fierce
and savage people called Fomorians, whom they finally defeated and the
strife between them may mythically represent the ancient war between
the good and evil principles in the world.

In the next cycle we draw nearer to history, and are in the world not
of myth but of legend. It is possible that some true history may be
hidden underneath its sagas, that some of its personages may be
historical, but we cannot tell. The events are supposed to occur about
the time of the birth of Christ, and seventeen hundred years after
those of the mythical period. This is the cycle which collects its
wars and sorrows and splendours around the dominating figure of
Cuchulain, and is called the Heroic or the Red Branch or the Ultonian
cycle. Several sagas tell of the birth, the life, and the death of
Cuchulain, and among them is the longest and the most important--the
Táin--the _Cattle Raid of Cooley_.

Others are concerned with the great King Conor mac Nessa, and the most
known and beautiful of these is the sorrowful tale of Deirdré. There
are many others of the various heroes and noble women who belonged to
the courts of Conor and of his enemy Queen Maev of Connaght. The
_Carving of mac Datho's Boar_, the story of _Etain and Midir_, and the
_Vengeance of Mesgedra_, contained in this book belong to these
miscellaneous tales unconnected with the main saga of Cuchulain.

The second cycle is linked to the first, not by history or race, but
by the fact that the great personages in the first have now become the
gods who intervene in the affairs of the wars and heroes of the
second. They take part in them as the gods do in the Iliad and the
Odyssey. Lugh, the Long-Handed, the great Counsellor of the Tuatha De
Danaan, is now a god, and is the real father of Cuchulain, heals him
of his wounds in the Battle of the Ford, warns him of his coming
death, and receives him into the immortal land. The Morrigan, who
descends from the first cycle, is now the goddess of war, and is at
first the enemy and afterwards the lover of Cuchulain. Angus, The
Dagda, Mananan the sea-god, enter not only into the sagas of the
second cycle, but into those of the third, of the cycle of Finn. And
all along to the very end of the stories, and down indeed to the
present day, the Tuatha De Danaan appear in various forms, slowly
lessening in dignity and power, until they end in the fairy folk in
whom the Irish peasants still believe. They are alive and still
powerful in the third--the Fenian--cycle of stories, some of which are
contained and adorned in this book. In their continued presence is the
only connexion which exists between the three cycles. No personages of
the first save these of the gods appear in the Heroic cycle, none of
the Heroic cycle appears in the Fenian cycle. Seventeen hundred years,
according to Irish annalists, separate the first from the second, more
than two hundred years separate the second from the beginning of the
third.

The third cycle is called Fenian because its legends tell, for the
most part, of the great deeds of the Féni or Fianna, who were the
militia employed by the High King to support his supremacy, to keep
Ireland in order, to defend the country from foreign invasion. They
were, it seems, finally organized by Cormac mac Art, 227 A.D.(?) the
grandson of Conn the Hundred Fighter. But they had loosely existed
before in the time of Conn and his son Art, and like all mercenary
bodies of this kind were sometimes at war with the kings who employed
them. Finally, at the battle of Gowra, they and their power were quite
destroyed. Long before this destruction, they were led in the reign
of Cormac by Finn the son of Cumhal, and it is around Finn and Oisín
the son of Finn, that most of the romances of the Fenian cycle are
gathered. Others which tell of the battles and deeds of Conn and Art
and Cormac and Cairbre of the Liffey, Cormac's son, are more or less
linked on to the Fenians. On the whole, Finn and his warriors, each of
a distinct character, warlike skill and renown, are the main
personages of the cycle, and though Finn is not the greatest warrior,
he is their head and master because he is the wisest; and this
masterdom by knowledge is for the first time an element in Irish
stories.

If the tales of the first cycle are mythological and of the second
heroic, these are romantic. The gods have lost their dreadful, even
their savage character, and have become the Fairies, full often of
gentleness, grace, and humour. The mysterious dwelling places of the
gods in the sea, in unknown lands, in the wandering air, are now in
palaces under the green hills of Ireland, or by the banks of swift
clear rivers, like the palace of Angus near the Boyne, or across the
seas in Tir-na-n-Óg, the land of immortal youth, whither Niam brings
Oisín to live with her in love, as Morgan le Fay brought Ogier the
Dane to her fairyland. The land of the Immortals in the heroic cycle,
to which, in the story of _Etain and Midir_ in this book, Midir brings
back Etain after she has sojourned for a time on earth, is quite
different in conception from the Land of Youth over the far seas where
delightfulness of life and love is perfect. This, in its conception of
an unknown world where is immortal youth, where stormless skies, happy
hunting, strange adventure, gentle manners dwell, where love is free
and time is unmarked, is pure romance. So are the adventures of Finn
against enchanters, as in the story of the _Birth of Oisín_, of
_Dermot in the Country under the Seas_, in the story of the _Pursuit
of the Gilla Dacar_, of the wild love-tale of _Dermot and Grania_,
flying for many years over all Ireland from the wrath of Finn, and of
a host of other tales of enchantments and battle, and love, and
hunting, and feasts, and discoveries, and journeys, invasions,
courtships, and solemn mournings. No doubt the romantic atmosphere has
been deepened in these tales by additions made to them by successive
generations of bardic singers and storytellers, but for all that the
original elements in the stories are romantic as they are not in the
previous cycles.

Again, these Fenian tales are more popular than the others. Douglas
Hyde has dwelt on this distinction. "For 1200 years at least, they
have been," he says, "intimately bound up with the thought and
feelings of the whole Gaelic race in Ireland and Scotland." Even at
the present day new forms are given to the tales in the cottage homes
of Ireland. And it is no wonder. The mysterious giant forms of the
mythological period, removed by divinity from the sympathy of men; the
vast heroic figures of Cuchulain and his fellows and foes, their close
relation to supernatural beings and their doings, are far apart from
the more natural humanity of Cormac and Finn, of Dermot and Goll, of
Oisín and Oscar, of Keelta, and last of Conan, the coward, boaster and
venomous tongue, whom all the Fenians mocked and yet endured. They are
a very human band of fighting men, and though many of them, like Oisín
and Finn and Dermot, have adventures in fairyland, they preserve in
these their ordinary human nature. The Connacht peasant has no
difficulty in following Finn into the cave of Slieve Cullinn, where
the witch turned him into a withered old man, for the village where he
lives has traditions of the same kind; the love affairs of Finn, of
Dermot and Grania, and of many others, are quite in harmony with a
hundred stories, and with the temper, of Irish lovers. A closer, a
simpler humanity than that of the other cycles pervades the Fenian
cycle, a greater chivalry, a greater courtesy, and a greater
tenderness. We have left the primeval savagery behind, the
multitudinous slaughtering, the crude passions of the earlier men and
women; we are nearer to civilization, nearer to the common temper and
character of the Irish people. No one can doubt this who will compare
the _Vengeance of Mesgedra_ with the _Chase of the Gilla Dacar_.

The elaborate courtesy with which Finn and his chief warriors receive
all comers, as in the story of Vivionn the giantess, is quite new,
even medieval in its chivalry; so is the elaborate code of honour; so
also is, on the whole, the treatment of women and their relation to
men. How far this resemblance to medieval romance has been intruded
into the stories--(there are some in which there is not a trace of
it)--by the after editors and re-editors of the tales, I cannot tell,
but however that may be, their presence in the Fenian cycle is plain;
and this brings the stories into a kindlier and more pleasurable
atmosphere for modern readers than that which broods in thunderous
skies and fierce light over dreadful passions and battles thick and
bloody in the previous cycles. We are in a gentler world.

Another more modern romantic element in the Fenian legends is the
delight in hunting, and that more affectionate relation of men to
animals which always marks an advance in civilization. Hunting, as in
medieval romance, is one of the chief pleasures of the Fenians. Six
months of the year they passed in the open, getting to know every part
of the country they had to defend, and hunting through the great woods
and over the hills for their daily food and their daily delight. The
story of the _Chase of the Gilla Dacar_ tells, at its beginning, of a
great hunting and of Finn's men listening with joy to the cries of the
hunters and the loud chiding of the dogs; and many tales celebrate the
following of the stag and the wild boar from early dawn to the
evening. Then Finn's two great hounds, Bran and Sceolaun, are loved by
Finn and his men as if they were dear friends; and they, when their
master is in danger or under enchantment wail like human beings for
his loss or pain. It is true Cuchulain's horses weep tears of blood
when he goes forth to his last battle, foreknowing his death; but they
are immortal steeds and have divine knowledge of fate. The dogs of
Finn are only dogs, and the relation between him and them is a natural
relation, quite unlike the relation between Cuchulain and the horses
which draw his chariot. Yet Finn's dogs are not quite as other dogs.
They have something of a human soul in them. They know that in the
milk-white fawn they pursue there is an enchanted maiden, and they
defend her from the other hounds till Finn arrives. And it is told of
them that sometimes, when the moon is high, they rise from their
graves and meet and hunt together, and speak of ancient days. The
supernatural has lessened since the heroic cycle. But it is still
there in the Fenian.

Again, the Fenian cycle of tales is more influenced by Christianity
than the others are. The mythological cycle is not only fully pagan,
it is primeval. It has the vastness, the savagery, the relentlessness
of nature-myths, and what beauty there is in it is akin to terror.
Gentleness is unknown. There is only one exception to this, so far as
I know, and that is in the story of _The Children of Lir_. It is
plain, however, that the Christian ending of that sorrowful story is a
later addition to it. It is remarkably well done, and most tenderly. I
believe that the artist who did it imported into the rest of the tale
the exquisite tenderness which fills it, and yet with so much
reverence for his original that he did not make the body of the story
Christian. He kept the definite Christian element to the very end, but
he filled the whole with its tender atmosphere.

No Christianity and very little gentleness intrude into the heroic
cycle. The story of Christ once touches it, but he who put it in did
not lose the pagan atmosphere, or the wild fierceness of the manners
of the time. How it was done may be read in this book at the end of
the story of the _Vengeance of Mesgedra_. Very late in the redaction
of these stories a Christian tag was also added to the tale of the
death of Cuchulain, but it was very badly done.

When we come to the Fenian cycle there is a well-defined borderland
between them and Christianity. The bulk of the stories is plainly
pagan; their originals were frankly so. But the temper of their
composers is more civilized than that of those who conceived the tales
of the previous cycles; the manners, as I have already said, of their
personages are gentler, more chivalrous; and their atmosphere is so
much nearer to that of Christianity, that the new Christian elements
would find themselves more at home in them than in the terrible
vengeance of Lugh, the savage brutality of Conor to Deirdré, or the
raging slaughterings of Cuchulain. So much was this the case that a
story was skilfully invented which linked in imagination the Fenian
cycle to a Christianized Ireland. This story--_Oisín in the Land of
Youth_--is contained in this book. Oisín, or Ossian, the son of Finn,
in an enchanted story, lives for 300 years, always young, with his
love in Tir-na-n-Óg, and finds on his return, when he becomes a
withered old man, St Patrick and Christianity in Ireland. He tells to
Patrick many tales of the Fenian wars and loves and glories, and in
the course of them paganism and Christianity are contrasted and
intermingled. A certain sympathy with the pagan ideas of honour and
courage and love enters into the talk of Patrick and the monks, and
softens their pious austerity. On the other hand, the Fenian legends
are gentled and influenced by the Christian elements, in spite of the
scorn with which Oisín treats the rigid condemnation of his companions
and of Finn to the Christian hell, and the ascetic and unwarlike life
of the monks.[4] There was evidently in the Fenian cycle of
story-telling a transition period in which the bards ran Christianity
and paganism in and out of one another, and mingled the atmosphere of
both, and to that period the last editing of the story of _Lir and his
Children_ may be referred. A lovely story in this book, put into fine
form by Mr Rolleston, is as it were an image of this transition
time--the story or _How Ethne quitted Fairyland_. It takes us back to
the most ancient cycle, for it tells of the great gods Angus and
Mananan, and then of how they became, after their conquest by the race
who live in the second cycle, the invisible dwellers in a Fairy
country of their own during the Fenian period, and, afterwards, when
Patrick and the monks had overcome paganism. Thus it mingles together
elements from all the periods. The mention of the great caldron and
the swine which always renew their food is purely mythological. The
cows which come from the Holy Land are Christian. Ethne herself is
born in the house of a pagan god who has become a Fairy King, but
loses her fairy nature and becomes human; and the reason given for
this is an interesting piece of psychology which would never have
occurred to a pagan world. She herself is a transition maiden, and,
suddenly finding herself outside the fairy world and lost, happens on
a monastery and dies on the breast of St Patrick. But she dies because
of the wild wailing for her loss of the fairy-host, whom she can hear
but cannot see, calling to her out of the darkened sky to come back to
her home. And in her sorrow and the battle in her between the love of
Christ and of Faerie, she dies. That is a symbol, not intended as such
by its conceiver, but all the more significant, of the transition
time. Short as it is, few tales, perhaps, are more deeply charged with
spiritual meaning.

   [4] I speak here of the better known of the two versions of
   this encounter of the pagan with the Christian spirit. There
   are others in which the reconciliation is carried still
   further. One example is to be found in the _Colloquy of the
   Ancients_ (SILVA GADELICA). Here Finn and his companions are
   explicitly pronounced to be saved by their natural virtues, and
   the relations of the Church and the Fenian warriors are most
   friendly.

Independent of these three cycles, but often touching them here and
there, and borrowing from them, there are a number of miscellaneous
tales which range from the earliest times till the coming of the
Danes. The most celebrated of these are the _Storming of the Hostel_
with the death of Conary the High King of Ireland, and the story of
the Boru tribute. Two examples of these miscellaneous tales of a high
antiquity are contained in this book--_King Iubdan and King Fergus_
and _Etain and Midir_. Both of them have great charm and
delightfulness.

Finally, the manner in which these tales grew into form must be
remembered when we read them. At first, they were not written down,
but recited in hall and with a harp's accompaniment by the various
bardic story-tellers who were attached to the court of the chieftain,
or wandered singing and reciting from court to court. Each bard, if he
was a creator, filled up the original framework of the tale with
ornaments of his own, or added new events or personages to the tale,
or mixed it up with other related tales, or made new tales altogether
attached to the main personages of the original tale--episodes in
their lives into which the bardic fancy wandered. If these new forms
of the tales or episodes were imaginatively true to the characters
round which they were conceived and to the atmosphere of the time,
they were taken up by other bards and became often separate tales, or
if a great number attached themselves to one hero, they finally formed
themselves into one heroic story, such as that which is gathered round
Cuchulain, which, as it stands, is only narrative, but might in time
have become epical. Indeed, the Táin approaches, though at some
distance, an epic. In this way that mingling of elements out of the
three cycles into a single Saga took place.

Then when Christianity came, the Irish who always, Christians or not,
loved their race and its stories, would not let them go. They took
them and suffused them with a Christian tenderness, even a Christian
forgiveness. Or they inserted Christian endings, while they left the
rest of the stories as pagan as before. Later on, while the stories
were still learned by the bards and recited, they were written down,
and somewhat spoiled by a luxurious use of ornamental adjectives, and
by the weak, roving and uninventive fancy of men and monks aspiring to
literature but incapable of reaching it.

However, in spite of all this intermingling and of the different forms
of the same story, it is possible for an intelligent and sensitive
criticism, well informed in comparative mythology and folklore, to
isolate what is very old in these tales from that which is less old,
and that in turn from that which is still less old, and that from what
is partly historical, medieval or modern. This has been done, with
endless controversy, by those excellent German, French, and Irish
scholars who have, with a thirsty pleasure, recreated the ancient
literature of Ireland, and given her once more a literary name among
the nations--a name which, having risen again, will not lose but
increase its brightness.

       *       *       *       *       *

As to the stories themselves, they have certain well-marked
characteristics, and in dwelling on these, I shall chiefly refer, for
illustration, to the stories in this book. Some of these
characteristic elements belong to almost all mythological tales, and
arise from human imagination, in separated lands, working in the same
or in a similar way on the doings of Nature, and impersonating them.
The form, however, in which these original ideas are cast is, in each
people, modified and varied by the animal life, the climate, the
configuration of the country, the nearness of mountain ranges and of
the sea, the existence of wide forests or vast plains, of swift rivers
and great inland waters.

The earliest tales of Ireland are crowded with the sea that wrapt the
island in its arms; and on the west and north the sea was the mighty
and mysterious Ocean, in whose far infinities lay for the Irish the
land of Immortal Youth. Between its shining shores and Ireland,
strange islands--dwelt in by dreadful or by fair and gracious
creatures, whose wonders Maeldun and Brendan visited--lay like jewels
on the green and sapphire waters. Out of this vast ocean emerged also
their fiercest enemies. Thither, beyond these islands into the
Unknown, over the waves on a fairy steed, went Oisín with Niam;
thither, in after years, sailed St Brendan, till it seemed he touched
America. In the ocean depths were fair cities and well-grassed lands
and cattle, which voyagers saw through water thin and clear. There,
too, Brian, one of the sons of Turenn, descended in his water-dress
and his crystal helmet, and found high-bosomed maidens weaving in a
shining hall. Into the land beneath the wave, Mananan, the proud god
of the sea brought Dermot and Finn and the Fianna to help him in his
wars, as is told in the story of the _Gilla Dacar_. On these western
seas, near the land, Lir's daughters, singing and floating, passed
three hundred years. On other seas, in the storm and in the freezing
sleet that trouble the dark waves of Moyle, between Antrim and the
Scottish isles, they spent another three centuries. Half the story of
the Sons of Usnach has to do with the crossing of seas and with the
coast. Even Cuchulain, who is a land hero, in one of the versions of
his death, dies fighting the sea-waves. The sound, the restlessness,
the calm, the savour and the infinite of the sea, live in a host of
these stories; and to cap all, the sea itself and Mananan its god
sympathise with the fates of Erin. When great trouble threatens
Ireland, or one of her heroes is near death, there are three huge
waves which, at three different points, rise, roaring, out of the
ocean, and roll, flooding every creek and bay and cave and river round
the whole coast with tidings of sorrow and doom. Later on, in the
Fenian tales, the sea is not so prominent. Finn and his clan are more
concerned with the land. Their work, their hunting and adventures
carry them over the mountains and plains, through the forests, and by
the lakes and rivers. In the stories there is scarcely any part of
Ireland which is not linked, almost geographically, with its scenery.
Even the ancient gods have retired from the coast to live in the
pleasant green hills or by the wooded shores of the great lakes or in
hearing of the soft murmur of the rivers. This business of the sea,
this varied aspect of the land, crept into the imagination of the
Irish, and were used by them to embroider and adorn their poems and
tales. They do not care as much for the doings of the sky. There does
not seem to be any supreme god of the heaven in their mythology.
Neither the sun nor the moon are specially worshipped. There are
sun-heroes like Lugh, but no isolated sun-god. The great beauty of the
cloud-tragedies of storm, the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, so
dramatic in Ireland, or the magnificence of the starry heavens, are
scarcely celebrated. But the Irish folk have heard the sound of the
wind in the tree-tops and marked its cold swiftness over the moor, and
watched with fear or love the mists of ocean and the bewilderment of
the storm-driven snow and the sweet falling of the dew. These are
fully celebrated.

These great and small aspects of Nature are not only celebrated, they
are loved. One cannot read the stories in this book without feeling
that the people who conceived and made them observed Nature and her
ways with a careful affection, which seems to be more developed in the
Celtic folk than elsewhere in modern Europe. There is nothing which
resembles it in Teutonic story-telling. In the story of _The Children
of Lir_, though there is no set description of scenery, we feel the
spirit of the landscape by the lake where Lir listened for three
hundred years to the sweet songs of his children. And, as we read of
their future fate, we are filled with the solitude and mystery, the
ruthlessness and beauty of the ocean. Even its gentleness on quiet
days enters from the tale into our imagination. Then, too, the
mountain-glory and the mountain-gloom are again and again
imaginatively described and loved. The windings and recesses, the
darkness and brightness of the woods and the glades therein, enchant
the Fenians even when they are in mortal danger. And the waters of the
great lakes, the deep pools of the rivers, the rippling shallows, the
green banks, the brown rushing of the torrents, are all alive in the
prose and song of Ireland. How deep was the Irish love of these
delightful things is plain from their belief that "the place of the
revealing of poetry was always by the margin of water." And the Salmon
of Knowledge, the eating of which gave Finn his pre-eminence, swam in
a green pool, still and deep, over which hung a rowan tree that shed
its red berries on the stream. Lovely were the places whence Art and
Knowledge came.

Then, as to all good landscape lovers, the beasts, birds, and insects
of Nature were dear to these ancient people. One of the things Finn
most cared for was not only his hounds, but the "blackbird singing on
Letterlee"; and his song, on page 114, in the praise of May, tells us
how keen was his observant eye for animal life and how much it
delighted him. The same minute realisation of natural objects is
illustrated in this book when King Iubdan explains to the servant the
different characteristics of the trees of the forest, and the mystic
elements that abide in them. It was a habit, even of Teutonic poets,
to tell of the various trees and their uses in verse, and Spenser and
Drayton have both done it in later times. But few of them have added,
as the Irish story does, a spiritual element to their description, and
made us think of malign or beneficent elements attached to them. The
woodbine, and this is a strange fancy, is the king of the woods. The
rowan is the tree of the magicians, and its berries are for poets. The
bramble is inimical to man, the alder is full of witchcraft, and the
elder is the wood of the horses of the fairies. Into every tree a
spiritual power is infused; and the good lords of the forest are loved
of men and birds and bees.

Thus the Irish love of nature led them to spiritualise, in another way
than mythical, certain things in nature, and afterwards to humanise,
up to a certain point, the noble implements wrought by human skill out
of natural materials. And this is another element in all these
stories, as it is in the folk-lore also of other lands. In the tale of
the Sons of Turenn, the stones of the wayside tell to Lugh the story
of the death of his father Kian, and the boat of Mananan, indwelt by a
spirit, flies hither and thither over the seas, obeying the commands,
even the thought, of its steersman. The soul of some famed spears is
so hot for slaughter that, when it is not being used in battle, its
point must stand in a bath of blood or of drowsy herbs, lest it
should slay the host. The swords murmur and hiss and cry out for the
battle; the shield of the hero hums louder and louder, vibrating for
the encouragement of the warrior. Even the wheels of Cuchulain's
chariot roar as they whirl into the fight. This partial life given to
the weapons of war is not specially Celtic. Indeed, it is more common
in Teutonic than in Celtic legend, and it seems probable that it was
owing to the Norsemen that it was established in the Hero tales of
Ireland.

This addition of life, or of some of the powers of life, to tree and
well and boulder-stone, to river and lake and hill, and sword and
spear, is common to all mythologies, but the special character of each
nation or tribe modifies the form of the life-imputing stories. In
Ireland the tree, the stream were not dwelt in by a separate living
being, as in Grecian story; the half-living powers they had were given
to them from without, by the gods, the demons, the fairies; and in the
case of the weapons, the powers they had of act or sound arose from
the impassioned thoughts and fierce emotions of their forger or their
wielder, which, being intense, were magically transferred to them. The
Celtic nature is too fond of reality, too impatient of illusion, to
believe in an actual living spirit in inanimate things. At least, that
is the case in the stories of the Hero and the Fenian Cycles.[5]

   [5] Everything, on the contrary, in the Mythological Cycle is
   gifted with life, all the doings and things of nature are
   represented as the work of living creatures; but it is quite
   possible that those in Ireland who made these myths were not
   Celts at all.

What the Irish of the Heroic, and still more of the Fenian Cycle, did
make in their imagination was a world, outside of themselves, of
living spiritual beings, in whose actuality they fully believed, and
in whom a great number of them still believe. A nation, if I may use
this term, dwelt under the sea. Another dwelt in the far island of the
ocean, the Isle of the Ever-Young. Another dwelt in the land, in the
green hills and by the streams of Ireland; and these were the ancient
gods who had now lost their dominion over the country, but lived on,
with all their courtiers and warriors and beautiful women in a country
underground. As time went on, their powers were dwarfed, and they
became small of size, less beautiful, and in our modern times are less
inclined to enter into the lives of men and women. But the Irish
peasant still sees them flitting by his path in the evening light, or
dancing on the meadow round the grassy mound, singing and playing
strange melodies; or mourns for the child they have carried away to
live with them and forget her people, or watches with fear his
dreaming daughter who has been touched by them, and is never again
quite a child of this earth, or quite of the common race of man.

These were the invisible lands and peoples of the Irish imagination;
and they live in and out of many of the stories. Cuchulain is lured
into a fairy-land, and lives for more than a year in love with Fand,
Mananan's wife. Into another fairy-land, through zones of mist,
Cormac, as is told here, was lured by Mananan, who now has left the
sea to play on the land. Oisín, as I have already said, flies with
Niam over the sea to the island of Eternal Youth. Etain, out of the
immortal land, is born into an Irish girl and reclaimed and carried
back to her native shore by Midir, a prince of the Fairy Host. Ethne,
whose story also is here, has lived for all her youth in the court of
Angus, deep in the hill beside the rushing of the Boyne.

These stories are but a few out of a great number of the loves and
wars between the men and women of the human and the fairy races.
Curiously enough, as the stories become less ancient, the relations
between men and the fairies are more real, more close, even more
affectionate. Finn and the Fianna seem to be almost in daily
companionship with the fairy host--much nearer to them than the men of
the Heroic Cycle are to the gods. They interchange love and music and
battle and adventure with one another. They are, for the most part,
excellent friends; and their intercourse suffers from no doubt. It is
as real as the intercourse between Welsh and English on the
Borderland.

There was nothing illusive, nothing merely imaginary, in these fairy
worlds for the Irish hero or the Irish people. They believed the lands
to be as real as their own, and the indwellers of fairyland to have
like passions with themselves. Finn is not a bit surprised when
Vivionn the giantess sits beside him on the hill, or Fergus when King
Iubdan stands on his hand; or St Patrick when Ethne, out of fairyland,
dies on his breast, or when he sees, at his spell, Cuchulain, dead
some nine hundred years, come forth out of the dark gates of Sheol,
high in his chariot, grasping his deadly spear, driven as of old by
his well-loved charioteer, drawn by the immortal steeds through the
mist, and finally talking of his deeds and claiming a place in the
Christian heaven--a place that Patrick yields to him. The invisible
worlds lived, loved, and thought around this visible world, and were,
it seems, closer and more real to the Celtic than to other races.

But it was not only these agreeable and lovely folk in pleasant
habitations whom the Irish made, but also spirits of another sort, of
lesser powers and those chiefly malignant, having no fixed
dwelling-place, homeless in the air and drifting with it, embodying
the venomous and deadly elements of the earth and the angers and
cruelty of the sea, and the hypocrisy of them all--demons, some of
whom, like the stepmother of the children of Lir, have been changed
from men or women because of wicked doings, but the most part born of
the evil in Nature herself. They do what harm they can to innocent
folk; they enter into, support, and direct--like Macbeth's
witches--the evil thoughts of men; they rejoice in the battle, in the
wounds and pain and death of men; they shriek and scream and laugh
around the head of the hero when he goes forth, like Cuchulain, to an
unwearied slaughter of men. They make the blight, the deadly mist, the
cruel tempest. To deceive is their pleasure; to discourage, to baffle,
to ruin the hero is their happiness. Some of them are monsters of
terrific aspect who abide in lakes or in desolate rocks, as the
terrible tri-formed horse whom Fergus mac Leda conquered and by whom
he died.

Naturally, as a link between these supernatural worlds and the natural
world, there arose a body of men and women in Irish legend who, by
years of study, gained a knowledge of, and power over, the
supernatural beings, and used these powers for hurt to the enemies of
their kingdom, or for help to their own people. Some were wise,
learned, and statesmanlike, and used their powers for good. These were
the high Druids, and every king had a band of them at his court and in
his wars. They practiced what the Middle Ages called white magic.
Others were wizards, magicians, witches, who, like the children of
Cailitin, the foes of Cuchulain, or the three mutilated women whom
Maev educated in evil craft to do evil to her foes, or the dread band
that deceived Cuchulain into his last ride of death, practised black
magic--evil, and the ministers of evil. Magic, and the doing of it,
runs through the whole of Irish story-telling, and not only into pagan
but also into Christian legend; for it was easy to change the old gods
into devils, to keep the demonic creatures as demons, to replace the
wise Druids by the priests and saints, and the wizards by the heretics
who gave themselves to sorcery. Thus the ancient supernaturalism of
the Irish has continued, with modern modifications, to the present
day. The body of thought is much the same as it was in the days of
Conor and Finn; the clothing is a bit different.

Another characteristic of the stories, especially in the mythological
period, is the barbaric brutality which appears in them. Curiously
mingled with this, in direct contrast, is their tenderness. These
extreme contrasts are common in the Celtic nature. A Gael, whether of
Ireland or the Western Isles, will pass in a short time from the
wildest spirits, dancing and singing and drinking, into deep and grim
depression--the child of the present, whether in love or war; and in
the tales of Ireland there is a similar contrast between their
brutality and their tenderness. The sudden fierce jealousy and the
pitiless cruelty of their stepmother to the children of Lir is set
over against the exquisite tenderness of Fionnuala, which pervades the
story like an air from heaven. The noble tenderness of Deirdre, of
Naisi and his brothers, in life and death, to one another, is lovelier
in contrast with the savage and treacherous revenge of Conor. The
great pitifulness of Cuchulain's fight with his dear friend Ferdia,
whom he is compelled to slay; the crowning tenderness of Emer's
recollective love in song before she dies on Cuchulain's dead body,
are in full contrast with the savage hard-heartedness and cruelties of
Maev, and with the ruthless slaughters Cuchulain made of his foes, out
of which he seems often to pass, as it were, in a moment, into
tenderness and gracious speech. Even Finn, false for once to his
constant courtesy, revenges himself on Dermot so pitilessly that both
his son and grandson cry shame upon him.

Of course this barbaric cruelty is common to all early periods in
every nation; and, whenever fierce passion is aroused, to civilised
nations also. What is remarkable in the Irish tales is the
contemporary tenderness. The Vikings were as savage as the Irish, but
the savagery is not mingled with the Irish tenderness. At last, when
we pass from the Hero Cycle into the Cycle of Finn, there is scarcely
any of the ancient brutality to be found in the host of romantic
stories which gather round the chivalry of the Fenians.

There are other characteristics of these old tales on which I must
dwell. The first is the extra-ordinary love of colour. This is not a
characteristic of the early German, English or Scandinavian poems and
tales. Its remarkable presence in Scottish poetry, at a time when it
is scarcely to be found in English literature, I have traced elsewhere
to the large admixture of Celtic blood in the Lowlands of Scotland. In
early Irish work it is to be found everywhere. In descriptions of
Nature, which chiefly appear in the Fenian Cycle and in Christian
times, colour is not as much dwelt on as we should expect, for nowhere
that I have seen is it more delicate and varied than under the Irish
atmosphere. Yet, again and again, the amber colour of the streams as
they come from the boglands, and the crimson and gold of the
sunsetting, and the changing green of the trees, and the blue as it
varies and settles down on the mountains when they go to their rest,
and the green crystal of the sea in calm and the dark purple of it in
storm, and the white foam of the waves when they grow black in the
squall, and the brown of the moors, and the yellow and rose and
crimson of the flowers, and many another interchanging of colour, are
seen and spoken of as if it were a common thing always to dwell on
colour. This literary custom I do not find in any other Western
literature. It is even more remarkable in the descriptions of the
dress and weapons of the warriors and kings. They blaze with colour;
and as gold was plentiful in Ireland in those far-off days, yellow and
red are continually flashing in and out of the blue and green and rich
purple of their dress. The women are dressed in as rich colours as the
men. When Eochy met Etain by the spring of pure water, as told in this
book, she must have flashed in the sunlight like a great jewel. Then,
the halls where they met and the houses of the kings are represented
as glorious with colour, painted in rich patterns, hung with woven
cloths dyed deep with crimson and blue and green and yellow. The
common things in use, eating and drinking implements, the bags they
carry, the bed-clothing, the chess-men, the tables, are embroidered or
chased or set with red carbuncles or white stones or with interlacing
of gold. Colour is everywhere and everywhere loved. And where colour
is loved the arts flourish, as the decorative arts flourished in
Ireland.

Lastly, on this matter, the Irish tale-tellers, even to the present
day, dwell with persistence on the colour of the human body as a
special loveliness, and with as much love of it as any Venetian when
he painted it. And they did this with a comparison of its colour to
the colours they observed in Nature, so that the colour of one was
harmonised with the colour of the other. I might quote many such
descriptions of the appearance of the warriors--they are
multitudinous--but the picture of Etain is enough to illustrate what I
say--"Her hair before she loosed it was done in two long tresses,
yellow like the flower of the waterflag in summer or like red gold.
Her hands were white as the snow of a single night, and her eyes as
blue as the dark hyacinth, and her lips red as the berries of the
rowan-tree, and her body as white as the foam of the sea-waves. The
radiance of the moon was in her face and the light of wooing in her
eyes." So much for the Irish love of colour.[6]

   [6] I give one example of the way colour was laid on to animals
   just for the pleasure of it. "And the eagle and cranes were red
   with green heads, and their eggs were pure crimson and blue";
   and deep in the wood the travellers found "strange birds with
   white bodies and purple heads and golden beaks," and afterwards
   three great birds, "one blue and his head crimson, and another
   crimson and his head green, and another speckled and his head
   gold."

Their love of music was equally great; and was also connected with
Nature. "The sound of the flowing of streams," said one of their
bardic clan, "is sweeter than any music of men." "The harp of the
woods is playing music," said another. In Finn's Song to May, the
waterfall is singing a welcome to the pool below, the loudness of
music is around the hill, and in the green fields the stream is
singing. The blackbird, the cuckoo, the heron and the lark are the
musicians of the world. When Finn asks his men what music they thought
the best, each says his say, but Oisín answers, "The music of the
woods is sweetest to me, the sound of the wind and of the blackbird,
and the cuckoo and the soft silence of the heron." And Finn himself,
when asked what was his most beloved music, said first that it was
"the sharp whistling of the wind as it went through the uplifted
spears of the seven battalions of the Fianna," and this was fitting
for a hero to say. But when the poet in him spoke, he said his music
was the crying of the sea-gull, and the noise of the waves, and the
voice of the cuckoo when summer was at hand, and the washing of the
sea against the shore, and of the tide when it met the river of the
White Trout, and of the wind rushing through the cloud. And many other
sayings of the same kind this charming and poetic folk has said
concerning those sweet, strong sounds in Nature out of which the music
of men was born.

Again, there is not much music in the Mythological Tales. Lugh, it is
true, is a great harper, and the harp of the Dagda, into which he has
bound his music, plays a music at whose sound all men laugh, and
another so that all men weep, and another so enthralling that all fall
asleep; and these three kinds of music are heard through all the
Cycles of Tales. Yet when the old gods of the mythology became the
Sidhe,[7] the Fairy Host, they--having left their barbaric life
behind--became great musicians. In every green hill where the tribes
of fairy-land lived, sweet, wonderful music was heard all day--such
music that no man could hear but he would leave all other music to
listen to it, which "had in it sorrows that man has never felt, and
joys for which man has no name, and it seemed as if he who heard it
might break from time into eternity and be one of the immortals." And
when Finn and his people lived, they, being in great harmony and union
with the Sidhe, heard in many adventures with them their lovely music,
and it became their own. Indeed, Finn, who had twelve musicians, had
as their chief one of the Fairy Host who came to dwell with him, a
little man who played airs so divine that all weariness and sorrow
fled away. And from him Finn's musicians learnt a more enchanted art
than they had known before. And so it came to pass that as in every
fairy dwelling there was this divine art, so in every palace and
chieftain's hall, and in every farm, there were harpers harping on
their harps, and all the land was full of sweet sounds and
airs--shaping in music, imaginative war, and sorrows, and joys, and
aspiration. Nor has their music failed. Still in the west and south of
Ireland, the peasant, returning home, hears, as the evening falls from
the haunted hills, airs unknown before, or at midnight a wild
triumphant song from the Fairy Host rushing by, or wakes with a dream
melody in his heart. And these are played and sung next day to the
folk sitting round the fire. Many who heard these mystic sounds became
themselves the makers of melodies, and went about the land singing and
making and playing from village to village and cabin to cabin, till
the unwritten songs of Ireland were as numerous as they were various.
Moore collected a hundred and twenty of them, but of late more than
five hundred he knew not of have been secured from the people and from
manuscripts for the pleasure of the world. And in them lives on the
spirit of the Fianna, and the mystery of the Fairy Host, and the long
sorrow and the fleeting joy of the wild weather in the heart of the
Irish race.

   [7] This word is pronounced Shee, and means "the folk of the
   fairy mounds."

As to the poetry of Ireland, that other Art which is illustrated in
this book, so fully has it been dwelt on by many scholars and critics
that it needs not be touched here other than lightly and briefly. The
honour and dignity of the art of poetry goes back in Irish mythology
to a dim antiquity. The ancient myth said that the nine hazels of
wisdom grew round a deep spring beneath the sea, and the hazels were
the hazels of inspiration and of poetry--so early in Ireland were
inspiration and poetry made identical with wisdom. Seven streams of
wisdom flowed from that fountain-head, and when they had fed the world
returned to it again. And all the art-makers of mankind, and of all
arts, have drunk of their waters. Five salmon in the spring ate of the
hazel nuts, and some haunted the rivers of Ireland; and whosoever,
like Finn, tasted the flesh of these immortal fish, was possessed of
the wisdom which is inspiration and poetry. Such was the ancient Irish
conception of the art of poetry.

It is always an art which grows slowly into any excellence, and it
needs for such growth a quieter life than the Irish lived for many
centuries. Poems appear but rarely in the mythological or heroic
cycles, and are loosely scattered among the prose of the bardic tales.
A few are of war, but they are chiefly dirges like the Song of Emer
over the dead body of Cuchulain, or that of Deirdre over
Naisi--pathetic wailings for lost love. There is an abrupt and pitiful
pain in the brief songs of Fionnuala, but I fancy these were made and
inserted in Christian times. Poetry was more at home among the Fianna.
The conditions of life were easier; there was more leisure and more
romance. And the other arts, which stimulate poetry, were more widely
practised than in the earlier ages. Finn's Song to May, here
translated, is of a good type, frank and observant, with a fresh air
in it, and a fresh pleasure in its writing. I have no doubt that at
this time began the lyric poetry of Ireland, and it reached, under
Christian influences, a level of good, I can scarcely say excellent,
work, at a time when no other lyrical poetry in any vernacular existed
in Europe or the Islands. It was religious, mystic, and chiefly
pathetic--prayers, hymns, dirges, regrets in exile, occasional stories
of the saints whose legendary acts were mixed with pagan elements, and
most of these were adorned with illustrations drawn from natural
beauty or from the doings of birds and beasts--a great affection for
whom is prominent in the Celtic nature. The Irish poets sent this
lyric impulse into Iceland, Wales, and Scotland, and from Scotland
into England; and the rise of English vernacular poetry instead of
Latin in the seventh and eighth centuries is due to the impulse given
by the Irish monasteries at Whitby and elsewhere in Northumbria. The
first rude lyric songs of Cædmon were probably modelled on the hymns
of Colman.

One would think that poetry, which arose so early in a nation's life,
would have developed fully. But this was not the case in Ireland. No
narrative, dramatic, didactic, or epic poetry of any importance arose,
and many questions and answers might be made concerning this curious
restriction of development. The most probable solution of this problem
is that there was never enough peace in Ireland or continuity of
national existence or unity, to allow of a continuous development of
any one of the arts into all its forms. Irish poetry never advanced
beyond the lyric. In that form it lasted all through the centuries; it
lasts still at the present day, and Douglas Hyde has proved how much
charm belongs to it in his book on the _Love Songs of Connacht_.

It has had a long, long history; it has passed through many phases; it
has sung of love and sorrow, of national wars and hopes, of Ireland
herself as the Queen of Sorrow, of exile regrets from alien shores, of
rebellion, of hatred of England, of political strife, in ballads sung
in the streets, of a thousand issues of daily life and death--but of
world-wide affairs, of great passions and duties and fates evolving in
epic or clashing in drama, of continuous human lives in narrative
(except in prose), of the social life of cities or of philosophic
thought enshrined in stately verse, it has not sung. What it may do in
the future, if Irish again becomes a tongue of literature in lofty
poetry, lies on the knees of the gods. I wish it well, but such a
development seems now too late. The Irish genius, if it is to speak in
drama, in narrative poetry or in an epic, must speak, if it is to
influence or to charm the world beyond the Irish shore, in a
world-language like English, and of international as well as of Irish
humanity.

These elements on which I have dwelt seem to me the most distinctive,
the most Irish, in the Tales in this book. There are many others on
which a more minute analysis might exercise itself, phases of feeling
concerning war or love or friendship or honour or the passions, but
these are not specially Irish. They belong to common human nature, and
have their close analogies in other mythologies, in other Folk-tales,
in other Sagas. I need not touch them here. But there is one element
in all the Irish tales which I have not yet mentioned, and it brings
all the others within its own circumference, and suffuses them with
its own atmosphere. It is the love of Ireland, of the land itself for
its own sake--a mystic, spiritual imaginative passion which in the
soul of the dweller in the country is a constant joy, and in the heart
of the exile is a sick yearning for return. There are not many direct
expressions of this in the stories; but it underlies the whole of
them, and it is also in the air they breathe. But now and again it
does find clear expression, and in each of the cycles we have
discussed. When the sons of Turenn are returning, wounded to death,
from the Hill of Mochaen, they felt but one desire. "Let us but see,"
said Iuchar and Iucharba to their brother Brian, "the land of Erin
again, the hills round Telltown, and the dewy plain of Bregia and the
quiet waters of the Boyne and our father's Dún thereby, and healing
will come to us; or if death come, we can endure it after that." Then
Brian raised them up; and they saw that they were now near by under
Ben Edar; and at the strand of the Bull they came to land. That is
from the Mythological Cycle.

In the Heroic Cycle it appears in the longing cry for return to
Ireland of Naisi and his brothers, which drives them out of Alba to
their death; but otherwise it is rarely expressed. In the Fenian Cycle
it exists, not in any clear words, but in a general delight in the
rivers, lakes, woods, valleys, plains, and mountains of Ireland. Every
description of them, and of life among them, is done with a loving,
observant touch; and moreover, the veil of magic charm is thrown over
all the land by the creation in it of the life and indwelling of the
fairy host. The Fianna loved their country well.

When Christianity came, this deep-set sentiment did not lessen. It
grew even stronger, and in exile it became a passion. It is
illustrated by the songs of deep regret and affection Columba made in
Iona, from whose rocky shores he looked day after day towards the west
while the mists rose over Ireland. One little story of great beauty
enshrines his passion. One morning he called to his side one of his
monks, and said, "Go to the margin of the sea on the western side of
our isle; and there, coming from the north of Ireland, you will see a
voyaging crane, very weary and beaten by the storms, and it will fall
at your feet on the beach. Lift it up with pity and carry it to the
hut, nourish it for three days, and when it is refreshed and strong
again it will care no more to stay with us in exile, but to fly back
to sweet Ireland, the dear country where it was born. I charge you
thus, for it comes from the land where I was born myself." And when
his servant returned, having done as he was ordered, Columba said,
"May God bless you, my son. Since you have well cared for our exiled
guest, you will see it return to its own land in three days." And so
it was. It rose, sought its path for a moment through the sky, and
took flight on a steady wing for Ireland. The spirit of that story has
never died in the soul of the Irish and in their poetry up to the
present day.

Lastly, as we read these stories, even in a modern dress, an
impression of great ancientry is made upon us, so much so that some
scholars have tried to turn Finn into a mythical hero--but if he be as
old as that implies, of how great an age must be the clearly mythic
tales which gather round the Tuatha de Danaan? However this may be,
the impression of ancientry is deep and agreeable. All myths in any
nation are, of course, of a high antiquity, but as they treat of the
beginning of things, they mingle an impression of youth with one of
age. This is very pleasant to the imagination, and especially so if
the myths, as in Ireland, have some poetic beauty or strangeness, as
in the myth I have referred to--of the deep spring of clear water and
the nine hazels of wisdom that encompass it. This mingling of the
beauty of youth and the honour of ancientry runs through all the Irish
tales. Youth and the love of it, of its beauty and strength, adorn and
vitalize their grey antiquity. But where, in their narrative, the
hero's youth is over and the sword weak in his hand, and the passion
less in his and his sweetheart's blood, life is represented as
scarcely worth the living. The famed men and women die young--the sons
of Turenn, Cuchulain, Conall, Dermot, Emer, Deirdre, Naisi, Oscar.
Oisín has three hundred years of youth in that far land in the
invention of which the Irish embodied their admiration of love and
youth. His old age, when sudden feebleness overwhelms him, is made by
the bardic clan as miserable, as desolate as his youth was joyous.
Again, Finn lives to be an old man, but the immortal was in him, and
either he has been born again in several re-incarnations (for the
Irish held from time to time the doctrine of the transmigration of
souls), or he sleeps, like Barbarossa, in a secret cavern, with all
his men around him, and beside him the mighty horn of the Fianna,
which, when the day of fate and freedom comes, will awaken with three
loud blasts the heroes and send them forth to victory. Old as she is,
Ireland does not grow old, for she has never reached her maturity. Her
full existence is before her, not behind her. And when she reaches it
her ancientry and all its tales will be dearer to her than they have
been in the past. They will be an inspiring national asset. In them
and in their strange admixture of different and successive periods of
customs, thoughts and emotions (caused by the continuous editing and
re-editing of them, first in oral recitation and then at the hands of
scribes), Ireland will see the record of her history, not the history
of external facts, but of her soul as it grew into consciousness of
personality; as it established in itself love of law, of moral right,
of religion, of chivalry, of courtesy in war and daily life; as it
rejoiced, and above all, as it suffered and was constant, in suffering
and oppression, to its national ideals.

It seems as if, once at least, this aspect of the tales of Ireland was
seen by men of old, for there is a story which tells that heaven
itself desired their remembrance, and that we should be diverted and
inspired by them. In itself it is a record of the gentleness of Irish
Christianity to Irish heathendom, and of its love of the heroic past.
For one day when Patrick and his clerks were singing the Mass at the
Rath of the Red Ridge, where Finn was wont to be, he saw Keelta, a
chief of the Fianna, draw near with his companions, and Keelta's huge
hounds were with him. They were men so tall and great that fear fell
on the clerks, but Patrick met with and asked their chieftain's name.
"I am Keelta," he answered, "son of Ronan of the Fianna." "Was it not
a good lord you were with," said Patrick, "Finn, son of Cumhal?" And
Keelta said, "If the brown leaves falling in the wood were gold, if
the waves of the sea were silver, Finn would have given them all
away." "What was it kept you through your lifetime?" said Patrick.
"Truth that was in our hearts, and strength in our hands, and
fulfilment in our tongues," said Keelta. Then Patrick gave them food
and drink and good treatment, and talked with them. And in the morning
the two angels who guarded him came to him, and he asked them if it
were any harm before God, King of heaven and earth, that he should
listen to the stories of the Fianna. And the angels answered, "Holy
Clerk, these old fighting men do not remember more than a third of
their tales by reason of the forgetfulness of age, but whatever they
tell write it down on the boards of the poets and in the words of the
poets, for it will be a diversion to the companies and the high people
of the latter times to listen to them."[8] So spoke the angels, and
Patrick did as he bade them, and the stories are in the world to this
day.

   [8] This is quoted with a few omissions, from Lady Gregory's
   delightful version, in her _Book of Saints and Wonders_, of an
   episode in _The Colloquy of the Ancients_ (Silva Gadelica).

STOPFORD A. BROOKE

ST PATRICK'S DAY, 1910




COIS NA TEINEADH

(_By the Fireside._)


   Where glows the Irish hearth with peat
     There lives a subtle spell--
   The faint blue smoke, the gentle heat,
     The moorland odours, tell

   Of long roads running through a red
     Untamed unfurrowed land,
   With curlews keening overhead,
     And streams on either hand;

   Black turf-banks crowned with whispering sedge,
     And black bog-pools below;
   While dry stone wall or ragged hedge
     Leads on, to meet the glow

   From cottage doors, that lure us in
     From rainy Western skies,
   To seek the friendly warmth within,
     The simple talk and wise;

   Or tales of magic, love and arms
     From days when princes met
   To listen to the lay that charms
     The Connacht peasant yet.

   There Honour shines through passions dire,
     There beauty blends with mirth--
   Wild hearts, ye never did aspire
     Wholly for things of earth!

   Cold, cold this thousand years--yet still
     On many a time-stained page
   Your pride, your truth, your dauntless will,
     Burn on from age to age.

   And still around the fires of peat
     Live on the ancient days;
   There still do living lips repeat
     The old and deathless lays.

   And when the wavering wreaths ascend,
     Blue in the evening air,
   The soul of Ireland seems to bend
     Above her children there.




BARDIC ROMANCES

CHAPTER I

The Story of the Children of Lir


Long ago there dwelt in Ireland the race called by the name of De
Danaan, or People of the Goddess Dana. They were a folk who delighted
in beauty and gaiety, and in fighting and feasting, and loved to go
gloriously apparelled, and to have their weapons and household vessels
adorned with jewels and gold. They were also skilled in magic arts,
and their harpers could make music so enchanting that a man who heard
it would fight, or love, or sleep, or forget all earthly things, as
they who touched the strings might will him to do. In later times the
Danaans had to dispute the sovranty of Ireland with another race, the
Children of Miled, whom men call the Milesians, and after much
fighting they were vanquished. Then, by their sorceries and
enchantments, when they could not prevail against the invaders, they
made themselves invisible, and they have dwelt ever since in the Fairy
Mounds and raths of Ireland, where their shining palaces are hidden
from mortal eyes. They are now called the Shee, or Fairy Folk of
Erinn, and the faint strains of unearthly music that may be heard at
times by those who wander at night near to their haunts come from the
harpers and pipers who play for the People of Dana at their revels in
the bright world underground.

At the time when the tale begins, the People of Dana were still the
lords of Ireland, for the Milesians had not yet come. They were
divided it is said, into many families and clans; and it seemed good
to them that their chiefs should assemble together, and choose one to
be king and ruler over the whole people. So they met in a great
assembly for this purpose, and found that five of the greatest lords
all desired the sovranty of Erin. These five were Bóv the Red, and
Ilbrech of Assaroe, and Lir from the Hill of the White Field, which is
on Slieve Fuad in Armagh; and Midir the Proud, who dwelt at Slieve
Callary in Longford; and Angus of Brugh na Boyna, which is now
Newgrange on the river Boyne, where his mighty mound is still to be
seen. All the Danaan lords saving these five went into council
together, and their decision was to give the sovranty to Bóv the Red,
partly because he was the eldest, partly because his father was the
Dagda, mightiest of the Danaans, and partly because he was himself the
most deserving of the five.

All were content with this, save only Lir, who thought himself the
fittest for royal rule; so he went away from the assembly in anger,
taking leave of no one. When this became known, the Danaan lords would
have pursued Lir, to burn his palace and inflict punishment and
wounding on himself for refusing obedience and fealty to him whom the
assembly had chosen to reign over them. But Bóv the Red forbade them,
for he would not have war among the Danaans; and he said, "I am none
the less King of the People of Dana because this man will not do
homage to me."

Thus it went on for a long time. But at last a great misfortune befell
Lir, for his wife fell ill, and after three nights she died. Sorely
did Lir grieve for this, and he fell into a great dejection of spirit,
for his wife was very dear to him and was much thought of by all folk,
so that her death was counted one of the great events of that time.

Now Bóv the Red came ere long to hear of it, and he said, "If Lir
would choose to have my help and friendship now, I can serve him well,
for his wife is no longer living, and I have three maidens, daughters
of a friend, in fosterage with me, namely, Eva and Aoife[9] and Elva,
and there are none fairer and of better name in Erin; one of these he
might take to wife." And the lords of the Danaans heard what he said,
and answered that it was true and well bethought. So messengers were
sent to Lir, to say that if he were willing to yield the sovranty to
Bóv the Red, he might make alliance with him and wed one of his
foster-children. To Lir, having been thus gently entreated, it seemed
good to end the feud, and he agreed to the marriage. So the following
day he set out with a train of fifty chariots from the Hill of the
White Field and journeyed straight for the palace of Bóv the Red,
which was by Lough Derg on the river Shannon.

   [9] Pronounced Eefa.

Arriving there, he found about him nothing but joy and glad faces, for
the renewal of amity and concord; and his people were welcomed, and
well entreated, and handsomely entertained for the night.

[Illustration: "There sat the three maidens with the Queen"]

And there sat the three maidens on the same couch with the Danaan
Queen, and Bóv the Red bade Lir choose which one he would have to
wife.

"The maidens are all fair and noble," said Lir, "but the eldest is
first in consideration and honour, and it is she that I will take, if
she be willing."

"The eldest is Eva," said Bóv the Red, "and she will wed thee if it be
pleasing to thee." "It is pleasing," said Lir, and the pair were
wedded the same night. Lir abode for fourteen days in the palace of
Bóv the Red, and then departed with his bride, to make a great
wedding-feast among his own people.

In due time after this Eva, wife of Lir, bore him two fair children at
a birth, a daughter and a son. The daughter's name was called
Fionnuala of the Fair Shoulder, and the son's name was Hugh. And
again she bore him two sons, Fiachra and Conn; and at their birth she
died. At this Lir was sorely grieved and afflicted, and but for the
great love he bore to his four children he would gladly have died too.

When the folk at the palace of Bóv the Red heard that, they also were
sorely grieved at the death of their foster-child, and they lamented
her with keening and with weeping. Bóv the Red said, "We grieve for
this maiden on account of the good man we gave her to, and for his
friendship and fellowship; howbeit our friendship shall not be
sundered, for we shall give him to wife her sister, namely Aoife."

Word of this was brought to Lir, and he went once more to Lough Derg
to the palace of Bóv the Red and there he took to wife Aoife, the fair
and wise, and brought her to his own home. And Aoife held the children
of Lir and of her sister in honour and affection; for indeed no one
could behold these four children without giving them the love of his
soul.

For love of them, too, came Bóv the Red often to the house of Lir, and
he would take them to his own house at times and let them spend a
while there, and then to their own home again. All of the People of
Dana who came visiting and feasting to Lir had joy and delight in the
children, for their beauty and gentleness; and the love of their
father for them was exceeding great, so that he would rise very early
every morning to lie down among them and play with them.

Only, alas! a fire of jealousy began to burn at last in the breast of
Aoife, and hatred and bitter ill-will grew in her mind towards the
children of Lir. And she feigned an illness, and lay under it for the
most of a year, meditating a black and evil deed. At last she said
that a journey from home might recover her, and she bade her chariot
be yoked and set out, taking with her the four children. Fionnuala was
sorely unwilling to go with her on that journey, for she had a
misgiving, and a prevision of treachery and of kin-slaying against her
in the mind of Aoife. Yet she was not able to avoid the mischief that
was destined for her.

So Aoife journeyed away from the Hill of the White Field, and when she
had come some way she spoke to her people and said, "Kill me, I pray
ye, the four children of Lir, who have taken the love of their father
from me, and ye may ask of me what reward ye will." "Not so," said
they, "by us they shall never be killed; it is an evil deed that you
have thought of, and evil it is but to have spoken of it."

When they would not consent to her will, she drew a sword and would
have slain the children herself, but her womanhood overcame her and
she could not. So they journeyed on westward till they came to the
shores of Loch Derryvaragh, and there they made a halt and the horses
were outspanned. Aoife bade the children bathe and swim in the lake,
and they did so. Then Aoife by Druid spells and witchcraft put upon
each of the children the form of a pure white swan, and she cried to
them:--

  "Out on the lake with you, children of Lir!
  Cry with the water-fowl over the mere!
  Breed and seed of you ne'er shall I see;
  Woeful the tale to your friends shall be."

Then the four swans turned their faces towards the woman, and
Fionnuala spoke to her and said, "Evil is thy deed, Aoife, to destroy
us thus without a cause, and think not that thou shalt escape
punishment for it. Assign us even some period to the ruin and
destruction that thou hast brought upon us."

"I shall do that," said Aoife, "and it is this: in your present forms
shall ye abide, and none shall release you till the woman of the South
be mated with the man of the North. Three hundred years shall ye be
upon the waters of Derryvaragh, and three hundred upon the Straits of
Moyle between Erinn and Alba,[10] and three hundred in the seas by
Erris and Inishglory, and then shall the enchantment have an end."

   [10] Scotland. Inishglory is an island in the Bay of Erris, on
   the Mayo coast.

Upon this, Aoife was smitten with repentance, and she said, "Since I
may not henceforth undo what has been done, I give you this, that ye
shall keep your human speech, and ye shall sing a sad music such as no
music in the world can equal, and ye shall have your reason and your
human will, that the bird-shape may not wholly destroy you." Then she
became as one possessed, and cried wildly like a prophetess in her
trance:--

  "Ye with the white faces! Ye with the stammering
      Gaelic on your tongues!
  Soft was your nurture in the King's house--
  Now shall ye know the buffeting wind!
  Nine hundred years upon the tide.

  "The heart of Lir shall bleed!
  None of his victories shall stead him now!
  Woe to me that I shall hear his groan,
  Woe that I have deserved his wrath!"

Then they caught and yoked her horses, and Aoife went on her way till
she reached the palace of Bóv the Red. Here she and her folk were
welcomed and entertained, and Bóv the Red inquired of her why she had
not brought with her the children of Lir.

"I brought them not," she replied, "because Lir loves thee not, and he
fears that if he sends his children to thee, thou wouldst capture them
and hold them for hostages."

"That is strange," said Bóv the Red, "for I love those children as if
they were my own." And his mind misgave him that some treachery had
been wrought; and he sent messengers privily northwards to the Hill of
the White Field. "For what have ye come?" asked Lir. "Even to bring
your children to Bóv the Red," said they. "Did they not reach you with
Aoife?" said Lir. "Nay," said the messengers, "but Aoife said you
would not permit them to go with her."

Then fear and trouble came upon Lir, for he surmised that Aoife had
wrought evil upon the children. So his horses were yoked and he set
out upon his road south-westward, until he reached the shores of Loch
Derryvaragh. But as he passed by that water, Fionnuala saw the train
of horsemen and chariots, and she cried to her brothers to come near
to the shore, "for," said she, "these can only be the company of our
father who have come to follow and seek for us."

Lir, by the margin of the lake, saw the four swans and heard them
talking with human voices, and he halted and spoke to them. Then said
Fionnuala: "Know, O Lir, that we are thy four children, and that she
who has wrought this ruin upon us is thy wife and our mother's sister,
through the bitterness of her jealousy." Lir was glad to know that
they were at least living, and he said, "Is it possible to put your
own forms upon you again?" "It is not possible," said Fionnuala, "for
all the men on earth could not release us until the woman of the South
be mated with the man of the North." Then Lir and his people cried
aloud in grief and lamentation, and Lir entreated the swans to come on
land and abide with him since they had their human reason and speech.
But Fionnuala said, "That may not be, for we may not company with men
any longer, but abide on the waters of Erinn nine hundred years. But
we have still our Gaelic speech, and moreover we have the gift of
uttering sad music, so that no man who hears it thinks aught worth in
the world save to listen to that music for ever. Do you abide by the
shore for this night and we shall sing to you."

So Lir and his people listened all night to the singing of the swans,
nor could they move nor speak till morning, for all the high sorrows
of the world were in that music, and it plunged them in dreams that
could not be uttered.

Next day Lir took leave of his children and went on to the palace of
Bóv the Red. Bóv reproached him that he had not brought with him his
children. "Woe is me," said Lir, "it was not I that would not bring
them; but Aoife there, your own foster-child and their mother's
sister, put upon them the forms of four snow-white swans, and there
they are on the Loch of Derryvaragh for all men to see; but they have
kept still their reason and their human voice and their Gaelic."

Bóv the Red started when he heard this, and he knew that what Lir had
said was true. Fiercely he turned to Aoife, and said, "This treachery
will be worse, Aoife, for you than for them, for they shall be
released in the end of time, but thy punishment shall be for ever."
Then he smote her with a druid wand and she became a Demon of the Air,
and flew shrieking from the hall, and in that form she abides to this
day.

[Illustration: "They made an encampment and the swans sang to them"]

As for Bóv the Red, he came with his nobles and attendants to the
shores of Loch Derryvaragh, and there they made an encampment, and the
swans conversed with them and sang to them. And as the thing became
known, other tribes and clans of the People of Dana would also come
from every part of Erinn and stay awhile to listen to the swans and
depart again to their homes; and most of all came their own friends
and fellow-pupils from the Hill of the White Field. No such music as
theirs, say the historians of ancient times, ever was heard in Erinn,
for foes who heard it were at peace, and men stricken with pain or
sickness felt their ills no more; and the memory of it remained with
them when they went away, so that a great peace and sweetness and
gentleness was in the land of Erinn for those three hundred years that
the swans abode in the waters of Derryvaragh.

But one day Fionnuala said to her brethren, "Do ye know, my dear
ones, that the end of our time here is come, all but this night only?"
Then great sorrow and distress overcame them, for in the converse with
their father and kinsfolk and friends they had half forgotten that
they were no longer men, and they loved their home on Loch
Derryvaragh, and feared the angry waves of the cold northern sea. But
early next day they came to the lough-side to speak with Bóv the Red
and with their father, and to bid them farewell, and Fionnuala sang to
them her last lament. Then the four swans rose in the air and flew
northward till they were seen no more, and great was the grief among
those they left behind; and Bóv the Red let it be proclaimed
throughout the length and breadth of Erin that no man should
henceforth presume to kill a swan, lest it might chance to be one of
the children of Lir.

Far different was the dwelling-place which the swans now came to, from
that which they had known on Loch Derryvaragh. On either side of them,
to north and south, stretched a wide coast far as the eye could see,
beset with black rocks and great precipices, and by it ran fiercely
the salt, bitter tides of an ever-angry sea, cold, grey, and misty;
and their hearts sank to behold it and to think that there they must
abide for three hundred years.

Ere long, one night, there came a thick murky tempest upon them, and
Fionnuala said, "In this black and violent night, my brothers, we may
be driven apart from each other; let us therefore appoint a
meeting-place where we may come together again when the tempest is
overpast." And they settled to meet at the Seal Rock, for this rock
they had now all learned to know.

By midnight the hurricane descended upon the Straits of Moyle, and the
waves roared upon the coast with a deafening noise, and thunder
bellowed from the sky, and lightning was all the light they had. The
swans were driven apart by the violence of the storm, and when at last
the wind fell and the seas grew calm once more, Fionnuala found
herself alone upon the ocean-tide not far from the Seal Rock. And thus
she made her lament:--

   "Woe is me to be yet alive!
   My wings are frozen to my sides.
   Wellnigh has the tempest shattered my heart,
   And my comely Hugh parted from me!

   "O my beloved ones, my Three,
   Who slept under the shelter of my feathers,
   Shall you and I ever meet again
   Until the dead rise to life?

   "Where is Fiachra, where is Hugh?
   Where is my fair Conn?
   Shall I henceforth bear my part alone?
   Woe is me for this disastrous night!"

Fionnuala remained upon the Seal Rock until the morrow morn, watching
the tossing waters in all directions around her, until at last she saw
Conn coming towards her, and his head drooping and feathers drenched
and disarrayed. Joyfully did the sister welcome him; and ere long,
behold, Fiachra also approaching them, cold and wet and faint, and the
speech was frozen in him that not a word he spake could be understood.
So Fionnuala put her wings about him, and said, "If but Hugh came now,
how happy should we be!"

In no long time after that they saw Hugh also approaching them across
the sea, and his head was dry and his feathers fair and unruffled, for
he had found shelter from the gale. Fionnuala put him under her
breast, and Conn under her right wing and Fiachra under her left, and
covered them wholly with her feathers. "O children," she said to them,
"evil though ye think this night to have been, many such a one shall
we know from this time forward."

So there the swans continued, suffering cold and misery upon the tides
of Moyle; and one while they would be upon the coast of Alba and
another upon the coast of Erinn, but the waters they might not leave.
At length there came upon them a night of bitter cold and snow such
as they had never felt before, and Fionnuala sang this lament:--

  "Evil is this life.
  The cold of this night,
  The thickness of the snow,
  The sharpness of the wind--

  "How long have they lain together,
  Under my soft wings,
  The waves beating upon us,
  Conn and Hugh and Fiachra?

  "Aoife has doomed us,
  Us, the four of us,
  To-night to this misery--
  Evil is this life."

Thus for a long time they suffered, till at length there came upon the
Straits of Moyle a night of January so piercing cold that the like of
it had never been felt. And the swans were gathered together upon the
Seal Rock. The waters froze into ice around them, and each of them
became frozen in his place, so that their feet and feathers clung to
the rock; and when the day came and they strove to leave the place,
the skin of their feet and the feathers of their breasts clove to the
rock, they came naked and wounded away.

"Woe is me, O children of Lir," said Fionnuala, "we are now indeed in
evil case, for we cannot endure the salt water, yet we may not be away
from it; and if the salt water gets into our sores we shall perish of
it." And thus she sang:--

   "To-night we are full of keening;
   No plumage to cover our bodies;
   And cold to our tender feet
   Are the rough rocks all awash.

   "Cruel to us was Aoife,
   Who played her magic upon us,
   And drove us out to the ocean,
   Four wonderful, snow-white swans.

   "Our bath is the frothing brine
   In the bay by red rocks guarded,
   For mead at our father's table
   We drink of the salt blue sea.

   "Three sons and a single daughter--
   In clefts of the cold rocks dwelling,
   The hard rocks, cruel to mortals.
   --We are full of keening to-night."

So they went forth again upon the Straits of Moyle, and the brine was
grievously sharp and bitter to them, but they could not escape it nor
shelter themselves from it. Thus they were, till at last their
feathers grew again and their sores were healed.

On one day it happened that they came to the mouth of the river Bann
in the north of Erinn, and there they perceived a fair host of
horsemen riding on white steeds and coming steadily onward from the
south-west "Do ye know who yon riders are, children of Lir?" asked
Fionnuala. "We know not," said they, "but it is like they are some
party of the People of Dana." Then they moved to the margin of the
land, and the company they had seen came down to meet them; and
behold, it was Hugh and Fergus, the two sons of Bóv the Red, and their
nobles and attendants with them, who had long been seeking for the
swans along the coast of the Straits of Moyle.

Most lovingly and joyfully did they greet each other and the swans
inquired concerning their father Lir, and Bóv the Red, and the rest of
their kinsfolk.

"They are well," said the Danaans; "and at this time they are all
assembled together in the palace of your father at the Hill of the
White Field, where they are holding the Festival of the Age of
Youth.[11] They are happy and gay and have no weariness or trouble,
save that you are not among them, and that they have not known where
you were since you left them at Lough Derryvaragh."

   [11] A magic banquet which had the effect of preserving for
   ever the youth of the People of Dana.

"That is not the tale of our lives," said Fionnuala.

After that the company of the Danaans departed and brought word of the
swans to Bóv the Red and to Lir, who were rejoiced to hear that they
were living, "for," said they, "the children shall obtain relief in
the end of time." And the swans went back to the tides of Moyle and
abode there till their time to be in that place had expired.

When that day had come, Fionnuala declared it to them, and they rose
up wheeling in the air, and flew westward across Ireland till they
came to the Bay of Erris, and there they abode as was ordained. Here
it happened that among those of mortal MEN whose dwellings bordered on
the bay was a young man of gentle blood, by name Evric, who having
heard the singing of the swans came down to speak with them, and
became their friend. After that he would often come to hear their
music, for it was very sweet to him; and he loved them greatly, and
they him. All their story they told him, and he it was who set it
down in order, even as it is here narrated.

Much hardship did they suffer from cold and tempest in the waters of
the Western Sea, yet not so much as they had to bear by the coasts of
the ever-stormy Moyle, and they knew that the day of redemption was
now drawing near. In the end of the time Fionnuala said, "Brothers,
let us fly to the Hill of the White Field, and see how Lir our father
and his household are faring." So they arose and set forward on their
airy journey until they reached the Hill of the White Field, and thus
it was that they found the place: namely, desolate and thorny before
them, with nought but green mounds where once were the palaces and
homes of their kin, and forests of nettles growing over them, and
never a house nor a hearth. And the four drew closely together and
lamented aloud at that sight, for they knew that old times and things
had passed away in Erinn, and they were lonely in a land of strangers,
where no man lived who could recognise them when they came to their
human shapes again. They knew not that Lir and their kin of the People
of Dana yet dwelt invisible in the bright world within the Fairy
Mounds, for their eyes were holden that they should not see, since
other things were destined for them than to join the Danaan folk and
be of the company of the immortal Shee.

So they went back again to the Western Sea until the holy Patrick
came into Ireland and preached the Faith of the One God and of the
Christ. But a man of Patrick's men, namely the Saint Mochaovóg,[12]
came to the Island of Inishglory in Erris Bay, and there built himself
a little church of stone, and spent his life in preaching to the folk
and in prayer. The first night he came to the island the swans heard
the sound of his bell ringing at matins on the following morn, and
they leaped in terror, and the three brethren left Fionnuala and fled
away. Fionnuala cried to them, "What ails you, beloved brothers?" "We
know not," said they, "but we have heard a thin and dreadful voice,
and we cannot tell what it is." "That is the voice of the bell of
Mochaovóg," said Fionnuala, "and it is that bell which shall deliver
us and drive away our pains, according to the will of God."

   [12] Pronounced Mo-chweev-ogue.

Then the brethren came back and hearkened to the chanting of the
cleric until matins were performed. "Let us chant our music now," said
Fionnuala. So they began, and chanted a solemn, slow, sweet, fairy
song in adoration of the High King of Heaven and of Earth.

Mochaovóg heard that, and wondered, and when he saw the swans he spoke
to them and inquired them. They told him they were the children of
Lir. "Praised be God for that," said Mochaovóg. "Surely it is for your
sakes that I have come to this island above every other island that is
in Erinn. Come to land now, and trust in me that your salvation and
release are at hand."

So they came to land, and dwelt with Mochaovóg in his own house, and
there they kept the canonical hours with him and heard mass. And
Mochaovóg caused a good craftsman to make chains of silver for the
swans, and put one chain between Fionnuala and Hugh and another
between Conn and Fiachra; and they were a joy and solace of mind to
the Saint, and their own woe and pain seemed to them dim and far off
as a dream.

Now at this time it happened that the King of Connacht was Lairgnen,
son of Colman, and he was betrothed to Deoca, daughter of the King of
Munster. And so it was that when Deoca came northward to be wedded to
Lairgnen she heard the tale of the swans and of their singing, and she
prayed the king that he would obtain them for her, for she longed to
possess them. But Lairgnen would not ask them of Mochaovóg. Then Deoca
set out homeward again, and vowed that she would never return to
Lairgnen till she had the swans; and she came as far as the church of
Dalua, which is now called Kildaloe, in Clare. Then Lairgnen sent
messengers for the birds to Mochaovóg, but he would not give them up.

At this Lairgnen was very wroth, and he went himself to Mochaovóg, and
he found the cleric and the four birds at the altar. But Lairgnen
seized upon the birds by their silver chains, two in each hand dragged
them away to the place where Deoca was; and Mochaovóg followed them.
But when they came to Deoca and she had laid her hands upon the
birds, behold, their covering of feathers fell off and in their places
were three shrunken and feeble old men and one lean and withered old
woman, fleshless and bloodless from extreme old age. And Lairgnen was
struck with amazement and fear, and went out from that place.

Then Fionnuala said to Mochaovóg, "Come now and baptize us quickly,
for our end is near. And if you are grieved at parting from us, know
that also to us it is a grief. Do thou make our grave when we are
dead, and place Conn at my right side and Fiachra at my left, and Hugh
before my face, for thus they were wont to be when I sheltered them on
many a winter night by the tides of Moyle."

So Mochaovóg baptized the three brethren and their sister; and shortly
afterwards they found peace and death, and they were buried even as
Fionnuala had said. And over their tomb a stone was raised, and their
names and lineage graved on it in branching Ogham[13]; and lamentation
and prayers were made for them, and their souls won to heaven.

   [13] See p. 133, _note_.

But Mochaovóg was sorrowful, and grieved after them so long as he
lived on earth.





CHAPTER II

The Quest of the Sons of Turenn


Long ago, when the people of Dana yet held lordship in Erinn, they
were sorely afflicted by hordes of sea-rovers named Fomorians who used
to harry the country and carry off youths and maidens into captivity.
They also imposed cruel and extortionate taxes upon the people, for
every kneading trough, and every quern for grinding corn, and every
flagstone for baking bread had to pay its tax. And an ounce of gold
was paid as a poll-tax for every man, and if any man would not or
could not pay, his nose was cut off. Under this tyranny the whole
country groaned, but they had none who was able to band them together
and to lead them in battle against their oppressors.

Now before this it happened that one of the lords of the Danaans named
Kian had married with Ethlinn, daughter of Balor, a princess of the
Fomorians. They had a son named Lugh Lamfada, or Lugh of the Long Arm,
who grew up into a youth of surpassing beauty and strength. And if his
body was noble and mighty, no less so was his mind, for lordship and
authority grew to him by the gift of the Immortals, and whatever he
purposed that would he perform, whatever it might cost in time or
toil, in tears or in blood. Now this Lugh was not brought up in Erinn
but in a far-off isle of the western sea, where the sea-god Mananan
and the other Immortals nurtured and taught him, and made him fit
alike for warfare or for sovranty, when his day should come to work
their will on earth. Hither in due time came the report of the
grievous and dishonouring oppression wrought by the Fomorians upon the
people of Dana, and that report was heard by Lugh. Then Lugh said to
his tutors "It were a worthy deed to rescue my father and the people
of Erinn from this tyranny; let me go thither and attempt it." And
they said to him, "Go, and blessing and victory be with thee." So Lugh
armed himself and mounted his fairy steed, and called his friends and
foster-brothers about him, and across the bright and heaving surface
of the waters they rode like the wind, until they took land in Erinn.

Now the chiefs of the Danaan folk were assembled upon the Hill of
Usnach, which is upon the western side of Tara in Meath, in order to
meet there the stewards of the Fomorians and to pay them their
tribute. As they awaited the arrival of the Fomorians they became
aware of a company on horseback, coming from the west, before whom
rode a young man who seemed to command them all, and whose countenance
was as radiant as the sun upon a dry summer's day, so that the Danaans
could scarcely gaze upon it. He rode upon a white horse and was armed
with a sword, and on his head was a helmet set with precious stones.
The Danaan folk welcomed him as he came among them, and asked him of
his name and his business among them. As they were thus talking
another band drew near, numbering nine times nine persons, who were
the stewards of the Fomorians coming to demand their tribute. They
were men of a fierce and swarthy countenance, and as they came
haughtily and arrogantly forward, the Danaans all rose up to do them
honour. Then Lugh said:

"Why do ye rise up before that grim and ill-looking band and not
before us?"

Said the King of Erinn, "We needs must do so, for if they saw but a
child of a month old sitting down when they came near they would hold
it cause enough to attack and slay us."

"I am greatly minded to slay them," said Lugh; and he repeated it,
"very greatly minded."

"That would be bad for us," said the King, "for our death and
destruction would surely follow."

"Ye are too long under oppression," said Lugh, and gave the word for
onset. So he and his comrades rushed upon the Fomorians, and in a
moment the hillside rang with blows and with the shouting of warriors.
In no long time all of the Fomorians were slain save nine men, and
these were taken alive and brought before Lugh.

"Ye also should be slain," said Lugh, "but that I am minded to send
you as ambassadors to your King. Tell him that he may seek homage and
tribute where he will henceforth, but Ireland will pay him none for
ever."

Then the Fomorians went northwards away, and the people of Dana made
them ready for war, and made Lugh their captain and war-lord, for the
sight of his face heartened them, and made them strong, and they
marvelled that they had endured their slavery so long.

In the meantime word was brought to Balor of the Mighty Blows, King of
the Fomorians, and to his queen Kethlinn of the Twisted Teeth, of the
shame and destruction that had been done to their stewards, and they
assembled a great host of the sea-rovers and manned their war-ships,
and the Northern Sea was white with the foam of their oarblades as
they swept down upon the shores of Erinn. And Balor commanded them,
saying, "When ye have utterly destroyed and subdued the people of
Dana, then make fast your ships with cables to the land of Erinn, and
tow it here to the north of us into the region of ice and snow, and it
shall trouble us no longer." So the host of Balor took land by the
Falls of Dara[14] and began plundering and devastating the province of
Connacht.

   [14] Ballysodare = the Town of the Falls of Dara, in Co. Sligo.

Then Lugh sent messengers abroad to bring his host together, and
among them was his own father, Kian, son of Canta. And as Kian went
northwards on his errand to rouse the Ulster men, and was now come to
the plain of Murthemny near by Dundealga,[15] he saw three warriors
armed and riding across the plain. Now these three were the sons of
Turenn, by name Brian and Iuchar and Iucharba. And there was an
ancient blood-feud between the house of Canta and the house of Turenn,
so that they never met without bloodshed.

   [15] Dundalk.

Then Kian thought to himself, "If my brothers Cu and Kethan were here
there might be a pretty fight, but as they are three to one I would do
better to fly." Now there was a herd of wild swine near by; and Kian
changed himself by druidic sorceries into a wild pig and fell to
rooting up the earth along with the others.

When the sons of Turenn came up to the herd, Brian said, "Brothers,
did ye see the warrior wh' just now was journeying across the plain?"

"We saw him," said they.

"What is become of him?" said Brian.

"Truly, we cannot tell," said the brothers.

"It is good watch ye keep in time of war!" said Brian; "but I know
what has taken him out of our sight, for he struck himself with a
magic wand, and changed himself into the form of one of yonder swine,
and he is rooting the earth among them now. Wherefore," said Brian, "I
deem that he is no friend to us."

"If so, we have no help for it," said they, "for the herd belongs to
some man of the Danaans; and even if we set to and begin to kill the
swine, the pig of druidism might be the very one to escape."

"Have ye learned so little in your place of studies," said Brian,
"that ye cannot distinguish a druidic beast from a natural beast?" And
with that he smote his two brothers with a magic wand, and changed
them into two slender, fleet hounds, and they darted in among the
herd. Then all the herd scattered and fled, but the hounds separated
the druidic pig and chased it towards a wood where Brian awaited it.
As it passed, Brian flung his spear, and it pierced the chest of the
pig and brought it down. The pig screamed, "Evil have you done to cast
at me."

Brian said, "That hath the sound of human speech!"

"I am in truth a man," said the pig, "and I am Kian, son of Canta, and
I pray you show me mercy."

"That will we," said Iuchar and Iucharba, "and sorry are we for what
has happened."

"Nay," said Brian, "but I swear by the Wind and the Sun that if thou
hadst seven lives I would take them all."

"Grant me a favour then," said Kian.

"We shall grant it," said Brian.

"Let me," said Kian, "return into my own form that I may die in the
shape of a man."

"I had liefer kill a man than a pig," said Brian. Then Kian became a
man again and stood before them, the blood trickling from his breast.

"I have outwitted you now," cried he, "for if ye had killed a pig ye
would have paid a pig's eric,[16] but now ye shall pay the eric of a
man. Never was greater eric in the land of Erinn than that which ye
shall pay; and I swear that the very weapons with which ye slay me
shall tell the tale to the avenger of blood."

   [16] Blood-fine.

"Then you shall be slain with no weapons at all," said Brian; and they
picked up the stones on the Plain of Murthemny and rained them upon
him till he was all one wound, and he died. So they buried him as
deep as the height of a man, and went their way to join the host of
Lugh.

When the host was assembled, Lugh led them into Connacht and smote the
Fomorians and drove them to their ships, but of this the tale tells
not here. But when the fight was done, Lugh asked of his comrades if
they had seen his father in the fight and how it fared with him. They
said they had not seen him. Then Lugh made search among the dead, and
they found not Kian there. "Were Kian alive he would be here," said
Lugh, "and I swear by the Wind and the Sun that I will not eat or
drink till I know what has befallen him."

On their return the Danaan host passed by the Plain of Murthemny, and
when they came near the place of the murder the stones cried aloud to
Lugh. And Lugh listened, and they told him of the deed of the sons of
Turenn. Then Lugh searched for the place of a new grave, and when he
had found it he caused it to be dug, and the body of his father was
raised up, and Lugh saw that it was but a litter of wounds. And he
cried out: "O wicked and horrible deed!" and he kissed his father and
said, "I am sick from this sight, my eyes are blind from it, my ears
are deaf from it, my heart stands still from it. Ye gods that I adore,
why was I not here when this crime was done? a man of the children of
Dana slain by his fellows." And he lamented long and bitterly. Then
Kian was again laid in his grave, and a mound was heaped over it and a
pillar-stone set thereon and his name written in Ogham, and a dirge
was sung for him.

After that Lugh departed to Tara, to the Court of the High King, and
he charged his people to say nothing of what had happened until he
himself had made it known.

When he reached Tara with his victorious host the King placed Lugh at
his own right hand before all the princes and lords of the Danaan
folk. Lugh looked round about him, and saw the sons of Turenn sitting
among the assembly; and they were among the best and strongest and the
handsomest of those who were present at that time; nor had any borne
themselves better in the fight with the sea-rovers. Then Lugh asked of
the King that the chain of silence might be shaken; and the assembly
heard it, and gave their attention to Lugh. And Lugh said:

"O King, and ye princes of the People of Dana, I ask what vengeance
would each of you exact upon a man who had foully murdered your
father?"

Then they were all astonished, and the King answered and said:

"Surely it is not the father of Lugh Lamfada who has thus been slain?"

"Thou hast said it," said Lugh, "and those who did the deed are
listening to me now, and know it better than I."

The King said, "Not in one day would I slay the murderer of my father,
but I would tear from him a limb day by day till he were dead."

And so spake all the lords of the Danaans, and the Sons of Turenn
among the rest.

"They have sentenced themselves, the murderers of my father," said
Lugh. "Nevertheless I shall accept an eric from them, and if they will
pay it, it shall be well; but if not, I shall not break the peace of
the King's Assembly and of his sanctuary, but let them beware how they
leave the Hall Tara until they have made me satisfaction."

"Had I slain your father," said the High King, "glad should I be to
have an eric accepted for his blood."

Then the Sons of Turenn whispered among themselves. "It is to us that
Lugh is speaking," said Iuchar and Iucharba, "let us confess and have
the eric assessed upon us, for he has got knowledge of our deed."

"Nay," said Brian, "but he may be seeking for an open confession, and
then perchance he would not accept an eric."

But the two brethren said to Brian, "Do thou confess because thou art
the eldest, or if thou do not, then we shall."

So Brian, son of Turenn, rose up and said to Lugh: "It is to us thou
hast spoken, Lugh, since thou knowest there is enmity of old time
between our houses; and if thou wilt have it that we have slain thy
father, then declare our eric and we shall pay it."

"I will take an eric from you," said Lugh, "and if it seem too great,
I will remit a portion of it."

"Declare it, then," said the Sons of Turenn.

"This it is," said Lugh.

"Three apples.

"The skin of a pig.

"A spear.

"Two steeds and a chariot.

"Seven swine.

"A whelp of a dog.

"A cooking spit.

"Three shouts on a hill."

"We would not consider heavy hundreds or thousands of these things,"
said the Sons of Turenn, "but we misdoubt thou hast some secret
purpose against us."

"I deem it no small eric," said Lugh, "and I call to witness the High
King and lords of the Danaans that I shall ask no more; and do ye on
your side give me guarantees for the fulfilment of it."

So the High King and the lords of the Danaans entered into bonds with
Lugh and with the Sons of Turenn that the eric should be paid and
should wipe out the blood of Kian.

"Now," said Lugh, "it is better for me to give you fuller knowledge of
the eric. The three apples that I have demanded of you are the apples
that grow in the garden of the Hesperides, in the east of the world,
and none but these will do. Thus it is with them: they are the colour
of bright gold, and as large as the head of a month-old child; the
taste of them is like honey; if he who eats them has any running sore
or evil disease it is healed by them; they may be eaten and eaten and
never be less. I doubt, O young heroes, if ye will get these apples,
for those who guard them know well an ancient prophecy that one day
three knights from the western world would come to attempt them.

"As for the skin of the pig, that is a treasure of Tuish, the King of
Greece. If it be laid upon a wounded man it will make him whole and
well, if only it overtake the breath of life in him. And do ye know
what is the spear that I demanded?"

"We do not," said they.

"It is the poisoned spear of Peisear, the King of Persia, and so
fierce is the spirit of war in it that it must be kept in a pot of
soporific herbs or it would fly out raging for death. And do ye know
what are the two horses and the chariot ye must get?"

"We do not know," said they.

"The steeds and the chariot belong to Dobar, King of Sicily. They are
magic steeds and can go indifferently over land and sea, nor can they
be killed by any weapon unless they be torn in pieces and their bones
cannot be found. And the seven pigs are the swine of Asal, King of the
Golden Pillars, which may be slain and eaten every night and the next
morning they are alive again.

"And the hound-whelp I asked of you is the whelp of the King of
Iorroway, that can catch and slay any beast in the world; hard it is
to get possession of that whelp.

"The cooking spit is one of the spits that the fairy women of the
Island of Finchory have in their kitchen.

"And the hill on which ye must give three shouts is the hill where
dwells Mochaen in the north of Lochlann. Now Mochaen and his sons have
it as a sacred ordinance that they permit not any man to raise a shout
upon their hill. With him it was that my father was trained to arms,
and if I forgave ye his death, yet would Mochaen not forgive it.

"And now ye know the eric which ye have to pay for the slaying of
Kian, son of Canta."

Astonishment and despair overcame the Sons of Turenn when they learned
the meaning of the eric of Lugh, and they went home to tell the
tidings to their father.

"This is an evil tale," said Turenn; "I doubt but death and doom shall
come from your seeking of that eric, and it is but right they should.
Yet it may be that ye shall obtain the eric if Lugh or Mananan will
help you to it. Go now to Lugh, and ask him for the loan of the fairy
steed of Mananan, which was given him to ride over the sea into Erinn.
He will refuse you, for he will say that the steed is but lent to him
and he may not make a loan of a loan. Then ask him for the loan of
Ocean Sweeper, which is the magic boat of Mananan, and that he must
give, for it is a sacred ordinance with Lugh not to refuse a second
petition."

So they went to Lugh, and it all fell out as Turenn had told them, and
they went back to Turenn.

"Ye have done something towards the eric," said Turenn, "but not much.
Yet Lugh would be well pleased that ye brought him whatever might
serve him when the Fomorians come to the battle again, and well
pleased would he be that ye might get your death in bringing it. Go
now, my sons, and blessing and victory be with you."

Then the Sons of Turenn went down to the harbour on the Boyne river
where the Boat of Mananan was, and Ethne their sister with them. And
when they reached the place, Ethne broke into lamentations and
weeping; but Brian said, "Weep not, dear sister, but let us go forth
gaily to great deeds. Better a hundred deaths in the quest of honour
than to live and die as cowards and sluggards." But Ethne said, "ye
are banished from Erinn--never was there a sadder deed." Then they
put forth from the river-mouth of the Boyne and soon the fair coasts
of Erinn faded out of sight. "And now," said they among themselves,
"what course shall we steer?"

[Illustration: "'Bear us swiftly, Boat of Mananan, to the Garden of
the Hesperides'"]

"No need to steer the Boat of Mananan," said Brian; and he whispered
to the Boat, "Bear us swiftly, Boat of Mananan, to the Garden of the
Hesperides"; and the spirit of the Boat heard him and it leaped
eagerly forward, lifting and dipping over the rollers and throwing up
an arch of spray each side of its bows wherein sat a rainbow when the
sun shone upon it; and so in no long time they drew nigh to the coast
where was the far-famed garden of the Golden Apples.

"And now, how shall we set about the capture of the apples?" said
Brian.

"Draw sword and fight for them," said Iuchar and Iucharba, "and if we
are the stronger, we shall win them, and if not, we shall fall, as
fall we surely must ere the eric for Kian be paid."

"Nay," said Brian, "but whether we live or die, let not men say of us
that we went blind and headlong to our tasks, but rather that we made
the head help the hand, and that we deserved to win even though we
lost. Now my counsel is that we approach the garden in the shape of
three hawks, strong of wing, and that we hover about until the Wardens
of the Tree have spent all their darts and javelins in casting at us,
and then let us swoop down suddenly and bear off each of us an apple
if we may."

So it was agreed; and Brian struck himself and each of the brothers
with a druid wand, and they became three beautiful, fierce, and
strong-winged hawks. When the Wardens perceived them, they shouted and
threw showers of arrows and darts at them, but the hawks evaded all of
these until the missiles were spent, and then seized each an apple in
his talons. But Brian seized two, for he took one in his beak as well.
Then they flew as swiftly as they might to the shore where they had
left their boat. Now the King of that garden had three fair daughters,
to whom the apples and the garden were very dear, and he transformed
the maidens into three griffins, who pursued the hawks. And the
griffins threw darts of fire, as it were lightning, at the hawks.

"Brian!" then cried Iuchar and his brother, "we are being burnt by
these darts--we are lost unless we can escape them."

On this, Brian changed himself and his brethren into three swans, and
they plunged into the sea, and the burning darts were quenched. Then
the griffins gave over the chase, and the Sons of Turenn made for
their boat, and they embarked with the four apples. Thus their first
quest was ended.

After that they resolved to seek the pigskin from the King of Greece,
and they debated how they should come before him. "Let us," said
Brian, "assume the character and garb of poets and men of learning,
for such are wont to come from Ireland and to travel foreign lands,
and in that character shall the Greeks receive us best, for such men
have honour among them." "It is well said," replied the brothers, "yet
we have no poems in our heads, and how to compose one we know not."

Howbeit they dressed their hair in the fashion of the poets of Erinn,
and went up to the palace of Tuish the King. The doorkeeper asked of
them who they were, and what was their business.

"We are bards from Ireland," they said, "and we have come with a poem
to the King."

"Let them be admitted," said the King, when the doorkeeper brought him
that tale; "they have doubtless come thus far to seek a powerful
patron."

So Brian and Iuchar and Iucharba came in and were made welcome, and
were entertained, and then the minstrels of the King of Greece chanted
the lays of that country before them. After that came the turn of the
stranger bards, and Brian asked his brethren if they had anything to
recite.

"We have not," said they; "we know but one art--to take what we want
by the strong hand if we may, and if we may not, to die fighting."

"That is a difficult art too," said Brian; "let us see how we thrive
with the poetry."

So he rose up and recited this lay:--

   "Mighty is thy fame, O King,
   Towering like a giant oak;
   For my song I ask no thing
   Save a pigskin for a cloak.

   "When a neighbour with his friend
   Quarrels, they are ear to ear;
   Who on us their store shall spend
   Shall be richer than they were.

   "Armies of the storming wind--
   Raging seas, the sword's fell stroke--
   Thou hast nothing to my mind
   Save thy pigskin for a cloak."

"That is a very good poem," said the King, "but one word of its
meaning I do not understand."

"I will interpret it for you," said Brian:--

  "Mighty is thy fame, O King,
  Towering like a giant oak."

"That is to say, as the oak surpasses all the other trees of the
forest, so do you surpass all the kings of the world in goodness, in
nobleness, and in liberality.

  "A pigskin for a cloak."

"That is the skin of the pig of Tuish which I would fain receive as
the reward for my lay."

   "When a neighbour with his friend
   Quarrels, they are ear to ear."

"That is to signify that you and I shall be about each other's ears
over the skin, unless you are willing to give it to me. Such is the
sense of my poem," said Brian, son of Turenn.

"I would praise your poem more," said the King, "if there were not so
much about my pigskin in it. Little sense have you, O man of poetry,
to make that request of me, for not to all the poets, scholars, and
lords of the world would I give that skin of my own free will. But
what I will do is this--I will give the full of that skin of red gold
thrice over in reward for your poem."

"Thanks be to you," said Brian, "for that. I knew that I asked too
much, but I knew also thou wouldst redeem the skin amply and
generously. And now let the gold be duly measured out in it, for
greedy am I, and I will not abate an ounce of it."

The servants of the King were then sent with Brian and his brothers to
the King's treasure-chamber to measure out the gold. As they did so,
Brian suddenly snatched the skin from the hands of him who held it,
and swiftly wrapped it round his body. Then the three brothers drew
sword and made for the door, and a great fight arose in the King's
palace. But they hewed and thrust manfully on every side of them, and
though sorely wounded they fought their way through and escaped to
the shore, and drove their boat out to sea, when the skin of the magic
pig quickly made them whole and sound again. And thus the second quest
of the Sons of Turenn had its end.

"Let us now," said Brian, "go to seek the spear of the King of
Persia."

"In what manner of guise shall we go before the King of Persia?" said
his brothers.

"As we did before the King of Greece," said Brian.

"That guise served us well with the King of Greece," replied they;
"nevertheless, O Brian, this business of professing to be poets, when
we are but swordsmen, is painful to us."

However, they dressed their hair in the manner of poets and went up
boldly to the palace of King Peisear of Persia, saying, as before,
that they were wandering bards from Ireland who had a poem to recite
before the King; and as they passed through the courtyard they marked
the spear drowsing in its pot of sleepy herbs. They were made welcome,
and after listening to the lays of the King's minstrel, Brian rose and
sang:--

   "'Tis little Peisear cares for spears,
   Since armies, when his face they see,
   All overcome with panic fears
   Without a wound they turn and flee.

   "The Yew is monarch of the wood,
   No other tree disputes its claim.
   The shining shaft in venom stewed
   Flies fiercely forth to kill and maim."

"'Tis a very good poem," said the King, "but, O bard from Erinn, I do
not understand your reference to my spear."

"It is merely this," replied Brian, "that I would like your spear as a
reward for my poem."

Then the King stared at Brian, and his beard bristled with anger, and
he said, "Never was a greater reward paid for any poem than not to
adjudge you guilty of instant death for your request."

Then Brian flung at the king the fourth golden apple which he had
taken from the Garden of the Hesperides, and it dashed out his brains.
Immediately the brothers all drew sword and made for the courtyard.
Here they seized the magic spear, and with it and with their swords
they fought their way clear, not without many wounds, and escaped to
their boat. And thus ended the third quest of the Sons of Turenn.

Now having come safely and victoriously through so many straits and
perils, they began to be merry and hoped that all the eric might yet
be paid. So they sailed away with high hearts to the Island of Sicily,
to get the two horses and the chariot of the King, and the Boat of
Mananan bore them swiftly and well.

Having arrived here, they debated among themselves as to how they
should proceed; and they agreed to present themselves as Irish
mercenary soldiers--for such were wont in those days to take service
with foreign kings--until they should learn where the horses and the
chariot were kept, and how they should come at them. Then they went
forward, and found the King and his lords in the palace garden taking
the air.

The Sons of Turenn then paid homage to him, and he asked them of their
business.

"We are Irish mercenary soldiers," they said, "seeking our wages from
the kings of the world." "Are ye willing to take service with me?"
said the King. "We are," said they, "and to that end are we come."

Then their contract of military service was made, and they remained at
the King's court for a month and a fortnight, and did not in all that
time come to see the steeds or the chariot. At last Brian said,

"Things are going ill with us, my brethren, in that we know no more at
this day of the steeds or of the chariot than when we first arrived at
this place."

"What shall we do, then?" said they.

"Let us do this," said Brian. "Let us gird on our arms and all our
marching array, and tell the King that we shall quit his service
unless he show us the chariot."

And so they did; and the King said, "To-morrow shall be a gathering
and parade of all my host, and the chariot shall be there, and ye
shall see it if ye have a mind."

So the next day the steeds were yoked and the chariot was driven round
a great plain before the King and his lords. Now these steeds could
run as well on sea as on dry land, and they were swifter than the
winds of March. As the chariot came round the second time, Brian and
his brothers seized the horses' heads, and Brian took the charioteer
by the foot and flung him out over the rail, and they all leaped into
the chariot and drove away. Such was the swiftness of their driving
that they were out of sight ere the King and his men knew rightly
what had befallen. And thus ended the fourth quest of the Sons of
Turenn.

Next they betook themselves to the court of Asal, King of the Golden
Pillars, to get the seven swine which might be eaten every night and
they would be whole and well on the morrow morn.

But it had now been noised about every country that three young heroes
from Erinn were plundering the kings of the world of their treasures
in payment of a mighty eric; and when they arrived at the Land of the
Golden Pillars they found the harbour guarded and a strait watch kept,
that no one who might resemble the Sons of Turenn should enter.

But Asal the King came to the harbour-mouth and spoke with the heroes,
for he was desirous to see those who had done the great deeds that he
had heard of. He asked them if it were true that they had done such
things, and why. Then Brian told him the story of the mighty eric
which had been laid upon them, and what they had done and suffered in
fulfilling it. "Why," said King Asal, "have ye now come to my
country?"

"For the seven swine," said Brian, "to take them with us as a part of
that eric."

"How do you mean to get them?" asked the King.

"With your goodwill," replied Brian, "if so it may be, and to pay you
therefore with all the wealth we now have, which is thanks and love,
and to stand by your side hereafter in any strait or quarrel you may
enter into. But if you will not grant us the swine, and we may not be
quit of our eric without them, we shall even take them as we may, and
as we have beforetime taken mighty treasures from mighty kings."

Then King Asal went into counsel with his lords, and he advised that
the swine be given to the Sons of Turenn, partly for that he was moved
with their desperate plight and the hardihood they had shown, and
partly that they might get them whether or no. To this they all
agreed, and the Sons of Turenn were invited to come ashore, where they
were courteously and hospitably entertained in the King's palace. On
the morrow the pigs were given to them, and great was their gladness,
for never before had they won a treasure without toil and blood. And
they vowed that, if they should live, the name of Asal should be made
by them a great and shining name, for his compassion and generosity
which he had shown them. This, then, was the fifth quest of the Sons
of Turenn.

"And whither do ye voyage now?" said Asal to them.

"We go," said they, "to Iorroway for the hound's whelp which is
there."

"Take me with you, then," said Asal, "for the King of Iorroway is
husband to my daughter, and I may prevail upon him to grant you the
hound without combat."

So the King's ship was manned and provisioned, and the Sons of Turenn
laid up their treasures in the Boat of Mananan, and they all sailed
joyfully forth to the pleasant kingdom of Iorroway.

But here, too, they found all the coasts and harbours guarded, and
entrance was forbidden them. Then Asal declared who he was, and him
they allowed to land, and he journeyed to where his son-in-law, the
King of Iorroway, was. To him Asal related the whole story of the sons
of Turenn, and why they were come to that kingdom.

"Thou wert a fool," said the King of Iorroway, "to have come on such a
mission. There are no three heroes in the world to whom the Immortals
have granted such grace that they should get my hound either by favour
or by fight."

"That is not a good word," said Asal, "for the treasures they now
possess have made them yet stronger than they were, and these they won
in the teeth of kings as strong as thou." And much more he said to him
to persuade him to yield up the hound, but in vain. So Asal took his
way back to the haven where the Sons of Turenn lay, and told them his
tidings.

Then the Sons of Turenn seized the magic spear, and the pigskin, and
with a rush like that of three eagles descending from a high cliff
upon a lamb-fold they burst upon the guards of the King of Iorroway.
Fierce and fell was the combat that ensued, and many times the
brothers were driven apart, and all but overborne by the throng of
their foes. But at last Brian perceived where the King of Iorroway was
directing the fight, and he cut his way to him, and having smitten him
to the ground, he bound him and carried him out of the press to the
haven-side where Asal was.

"There," he said, "is your son-in-law for you Asal, and I swear by my
sword that I had more easily killed him thrice than once to bring him
thus bound to you."

"That is very like," said Asal; "but now hold him to ransom."

So the people of Iorroway gave the hound to the Sons of Turenn as a
ransom for their King, and the King was released, and friendship and
alliance were made between them. And with joyful hearts the Sons of
Turenn bade farewell to the King of Iorroway and to Asal, and departed
on their way. Thus was the sixth of their quests fulfilled.

Now Lugh Lamfada desired to know how the Sons of Turenn had fared, and
whether they had got any portion of the great eric that might be
serviceable to him when the Fomorians should return for one more
struggle. And by sorcery and divination it was revealed to him how
they had thriven, and that nought remained to be won save the
cooking-spit of the sea-nymphs, and to give the three shouts upon the
hill. Lugh then by druidic art caused a spell of oblivion and
forgetfulness to descend upon the Sons of Turenn, and put into their
hearts withal a yearning and passion to return to their native land of
Erinn. They forgot, therefore, that a portion of the eric was still to
win, and they bade the Boat of Mananan bear them home with their
treasures, for they deemed that they should now quit them of all their
debt for the blood of Kian and live free in their father's home,
having done such things and won such fame as no three brothers had
ever done since the world began.

At the Brugh of Boyne, where they had started on their quest, their
boat came ashore again, and as they landed they wept for joy, and
falling on their knees they kissed the green sod of Erinn. Then they
took up their treasures and journeyed to Ben Edar,[17] where the High
King of Ireland, and Lugh with him, were holding an Assembly of the
People of Dana. But when Lugh heard that they were on their way he put
on his cloak of invisibility and withdrew privily to Tara.

   [17] The Hill of Howth.

When the brethren arrived at Ben Edar, the High King of the lords of
the Danaans gave them welcome and applause, for all were rejoiced that
the stain of ancient feud and bloodshed should be wiped out, and that
the Children of Dana should be at peace within their borders. Then
they sought for Lugh to deliver over the eric, but he was not to be
found. And Brian said, "He has gone to Tara to avoid us, having heard
that we were coming with our treasures and weapons of war."

Word was then sent to Lugh at Tara that the Sons of Turenn were at Ben
Edar, and the eric with them.

"Let them pay it over to the High King," said Lugh.

So it was done; and when Lugh had tidings that the High King had the
eric, he returned to Ben Edar.

Then the eric was laid before him, and Brian said, "Is the debt paid,
O Lugh, son of Kian?"

Lugh said, "Truly there is here the price of any man's death; but it
is not lawful to give a quittance for an eric that is not complete.
Where is the cooking-spit from the Island of Finchory? and have ye
given the three shouts upon the Hill of Mochaen?"

At this word Brian and Iuchar and Iucharba fell prone upon the
ground, and were speechless awhile from grief and dismay. After a
while they left the Assembly like broken men, with hanging heads and
with heavy steps, and betook themselves to Dún Turenn, where they
found their father, and they told him all that had befallen them since
they had parted with him and set forth on the Quest. Thus they passed
the night in gloom and evil forebodings, and on the morrow they went
down once more to the place where the Boat of Mananan was moored. And
Ethne their sister accompanied them, wailing and lamenting, but no
words of cheer had they now to say to her, for now they began to
comprehend that a mightier and a craftier mind had caught them in the
net of fate. And whereas they had deemed themselves heroes and victors
in the most glorious quest whereof the earth had record, they now knew
that they were but as arrows in the hands of a laughing archer, who
shoots one at a stag and one at the heart of a foe, and one, it may
be, in sheer wantonness, and to try his bow, over a cliff edge into
the sea.

[Illustration: "There dwelt the red-haired ocean-nymphs"]

However, they put forth in their magic boat, but in no wise could they
direct it to the Isle of Finchory, and a quarter of a year they
traversed the seaways and never could get tidings of that island. At
last Brian fashioned for himself by magic art a water-dress, with a
helmet of crystal, and into the depths of the sea he plunged. Here,
the story tells, he searched hither and thither for a fortnight, till
at last he found that island, which was an island indeed with the sea
over it and around it and beneath it. There dwelt the red-haired
ocean-nymphs in glittering palaces among the sea-flowers, and they
wrought fair embroidery with gold and jewels, and sang, as they
wrought, a fairy music like the chiming of silver bells. Three fifties
of them sat or played in their great hall as Brian entered, and they
gazed on him but spoke no word. Then Brian strode to the wide hearth,
and without a word he seized from it a spit that was made of beaten
gold, and turned again to go. But at that the laughter of the
sea-maidens rippled through the hall and one of them said:

"Thou art a bold man, Brian, and bolder than thou knowest; for if
thy two brothers were here, the weakest of us could vanquish all the
three. Nevertheless, take the spit for thy daring; we had never
granted it for thy prayers."

So Brian thanked them and bade farewell, and he rose to the surface of
the water. Ere long his brethren perceived him as he shouldered the
waves on the bosom of the deep, and they sailed to where he was and
took him on board. And thus ended the quest for the seventh portion of
the eric of Kian.

After that their hopes revived a little, and they set sail for the
land of Lochlann, in which was the Hill of Mochaen. When they had
arrived at the hill Mochaen came out to meet them with his three sons,
Corc and Conn and Hugh; nor did the Sons of Turenn ever behold a band
of grimmer and mightier warriors than those four.

"What seek ye here?" asked Mochaen of them They told him that it had
been laid upon them to give three shouts upon the hill.

"It hath been laid upon me," said Mochaen, "to prevent this thing."

Then Brian and Mochaen drew sword and fell furiously upon each other,
and their fighting was like that of two hungry lions or two wild
bulls, until at last Brian drove his sword into the throat of Mochaen,
and he died.

With that the Sons of Mochaen and the Sons of Turenn rushed fiercely
upon each other. Long and sore was the strife that they had, and the
blood that fell made red the grassy place wherein they fought. Not one
of them but received wounds that pierced him through and through, and
that heroes of less hardihood had died of a score of times. But in the
end the sons of Mochaen fell, and Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba lay over
them in a swoon like death.

After a while Brian's senses came back to him, and he said, "Do ye
live, dear brothers, or how is it with you?" "We are as good as dead,"
said they; "let us be."

"Arise," then said Brian, "for truly I feel death coming swiftly upon
us, and we have yet to give the three shouts upon the hill."

"We cannot stir," said Iuchar and Iucharba. Then Brian rose to his
knees and to his feet, and he lifted up his two brothers while the
blood of all three streamed down to their feet, and they raised their
voices as best they might, and gave three hoarse cries upon the Hill
of Mochaen. And thus was the last of the epic fulfilled.

Then they bound up their wounds, and Brian placed himself between the
two brothers, and slowly and painfully they made their way to the
boat, and put out to sea for Ireland. And as they lay in the stupor of
faintness in the boat, one murmured to himself, "I see the Cape of Ben
Edar and the coast of Turenn, and Tara of the Kings." Then Iuchar and
Iucharba entreated Brian to lift their heads upon his breast. "Let us
but see the land of Erinn again," said they, "the hills around
Tailtin, and the dewy plain of Bregia, and the quiet waters of the
Boyne and our father's Dún thereby, and healing will come to us; or if
death come we can endure it after that." Then Brian raised them up;
and they saw that they were now near by under Ben Edar; and at the
Strand of the Bull[18] they took land. They were then conveyed to the
Dún of Turenn, and life was still in them when they were laid in their
father's hall.

   [18] Cluan Tarbh, Clontarf; so called from the roaring of the
   waves on the strand.

And Brian said to Turenn, "Go now, dear father, with all speed to Lugh
at Tara. Give him the cooking-spit, and tell how thou hast found us
after giving our three shouts upon the Hill of Mochaen. Then beseech
him that he yield thee the loan of the pigskin of the King of Greece,
for if it be laid upon us while the life is yet in us, we shall
recover. We have won the eric, and it may be that he will not pursue
us to our death."

Turenn went to Lugh and gave him the spit of the sea-nymphs, and
besought him for the lives of his sons.

Lugh was silent for a while, but his countenance did not change, and
he said, "Thou, old man, seest nought but the cloud of sorrow wherein
thou art encompassed. But I hear from above it the singing of the
Immortal Ones, who tell to one another the story of this land. Thy
sons must die; yet have I shown to them more mercy than they showed to
Kian. I have forgiven them; nor shall they live to slay their own
immortality, but the royal bards of Erinn and the old men in the
chimney corners shall tell of their glory and their fate as long as
the land shall endure."

Then Turenn bowed his white head and went sorrowfully back to Dún
Turenn; and he told his sons of the words that Lugh had said. And
with that the sons of Turenn kissed each other, and the breath of life
departed from them, and they died. And Turenn died also, for his heart
was broken in him; and Ethne his daughter buried them in one grave.
Thus, then, ends the tale of the Quest of the Eric and the Fate of the
Sons of Turenn.




CHAPTER III

The Secret of Labra


In very ancient days there was a King in Ireland named Labra, who was
called Labra the Sailor for a certain voyage that he made. Now Labra
was never seen save by one man, once a year, without a hood that
covered his head and ears. But once a year it was his habit to let his
hair be cropped, and the person to do this was chosen by lot, for the
King was accustomed to put to death instantly the man who had cropped
him. And so it happened that on a certain year the lot fell on a young
man who was the only son of a poor widow, who dwelt near by the palace
of the King. When she heard that her son had been chosen she fell on
her knees before the King and besought him, with tears, that her son,
who was her only support and all she had in the world, might not
suffer death as was customary. The King was moved by her grief and her
entreaties, and at last he consented that the young man should not be
slain provided that he vowed to keep secret to the day of his death
what he should see. The youth agreed to this and he vowed by the Sun
and the Wind that he would never, so long as he lived, reveal to man
what he should learn when he cropped the King's hair.

So he did what was appointed for him and went home. But when he did so
he had no peace for the wonder of the secret that he had learned
preyed upon his mind so that he could not rest for thinking of it and
longing to reveal it, and at last he fell into a wasting sickness from
it, and was near to die. Then there was brought to see him a wise
druid, who was skilled in all maladies of the mind and body, and after
he had talked with the youth he said to his mother, "Thy son is dying
of the burden of a secret which he may not reveal to any man, but
until he reveals it he will have no ease. Let him, therefore, walk
along the high way till he comes to a place where four roads meet. Let
him then turn to the right, and the first tree that he shall meet on
the roadside let him tell the secret to it, and so it may be he shall
be relieved, and his vow will not be broken."

The mother told her son of the druid's advice, and next day he went
upon his way till he came to four cross roads, and he took the road
upon the right, and the first tree he found was a great willow-tree.
So the young man laid his cheek against the bark, and he whispered the
secret to the tree, and as he turned back homeward he felt lightened
of his burden, and he leaped and sang, and ere many days were past he
was as well and light hearted as ever he had been in his life.

Some while after that it happened that the King's harper, namely
Craftiny, broke the straining-post of his harp and went out to seek
for a piece of wood wherewith to mend it. And the first timber he
found that would fit the purpose was the willow-tree by the cross
roads. He cut it down, therefore, and took as much as would give him a
new straining-post, and he bore it home with him and mended his harp
with it. That night he played after meat before the King and his lords
as he was wont, but whatever he played and sang the folk that listened
to him seemed to hear only one thing, "Two horse's ears hath Labra the
Sailor."

Then the King plucked off his hood, and after that he made no secret
of his ears and none suffered on account of them thenceforward.



CHAPTER IV

King Iubdan and King Fergus


It happened on a day when Fergus son of Leda was King of Ulster, that
Iubdan, King of the Leprecauns or Wee Folk, of the land of Faylinn,
held a great banquet and assembly of the lords and princes of the Wee
Folk. And all their captains and men of war came thither, to show
their feats before the King, among whom was the strong man, namely
Glowar, whose might was such that with his battle-axe he could hew
down a thistle at one stroke. Thither also came the King's
heir-apparent. Tiny, son of Tot, and the Queen Bebo with her maidens;
and there were also the King's harpers and singing-men, and the chief
poet of the court, who was called Eisirt.

All these sat down to the feast in due order and precedence, with Bebo
on the King's right hand and the poet on his left, and Glowar kept the
door. Soon the wine began to flow from the vats of dark-red yew-wood,
and the carvers carved busily at great haunches of roast hares and
ribs of field-mice; and they all ate and drank, and loudly the hall
rang with gay talk and laughter, and the drinking of toasts, and
clashing of silver goblets.

At last when they had put away desire of eating and drinking, Iubdan
rose up, having in his hand the royal goblet of gold inlaid with
precious many-coloured jewels, and the heir-apparent rose at the other
end of the table, and they drank prosperity and victory to Faylinn.
Then Iubdan's heart swelled with pride, and he asked of the company,
"Come now, have any of you ever seen a king more glorious and powerful
than I am?" "Never, in truth," cried they all. "Have ye ever seen a
stronger man than my giant, Glowar?" "Never, O King," said they. "Or
battle-steeds and men-at-arms better than mine?" "By our words," they
cried, "we never have." "Truly," went on Iubdan, "I deem that he who
would assail our kingdom of Faylinn, and carry away captives and
hostages from us, would have his work cut out for him, so fierce and
mighty are our warriors; yea, any one of them hath the stuff of
kingship in him."

On hearing this, Eisirt, in whom the heady wine and ale had done their
work, burst out laughing; and the King turned to him, saying, "Eisirt,
what hath moved thee to this laughter?" "I know a province in Erinn,"
replied Eisirt, "one man of whom would harry Faylinn in the teeth of
all four battalions of the Wee Folk." "Seize him," cried the King to
his attendants; "Eisirt shall pay dearly in chains and in prison for
that scornful speech against our glory."

Then Eisirt was put in bonds, and he repented him of his brag; but ere
they dragged him away he said, "Grant me, O mighty King, but three
days' respite, that I may travel to Erinn to the court of Fergus mac
Leda, and if I bring not back some clear token that I have uttered
nought but the truth, then do with me as thou wilt."

So Iubdan bade them release him, and he fared away to Erinn oversea.

[Illustration: "They all trooped out, lords and ladies, to view the
wee man"]

After this, one day, as Fergus and his lords sat at the feast, the
gatekeeper of the palace of Fergus in Emania heard outside a sound of
ringing; he opened the gate, and there stood a wee man holding in his
hand a rod of white bronze hung with little silver bells, by which
poets are wont to procure silence for their recitations. Most noble
and comely was the little man to look on, though the short grass of
the lawn reached as high as to his knee. His hair was twisted in
four-ply strands after the manner of poets and he wore a
gold-embroidered tunic of silk and an ample scarlet cloak with a
fringe of gold. On his feet he wore shoes of white bronze ornamented
with gold, and a silken hood was on his head. The gatekeeper wondered
at the sight of the wee man, and went to report the matter to King
Fergus. "Is he less," asked Fergus, "than my dwarf and poet Æda?"
"Verily," said the gatekeeper, "he could stand upon the palm of Æda's
hand and have room to spare." Then with much laughter and wonder they
all trooped out, lords and ladies, to the great gate to view the wee
man and to speak with him. But Eisirt, when he saw them, waved them
back in alarm, crying, "Avaunt, huge men; bring not your heavy breath
so near me; but let yon man that is least among you approach me and
bear me in." So the dwarf Æda put Eisirt on his palm and bore him into
the banqueting hall.

Then they set him on the table, and Eisirt declared his name and
calling. The King ordered that meat and drink should be given him, but
Eisirt said, "I will neither eat of your meat nor drink of ale." "By
our word," said Fergus, "'tis a haughty wight; he ought to be dropped
into a goblet that he might at least drink all round him." The
cupbearer seized Eisirt and put him into a tankard of ale, and he swam
on the surface of it. "Ye wise men of Ulster," he cried, "there is
much knowledge and wisdom ye might get from me, yet ye will let me be
drowned!" "What, then?" cried they. Then Eisirt, beginning with the
King, set out to tell every hidden sin that each man or woman had
done, and ere he had gone far they with much laughter and chiding
fetched him out of the ale-pot and dried him with fair satin napkins.
"Now ye have confessed that I know somewhat to the purpose," said
Eisirt, "and I will even eat of your food, but do ye give heed to my
words, and do ill no more."

Fergus then said, "If thou art a poet, Eisirt, give us now a taste of
thy delightful art." "That will I," said Eisirt, "and the poem that I
shall recite to you shall be an ode in praise of my king, Iubdan the
Great." Then he recited this lay:--

   "A monarch of might
   Is Iubdan my king.
   His brow is snow-white,
   His hair black as night;
   As a red copper bowl
   When smitten will sing,
   So ringeth the voice
   Of Iubdan the king.
   His eyen, they roll
   Majestic and bland
   On the lords of his land
   Arrayed for the fight,
   A spectacle grand!
   Like a torrent they rush
   With a waving of swords
   And the bridles all ringing
   And cheeks all aflush,
   And the battle-steeds springing,
   A beautiful, terrible, death-dealing band.
   Like pines, straight and tall,
   Where Iubdan is king,
   Are the men one and all.
   The maidens are fair--
   Bright gold is their hair.
   From silver we quaff
   The dark, heady ale
   That never shall fail;
   We love and we laugh.
   Gold frontlets we wear;
   And aye through the air
   Sweet music doth ring--
   O Fergus, men say
   That in all Inisfail
   There is not a maiden so proud or so wise
   But would give her two eyes
   Thy kisses to win--
   But I tell thee, that there
   Thou canst never compare
   With the haughty, magnificent King of Faylinn!"

At this they all applauded, and Fergus said, "O youth and blameless
bard, let us be friends henceforth." And they all heaped before him,
as a poet's reward, gifts of rings and jewels and gold cups and
weapons, as high as a tall man standing. Then Eisirt said, "Truly a
generous and a worthy reward have ye given me, O men of Ulster; yet
take back these precious things I pray you, for every man in my
king's household hath an abundance of them." But the Ulster lords
said, "Nothing that we have given may we take back." Eisirt then bade
two-thirds of his reward be given to the bards and learned men of
Ulster, and one-third to the horse-boys and jesters; and so it was
done.

Three days and nights did Eisirt abide in Emania, and all the King's
court loved him and made much of him. Then he wished them blessing and
victory, and prepared to depart to his own country. Now Æda, the
King's dwarf and minstrel, begged Eisirt to take him with him on a
visit to the land of Faylinn; and Eisirt said, "I shall not bid thee
come, for then if kindness and hospitality be shown thee, thou wilt
say it is only what I had undertaken; but if thou come of thine own
motion, thou wilt perchance be grateful."

So they went off together; but Eisirt could not keep up with Æda, and
Æda said, "I perceive that Eisirt is but a poor walker." At this
Eisirt ran off like a flash and was soon an arrow flight in front of
Æda. When the latter at last came up with him, he said, "The right
thing, Eisirt, is not too fast and not too slow." "Since I have been
in Ulster," Eisirt replied, "I have never before heard ye measure out
the right."

By and by they reached the margin of the sea. "And what are we to do
now?" asked Æda. "Be not troubled, Æda," said Eisirt, "the horse of
Iubdan will bear us easily over this." They waited awhile on the
beach, and ere long they saw it coming toward them skimming over the
surface of the waves. "Save and protect us!" cried Æda at that sight;
and Eisirt asked him what he saw. "A red-maned hare," answered Æda.
"Nay, but that is Iubdan's horse," said Eisirt, and with that the
creature came prancing to land with flashing eyes and waving tail and
a long russet-coloured mane; a bridle beset with gold it had. Eisirt
mounted and bade Æda come up behind him. "Thy boat is little enough
for thee alone," said Æda. "Cease fault-finding and grumbling," then
said Eisirt, "for the weight of wisdom that is in thee will not bear
him down."

So Æda and Eisirt mounted on the fairy horse and away they sped over
the tops of the waves and the deeps of the ocean till at last they
reached the Kingdom of Faylinn, and there were a great concourse of
the Wee Folk awaiting them. "Eisirt is coming! Eisirt is coming!"
cried they all, "and a Fomorian giant along with him."

Then Iubdan went forth to meet Eisirt, and he kissed him, and said,
"Why hast thou brought this Fomorian with thee to slay us?" "He is no
Fomor," said Eisirt, "but a learned man and a poet from Ulster. He is
moreover the King of Ulster's dwarf, and in all that realm he is the
smallest man. He can lie in their great men's bosoms and stand upon
their hands as though he were a child; yet for all that you would do
well to be careful how you behave to him." "What is his name?" said
they then. "He is the poet Æda," said Eisirt. "Uch," said they, "what
a giant thou hast brought us!"

"And now, O King," said Eisirt to Iubdan, "I challenge thee to go and
see for thyself the region from which we have come, and make trial of
the royal porridge which is made for Fergus King of Ulster this very
night."

At this Iubdan was much dismayed, and he betook himself to Bebo his
wife and told her how he was laid under bonds of chivalry by Eisirt to
go to the land of the giants; and he bade her prepare to accompany
him. "I will go," said she, "but you did an ill deed when you
condemned Eisirt to prison."

So they mounted, both of them, on the fairy steed, and in no long time
they reached Emania, and it was now past midnight. And they were
greatly afraid, and said Bebo, "Let us search for that porridge and
taste it, as we were bound, and make off again ere the folk awake."

They made their way into the palace of Fergus, and soon they found a
great porridge pot, but the rim was too high to be reached from the
ground. "Get thee up upon thy horse," said Bebo, "and from thence to
the rim of this cauldron." And thus he did, but having gained the rim
of the pot his arm was too short to reach the silver ladle that was
in it. In straining downward to do so, however, he slipped and in he
fell, and up to his middle in the thick porridge he stuck fast. And
when Bebo heard what a plight he was in, she wept, and said, "Rash and
hasty wert thou, Iubdan, to have got into this evil case, but surely
there is no man under the sun that can make thee hear reason." And he
said, "Rash indeed it was, but thou canst not help me, Bebo, now, and
it is but folly to stay; take the horse and flee away ere the day
break." "Say not so," replied Bebo, "for surely I will not go till I
see how things fall out with thee."


At last the folk in the palace began to be stirring, and ere long they
found Iubdan in the porridge pot.

So they picked him out with great laughter bore him off to Fergus.

"By my conscience," said Fergus, "but this is not the little fellow
that was here before, for he had yellow hair, but this one hath a
shock of the blackest; who art thou at all, wee man?"

"I am of the Wee Folk," said Iubdan, "and am indeed king over them,
and this woman is my wife and queen, Bebo."

"Take him away," then said Fergus to his varlets, "and guard him
well"; for he misdoubted some mischief of Faery was on foot.

"Nay, nay," cried Iubdan, "but let me not be with these coarse
fellows. I pledge thee my word that I will not quit this place till
thou and Ulster give me leave."

"Could I believe that," said Fergus, "I would not put thee in bonds."

"I have never broken my word," said Iubdan, "and I never will."

Then Fergus set him free and allotted him a fair chamber for himself,
and a trusty servingman to wait upon him. Soon there came in a gillie
whose business it was to see to the fires, and he kindled the fire for
Iubdan, throwing on it a woodbine together with divers other sorts of
timber. Then Iubdan said, "Man of smoke, burn not the king of the
trees, for it is not meet to burn him. Wouldst thou but take counsel
from me thou mightest go safely by sea or land." Iubdan then chanted
to him the following recital of the duties of his office:--

"O fire-gillie of Fergus of the Feasts, never by land or sea burn the
King of the woods, High King of the forests of Inisfail, whom none may
bind, but who like a strong monarch holds all the other trees in hard
bondage. If thou burn the twining one, misfortune will come of it,
peril at the point of spear, or drowning in the waves.

"Burn not the sweet apple-tree of drooping branches, of the white
blossoms, to whose gracious head each man puts forth his hand.

"The stubborn blackthorn wanders far and wide, the good craftsman
burns not this timber; little though its bushes be, yet flocks of
birds warble in them.

"Burn not the noble willow, the unfailing ornament of poems; bees
drink from its blossoms, all delight in the graceful tent.

"The delicate, airy tree of the druids, the rowan with its berries,
this burn; but avoid the weak tree, burn not the slender hazel.

"The ash-tree of the black buds burn not--timber that speeds the
wheel, that yields the rider his switch; the ashen spear is the
scale-beam of battle.

"The tangled, bitter bramble, burn him, the sharp and green; he flays
and cuts the foot; he snares you and drags you back.

"Hottest of timber is the green oak; he will give you a pain in the
head if you use him overmuch, a pain in the eyes will come from his
biting fumes.

"Full-charged with witchcraft is the alder, the hottest tree in the
fight; burn assuredly both the alder and the whitehorn at your will.

"Holly, burn it in the green and in the dry; of all trees in the
world, holly is absolutely the best.

"The elder-tree of the rough brown bark, burn him to cinders, the
steed of the Fairy Folk.

"The drooping birch, by all means burn him too, the tree of
long-lasting bloom.

"And lay low, if it pleases you, the russet aspen; late or early, burn
the tree with the quaking plumage.

"The yew is the venerable ancestor of the wood as the companion of
feasts he is known; of him make goodly brown vats for ale and wine.

"Follow my counsel, O man of the smoke, and it shall go well with you,
body and soul."

So Iubdan continued in Emania free to go and come as he pleased; and
all the Ulstermen delighted to watch him and to hear his conversation.

One day it chanced that he was in the chamber of the Queen, and saw
her putting on her feet a very dainty and richly embroidered pair of
shoes. At this Iubdan gave a laugh. "Why dost thou laugh?" said
Fergus. "Meseems the healing is applied very far from the hurt,"
replied Iubdan. "What meanest thou by that?" said Fergus. "Because the
Queen is making her feet fine in order, O Fergus, that she may attract
thee to her lips," said Iubdan.

Another time it chanced that Iubdan overheard one of the King's
soldiers complaining of a pair of new brogues that had been served out
to him, and grumbling that the soles were too thin. At this Iubdan
laughed again, and being asked why, he said, "I must need laugh to
hear yon fellow grumbling about his brogues, for the soles of these
brogues, thin as they are, he will never wear out." And this was a
true prophecy, for the same night this and another of the King's men
had a quarrel, and fought, and killed each the other.

At last the Wee Folk determined to go in search of their king, and
seven battalions of them marched upon Emania and encamped upon the
lawn over against the King's Dún. Fergus and his nobles went out to
confer with them. "Give us back our king," said the Wee Folk, "and we
shall redeem him with a great ransom." "What ransom, then?" asked
Fergus. "We shall," said they, "cause this great plain to stand thick
with corn for you every year, and that without ploughing or sowing."
"I will not give up Iubdan for that," said Fergus. "Then we shall do
you a mischief," said the Wee Folk.

That night every calf in the Province of Ulster got access to its dam,
and in the morn there was no milk to be had for man or child, for the
cows were sucked dry.

Then said the Wee Folk to Fergus, "This night, unless we get Iubdan,
we shall defile every well and lake and river in Ulster." "That is a
trifle," said Fergus, "and ye shall not get Iubdan."

The Wee Folk carried out this threat, and once more they came and
demanded Iubdan, saying, "To-night we shall burn with fire the shaft
of every mill in Ulster." "Yet not so shall ye get Iubdan," said
Fergus.

This being done, they came again, saying, "We shall have vengeance
unless Iubdan be delivered to us." "What vengeance?" said Fergus. "We
shall snip off every ear of corn in thy kingdom," said they. "Even
so," replied Fergus, "I shall not deliver Iubdan."

So the Wee Folk snipped off every ear of standing corn in Ulster, and
once more they returned and demanded Iubdan. "What will ye do next?"
asked Fergus. "We shall shave the hair of every man and every woman in
Ulster," said they, "so that ye shall be shamed and disgraced for ever
among the people of Erinn." "By my word," said Fergus, "if ye do that
I shall slay Iubdan."

Then Iubdan said, "I have a better counsel than that, O King; let me
have liberty to go and speak with them, and I shall bid them make good
what mischief they have done, and they shall return home forthwith."

Fergus granted that; and when the Wee Folk saw Iubdan approaching
them, they set up a shout of triumph that a man might have heard a
bowshot off, for they believed they had prevailed and that Iubdan was
released to them. But Iubdan said, "My faithful people, you must now
begone, and I may not go with you; make good also all the mischief
that ye have done, and know that if ye do any more I must die."

Then the Wee Folk departed, very downcast and sorrowful, but they did
as Iubdan had bidden them.

Iubdan, however, went to Fergus and said, "Take, O King, the choicest
of my treasures, and let me go."

"What is thy choicest treasure?" said Fergus.

Iubdan then began to recite to Fergus the list of his possessions,
such as druidic weapons, and love-charms, and instruments of music
that played without touch of human hand, and vats of ale that could
never be emptied; and he named among other noble treasures a pair of
shoes, wearing which a man could go over or under the sea as readily
as on dry land.

At the same time Æda, the dwarf and poet of Ulster, returned hale and
well from the land of Faylinn, and much did he entertain the King and
all the court with tales of the smallness of the Wee Folk, and their
marvel at his own size, and their bravery and beauty, and their marble
palaces and matchless minstrelsy.

So the King, Fergus mac Leda, was well content to take a ransom,
namely the magic shoes, which he desired above all the treasures of
Faylinn, and to let Iubdan go. And he gave him rich gifts, as did also
the nobles of Ulster, and wished him blessing and victory; and Iubdan
he departed, with Bebo his wife, having first bestowed upon Fergus the
magical shoes. And of him the tale hath now no more to say.

But Fergus never tired of donning the shoes of Iubdan and traversing
the secret depths of the lakes and rivers of Ulster. Thereby, too, in
the end he got his death, for as the wise say that the gifts of Faery
may not be enjoyed without peril by mortal men, so in this case too
it proved. For, one day as Fergus was exploring the depths of Loch
Rury he met the monster, namely the river-horse, which inhabited that
lake. Horrible of form it was, swelling and contracting like a
blacksmith's bellows, and with eyes like torches, and glittering
tusks, and a mane of coarse hair on its crest and neck. When it saw
Fergus it laid back its ears, and its neck arched like a rainbow over
his head, and the vast mouth gaped to devour him. Then Fergus rose
quickly to the surface and made for the land, and the beast after him,
driving before it a huge wave of foam. Barely did he escape with his
life; but with the horror of the sight his features were distorted and
his mouth was twisted around to the side of his head, so that he was
called Fergus Wry-mouth from that day forth. And the gillie that was
with him told the tale of the adventure.

Now there was a law in Ireland that no man might be king who was
disfigured by any bodily blemish. His people, therefore, loving
Fergus, kept from him all knowledge of his condition, and the Queen
let all mirrors that were in the palace be put away. But one day it
chanced that a bondmaid was negligent in preparing the bath, and
Fergus being impatient, gave her a stroke with a switch which he had
in his hand. The maid in anger turned upon him, and cried, "It would
better become thee to avenge thyself on the riverhorse that hath
twisted thy mouth, than to do brave deeds on women."

Fergus then bade a mirror be fetched, and when he saw his face in it,
he said, "The woman spake truth; the riverhorse of Loch Rury has done
this thing."

[Illustration: "Fergus goes down into the lake"]

The next day Fergus put on the shoes of Iubdan and went forth to Loch
Rury, and with him went the lords of Ulster. And when he reached the
margin of the lake he drew his sword and went down into it, and soon
the waters covered him.

After a while those that watched upon the bank saw a bubbling and a
mighty commotion in the waters, now here, now there, and waves of
bloody froth broke at their feet. At last, as they strained their eyes
upon the tossing water, they saw Fergus rise to his middle from it,
pale and bloody. In his right hand he waved aloft his sword, his left
was twisted in the coarse hair of the monster's head, and they saw
that his countenance was fair and kingly as of old. "Ulstermen, I have
conquered," he cried; and as he did so he sank down again, dead with
his dead foe, into their red grave in Loch Rury.

And the Ulster lords went back to Emania, sorrowful yet proud, for
they knew that a seed of honour had been sown that day in their land
from which should spring a breed of high-hearted fighting men for many
a generation to come.




CHAPTER V

The Carving of mac Datho's Boar


Once upon a time there dwelt in the province of Leinster a wealthy
hospitable lord named Mesroda, son of Datho. Two possessions had he;
namely, a hound which could outrun every other hound and every wild
beast in Erinn, and a boar which was the finest and greatest in size
that man had ever beheld.

Now the fame of this hound was noised all about the land, and many
were the princes and lords who longed to possess it. And it came to
pass that Conor, King of Ulster, and Maev, Queen of Connacht, sent
messengers to mac Datho to ask him to sell them the hound for a price,
and both the messengers arrived at the Dún of mac Datho on the same
day. Said the Connacht messenger, "We will give thee in exchange for
the hound six hundred milch cows, and a chariot with two horses, the
best that are to be found in Connacht, and at the end of a year thou
shalt have as much again." And the messenger of King Conor said, "We
will give no less than Connacht, and the friendship and alliance of
Ulster, and that will be better for thee than the friendship of
Connacht."

Then Mesroda mac Datho fell silent, and for three days he would not
eat nor drink, nor could he sleep o' nights, but tossed restlessly on
his bed. His wife observed his condition, and said to him, "Thy fast
hath been long, Mesroda, though good food is by thee in plenty; and at
night thou turnest thy face to the wall, and well I know thou dost not
sleep. What is the cause of thy trouble?"

"There is a saying," replied mac Datho, "'Trust not a thrall with
money, nor a woman with a secret.'"

"When should a man talk to a woman," said his wife, "but when
something were amiss? What thy mind cannot solve perchance another's
may."

Then mac Datho told his wife of the request for his hound both from
Ulster and from Connacht at one and the same time, "and whichever of
them I deny," he said, "they will harry my cattle and slay my people."

"Then hear my counsel," said the woman. "Give it to both of them, and
bid them come and fetch it; and if there be any harrying to be done,
let them even harry each other; but in no way mayest thou keep the
hound."

On that, mac Datho rose up and shook himself, and called for food and
drink, and made merry with himself and his guests. Then he sent
privately for the messenger of Queen Maev, and said to him, "Long have
I doubted what to do, but now I am resolved to give the hound to
Connacht. Let ye send for it on such a day with a train of your nobles
or warriors and bear him forth nobly and proudly, for he is worth it;
and ye shall all have drink and food and royal entertainment in my
Dún." So the messenger departed, well pleased.

To the Ulster messenger mac Datho said, "After much perplexity I have
resolved to give my hound to Conor. Let the best of the Ulstermen come
to fetch him, and they shall be welcomed and entertained as is
fitting." And for these he named the same day as he had done for the
embassy from Connacht.

When the appointed day came round, the flower of the fighting men of
two provinces of Ireland were assembled before the Dún of the son of
Datho, and there were also Conor, King of Ulster, and Ailill, the
husband of Maev, Queen of Connacht. Mac Datho went forth to meet them.
"Welcome, warriors," he said to them, "albeit for two armies at once
we were not prepared." Then he bade them into the Dún, and in the
great hall they sat down. Now in this hall there were seven doors, and
between every two doors were benches for fifty men. Not as friends
bidden to a feast did the men of Ulster and of Connacht look upon one
another, since for three hundred years the provinces had ever been at
war.

"Let the great boar be killed," said mac Datho, and it was done. For
seven years had that boar been nourished on the milk of fifty cows;
yet rather on venom should it have been nourished, such was the
mischief that was to come from the carving of it.

When the boar was roasted it was brought in, and many other kinds of
food as side dishes, "and if more be wanting to the feast," said mac
Datho, "it shall be slain for you before the morning."

"The boar is good," said Conor.

"It is a fine boar," said Ailill; "and now, O mac Datho, how shall it
be divided among us?"

There was among the Ulster company one Bricru, son of Carbad, whose
delight was in biting speeches and in fomenting strife, though he
himself was never known to draw sword in any quarrel. He now spoke
from his couch in answer to Ailill:

"How should the boar be divided, O son of Datho, except by appointing
to carve it him who is best in deeds of arms? Here be all the valiant
men of Ireland assembled; have none of us hit each other a blow on the
nose ere now?"

"Good," said Ailill, "so let it be done."

"We also agree," said Conor; "there are plenty of our lads in the
house that have many a time gone round the border of the Provinces."

"You will want them to-night, Conor," said an old warrior from Conlad
in the West. "They have often been seen on their backs on the roads of
rushy Dedah, and many a fat steer have they left with me."

"It was a fat bullock thou didst have with thee once upon a day,"
replied Moonremar of Ulster, "even thine own brother, and by the rushy
road of Conlad he came and went not back."

"'Twas a better man than he, even Irloth, son of Fergus mac Leda, who
fell by the hand of Echbael in Tara Luachra," replied Lugad of
Munster.

"Echbael?" cried Keltchar, son of Uthecar Hornskin of Ulster. "Is it
of him ye boast, whom I myself slew and cut off his head?"

And thus the heroes bandied about the tales and taunts of their
victories, until at length Ket, son of Maga of the Connachtmen, arose
and stood over the boar and took the knife into his hand. "Now," he
cried, "let one man in Ulster match his deeds with mine, or else hold
ye your peace and let me carve the boar!"

For a while there was silence, and then Conor King of Ulster, said to
Logary the Triumphant, "Stay that for me." So Logary arose and said,
"Ket shall never carve the boar for all of us."

"Not so fast, Logary," said Ket. "It is the custom among you Ulstermen
that when a youth first takes arms he comes to prove himself on us. So
didst thou, Logary, and we met thee at the border. From that meeting I
have thy chariot and horses, and thou hadst a spear through thy ribs
Not thus wilt thou get the boar from me." Then Logary sat down on his
bench.

"Ket shall never divide that pig," spake then a tall fair-haired
warrior from Ulster, coming down the hall. "Whom have we here?" asked
Ket. "A better man than thou," shouted the Ulstermen, "even Angus, son
of Lama Gabad." "Indeed?" said Ket, "and why is his father called Lama
Gabad [wanting a hand]?" "We know not," said they. "But I know it,"
said Ket. "Once I went on a foray to the East, and was attacked by a
troop, Lama Gabad among them. He flung a lance at me. I seized the
same lance and flung it back, and it shore off his hand, and it lay
there on the field before him. Shall that man's son measure himself
with me?" And Angus went to his bench and sat down.

"Keep up the contest," then cried Ket tauntingly, "or let me divide
the boar." "That thou shalt not," cried another Ulster warrior of
great stature. "And who is this?" said Ket. "Owen Mór, King of Fermag,"
said the Ulstermen. "I have seen him ere now," said Ket. "I took a
drove of cattle from him before his own house. He put a spear through
my shield and I flung it back and it tore out one of his eyes, and
one-eyed he is to this day." Then Owen Mór sat down.

"Have ye any more to contest the pig with me?" then said Ket. "Thou
hast not won it yet," said Moonremar, son of Gerrkind, rising up. "Is
that Moonremar?" said Ket, "It is," they cried.

"It is but three days," said Ket, "since I was the last man who won
renown of thee. Three heads of thy fighting men did I carry off from
Dún Moonremar, and one of the three was the head of thy eldest son."
Moonremar then sat down.

"Still the contest," said Ket, "or I shall carve the boar." "Contest
thou shalt have," said Mend, son of Sword-heel. "Who is this?" said
Ket. "'Tis Mend," cried all the Ulstermen.

"Shall the sons of fellows with nicknames come here to contend with
me?" cried Ket. "I was the priest who christened thy father that name.
'Twas I who cut the heel off him, so that off he went with only one.
What brings the son of that man to contend with me?" Mend then sat
down in his seat.

"Come to the contest," said Ket, "or I shall begin to carve." Then
arose from the Ulstermen a huge grey and terrible warrior. "Who is
this?" asked Ket. '"Tis Keltcar, son of Uthecar," cried they all.

"Wait awhile, Keltcar," said Ket, "do not pound me to pieces just yet.
Once, O Keltcar, I made a foray on thee and came in front of Dún. All
thy folk attacked me, and thou amongst them. In a narrow pass we
fought, and thou didst fling a spear at me and I at thee, but my spear
went through thy loins and thou hast never been the better of it
since." Then Keltcar sat down in his seat.

"Who else comes to the contest," cried Ket "or shall I at last divide
the pig?" Up rose then the son of King Conor, named Cuscrid the
Stammerer "Whom have we here?" said Ket. "'Tis Cuscrid son of Conor,"
cried they all. "He has the stuff of a king in him," said Ket. "No
thanks to thee for that," said the youth.

"Well, then," said Ket, "thou madest thy first foray against us
Connachtmen, and on the border of the Provinces we met thee. A third
of thy people, thou didst leave behind thee, and came away with my
spear through thy throat, so that thou canst not speak rightly ever
since, for the sinews of thy throat were severed. And hence is Cuscrid
the Stammerer thy byname ever since."

So thus Ket laid shame and defeat on the whole Province of Ulster, nor
was there any other warrior in the hall found to contend with him.

[Illustration: "A mighty shout of exultation arose from the
Ulstermen"]

Then Ket stood up triumphing, and took the knife in his hand and
prepared to carve the boar when a noise and trampling were heard at
the great door of the hall, and a mighty shout of exultation arose
from the Ulstermen. When the press parted, Ket saw coming up the
centre of the hall Conall of the Victories, and Conor the King dashed
the helmet from his head and sprang up for joy.

"Glad we are," cried Conall, "that all is ready for feast; and who is
carving the boar for us?"

"Ket, son of Maga," replied they, "for none could contest the place of
honour with him."

"Is that so, Ket?" says Conall Cearnach.

"Even so," replied Ket. "And now welcome to thee, O Conall, thou of
the iron heart and fiery blood; keen as the glitter of ice,
ever-victorious chieftain; hail mighty son of Finnchoom!"

And Conall said, "Hail to thee, Ket, flower of heroes, lord of
chariots, a raging sea in battle; a strong, majestic bull; hail, son
of Maga!"

"And now," went on Conall, "rise up from the boar and give me place."

"Why so?" replied Ket.

"Dost thou seek a contest from me?" said Conall; "verily thou shalt
have it. By the gods of my nation I swear that since I first took
weapons in my hand I have never passed one day that I did not slay a
Connachtman, nor one night that I did not make a foray on them, nor
have I ever slept but I had the head of a Connachtman under my knee."

"I confess," then, said Ket, "that thou art a better man than I, and I
yield thee the boar. But if Anluan my brother were here, he would
match thee deed for deed, and sorrow and shame it is that he is not."


"Anluan is here," shouted Conall, and with that he drew from his
girdle the head of Anluan and dashed it in the face of Ket.

Then all sprang to their feet and a wild shouting and tumult arose,
and the swords flew out of themselves, and battle raged in the hall of
mac Datho. Soon the hosts burst out through the doors of the Dún and
smote and slew each other in the open field, until the Connacht host
were put to flight. The hound of mac Datho pursued them along with the
Ulstermen, and it came up with the chariot in which King Ailill was
driving, and seized the pole of the chariot, but the charioteer dealt
it a blow that cut off its head. When Ailill drew rein they found the
hound's head still clinging to the pole, whence that place is called
Ibar Cinn Chon, or the Yew Tree of the Hound's Head.

Now when Conor pursued hard upon King Ailill, Ferloga, the charioteer
of Ailill, lighted down and hid himself in the heather; and as Conor
drove past, Ferloga leaped up behind him in the chariot and gripped
him by the throat.

"What will thou have of me?" said Conor.

"Give over the pursuit," said Ferloga, "and take me with thee to
Emania,[19] and let the maidens of Emania so long as I am there sing
a serenade before my dwelling every night."

   [19] The ancient royal residence of Ulster, near to the present
   town of Armagh.

"Granted," said Conor. So he took Ferloga with him to Emania, and at
the end of a year sent him back to Connacht, escorting him as far as
to Athlone; and Ferloga had from the King of Ulster two noble horses
with golden bridles, but the serenade from the maidens of Ulster he
did not get, though he got the horses instead. And thus ends the tale
of the contention between Ulster and Connacht over the Carving of mac
Datho's Boar.




CHAPTER VI

The Vengeance of Mesgedra


Atharna the Bard, surnamed the Extortionate, was the chief poet and
satirist of Ulster in the reign of Conor mac Nessa. Greed and
arrogance were in his heart and poison on his tongue, and the kings
and lords of whom he asked rewards for his poems dared not refuse him
aught, partly because of the poisonous satires and lampoons which he
would otherwise make upon them for their niggardliness, and partly for
that in Ireland at that day it was deemed shameful to refuse to a bard
whatsoever he might ask. Once it was said that he asked of a sub-king,
namely Eochy mac Luchta, who was famed for hospitality and generosity,
the single thing that Eochy would have been grieved to give, namely
his eye, and Eochy had but one eye. But the King plucked it out by the
roots and gave it to him; and Atharna went away disappointed, for he
had looked that Eochy would ransom his eye at a great price.

Now Conor mac Nessa, King of Ulster, and all the Ulster lords, having
grown very powerful and haughty, became ill neighbours to all the
other kingdoms in Ireland. On fertile Leinster above all they fixed
their eyes, and sought for an opportunity to attack and plunder the
province. Conor resolved at last to move Atharna to go to the King of
Leinster, in the hope that he himself might be rid of Atharna, by the
King of Leinster killing him for his insolence and his exactions, and
that he might avenge the death of his bard by the invasion of
Leinster.

Atharna therefore set out for Leinster accompanied by his train of
poets and harpers and gillies and arrived at the great Dún of Mesgedra
the King, at Naas in Kildare. Here he dwelt for twelve months wasting
the substance of the Leinstermen and in the end when he was minded to
return to Ulster he went before the King Mesgedra and the lords of
Leinster and demanded his poet's fee.

"What is thy demand, Atharna?" asked Mesgedra.

"So many cattle and so many sheep," answered Atharna, "and store of
gold and raiment, and of the fairest dames and maidens of Leinster
forty-five, to grind at my querns in Dún Atharna."

"It shall be granted thee," said the King. Then Atharna feared some
mischief, for the King and the nobles of Leinster had not seemed like
men on whom shameful conditions are laid, nor had they offered to
ransom their women. Atharna therefore judged that the Leinstermen
might fall upon him to recover their booty when he was once beyond the
border, for within their own borders they might not affront a guest.
He sent, therefore, a swift messenger to Conor mac Nessa, bidding him
come with a strong escort as quickly as he might, to meet Atharna's
band on the marches of Leinster, and convey him safely home.

Atharna then departed from Naas with a great herd of sheep and cattle
and other spoils, and with thrice fifteen of the noble women of
Leinster. He went leisurely, meaning to strike the highroad to Emania
from Dublin; but when he came thither the Liffey was swollen with
rain, and the ford at Dublin might not be crossed. He caused,
therefore, many great hurdles to be made, and these were set in the
river, and over them a causeway of boughs was laid, so that his
cattle and spoils came safely across. Hence is the town of that place
called to this day in Gaelic the City of the Hurdle Ford.

On the next day Conor and the Ulstermen met him, but a great force of
the men of Leinster was also marching from Naas to the border, to
recover their womenfolk, even as Atharna had expected. The Leinstermen
then broke the battle on the company from Ulster, and defeated them,
driving them with the cows of Atharna on to the sea cape of Ben Edar
(Howth), but they recovered the women. On Ben Edar did King Conor with
the remnant of his troop then fortify themselves, making a great fosse
across the neck of land by which Ben Edar is joined to the mainland,
and here they were besieged, with hard fighting by day and night,
expecting that help should come to them from Ulster, whither they had
sent messengers to tell of their distress.

Now Conall of the Victories was left behind to rule in Emania when
Conor set forth to Leinster, and he now, on hearing how the King was
beset, assembled a great host and marched down to Ben Edar. Here he
attacked the host of Leinster, and a great battle was fought, many
being slain on both sides, and the King of Leinster, Mesgedra, lost
his left hand in the fight. In the end the men of Leinster were
routed, and fled, and Mesgedra drove in his chariot past the City of
the Hurdle Ford and Naas to the fords of Liffey at Clane. Here there
was a sacred oak tree where druid rites and worship were performed,
and that oak tree was sanctuary, so that within its shadow, guarded by
mighty spells, no man might be slain by his enemy.

Now Conall Cearnach had followed hard on the track of Mesgedra, and
when he found him beneath the oak, he drove his chariot round and
round the circuit of the sanctuary, bidding Mesgedra come forth and do
battle with him, or be counted a dastard among the kings of Erinn. But
Mesgedra said, "Is it the fashion of the champions of Ulster to
challenge one-armed men to battle?"

Then Conall let his charioteer bind one of his arms to his side, and
again he taunted Mesgedra and bade him come forth.

Mesgedra then drew sword, and between him and Conall there was a
fierce fight until the Liffey was reddened with their blood. At last,
by a chance blow of the sword of Mesgedra, the bonds of Conall's left
arm were severed.

"On thy head be it," said Conall, "if thou release me again."

Then he caused his arm to be bound up once more, and again they met,
sword to sword, and again in the fury of the fight Mesgedra cut the
thongs that bound Conall's arm. "The gods themselves have doomed
thee," shouted Conall then, and he rushed upon Mesgedra and in no
long time he wounded him to death.

"Take my head," said Mesgedra then, "and add my glory to thy glory,
but be well assured this wrong shall yet be avenged by me upon
Ulster," and he died.

Then Conall cut off the head of Mesgedra and put it in his chariot,
and took also the chariot of Mesgedra and fared northwards. Ere long
he met a chariot and fifty women accompanying it. In it was Buan the
Queen, wife of Mesgedra, returning from a visit to Meath.

"Who art thou, woman?" said Conall.

"I am Buan, wife of Mesgedra the King."

"Thou art to come with me," then said Conall.

"Who hath commanded this?" said Buan.

"Mesgedra the King," said Conall.

"By what token dost thou lay these commands upon me?"

"Behold his chariot and his horses," said Conall.

"He gives rich gifts to many a man," answered the Queen.

Then Conall showed her the head of her husband.

"This is my token," said he.

"It is enough," said Buan. "But give me leave to bewail him ere I go
into captivity."

Then Buan rose up in her chariot and raised for Mesgedra a keen of
sorrow so loud and piercing that her heart broke with it, and she fell
backwards on the road and died.

Conall Cearnach then buried her there, and laid the head of her
husband by her side; and the fair hazel tree that grew from her grave
by the fords of Clane was called Coll Buana, or the Hazel Tree of
Buan.

But ere Conall buried the head of Mesgedra he caused the brain to be
taken out and mixed with lime to make a bullet for a sling, for so it
was customary to do when a great warrior had been killed; and the
brain-balls thus made were accounted to be the deadliest of missiles.


So when Leinster had been harried and plundered and its king and queen
thus slain, the Ulstermen drew northward again, and the brain-ball was
laid up in the Dún of King Conor at Emania.

Years afterwards it happened that the Wolf of Connacht, namely Ket,
son of Maga, came disguised within the borders of Ulster in search of
prey, and he entered the palace precincts of Conor in Emania. There he
saw two jesters of the King, who had gotten the brain-ball from the
shelf where it lay, and were rolling it about the courtyard. Ket knew
it for what it was, and put it out of sight of the jesters and took it
away with him while they made search for it. Thenceforth Ket carried
it ever about with him in his girdle, hoping that he might yet use it
to destroy some great warrior among the Ulstermen.

One day thereafter Ket made a foray on the men of Ross, and carried
away a spoil of cattle. The host of Ulster and King Conor with them
overtook him as he went homeward. The men of Connacht had also
mustered to the help of Ket, and both sides made them ready for
battle.

Now a river, namely Brosna, ran between them, and on a hill at one
side of this were assembled a number of the noble women of Connacht,
who desired greatly to look on the far-famed Ultonian warriors, and
above all on Conor the King, whose presence was said to be royal and
stately beyond any man that was then living in Erinn. Among the
bushes, close to the women, Ket hid himself, and lay still but
watchful.

Now Conor, seeing none but womenfolk close to him at this point, and
being willing to show them his splendour, drew near to the bank on his
side of the stream. Then Ket leaped up, whirling his sling, and the
bullet hummed across the river and smote King Conor on the temple. And
his men carried him off for dead, and the men of Connacht broke the
battle on the Ulstermen, slaying many, and driving the rest of them
back to their own place. This battle was thenceforth called the Battle
of the Ford of the Sling-cast, or Athnurchar; and so the place is
called to this day.

When Conor was brought home to Emania his chief physician, Fingen,
found the ball half buried in his temple. "If the ball be taken out,"
said Fingen, "he will die; if it remain he will live, but he will bear
the blemish of it."

"Let him bear the blemish," said the Ulster lords, "that is a small
matter compared with the death of Conor."

Then Fingen stitched the wound over with a thread of gold, for Conor
had curling golden hair, and bade him keep himself from all violent
movements and from all vehement passions, and not to ride on
horseback, and he would do well.

After that Conor lived for seven years, and he went not to war during
that time, and all cause of passion was kept far from him. Then one
day at broad noon the sky darkened, and the gloom of night seemed to
spread over the world, and all the people feared, and looked for some
calamity. Conor called to him his chief druid, namely Bacarach, and
inquired of him as to the cause of the gloom.

The druid then went with Conor into a sacred grove of oaks and
performed the rites of divination, and in a trance he spoke to Conor,
saying, "I see a hill near a great city, and three high crosses on it.
To one of them is nailed the form of a young man who is like unto one
of the Immortals. Round him stand soldiers with tall spears, and a
great crowd waiting to see him die."

"Is he, then, a malefactor?"

"Nay," said the druid, "but holiness, innocence, and truth have come
to earth in him, and for this cause have the druids of his land doomed
him to die, for his teaching was not as theirs. And the heavens are
darkened for wrath and sorrow at the sight."

Then Conor leaped up in a fury, crying, "They shall not slay him,
they shall not slay him! Would I were there with the host of Ulster,
and thus would I scatter his foes"; and with that he snatched his
sword and began striking at the trees that stood thickly about him in
the druid grove. Then with the heat of his passion the sling-ball
burst from his head, and he fell to the ground and died.

Thus was fulfilled the vengeance of Mesgedra upon Conor mac Nessa,
King of Ulster.




CHAPTER VII

The Story of Etain and Midir


Once upon a time there was a High King of the Milesian race in Ireland
named Eochy Airem, whose power and splendour were very great, and all
the sub-Kings, namely, Conor of Ulster, and Mesgedra of Leinster, and
Curoi of Munster, and Ailill and Maev of Connacht, were obedient to
him. But he was without a wife; and for this reason the sub-Kings and
Princes of Ireland would not come to his festivals at Tara, "for,"
said they, "there is no noble in Ireland who is a wifeless man, and a
King is no king without a queen." And they would not bring their own
wives to Tara without a queen there to welcome them, nor would they
come themselves and leave their womenfolk at home.

So Eochy bade search be made through all the boundaries of Ireland for
a maiden meet to be wife of the High King. And in time his messengers
came back and said that they had found in Ulster, by the Bay of
Cichmany, the fairest and most accomplished maiden in Ireland, and her
name was Etain, daughter of Etar, lord of the territory called Echrad.
So Eochy, when he had heard their report, went forth to woo the
maiden.

When he drew near his journey's end he passed by a certain spring of
pure water where it chanced that Etain and her maids had come down
that she might wash her hair. She held in her hand a comb of silver
inlaid with gold, and before her was a bason of silver chased with
figures of birds, and around the rim of it red carbuncles were set.
Her mantle was purple with a fringe of silver, and it was fastened
with a broad golden brooch. She wore also a tunic of green silk, stiff
with embroidery of gold that glittered in the sun. Her hair before she
loosed it was done in two mighty tresses, yellow like the flower of
the waterflag, each tress being plaited in four strands, and at the
end of each strand a little golden ball. When she laid aside her
mantle her arms came through the armholes of her tunic, white as the
snow of a single night, and her cheeks were ruddy as the foxglove.
Even and small were her teeth, as if a shower of pearls had fallen in
her mouth. Her eyes were hyacinth-blue, her lips scarlet as the
rowan-berry, her shoulders round and white, her fingers were long and
her nails smooth and pink. Her feet also were slim, and white as
sea-foam. The radiance of the moon was in her face, pride in her
brows, the light of wooing in her eyes. Of her it was said that there
was no beauty among women compared with Etain's beauty, no sweetness
compared with the sweetness of Etain.

When the King saw her his heart burned with love for her, and when he
had speech with her he besought her to be his bride. And she consented
to that, and said, "Many have wooed me, O King, but I would none of
them, for since I was a little child I have loved thee, for the high
tales that I heard of thee and of thy glory." And Eochy said, "Thine
alone will I be if thou wilt have me." So the King paid a great
bride-price for her, and bore her away to Tara, and there they were
wedded, and all men welcomed and honoured the Queen. Nor had she dwelt
long in Tara before the enchantment of her beauty and her grace had
worked upon the hearts of all about her, so that the man to whom she
spoke grew pale at the womanly sweetness of her voice, and felt
himself a king for that day. All fair things and bright she loved,
such as racing steeds and shining raiment, and the sight of Eochy's
warriors with their silken banners and shields decorated with rich
ornament in red and blue. And she would have all about her happy and
joyous, and she gave freely of her treasure, and of her smiles and
loving words, if she might see the light of joy on the faces of men,
but from pain or sadness that might not be cured she would turn away.
In one thing only was sadness endurable to her and that was in her
music, for when she sang or touched the harp all hearts were pierced
with longing for they knew not what, and all eyes shed tears save hers
alone, who looked as though she beheld, far from earth, some land more
fair than words of man can tell; and all the wonder of that land and
all its immeasurable distance were in her song.

Now Eochy the King had a brother whose name was Ailill Anglounach, or
Ailill of the Single Stain, for one dark spot only was on his life,
and it is of this that the story now shall tell. One day, when he had
come from his own Dún to the yearly Assembly in the great Hall of
Tara, he ate not at the banquet but gazed as it were at something afar
off, and his wife said to him, "Why dost thou gaze so, Ailill; so do
men look who are smitten with love?" Ailill was wroth with himself and
turned his eyes away, but he said nothing, for that on which he gazed
was the face of Etain.

After that Assembly was over Ailill knew that the torment of love had
seized him for his brother's wife, and he was sorely shamed and
wrathful, and the secret strife in his mind between his honour and the
fierce and pitiless love that possessed him brought him into a sore
sickness. And he went home to his Dún in Tethba and there lay ill for
a year. Then Eochy the King went to see him, and came near him and
laid his hand on his breast, and Ailill heaved a bitter sigh. Eochy
asked, "Why art thou not better of this sickness, how goes it with
thee now?" "By my word," said Ailill, "no better, but worse each day
and night." "What ails thee, then?" asked Eochy. Ailill said, "Verily,
I know not." Then Eochy bade summon his chief physician, who might
discover the cause of his brother's malady, for Ailill was wasting to
death.

So Fachtna the chief physician came and he laid his hand upon Ailill,
and Ailill sighed. Then Fachtna said, "This is no bodily disease, but
either Ailill suffers from the pangs of envy or from the torment of
love." But Ailill was full of shame and he would not tell what ailed
him, and Fachtna went away.

After this the time came that Eochy the High King should make a royal
progress throughout his realm of Ireland, but Etain he left behind at
Tara. Before he departed he charged her saying, "Do thou be gentle and
kind to my brother Ailill while he lives, and should he die, let his
burial mound be heaped over him, and a pillar stone set up above it,
and his name written thereon in letters of Ogham." Then the King took
leave of Ailill and looked to see him again on earth no more.

After a while Etain bethought her and said, "Let us go to see how it
fares with Ailill." So she went to where he lay in his Dún at Tethba.
And seeing him wasted and pale she was moved with pity and distress
and said,

"What ails thee, young man? Long thou hast lain prostrate, in fair
weather and in foul, thou who wert wont to be so swift and strong?"

And Ailill said,

"Truly, I have a cause for my suffering; and I cannot eat, nor listen
to the music makers; my affliction is very sore."

Then said Etain,

"Though I am a woman I am wise in many a thing; tell me what ails thee
and thy healing shall be done."

Ailill replied,

"Blessing be with thee, O fair one; I am not worthy of thy speech; I
am torn by the contention of body and of soul."

Then Etain deemed that she knew somewhat of his trouble, and she said,


"If thy heart is set on any of the white maidens that are my
handmaids, tell me of it, and I shall court her for thee and she shall
come to thee," and then Ailill cried out,

"Love indeed, O Queen, hath brought me low. It is a plague nearer than
the skin, it overwhelms my soul as an earthquake, it is farther than
the height of the sky, and harder to win than the treasures of the
Fairy Folk. If I contend with it, it is like a combat with a spectre;
if I fly to the ends of the earth from it, it is there; if I seek to
seize it, it is a passion for an echo. It is thou, O my love, who hast
brought me to this, and thou alone canst heal me, or I shall never
rise again."

Then Etain went away and left him. But still in her palace in Tara she
was haunted by his passion and his misery, and, though she loved him
not, she could not endure his pain, nor the triumph of grim death over
his youth and beauty. So at last she went to him again and said, "If
it lies with me, Ailill, to heal thee of thy sickness, I may not let
thee die." And she made a tryst to meet him on the morrow at a house
of Ailill's between Dún Tethba and Tara, "but be it not at Tara," she
said, "for that is the palace of the High King."

All that night Ailill lay awake with the thought of his tryst with
Etain. But on the morrow morn a heaviness came upon his eyelids, and a
druid sleep overcame him, and there all day he lay buried in slumbers
from which none could wake him, until the time of his meeting with
Etain was overpast.

But Etain, when she had come to the place of the tryst, looked out,
and behold, a youth having the appearance and the garb of Ailill was
approaching from Tethba. He entered the bower where she was; but no
lover did she there meet, but only a sick and sorrowful man who spake
coldly to her and lamented the sufferings of his malady, and after a
short time he went away.

Next day Etain went to see Ailill and to hear how he did. And Ailill
entreated her forgiveness that he had not kept his tryst, "for," said
he, "a druid slumber descended upon me, and I lay as one dead from
morn till eve. And morever," he added, "it seems as if the strange
passion that has befallen me were washed away in that slumber, for
now, Etain, I love thee no more but as my Queen and my sister, and I
am recovered as if from an evil dream." Then Etain knew that powers
not of earth were mingling in her fate, and she pondered much of these
things, and grew less lighthearted than of old. And when the King came
back, he rejoiced to find his brother whole and sound and merry, as
Ailill had ever been, and he praised Etain for her gentleness and
care.

Now after a time as Etain was by herself in her sunny bower she was
aware of a man standing by her, whom she had never seen before. Young
he was, and grey-eyed, with curling golden hair, and in his hand he
bore two spears. His mantle was of crimson silk, his tunic of saffron,
and a golden helmet was on his head. And as she gazed upon him,
"Etain," he said, "the time is come for thee to return; we have missed
thee and sorrowed for thee long enough in the Land of Youth." Etain
said, "Of what land dost thou speak?" Then he chanted to her a song:--

  "Come with me, Etain, O come away,
     To that oversea land of mine!
   Where music haunts the happy day,
     And rivers run with wine;
   Where folk are careless, and young, and gay,
     And none saith 'mine' or 'thine.'

   "Golden curls on the proud young head,
     And pearls in the tender mouth;
   Manhood, womanhood, white and red,
     And love that grows not loth
   When all the world's desires are dead,
     And all the dreams of youth.

   "Away from the cloud of Adam's sin!
     Away from grief and care!
   This flowery land thou dwellest in
     Seems rude to us, and bare;
   For the naked strand of the Happy Land
     Is twenty times as fair."

When Etain heard this she stood motionless and as one that dreams
awake, for it seemed to her as if she must follow that music
whithersoever it went on earth or beyond the earth. But at last
remembrance came upon her and she said to the stranger, "Who art thou,
that I, the High King's wife, should follow a nameless man and betray
my troth?" And he said, "Thy troth was due to me before it was due to
him, and, moreover, were it not for me thou hadst broken it already. I
am Midir the Proud, a prince among the people of Dana, and thy
husband, Etain. Thus it was, that when I took thee to wife in the Land
of Youth, the jealousy of thy rival, Fuamnach, was awakened; and
having decoyed me from home by a false report, she changed thee by
magical arts into a butterfly, and then contrived a mighty tempest
that drove thee abroad. Seven years wast thou borne hither and thither
on the blast till chance blew thee into the fairy palace of Angus my
kinsman, by the waters of the Boyne. But Angus knew thee, for the
Fairy Folk may not disguise themselves from each other, and he built
for thee a magical sunny bower with open windows, through which thou
mightest pass, and about it were all manner of blossoming herbs and
shrubs, and on the odour and honey of these thou didst live and grow
fair and well nourished. But in the end Fuamnach got tidings of thee,
and again the druid tempest descended and blew thee forth for another
seven years of wandering and woe. Then it chanced that thou wert blown
through the roof-window of the Dún of Etar by the Bay of Cichmany, and
fell into the goblet from which his wife was drinking, and thee she
drank down with that draught of ale. And in due time thou wast born
again in the guise of a mortal maid and daughter to Etar the Warrior.
But thou art no mortal, nor of mortal kin, for it is one thousand and
twelve years from the time when thou wast born in Fairy Land till
Etar's wife bore thee as a child on earth."

Then Etain was bewildered, and her mind ran back on many a
half-forgotten thing and she gazed as into a gulf of visions, full of
dim shapes, strange and glorious. And Midir as she looked at him again
seemed transfigured, taller and mightier than before, and a light
flame flickered from his helmet's crest and moved like wings about his
shoulders.

But at last she said, "I know not what thou sayest if it be truth or
not, but this I know, that I am the wife of the High King and I will
not break my troth." "It were broken already," said Midir, "but for
me, for I it was who laid a druidic sleep on Ailill, and it was I who
came to thee in his shape that thy honour might not be stained." Etain
said, "I learned then that honour is more than life." "But if Eochy
the High King consent to let thee go," said Midir, "wilt thou then
come with me to my land and thine?" "In that case," said Etain "I
will go."

And the time went by, and Etain abode in Tara, and the High King did
justice and made war and held the great Assembly as he was used. But
one day in summer Eochy arose very early to breathe the morning air,
and he stood by himself leaning on the rampart of his great Dún, and
looking over the flowery plain of Bregia. And as he thus gazed he was
aware of a young warrior standing by his side. Grey-eyed the youth
was, and golden-haired, and he was splendidly armed and apparelled as
beseemed the lord of a great clan of the Gael. Eochy bade him welcome
courteously, and asked him of the cause of his coming. "I am come," he
said, "to play a game of chess with thee, O King, for thou art
renowned for thy skill in that game, and to test that skill am I come.
And my name is Midir, of the People of Dana, whom they have called The
Proud."

"Willingly," said the King; "but I have here no chessboard, and mine
is in the chamber where the Queen is sleeping."

"That is easily remedied," said Midir, and he drew from his cloak a
folding chessboard whose squares were alternate gold and silver. From
a men-bag made of brazen chainwork he drew out a set of men adorned
with flashing jewels, and he set them in array.

"I will not play," then said Eochy, "unless we play for a stake."

"For what stake shall we play, then?" said Midir.

"I care not," said Eochy; "but do thou perform tasks for me if I win
and I shall bestow of my treasures upon thee if I lose."

So they played a game, and Eochy won. Then Eochy bade Midir clear the
plains of Meath about Tara from rocks and stones, and Midir brought at
night a great host of the Fairy Folk, and it was done. And again he
played with Eochy, and again he lost, and this time he cut down the
forest of Breg. The third time Midir lost again, and his task was to
build a causeway across the moor of Lamrach. Now at night, while Midir
and the fairy host were labouring at the causeway and their oxen
drawing to it innumerable loads of earth and gravel, the steward of
Eochy stole out and hid himself to watch them, for it was a
prohibition to see them at work. And he observed that the fairy oxen
were not harnessed with a thong across their foreheads, that the pull
might be upon their brows and necks, as was the manner with the Gael,
but with yokes upon their shoulders. This he reported to Eochy, who
found it good; and he ordered that henceforth the children of the Gael
should harness their plough-oxen with the yoke upon their shoulders;
and so it was done from that day forth. Hence Eochy got his name of
_Airem_, or "The Ploughman," for he was the first of the Gael to put
the yoke upon the shoulder of the ox.

But it was said that because the Fairy Folk were watched as they made
that noble causeway, there came a breach in it at one place which none
could ever rightly mend.

When all their works were accomplished, Midir came again to Eochy, and
this time he bore a dark and fierce countenance and was high girt as
for war. And the King welcomed him, and Midir said, "Thou hast treated
me hardly and put slavish tasks upon me. All that seemed good to thee
have I done, but now I am moved with anger against thee."

"I return not anger for anger," said Eochy; "say what satisfaction I
can make thee."

"Let us once more play at chess," said Midir.

"Good," said Eochy, "and what stake wilt thou have now?"

"The stake to be whatever the winner shall demand," said Midir.

Then they played for the fourth time and Eochy lost.

"Thou hast won the game," said he.

"I had won long ago had I chosen," said Midir.

"What dost thou demand of me?" said Eochy.

"To hold Etain in my arms and obtain a kiss from her," replied Midir.

The King was silent for a while and after that he said, "Come back in
one month from this day and the stake which I have lost shall be
paid."

But Eochy summoned together all the host of the heroes of the Gael,
and they surrounded Tara, ring within ring; and the King himself and
Etain were in the palace, with the outer court of it shut and locked.
For they looked that Midir should come with a great host of the Danaan
folk to carry off the Queen. And on the appointed day, as the kings
sat at meat, Etain and her handmaids were dispensing the wine to them
as was wont. Then suddenly as they feasted and talked, behold, Midir,
stood in the midst of them. If he was fair and noble to look on as he
had appeared before to the King and to Etain, he was fairer now, for
the splendour of the Immortals clothed him, and his jewels flamed as
he moved like eyes of living light. And all the kings and lords and
champions who were present gazed on him in amazement and were silent,
as the King arose and gave him welcome.

"Thou hast received me as I expected to be received," said Midir,
"and now let thy debt be paid, since I for my part faithfully
performed all that I undertook."

"I must consider the matter yet longer," said Eochy.

"Thou hast promised Etain's very self to me," said Midir; "that is
what hath come from thee." And when she heard that word Etain blushed
for shame.

"Blush not," said Midir, "for all the treasures of the Land of Youth
have not availed to win thee from Eochy, and it is not of thine own
will that thou art won, but because the time is come to return to thy
kin."

Then said Eochy, "I have not promised Etain's self to thee, but to
take her in thine arms and kiss her, and now do so if thou wilt."

[Illustration: "They rose up in the air"]

Then Midir took his weapons in his left hand and placed his right
around Etain, and when he did so they rose up in the air over the
heads of the host, and passed through a roof-window in the palace.
Then all rose up, tumultuous and angry, and rushed out of doors, but
nothing could they see save two white swans that circled high in air
around the Hill of Tara, and then flew southwards and away towards
the fairy mountain of Slievenamon. And thus Etain the immortal
rejoined the Immortals; but a daughter of Etain and of Eochy, who was
another Etain in name and in beauty, became in due time a wife, and
mother of kings.




CHAPTER VIII

How Ethne Quitted Fairyland


By the banks of the River Boyne, where rises the great Fairy Mound now
called Newgrange, there stood long ago the shining Palace of a prince
of the People of Dana, named Angus. Of him it is that the lines are
written--

  "By the dark rolling waters of the Boyne
   Where Angus Óg magnificently dwells."

When the Milesian race invaded Ireland, and after long fighting
subdued the Danaans in spite of all their enchantments and all their
valour, the Danaans wrought for themselves certain charms by which
they and all their possessions became invisible to mortals, and thus
they continued to lead their old joyous life in the holy places of the
land, and their palaces and dancing-places and folk-motes seem to the
human eye to be merely a green mound or rath, or a lonely hillside, or
a ruined shrine with nettles and foxgloves growing up among its broken
masonry.

Now, after Angus and his folk had thus retreated behind the veil of
invisibility, it happened that the steward of his palace had a
daughter born to him whose name was Ethne. On the same day Fand, the
wife of Mananan the Sea God, bore him a daughter, and since Angus was
a friend of Mananan and much beloved by him, the child of the Sea God
was sent to Brugh na Boyna, the noble dwelling-place of Angus, to be
fostered and brought up, as the custom was. And Ethne became the
handmaid of the young princess of the sea.

In time Ethne grew into a fair and stately maiden Now in the Brugh of
Angus there were two magical treasures, namely, an ale-vat which could
never be emptied, and two swine whereof one was ever roasted and ready
to be eaten while the other lived, and thus they were, day and day
about. There was therefore always a store of food of faery, charged
with magical spells, by eating of which one could never grow old or
die. It came to be noticed that after Ethne had grown up she never ate
or drank of the fairy food, or of any other, yet she continued to seem
healthy and well-nourished. This was reported to Angus, and by him to
Mananan, and Mananan by his wisdom discovered the cause of it. One of
the lords of the Danaans, happening to be on a visit with Angus, was
rendered distraught by the maiden's beauty, and one day he laid hands
upon her and strove to carry her away to his own dwelling. Ethne
escaped from him, but the blaze of resentment at the insult that lit
up in her soul consumed in her the fairy nature, that knows not of
good or evil, and the nature of the children of Adam took its place.
Thenceforth she ate not of the fairy food, which is prohibited to man,
and she was nourished miraculously by the will of the One God. But
after a time it chanced that Mananan and Angus brought from the Holy
Land two cows whose milk could never run dry. In this milk there was
nothing of the fairy spell, and Ethne lived upon it many long years,
milking the cows herself, nor did her youth and beauty suffer any
change.

Now it happened that on one very hot day the daughter of Mananan went
down to bathe in the waters of the Boyne, and Ethne and her other
maidens along with her. After they had refreshed themselves in the
cool, amber-coloured water, they arrayed themselves in their silken
robes and trooped back to the Brugh again; but ere they entered it,
they discovered that Ethne was not among them.

So they went back, scattering themselves along the bank and searching
in every quiet pool of the river and in every dark recess among the
great trees that bordered it, for Ethne was dearly loved by all of
them; but neither trace nor tidings of her could they find, and they
went sorrowfully home without her, to tell the tale to Angus and to
her father.

What had befallen Ethne was this. In taking off her garments by the
riverside she had mislaid her fairy charm, and was become as a mortal
maid. Nothing could she now see of her companions, and all around was
strange to her. The fairy track that had led to the riverside was
overgrown with briars, the palace of Angus was but a wooded hill. She
knew not where she was, and pierced with sudden terror she fled wildly
away, seeking for the familiar places that she had known in the fairy
life, but which were now behind the Veil. At length she came to a high
wall wherein was a wicket gate, and through it she saw a garden full
of sweet herbs and flowers, which surrounded a steep-roofed building
of stone. In the garden she saw a man in a long brown robe tied about
his waist with a cord. He smiled at her and beckoned her to come in
without fear. He was a monk of the holy Patrick, and the house was a
convent church.

When the monk had heard her tale, he marvelled greatly and brought her
to St Patrick himself, who instructed her in the Faith, and she
believed and was baptized.

[Illustration: "She heard her own name called again and again"]

But not long thereafter, as she was praying in the church by the
Boyne, the sky darkened and she heard a sound without like the rushing
of a great wind, and mingled in it were cries and lamentations, and
her own name called again and again in a multitude of voices, thin and
faint as the crying of curlews upon the moor. She sprang up and gazed
around, calling in return, but nothing could she see, and at last the
storm of cries died away, and everything was still again around the
church except the singing voice of Boyne and the humming of the garden
bees.

Then Ethne sank down swooning, and the monks bore her out into the
air, and it was long until her heart beat and her eyes unclosed again.
In that hour she fell into a sickness from which she never recovered.
In no long time she died with her head upon the breast of the holy
Patrick, and she was buried in the church where she had first been
received by the monk; and the church was called Killethne, or the
Church of Ethne, from that day forward until now.




THE HIGH DEEDS OF FINN


CHAPTER IX

The Boyhood of Finn mac Cumhal


In Ireland long ago, centuries before the English appeared in that
country, there were kings and chiefs, lawyers and merchants, men of
the sword and men of the book, men who tilled their own ground and men
who tilled the ground of others, just as there are now. But there was
also, as ancient poets and historians tell us, a great company or
brotherhood of men who were bound to no fixed calling, unless it was
to fight for the High King of Ireland whenever foes threatened him
from within the kingdom or without it. This company was called the
Fianna of Erinn. They were mighty hunters and warriors, and though
they had great possessions in land, and rich robes, and gold
ornaments, and weapons wrought with beautiful chasing and with
coloured enamels, they lived mostly a free out-door life in the light
hunting-booths which they made in the woods where the deer and the
wolf ranged. There were then vast forests in Ireland, which are all
gone now, and there were also, as there still are, many great and
beautiful lakes and rivers, swarming with fish and water-fowl. In the
forests and on the mountain sides roamed the wild boar and the wolf,
and great herds of deer, some of giant size, whose enormous antlers
are sometimes found when bogs are being drained. The Fianna chased
these and the wolves with great dogs, whose courage and strength and
beauty were famous throughout Europe, and which they prized and loved
above all things. To the present day in Ireland there still remain
some of this breed of Irish hounds, but the giant deer and the wolf
are gone, and the Fianna of Erinn live only in the ancient books that
were written of them, and in the tales that are still told of them in
the winter evenings by the Irish peasant's fireside.

The Fianna were under the rule of one great captain or chief, and at
the time I tell of his name was Cumhal, son of Trenmor. Now a tribe or
family of the Fianna named the Clan Morna, or Sons of Morna, rose in
rebellion against Cumhal, for they were jealous and greedy of his
power and glory, and sought to have the captaincy for themselves. They
defeated and slew him at the battle of Cnucha, which is now called
Castleknock, near the City of the Hurdle Ford, which is the name that
Dublin still bears in the Irish tongue. Goll, son of Morna, slew
Cumhal, and they spoiled him of the Treasure Bag of the Fianna, which
was a bag made of a crane's skin and having in it jewels of great
price, and magic weapons, and strange things that had come down from
far-off days when the Fairy Folk and mortal men battled for the
lordship of Ireland. The Bag with its treasures was given to Lia, the
chief of Luachar in Connacht, who had the keeping of it before, for he
was the treasurer of Cumhal, and he was the first man who had wounded
Cumhal in the battle when he fell.

Cumhal's wife was named Murna, and she bore him two sons. The elder
was named Tulcha, and he fled from the country for fear of Goll and
took service with the King of Scotland. The younger was born after
Cumhal's death, and his name was called Demna. And because his mother
feared that the sons of Morna would find him out and kill him, she
gave him to a Druidess and another wise woman of Cumhal's household,
and bade them take him away and rear him as best they could. So they
took him into the wild woods on the Slieve Bloom Mountains, and there
they trained him to hunt and fish and to throw the spear, and he grew
strong, and as beautiful as a child of the Fairy Folk. If he were in
the same field with a hare he could run so that the hare could never
leave the field, for Demna was always before it. He could run down and
slay a stag with no dogs to help him, and he could kill a wild duck on
the wing with a stone from his sling. And the Druidess taught him the
learning of the time, and also the story of his race and nation, and
told him of his right to be captain of the Fianna of Erinn when his
day of destiny should come.

One day, while still a boy, he was roaming through the woods when he
came to the mansion of a great lord, where many boys, sons of the
chief men of Ireland, were being trained in manly arts and exercises.
He found them playing at hurling, and they invited him to join them.
He did so, but the side he was on won too easily, so they divided
again, and yet again, giving fewer and fewer to Demna's side, till at
last he alone drove the ball to the goal through them all, flashing
among them as a salmon among a shoal of minnows. And then their anger
and jealousy rose and grew bitter against the stranger, and instead of
honouring him as gallant lads of gentle blood should have done they
fell upon him with their hurling clubs and sought to kill him. But
Demna felled seven of them to the ground and put the rest to flight,
and then went his way home. When the boys told what had happened the
chief asked them who it was that had defeated and routed them
single-handed. They said, "It was a tall shapely lad, and very fair
(_finn_)." So the name of Finn, the Fair One, clung to him
thenceforth, and by that name he is known to this day.

By and by Finn gathered round him a band of youths who loved him for
his strength and valour and for his generous heart, and with them he
went hunting in the forests. And Goll, and the sons of Morna, who were
now captains of the Fianna under the High King, began to hear tales of
him and his exploits, and they sent trackers to inquire about him, for
they had an inkling of who this wonderful fair-haired youth might be.
Finn's foster mothers heard of this. "You must leave this place," they
said to him, "and see our faces no more, for if Goll's men find you
here they will slay you. We have cherished the blood of Cumhal," they
said, "and now our work is done. Go, and may blessing and victory go
with you." So Finn departed with naught but his weapons and his
hunting gear, very sorrowful at leaving the wise and loving friends
who had fostered his childhood; but deep in his heart was a wild and
fierce delight at the thought of the trackless ways he would travel,
and the wonders he would see; and all the future looked to him as
beautiful and dim as the mists that fill a mountain glen under the
morning sun.

Now after the death of Cumhal, his brother Crimmal and a few others of
the aged warriors of the Fianna, who had not fallen in the fight at
Cnucha, fled away into Connacht, and lived there in the deepest
recesses of a great forest, where they hoped the conquerors might
never find them. Here they built themselves a poor dwelling of tree
branches, plastered with mud and roofed with reeds from the lake, and
here they lived on what game they could kill or snare in the wild
wood; and harder and harder it grew, as age and feebleness crept on
them, to find enough to eat, or to hew wood for their fire. In this
retreat, never having seen the friendly face of man, they were one day
startled to hear voices and the baying of hounds approaching them
through the wood, and they thought that the sons of Morna were upon
them at last, and that their hour of doom was at hand. Soon they
perceived a company of youths coming towards their hut, with one in
front who seemed to be their leader. Taller he was by a head than the
rest, broad shouldered, and with masses of bright hair clustering
round his forehead, and he carried in his hand a large bag made of
some delicate skin and stained in patterns of red and blue. The old
men thought when they saw him of a saying there was about the mighty
Lugh, who was brother to the wife of Cumhal, that when he came among
his army as they mustered for battle, men felt as though they beheld
the rising of the sun. As they came near, the young men halted and
looked upon the elders with pity, for their clothing of skins was
ragged and the weapons they strove to hold were rusted and blunt, and
except for their proud bearing and the fire in their old eyes they
looked more like aged and worthless slaves in the household of a
niggardly lord than men who had once been the flower of the fighting
men of Erinn.

But the tall youth stepped in front of his band and cried aloud--

"Which of ye is Crimmal, son of Trenmor?" And one of the elders said,
"I am Crimmal." Then tears filled the eyes of the youth, and he knelt
down before the old man and put his hands in his.

"My lord and chief," he said, "I am Finn, son of Cumhal, and the day
of deliverance is come."

[Illustration: "And that night there was feasting and joy in the
lonely hut"]

So the youths brought in the spoils of their hunting, and yet other
spoils than these; and that night there was feasting and joy in the
lonely hut. And Crimmal said--

"It was foretold to us that one day the blood of Cumhal should be
avenged, and the race of Cumhal should rule the Fianna again. This was
the sign that the coming champion should give of his birth and
destiny; he was to bear with him the Treasure Bag of Cumhal and the
sacred things that were therein."

Finn said, "Ye know the Bag and its treasures, tell us if these be
they." And he laid his skin bag on the knees of Crimmal.

Crimmal opened it, and he took out the jewels of sovranty the magic
spear-head made by the smiths of the Fairy Folk, and he said, "These
be the treasures of Cumhal; truly the ripeness of the time is come."

And Finn then told the story of how he had won these things.

"But yesterday morning," he said, "we met on our way a woman of noble
aspect, and she knelt over the body of a slain youth. When she lifted
her head as we drew near, tears of blood ran down her cheeks, and she
cried to me, 'Whoever thou art, I bind thee by the bonds of the sacred
ordinances of the Gael that thou avenge my wrong. This was my son
Glonda,' she said, 'my only son, and he was slain to-day wantonly by
the Lord of Luachar and his men.' So we went, my company and I, to the
Dún of the Lord of Luachar, and found an earthen rampart with a fosse
before it, and on the top of the rampart was a fence of oaken posts
interlaced with wattles, and over this we saw the many-coloured thatch
of a great dwelling-house, and its white walls painted with bright
colours under the broad eaves. So I stood forth and called to the Lord
of Luachar and bade him make ready to pay an eric to the mother of
Glonda, whatsoever she should demand. But he laughed at us and cursed
us and bade us begone. Then we withdrew into the forest, but returned
with a great pile of dry brushwood, and while some of us shot stones
and arrows at whoever should appear above the palisade, others rushed
up with bundles of brushwood and laid it against the palisade and set
it on fire, and the Immortal Ones sent a blast of wind that set the
brushwood and palisade quickly in a blaze, and through that fiery gap
we charged in shouting. And half of the men of Luachar we killed and
the rest fled, and the Lord of Luachar I slew in the doorway of his
palace. We took a great spoil then, O Crimmal--these vessels of bronze
and silver, and spears and bows, smoked bacon and skins of Greek wine;
and in a great chest of yewwood we found this bag. All these things
shall now remain with you, and my company shall also remain to hunt
for you and protect you, for ye shall know want and fear no longer
while ye live."

And Finn said, "I would fain know if my mother Murna still lives, or
if she died by the sons of Morna."

Crimmal said, "After thy father's death, Finn, she was wedded to
Gleor, Lord of Lamrigh, in the south, and she still lives in honour
with him, and the sons of Morna have let her be. Didst thou never see
her since she gave thee, an infant, to the wise women on the day of
Cnucha?"

"I remember," said Finn, "when I was, as they tell me, but six years
old, there came one day to our shieling in the woods of Slieve Bloom a
chariot with bronze-shod wheels and a bronze wolf's head at the end of
the pole, and two horsemen riding with it, besides him who drove. A
lady was in it, with a gold frontlet on her brow and her cloak was
fastened with a broad golden brooch. She came into our hut and spoke
long with my foster-mothers, and me she clasped in her arms and kissed
many times, and I felt her tears on my face. And they told me
afterwards that this was Murna of the White Neck, and my mother. If
she have suffered no harm at the hands of the sons of Morna, so much
the less is the debt that they shall one day pay."

Now it is to be told what happened to Finn at the house of Finegas the
Bard. Finn did not deem that the time had come for him to seize the
captaincy of the Fianna until he had perfected himself in wisdom and
learning. So on leaving the shelter of the old men in the wood he went
to learn wisdom and the art of poetry from Finegas, who dwelt by the
River Boyne, near to where is now the village of Slane. It was a
belief among the poets of Ireland that the place of the revealing of
poetry is always by the margin of water. But Finegas had another
reason for the place where he made his dwelling, for there was an old
prophecy that whoever should first eat of the Salmon of Knowledge that
lived in the River Boyne, should become the wisest of men. Now this
salmon was called Finntan in ancient times and was one of the
Immortals, and he might be eaten and yet live. But in the time of
Finegas he was called the Salmon of the Pool of Fec, which is the
place where the fair river broadens out into a great still pool, with
green banks softly sloping upward from the clear brown water. Seven
years was Finegas watching the pool, but not until after Finn had come
to be his disciple was the salmon caught. Then Finegas gave it to Finn
to cook, and bade him eat none of it. But when Finegas saw him coming
with the fish, he knew that something had chanced to the lad, for he
had been used to have the eye of a young man but now he had the eye of
a sage. Finegas said, "Hast thou eaten of the salmon?"

"Nay," said Finn, "but it burnt me as I turned it upon the spit and I
put my thumb in my mouth" And Finegas smote his hands together and was
silent for a while. Then he said to the lad who stood by obediently,
"Take the salmon and eat it, Finn, son of Cumhal, for to thee the
prophecy is come. And now go hence, for I can teach thee no more, and
blessing and victory be thine."

With Finegas, Finn learned the three things that make a poet, and they
are Fire of Song, and Light of Knowledge, and the Art of Extempore
Recitation. Before he departed he made this lay to prove his art, and
it is called "The Song of Finn in Praise of May":--

   May Day! delightful day!
     Bright colours play the vales along.
   Now wakes at morning's slender ray,
     Wild and gay, the blackbird's song.

   Now comes the bird of dusty hue,
     The loud cuckoo, the summer-lover;
   Branching trees are thick with leaves;
     The bitter, evil time is over.

   Swift horses gather nigh
     Where half dry the river goes;
   Tufted heather crowns the height;
     Weak and white the bogdown blows.

   Corncrake sings from eve till morn,
     Deep in corn, a strenuous bard!
   Sings the virgin waterfall,
     White and tall, her one sweet word.

   Loaded bees of little power
     Goodly flower-harvest win;
   Cattle roam with muddy flanks;
     Busy ants go out and in.

   Through, the wild harp of the wood
     Making music roars the gale--
   Now it slumbers without motion,
     On the ocean sleeps the sail.

   Men grow mighty in the May,
     Proud and gay the maidens grow;
   Fair is every wooded height;
     Fair and bright the plain below.

   A bright shaft has smit the streams,
     With gold gleams the water-flag;
   Leaps the fish, and on the hills
     Ardour thrills the flying stag.

   Carols loud the lark on high,
     Small and shy, his tireless lay,
   Singing in wildest, merriest mood
     Of delicate-hued, delightful May.[20]

   [20] I am much indebted to the beautiful prose translation of
   this song, published by Dr Kuno Meyer in _Ériu_ (the Journal of
   the School of Irish Learning), Vol. I. Part II. In my poetic
   version an attempt has been made to render the riming and
   metrical effect of the original, which is believed to date from
   about the ninth century.




CHAPTER X

The Coming of Finn


And now we tell how Finn came to the captaincy of the Fianna of Erinn.

At this time Ireland was ruled by one of the mightiest of her native
kings, Conn, son of Felimy, who was surnamed Conn of the Hundred
Battles. And Conn sat in his great banqueting hall at Tara, while the
yearly Assembly of the lords and princes of the Gael went forward,
during which it was the inviolable law that no quarrel should be
raised and no weapon drawn, so that every man who had a right to come
to that Assembly might come there and sit next his deadliest foe in
peace. Below him sat at meat the provincial kings and the chiefs of
clans, and the High King's officers and fighting-men of the Fianna,
with Goll and the sons of Morna at their head. And there, too, sat
modestly a strange youth, tall and fair, whom no one had seen in that
place before. Conn marked him with the eye of a king that is
accustomed to mark men, and by and by he sent him a horn full of wine
from his own table and bade the youth declare his name and lineage.
"I am Finn, son of Cumhal," said the youth, standing among them, tall
as a warriors spear, and a start and a low murmur ran through the
Assembly while the captains of the Fianna stared upon him like men who
see a vision of the dead. "What seek you here?" said Conn, and Finn
replied, "To be your man, O King, and to do you service in war as my
father did." "It is well," said the King. "Thou art a friend's son and
the son of man of trust." So Finn put his hand in the Kind's and swore
fealty and service to him, and Conn set him beside his own son Art,
and all fell to talking again and wondering what new things that day
would bring forth, and the feasting went merrily forward.

Now at this time the people of the royal burg of Tara were sorely
afflicted by a goblin of the Fairy Folk, who was wont to approach the
place at night-fall, there to work what harm to man, or beast, or
dwelling that he found in his evil mind to do. And he could not be
resisted, for as he came he played on a magic harp a strain so keen
and sweet, that each man who heard it must needs stand entranced and
motionless until the fairy music had passed away. The King proclaimed
a mighty reward to any man who would save Tara from the goblin, and
Finn thought in his heart, "I am the man to do that." So he said to
the King, "Shall I have my rightful heritage as captain of the Fianna
of Erin if I slay the goblin?" Conn said, "I promise thee that," and
he bound himself by the sureties of all the provincial Kings of
Ireland and of the Druid Kithro and his magicians.

Now there was among the following of Conn a man named Fiacha, who had
been as a youth a trusty friend and follower of Cumhal. He came to
Finn and brought with him a spear having a head of dark bronze with
glittering edges, and fastened with thirty rivets of Arabian gold, and
the spear-head was laced up within a leathern case. "By this weapon of
enchantment," said Fiacha, "you shall overcome the enchanter," and he
taught Finn what to do with it when the hour of need should come.

So Finn took the spear, and left the strings of the case loose, and he
paced with it towards night-fall around the ramparts of royal Tara.
And when he had once made the circuit of the rampart, and the light
had now almost quite faded from the summer sky, and the wide low
plains around the Hill of Tara were a sea of white mist, he heard far
off in the deepening gloom the first notes of the fairy harp. Never
such music was made by mortal hand, for it had in it sorrows that man
has never felt, and joys for which man has no name, and it seemed as
if a man listening to that music might burst from time into eternity
and be as one of the Immortals for evermore. And Finn listened, amazed
and rapt, till at last as the triumphant melody grew nearer and louder
he saw dimly a Shadow Shape playing as it were on a harp, and coming
swiftly towards him. Then with a mighty effort he roused himself from
dreams, and tore the cover from the spear-head and laid the metal to
his brow. And the demoniac energy that had been beaten into the blade
by the hammers of unearthly craftsmen in ancient days thrilled
through him and made him fighting-mad, and he rushed forward shouting
his battle-cry, and swinging the spear aloft. But the Shadow turned
and fled before him, and Finn chased it northward to the Fairy Mound
of Slieve Fuad, and there he drove the spear through its back. And
what it was that fell there in the night, and what it was that passed
like the shadow of a shadow into the Fairy Mound, none can tell, but
Finn bore back with him next day a pale, sorrowful head on the point
of Fiacha's spear, and the goblin troubled the folk of royal Tara no
more.

But Conn of the Hundred Battles called the Fianna together, and he set
Finn at his right hand and said, "Here is your Captain by birth-right
and by sword-right. Let who will now obey him hence-forward, and who
will not, let him go in peace and serve Arthur of Britain or Arist of
Alba, or whatsoever King he will." And Goll, son of Morna, said, "For
my part I will be Finn's man under thee, O King," and he swore
obedience and loyalty to Finn before them all. Nor was it hard for any
man to step where Goll had gone before, so they all took their oaths
of Fian service to Finn mac Cumhal. And thus it was that Finn came to
the captaincy of the Fianna of Erinn, and he ruled the Fianna many a
year till he died in battle with the Clan Urgrenn at Brea upon the
Boyne.




CHAPTER XI

Finn's Chief Men


With the coming of Finn did the Fianna of Erinn come to their glory,
and with his life their glory passed away. For he ruled them as no
other captain ever did, both strongly and wisely, and never bore a
grudge against any, but freely forgave a man all offences save
disloyalty to his lord. Thus it is told that Conan, son of the Lord of
Luachar, him who had the Treasure Bag and whom Finn slew at Rath
Luachar, was for seven years an outlaw and marauder, harrying the
Fians, and killing here a man and there a hound, and firing their
dwellings, and raiding their cattle. At last they ran him to a corner
at Cam Lewy in Munster, and when he saw that he could escape no more
he stole upon Finn as he sat down after a chase, and flung his arms
round him from behind, holding him fast and motionless. Finn knew who
held him thus and said, "What wilt thou Conan?" Conan said, "To make a
covenant of service and fealty with thee, for I may no longer evade
thy wrath." So Finn laughed and said, "Be it so, Conan, and if thou
prove faithful and valiant, I also will keep faith." And Conan served
him for thirty years, and no man of all the Fianna was keener and
hardier in fight. There was also another Conan, namely, mac Morna,
who was big and bald, and unwieldy in manly exercises, but whose
tongue was bitter and scurrilous; no high brave thing was done that
Conan the Bald did not mock and belittle. It is said that when he was
stripped he showed down his back and buttocks a black sheep's fleece
instead of a man's skin, and this is the way it came about. One day
when Conan and certain others of the Fianna were hunting in the forest
they came to a stately Dún, white-walled, with coloured thatching on
the roof, and they entered it to seek hospitality. But when they were
within they found! no man, but a great empty hall with pillars of
cedar wood and silken hangings about it, like the hall of a wealthy
lord. In the midst there was a table set forth with a sumptuous feast
of boar's flesh and venison, and a great vat of yew wood full of red
wine, and cups of gold and silver. So they set themselves gaily to eat
and drink, for they were hungry from the chase, and talk and laughter
were loud around the board. But one of them ere long started to his
feet with a cry of fear and wonder, and they all looked round, and saw
before their eyes the tapestried walls changing to rough wooden balks
and the ceiling to foul sooty thatch like that of a herdsman's hut. So
they knew they were being entrapped by some enchantment of the Fairy
Folk, and all sprang to their feet and made for the doorway, that was
no longer high and stately but was shrinking to the size of a fox
earth,--all but Conan the Bald, who was gluttonously devouring the
good things on the table, and heeded nothing else. Then they shouted
to him, and as the last of them went out he strove to rise and follow,
but found himself limed to the chair so that he could not stir. So
two of the Fianna, seeing his plight, rushed back and seized his arms
and tugged with all their might, and if they dragged him away, they
left the most part of his raiment and his skin sticking to the chair.
Then, not knowing what else to do with him in his sore plight they
clapped upon his back the nearest thing they could find, which was the
skin of a black sheep that they took from a peasant's flock hard by,
and it grew there, and Conan wore it till his death.

Though Conan was a coward and rarely adventured himself in battle with
the Fianna, it is told that once a good man fell by his hand. This was
on the day of the great battle with the pirate horde on the Hill of
Slaughter in Kerry.[21] For Liagan, one of the invaders, stood out
before the hosts and challenged the bravest of the Fians to single
combat, and the Fians, in mockery, thrust Conan forth to the fight.
When he appeared, Liagan laughed, for he had more strength than wit,
and he said, "Silly is thy visit, thou bald old man." And as Conan
still approached, Liagan lifted his hand fiercely, and Conan said,
"Truly thou art in more peril from the man behind than from the man in
front." Liagan looked round; and in that instant Conan swept off his
head and then threw down his sword and ran for shelter to the ranks of
the laughing Fians. But Finn was very wroth because he had won the
victory by a trick.

   [21] The hill still bears the name, Knockanar.

And one of the chiefest of the friends of Finn was Dermot of the Love
Spot. He was so fair and noble to look on that no woman could refuse
him love, and it was said that he never knew weariness, but his step
was as light at the end of the longest day of battle or the chase as
it was at the beginning. Between him and Finn there was great love
until the day when Finn, then an old man, was to wed Grania, daughter
of Cormac the High King; but Grania bound Dermot by the sacred
ordinances of the Fian chivalry to fly with her on her wedding night,
which thing, sorely against his will, he did, and thereby got his
death. But Grania went back to Finn, and when the Fianna saw her they
laughed through all the camp in bitter mockery, for they would not
have given one of the dead man's fingers for twenty such as Grania.

Others of the chief men that Finn had were Keelta mac Ronan, who was
one of his house-stewards and a strong warrior as well as a
golden-tongued reciter of tales and poems. And there was Oisín, the
son of Finn, the greatest poet of the Gael, of whom more shall be told
hereafter. And Oisín had a son Oscar, who was the fiercest fighter in
battle among all the Fians. He slew in his maiden battle three kings,
and in his fury he also slew by mischance his own friend and
condisciple Linne. His wife was the fair Aideen, who died of grief
after Oscar's death in the battle of Gowra, and Oisín buried her on
Ben Edar (Howth), and raised over her the great cromlech which is
there to this day.

Another good man that Finn had was Geena, the son of Luga; his mother
was the warrior-daughter of Finn, and his father was a near kinsman of
hers. He was nurtured by a woman that bore the name of Fair Mane, who
had brought up many of the Fianna to manhood. When his time to take
arms was come he stood before Finn and made his covenant of fealty,
and Finn gave him the captaincy of a band. But mac Luga proved
slothful and selfish, for ever vaunting himself and his weapon-skill
and never training his men to the chase of deer or boar, and he used
to beat his hounds and his serving-men. At last the Fians under him
came with their whole company to Finn at Loch Lena in Killarney, and
there they laid their complaint against mac Luga, and said, "Choose
now, O Finn, whether you will have us, or the son of Luga by himself."

Then Finn sent to mac Luga and questioned him, but mac Luga could say
nothing to the point as to why the Fianna would none of him. Then Finn
taught him the things befitting a youth of noble birth and a captain
of men, and they were these:--

"Son of Luga, if armed service be thy design, in a great man's
household be quiet, be surly in the narrow pass."

"Without a fault of his beat not thy hound; until thou ascertain her
guilt, bring not a charge against thy wife."

"In battle, meddle not with a buffoon, for, O mac Luga, he is but a
fool."

"Censure not any if he be of grave repute; stand not up to take part
in a brawl; have nought to do with a madman or a wicked one."

"Two-thirds of thy gentleness be shown to women and to those that
creep on the floor (little children) and to poets, and be not violent
to the common people."

"Utter not swaggering speech, nor say thou wilt not yield what is
right; it is a shameful thing to speak too stiffly unless that it be
feasible to carry out thy words."

"So long as thou shalt live, thy lord forsake not; neither for gold
nor for other reward in the world abandon one whom thou art pledged to
protect."

"To a chief do not abuse his people, for that is no work for a
gentleman."

"Be no talebearer, nor utterer of falsehoods; be not talkative nor
rashly censorious. Stir not up strife against thee, however good a man
thou be."

"Be no frequenter of the drinking-house, nor given to carping at the
old; meddle not with a man of mean estate."

"Dispense thy meat freely, have no niggard for thy familiar."

"Force not thyself upon a chief, nor give him cause to speak ill of
thee."

"Stick to thy gear, hold fast to thy arms till the stern fight with
its weapon-glitter be well ended."

"Be more apt to give than to deny, and follow after gentleness, O son
of Luga."[22]

   [22] I have in the main borrowed Standish Hayes O'Grady's vivid
   and racy translation of these adages of the Fianna. (SILVA
   GADELICA, Engl. transl., p. 115.)

And the son of Luga, it is written, heeded these counsels and gave up
his bad ways, and he became one of the best of Finn's men.

Such-like things also Finn taught to all his followers, and the best
of them became like himself in valour and gentleness and generosity.
Each of them loved the repute of his comrades more than his own, and
each would say that for all noble qualities there was no man in the
breadth of the world worthy to be thought of beside Finn.

It was said of him that "he gave away gold as if it were the leaves of
the woodland, and silver as if it were the foam of the sea," and that
whatever he had bestowed upon any man, if he fell out with him
afterwards, he was never known to bring it against him.

Sang the poet Oisín of him once to St Patrick:--

  "These are the things that were dear to Finn--
  The din of battle, the banquet's glee,
  The bay of his hounds through the rough glen ringing.
  And the blackbird singing in Letter Lee,

  "The shingle grinding along the shore
  When they dragged his war-boats down to sea,
  The dawn-wind whistling his spears among,
  And the magic song of his minstrels three."

In the time of Finn no one was ever admitted to be one of the Fianna
of Erinn unless he could pass through many severe tests of his
worthiness. He must be versed in the Twelve Books of Poetry and must
himself be skilled to make verse in the rime and metre of the masters
of Gaelic poesy. Then he was buried to his middle in the earth, and
must, with a shield and a hazel stick, there defend himself against
nine warriors casting spears at him, and if he were wounded he was
not accepted. Then his hair was woven into braids and he was chased
through the forest by the Fians. If he were overtaken, or if a braid
of his hair were disturbed, or if a dry stick cracked under his foot,
he was not accepted. He must be able to leap over a lath level with
his brow and to run at full speed under level with his knee, and he
must be able while running to draw out a thorn from his foot and never
slacken speed. He must take no dowry with a wife.

It was said that one of the Fians, namely Keelta, lived on to a great
age, and saw St Patrick, by whom he was baptized into the faith of the
Christ, and to whom he told many tales of Finn and his men, which
Patrick's scribe wrote down. And once Patrick asked him how it was
that the Fianna became so mighty and so glorious that all Ireland sang
of their deeds, as Ireland has done ever since. Keelta answered,
"Truth was in our hearts and strength in our arms, and what we said,
that we fulfilled."

This was also told of Keelta after he had seen St Patrick and received
the Faith. He chanced to be one day by Leyney in Connacht, where the
Fairy Folk of the Mound of Duma were wont to be sorely harassed and
spoiled every year by pirates from oversea. They called Keelta to
their aid, and by his counsel and valour the invaders were overcome
and driven home, but Keelta was sorely wounded. Then Keelta asked
that Owen the seer of the Fairy Folk might foretell him how long he
had to live, for he was already a very aged man. Owen said, "It will
be seventeen years, O Keelta of fair fame, till thou fall by the pool
of Tara, and grievous that will be to all the King's household." "Even
so did my chief and lord, my guardian and loving Protector, Finn,
foretell to me," said Keelta. "And now what fee will ye give me for my
rescue of you from the worst affliction that ever befell you?" "A
great reward," said the Fairy Folk, "even youth; for by our art we
shall change you into young man again with all the strength and
activity of your prime." "Nay, God forbid," said Keelta "that I should
take upon me a shape of sorcery, or any other than that which my
Maker, the true and glorious God, hath bestowed upon me." And the
Fairy Folk said, "It is the word of a true warrior and hero, and the
thing that thou sayest is good." So they healed his wounds, and every
bodily evil that he had, and he wished them blessing and victory, and
went his way.




CHAPTER XII

The Tale of Vivionn the Giantess


One day Finn and Goll, Keelta and Oscar, and others of the Fianna,
were resting after the hunt on a certain hill now called the Ridge of
the Dead Woman, and their meal was being got ready, when a girl of the
kin of the giants came striding up and sat down among them. "Didst
thou ever see a woman so tall?" asked Finn of Goll. "By my troth,"
said Goll, "never have I or any other seen a woman so big." She took
her hand out of her bosom and on her long slender fingers there were
three gold rings each as thick as an ox's yoke. "Let us question her,"
said Goll, and Finn said, "If we stood up, perchance she might hear
us."

So they all rose to their feet, but the giantess, on that, rose up
too. "Maiden," said Finn, "if thou have aught to say to us or to hear
from us, sit down and lean thine elbow on the hill-side." So she lay
down and Finn bade her say whence she came and what was her will with
them. "Out of the World Oversea where the sun sets am I come," she
said, "to seek thy protection, O mighty Finn." "And what is thy name?"
"My name is Vivionn of the Fair Hair, and my father Treon is called
King of the Land of Lasses, for he has but three sons and nine and
seven score daughters, and near him is a King who hath one daughter
and eight score sons. To one of these, Æda, was I given in marriage
sorely against my will. Three times now have I fled from him. And this
time it was fishermen whom the wind blew to us from off this land who
told us of a mighty lord here, named Finn, son of Cumhal, who would
let none be wronged or oppressed, but he would be their friend and
champion. And if thou be he, to thee am I come." Then she laid her
hand in Finn's, and he bade her do the same with Goll mac Morna, who
was second in the Fian leadership, and she did so.

Then the maiden took from her head a jewelled golden helmet, and
immediately her hair flowed out in seven score tresses, fair, curly
and golden, at the abundance of which all stood amazed; and Finn said,
"By the Immortals that we adore, but King Cormac and the poetess Ethne
and the fair women-folk of the Fianna would deem it a marvel to see
this girl. Tell us now, maiden, what portion wilt thou have of meat
and drink? will that of a hundred of us suffice thee?" The girl then
saw Cnu, the dwarf harper of Finn, who had just been playing to them,
and she said, "Whatever thou givest to yon little man that bears the
harp, be it much or little, the same, O Finn, will suffice for me."

Then she begged a drink from them, and Finn called his gillie,
Saltran, and bade him fetch the full of a certain great goblet with
water from the ford; now this goblet was of wood, and it held as much
as nine of the Fianna could drink. The maiden poured some of the water
into her right hand and drank three sips of it, and scattered the rest
over the Fianna, and she and they burst out laughing. Finn said, "On
thy conscience, girl, what ailed thee not to drink out of the goblet?"
"Never," she replied, "have I drunk out of any vessel but there was a
rim of gold to it, or at least of silver."

And now Keelta looking up perceived a tall youth coming swiftly
towards them, who, when he approached, seemed even bigger than was the
maiden. He wore a rough hairy cape over his shoulder and beneath that
a green cloak fastened by a golden brooch; his tunic was of royal
satin, and he bore a red shield slung over his shoulders, and a spear
with a shaft as thick as a man's leg was in his hand; a gold-hilted
sword hung by his side. And his face, which was smooth-shaven, was
comelier than that of any of the sons of men.

When he came near, seeing among the Fians a stir of alarm at this
apparition, Finn said, "Keep every one of you his place, let neither
warrior nor gillie address him. Know any of you this champion?" "I
know him," said the maiden; "that is even he to escape from whom I am
come to thee, O Finn." And she sat down between Finn and Goll. But the
stranger drew near, and spake never a word, but before any one could
tell what he would be at he thrust fiercely and suddenly with his
spear at the girl, and the shaft stood out a hand's breadth at her
back. And she fell gasping, but the young man drew his weapon out and
passed rapidly through the crowd and away.

[Illustration: "They ran him by hill and plain"]

Then Finn cried, red with wrath, "Ye have seen! Avenge this wicked
deed, or none of you aspire to Fianship again." And the whole company
sprang to their feet and gave chase to that murderer, save only Finn
and Goll, who stayed by the dying maiden. And they ran him by hill and
plain to the great Bay of Tralee and down to the Tribute Point, where
the traders from oversea were wont to pay their dues, and there he set
his face to the West and took the water. By this time four of the
Fianna had outstripped the rest, namely, Keelta, and Dermot, and Glas,
and Oscar, son of Oisín. Of these Keelta was first, and just as the
giant was mid-leg in the waves he hurled his spear and it severed the
thong of the giant's shield so that it fell off in the water. And as
the giant paused, Keelta seized his spear and tore it from him. But
the giant waded on, and soon the Fians were floundering in deep water
while the huge form, thigh deep, was seen striding towards the setting
sun. And a great ship seemed to draw near, and it received him, and
then departed into the light, but the Fians returned in the grey
evening, bearing the spear and the great shield to Finn. There they
found the maiden at point of death, and they laid the weapons before
her. "Goodly indeed are these arms," she said, "for that is the
Thunder Spear of the King Oversea and the shield is the Red Branch
Shield," for it was covered with red arabesques. Then she bestowed her
bracelets on Finn's three harpers, the dwarf Cnu, and Blanit his wife,
and the harper Daira. And she bade Finn care for her burial, that it
should be done becomingly, "for under thy honour and protection I got
my death, and it was to thee I came into Ireland." So they buried her
and lamented her, and made a great far-seen mound over her grave,
which is called the Ridge of the Dead Woman, and set up a pillar stone
upon it with her name and lineage carved in Ogham-crave.[23]

   [23] Ogham-craobh = "branching Ogham," so called because the
   letters resembled the branching of twigs from a stem. The Ogham
   alphabet was in use in Ireland in pre-Christian times, and many
   sepulchral inscriptions in it still remain.




CHAPTER XIII

The Chase of the Gilla Dacar


In the reign of Cormac mac Art, grandson of Conn of the Hundred
Battles, the order of precedence and dignity in the court of the High
King at Tara was as follows: First came great Cormac, the kingly, the
hospitable, warrior and poet, and he was supreme over all. Next in
order came the five kings of the five Provinces of Ireland, namely,
Ulster, Munster, Connacht, Leinster, and Mid-Erinn. After these ranked
the captains of the royal host, of whom Finn, son of Cumhal, was the
chief.

Now the privileges of the Fianna of Erinn were many and great; to wit,
in every county in Ireland one townland, and in every townland a
cartron of land, and in the house of every gentleman the right to
have a young deer-hound or a beagle kept at nurse from November to
May, together with many other taxes and royalties not to be recounted
here. But if they had these many and great privileges, yet greater
than these were the toils and hardships which they had to endure, in
guarding the coasts of all Ireland from oversea invaders and
marauders, and in keeping down all robbers and outlaws and evil folk
within the kingdom, for this was the duty laid upon them by their bond
of service to the King.

Now the summer half of the year was wont to be ended by a great
hunting in one of the forests of Ireland, and so it was that one
All-hallowtide, when the great banquet of Finn in his Dún on the Hill
of Allen was going forward, and the hall resounded with cheerful talk
and laughter and with the music of tympan and of harp, Finn asked of
the assembled captains in what part of Erinn they should proceed to
beat up game on the morrow. And it was agreed among them to repair to
the territory of Thomond and Desmond in Munster; and from Allen they
set out accordingly and came to the Hill of Knockany. Thence they
threw out the hunt and sent their bands of beaters through many a
gloomy ravine and by many a rugged hill-pass and many a fair open
plain. Desmond's high hills, called now Slievelogher, they beat, and
the smooth, swelling hills of Slievenamuck, and the green slopes of
grassy Slievenamon, and the towering rough crags of the Decies, and
thence on to the dark woods of Belachgowran.

While the great hunt was going forward Finn with certain of his chief
captains sat on a high mound to overlook it. There, with Finn, were
Goll and Art mac Morna, and Liagan the swift runner, and Dermot of the
Love Spot, and Keelta, son of Ronan, and there also was Conan the
Bald, the man of scurrilous tongue, and a score or so more. Sweet it
was to Finn and his companions to hear from the woods and wildernesses
around them the many-tongued baying of the hounds and the cries and
whistling of the beaters, the shouting of the strong men and the notes
of the Fian hunting-horn.

When they had sat there awhile one of Finn's men came running quickly
towards him and said--

"A stranger is approaching us from the westward, O Finn, and I much
mislike his aspect."

With that all the Fians looked up and beheld upon the hillside a huge
man, looking like some Fomorian marauder, black-visaged and ugly, with
a sour countenance and ungainly limbs. On his back hung a dingy black
shield, on his misshapen left thigh he wore a sharp broad-bladed
sword; projecting over his shoulder were two long lances with broad
rusty heads. He wore garments that looked as if they had been buried
in a cinder heap, and a loose ragged mantle. Behind him there shambled
a sulky, ill-shapen mare with a bony carcase and bowed knees, and on
her neck a clumsy iron halter. With a rope her master hauled her
along, with violent jerks that seemed as if they would wrench her head
from her scraggy neck, and ever and anon the mare would stand and jib,
when the man laid on her ribs such blows from a strong ironshod cudgel
that they sounded like the surges of the sea beating on a rocky coast.
Short as was the distance from where the man and his horse were first
perceived to where Finn was standing, it was long ere they traversed
it. At last, however, he came into the presence of Finn and louted
before him, doing obeisance. Finn lifted his hand over him and bade
him speak, and declare his business and his name and rank. "I know
not," said the fellow, "of what blood I am, gentle or simple, but only
this, that I am a wight from oversea looking for service and wages.
And as I have heard of thee, O Finn, that thou art not wont to refuse
any man, I came to take service with thee if thou wilt have me."

"Neither shall I refuse thee," said Finn; "but what brings thee here
with a horse and no horseboy?"

"Good enough reason," said the stranger. "I have much ado to get meat
for my own belly, seeing that I eat for a hundred men; and I will not
have any horseboy meddling with my ration."

"And what name dost thou bear?"

"I am called the Gilla Dacar (the Hard Gillie)," replied he.

"Why was that name given thee?" asked Finn.

"Good enough reason for that also," spake the stranger, "for of all
the lads in the world there is none harder than I am for a lord to get
any service and obedience from." Then turning to Conan the Bald he
said, "Whether among the Fianna is a horseman's pay or a footman's the
highest?"

"A horseman's surely," said Conan, "seeing that he gets twice the pay
of a footman."

"Then I am a horseman in thy service, Finn," said the gillie. "I call
thee to observe that I have here a horse, and moreover that as a
horseman I came among the Fianna. Have I thy authority," he went on,
"to turn out my steed among thine?"

"Turn her out," quoth Finn.

Then the big man flung his mare the rope and immediately she galloped
off to where the Fian horses were grazing. Here she fell to biting and
kicking them, knocking out the eye of one and snapping off another's
ear and breaking the leg of another with a kick.

"Take away thy mare, big man," cried Conan then, "or by Heaven and
Earth were it not that Finn told thee to let her loose I would let
loose her brains. Many a bad bargain has Finn made but never a worse
than thou."

"By Heaven and Earth," said the gillie, "that I never will, for I have
no horseboy, and I will do no horseboy's work."

Then Conan mac Morna took the iron halter and laid it on the
stranger's horse and brought the beast back to Finn and held it there.

Said Finn to Conan, "I have never seen thee do horseboy's service even
to far better men than this gillie. How now if thou wert to leap on
the brute's back and gallop her to death over hill and dale in payment
for the mischief she hath wrought among our steeds?"

At this word Conan clambered up on the back of the big man's mare, and
with all his might he smote his two heels into her, but the mare never
stirred.

"I perceive what ails her," said Finn. "She will never stir till she
has a weight of men on her equal to that of her own rider."

Then thirteen men of the Fianna scrambled up laughing behind Conan,
and the mare lay down under them, and then got up again, they still
clinging to her. At this the big man said,

"It appears that you are making a sport and mockery of my mare, and
that even I myself do not escape from it. It is well for me that I
have not spent the rest of the year in your company, seeing what a
jest ye have made of me the very first day; and I perceive, O Finn,
that thou art very unlike the report that is made of thee. And now I
bid thee farewell, for of thy service I have had enough."

So with downcast head and despondent looks the big gillie shambled
slowly away until he had passed out of view of the Fianna, behind the
shoulder of the hill. Having arrived here he tucked up his coat to his
waist, and fast though be the flight of the swallow, and fast that of
the roe-deer, and fast the rush of a roaring wind over a mountain top
in mid-March, no faster are these than the bounding speed and furious
flight of the big man down the hillside toward the West.

No sooner did the mare see that her master had departed than she too
dashed uncontrollably forward and flew down the hillside after him.
And as the Fians saw Conan the Bald and his thirteen companions thus
carried off, willy nilly, they broke into a roar of laughter and ran
alongside mocking them. But Conan, seeing that they were being carried
off in the wake of the big man of evil aspect, of whom none knew
whence or who he was, he was terrified and began reviling and cursing,
and shouted to Finn, "A palsy seize thee, Finn; may some rascally
churl, that is if possible of worse blood than thyself, have thy head,
unless thou follow and rescue us wheresoever this monster shall bring
us." So Finn and the Fianna ran, and the mare ran, over bare hills and
by deep glens, till at last they came to Corcaguiny in Kerry, where
the gillie set his face to the blue ocean, and the mare dashed in
after him. But ere he did so, Liagan the Swift got two hands on the
tail of the mare, though further he could not win, and he was towed
in, still clinging to his hold, and over the rolling billows away they
went, the fourteen Fians on the wild mare's back, and Liagan haled
along by her tail.

"What is to be done now?" said Oisín to Finn when they had arrived at
the beach.

"Our men are to be rescued," said Finn, "for to that we are bound by
the honour of the Fianna. Whithersoever they are gone, thither must we
follow and win them back by fair means or foul; but to that end we
must first fit out a galley."

So in the end it was agreed that Finn and fourteen men of his bravest
and best champions should sail oversea in search of the Gilla Dacar
and his captives, while Oisín remained in Erinn and exercised rule
over the Fianna in the place of his father.

After a while, then, a swift galley was made ready by Finn and stored
with victual, and with arms, and also with gold and raiment to make
gifts withal if need should be. And into the ship came the fifteen
valiant men, and gripped their oars, while Finn steered; and soon the
sea whitened around their oarblades, and over the restless, rolling
masses of the many-hued and voiceful billows, the ship clove her way
to the West. And the Fians, who were wont to be wakened by the
twittering of birds over their hunting booths in the greenwood, now
delighted to hear, day after day as they roused themselves at morn,
the lapping of the wide waters of the world against their vessel's
bows, or the thunder of pounding surges when the wind blew hard.

At length after many days the sharpest-eyed of the men of Finn saw
far-off what seemed a mountain rising from the sea, and to it they
shaped their course. When they had come to that land they found
themselves under the shadow of a great grey cliff, and beneath it
slippery rocks covered with seaweed.

Then Dermot, who was the most active of the company, was bidden to
mount the cliff and to procure means of drawing up the rest of the
party, but of what land might lie on the top of that wall of rock none
of them could discover anything. Dermot, descending from the ship,
then climbed with difficulty up the face of the cliff, while the
others made fast their ship among the rocks. But Dermot having arrived
at the top saw no habitation of man, and could compass no way of
helping his companions to mount. He went therefore boldly forward into
the unknown land, hoping to obtain some help, if any friendly and
hospitable folk could there be found.

[Illustration: "Dermot took the horn and would have filled it"]

Before he had gone far he came into a wild wood, thick and tangled,
and full of the noise of streams, and the sough of winds, and
twittering of birds, and hum of bees. After he had traversed this
wilderness for a while he came to a mighty tree with densely
interwoven branches, and beneath it a pile of rocks, having on its
summit a pointed drinking horn wreathed with rich ornament, and at its
foot a well of pure bright water. Dermot, being now thirsty, took the
horn and would have filled it at the well, but as he stooped down to
do so he heard a loud, threatening murmur which seemed to rise from
it. "I perceive," he said to himself, "that I am forbidden to drink
from this well" Nevertheless thirst compelled him, and he drank his
fill.

In no long time thereafter he saw an armed warrior of hostile aspect
coming towards him through the wood. No courteous greeting did he give
to Dermot, but began to revile him for roaming in his wood and
wilderness, and for drinking his water. Thereupon they fought, and
for the rest of the afternoon they took and gave hard blows neither
subduing the other, till at last as darkness began to fall the warrior
suddenly dived into the well and was seen no more. Dermot, vexed at
this ending of the combat, then made him ready to spend the night in
that place, but first he slew a deer in the wood, and made a fire,
whereat he roasted pieces of the deer's flesh on spits of white hazel,
and drank abundantly of the well-water, and then slept soundly through
the night.

Next morning when he awakened and went to the well he found the
Champion of the Well standing there and awaiting him. "It is not
enough, Dermot," said he angrily, "for thee to traverse my woods at
will and to drink my water, but thou must even also slay my deer."
Then they closed in combat again, and dealt each other blow for blow
and wound for wound till evening parted them, and the champion dived
into the well as before.

On the third day it went even so; but as evening came on Dermot,
watching closely, rushed at the champion just as he was about to
plunge into the well, and gripped him in his arms. But none the less
the Champion of the Well made his dive, and took down Dermot with him.
And a darkness and faintness came over Dermot, but when he awoke, he
found himself in a wide, open country, flowery and fair, and before
him the walls and towers of a royal city. Thither the champion, sorely
wounded, was now borne off, while a crowd of his people came round
Dermot, and beat and wounded him, leaving him on the ground for dead.

After night had fallen, when all the people of the city in the Land
Undersea had departed, a stalwart champion, well-armed and of bold
appearance, came upon Dermot and stirred him with his foot. Dermot
thereon awoke from his swoon and, warrior-like, reached out his hand
for his arms. But the champion said, "Wait awhile, my son, I have not
come to do thee hurt or harm. Thou hast chosen an ill place to rest
and slumber in, before the city of thine enemy. Rise and follow me,
and I shall bestow thee far better than that." Dermot then rose and
followed the champion, and long and far they journeyed until they came
to a high-towered fortress, wherein were thrice fifty valiant
men-at-arms and fair women; and the daughter of that champion, a
white-toothed, rosy-cheeked, smooth-handed, and black-eyebrowed maid,
received Dermot, kindly and welcomefully, and applied healing herbs to
his wounds, and in no long time he was made as good a man as ever. And
thus he remained, and was entertained most royally with the best of
viands and of liquors. The first part of every night those in that Dún
were wont to spend in feasting, and the second in recreation and
entertainment of the mind, with music and with poetry and bardic
tales, and the third part in sound and healthful slumber, till the sun
in his fiery journey rose over the heavy-clodded earth on the morrow
morn.

And the King of that country, who was the champion that had aroused
Dermot, told him this was the land of Sorca, and that he had showed
this kindness to Dermot for that he himself had once been on wage and
service with Finn, son of Cumhal "and a better master," said he, "man
never had."

Now the story turns to tell of what befell Finn and the remainder of
his companions when Dermot left them in the ship. After a while,
seeing that he did not return, and being assured that some mischief or
hindrance must have befallen him, they made an attempt to climb the
cliff after him, having noted which way he went. With much toil and
peril they accomplished this, and then journeying forward and
following on Dermot's track, they came at last to the well in the wild
wood, and saw near by the remains of the deer, and the ashes of the
fire that Dermot had kindled to cook it. But from this place they
could discover no track of his going. While they were debating on what
should next be done, they saw riding towards them a tall warrior on a
dark grey horse with a golden bridle, who greeted them courteously.
From him they enquired as to whether he had seen aught of their
companion, Dermot, in the wilderness. "Follow me," said the warrior,
"and you shall shortly have tidings of him."

Then they followed the strange horseman into the forest by many dark
and winding ways, until at last they came into a rocky ravine, where
they found the mouth of a great cavern opening into the hillside.
Into this they went, and the way led them downward until it seemed as
if they were going into the bowels of the earth, until at last the
light began to shine round them, and they came out into a lovely land
of flowery plains and green woods and singing streams. In no long time
thereafter they came to a great royal Dún, where he who led them was
hailed as king and lord, and here, to their joy, they found their
comrade, Dermot of the Love Spot, who told them of all his adventures
and heard from them of theirs. This ended, and when they had been
entertained and refreshed, the lord of that place spoke to Finn and
said:--

"I have now, O Finn, within my fortress the fifteen stoutest heroes
that the world holds. To this end have I brought you here, that ye
might make war with me upon mine enemy the Champion of the Well, who
is king of the land bordering on mine, and who ceases not to persecute
and to harry my people because, in his arrogance, he would have all
the Under World country subject to himself alone. Say now if ye will
embrace this enterprise and help me to defend my own: and if not I
shall set you again upon the land of Erinn."

Finn said, "What of my fifteen men that were carried away on the wild
mare's back oversea?" "They are guarding the marches of my kingdom,"
said the King of Sorca, "and all is well with them and shall be well."

Then Finn agreed to take service with the King of Sorca, and next day
they arrayed themselves for fight and went out at the head of the
host. Ere long they came upon the army of the King of the Well, and
with him was the King of the Greeks and a band of fierce mercenaries,
and also the daughter of the Greek King, by name Tasha of the White
Side, a maiden who in beauty and grace surpassed all other women of
the world, as the Shannon surpasses all rivers of Erinn and the eagle
surpasses all birds of the air. Now the stories of Finn and his
generosity and great deeds had reached her since she was a child, and
she had set her love on him, though she had never seen his face till
now.

When the hosts were met, the King of the Greeks said, "Who of my men
will stand forth and challenge the best of these men of Erinn to
single combat that their metal may be proved, for to us it is unknown
what manner of men they be." The son of the King of the Greeks said,
"I will go."

So on the side of Finn, Oscar, son of Oisín, was chosen to match the
son of the Greek King, and the two hosts sat down peacefully together
to watch the weapon-play. And Tasha the princess sat by Finn, son of
Cumhal.

Then Oscar and the King's son stepped into their fighting place, and
fierce was the combat that arose between them, as when two roaring
surges of the sea dash against each other in a fissure of the rocks,
and the spray-cloud bursts from them high into the air. Long they
fought, and many red wounds did each of them give and receive, till at
last Oscar beat the Greek prince to the earth and smote off his head.
Then one host groaned for woe and discouragement, while the other
shouted for joy of victory, and so they parted for the night, each to
their own camp.

And in the camp of the folk of Sorca they found Conan the Bald and the
fourteen men that had gone with him on the mare's back.

But when night had fallen, Tasha stole from the wizard of the Greek
King his branch of silver bells that when shaken would lay asleep a
host of men, and with the aid of this she passed from the camp of the
Greeks, and through the sentinels, and came to the tent of Finn.

On the morrow morn the King of the Greeks found that his daughter had
fled to be the wife of Finn, son of Cumhal, and he offered a mighty
reward to whosoever would slay Finn and bring Tasha back. But when the
two armies closed in combat the Fians and the host of the King of
Sorca charged so fiercely home, that they drove their foes before them
as a winter gale drives before it a cloud of madly whirling leaves,
and those that were not slain in the fight and the pursuit went to
their own lands and abode there in peace; and thus was the war ended
of the King of Sorca and the Lord of the Well.

Then the King of Sorca had Finn and his comrades before him and gave
them praise and thanks for their valour. "And what reward," he said,
"will ye that I make you for the saving of the kingdom of Sorca?"

"Thou wert in my service awhile," said Finn, "and I mind not that I
paid thee any wage for it. Let that service even go against this, and
so we are quits."

"Nay, then," cried Conan the Bald, "but what shall I have for my ride
on the mare of the Gilla Dacar?"

"What wilt thou have?" said the King of Sorca.

"This," said Conan, "and nothing else will I accept. Let fourteen of
the fairest women of the land of Sorca be put on that same mare, and
thy wife, O King, clinging to its tail, and let them be thus haled
across the sea until they come to Corcaguiny in the land of Erinn. I
will have none of thy gold and silver, but the indignity that has been
put upon me doth demand an honourable satisfaction."

Then the King of Sorca smiled, and he said, "Behold thy men, Finn."

[Illustration: "'Follow me now to the Hill of Allen'"]

Finn turned his head to look round, and as he did so the plain and the
encampment of the Fairy Host vanished from his sight, and he saw
himself standing on the shingly strand of a little bay, with rocky
heights to right and left, crowned with yellow whin bushes whose
perfume mingled with the salt sea wind. It was the spot where he had
seen the Gilla Dacar and his mare take water on the coast of Kerry.
Finn stared over the sea, to discover, if he might, by what means he
had come thither, but nothing could he see there save the sunlit
water, and nothing hear but what seemed a low laughter from the
twinkling ripples that broke at his feet. Then he looked for his men,
who stood there, dazed like himself and rubbing their eyes; and there
too stood the Princess Tasha, who stretched out her white arms to him.
Finn went over and took her hands. "Shoulder your spears, good lads!"
he called to his men. "Follow me now to the Hill of Allen, and to the
wedding feast of Tasha and of Finn mac Cumhal."




CHAPTER XIV

The Birth of Oisín


One day as Finn and his companions and dogs were returning from the
chase to their Dún on the Hill of Allen, a beautiful fawn started up
on their path and the chase swept after her, she taking the way which
led to their home. Soon, all the pursuers were left far behind save
only Finn himself and his two hounds Bran and Sceolaun. Now these
hounds were of strange breed, for Tyren, sister to Murna, the mother
of Finn, had been changed into a hound by the enchantment of a woman
of the Fairy Folk, who loved Tyren's husband Ullan; and the two hounds
of Finn were the children of Tyren, born to her in that shape. Of all
hounds in Ireland they were the best, and Finn loved them much, so
that it was said he wept but twice in his life, and once was for the
death of Bran.

At last, as the chase went on down a valley side, Finn saw the fawn
stop and lie down, while the two hounds began to play round her and to
lick her face and limbs. So he gave commandment that none should hurt
her, and she followed them to the Dún of Allen, playing with the
hounds as she went.

The same night Finn awoke and saw standing by his bed the fairest
woman his eyes had ever beheld.

"I am Saba, O Finn," she said, "and I was the fawn ye chased to-day.
Because I would not give my love to the Druid of the Fairy Folk, who
is named the Dark, he put that shape upon me by his sorceries, and I
have borne it these three years. But a slave of his, pitying me, once
revealed to me that if I could win to thy great Dún of Allen, O Finn,
I should be safe from all enchantments and my natural shape would come
to me again. But I feared to be torn in pieces by thy dogs, or wounded
by thy hunters, till at last I let myself be overtaken by thee alone
and by Bran and Sceolaun, who have the nature of man and would do me
no hurt." "Have no fear, maiden," said Finn, "we the Fianna, are free
and our guest-friends are free; there is none who shall put compulsion
on you here."

So Saba dwelt with Finn, and he made her his wife; and so deep was his
love for her that neither the battle nor the chase had any delight for
him, and for months he never left her side. She also loved him as
deeply, and their joy in each other was like that of the Immortals in
the Land of Youth. But at last word came to Finn that the warships of
the Northmen were in the bay of Dublin, and he summoned his heroes to
the fight, "for," said he to Saba, "the men of Erinn give us tribute
and hospitality to defend them from the foreigner, and it were shame
to take it from them and not to give that to which we, on our side,
are pledged." And he called to mind that great saying of Goll mac
Morna when they were once sore bested by a mighty host--"a man," said
Goll, "lives after his life but not after his honour."

Seven days was Finn absent, and he drove the Northmen from the shores
of Erinn. But on the eighth day he returned, and when he entered his
Dún he saw trouble in the eyes of his men and of their fair womenfolk,
and Saba was not on the rampart expecting his return. So he bade them
tell him what had chanced, and they said--

"Whilst thou, our father and lord, wert afar off smiting the
foreigner, and Saba looking ever down the pass for thy return, we saw
one day as it were the likeness of thee approaching, and Bran and
Sceolaun at thy heels. And we seemed also to hear the notes of the
Fian hunting call blown on the wind. Then Saba hastened to the great
gate, and we could not stay her, so eager was she to rush to the
phantom. But when she came near, she halted and gave a loud and bitter
cry, and the shape of thee smote her with a hazel wand, and lo, there
was no woman there any more, but a deer. Then those hounds chased it,
and ever as it strove to reach again the gate of the Dún they turned
it back. We all now seized what arms we could and ran out to drive
away the enchanter, but when we reached the place there was nothing to
be seen, only still we heard the rushing of flying feet and the baying
of dogs, and one thought it came from here, and another from there,
till at last the uproar died away and all was still. What we could do,
O Finn, we did; Saba is gone."

Finn then struck his hand on his breast but spoke no word, and he went
to his own chamber. No man saw him for the rest of that day, nor for
the day after. Then he came forth, and ordered the matters of the
Fianna as of old, but for seven years thereafter he went searching for
Saba through every remote glen and dark forest and cavern of Ireland,
and he would take no hounds with him save Bran and Sceolaun. But at
last he renounced all hope of finding her again, and went hunting as
of old. One day as he was following the chase on Ben Gulban in Sligo,
he heard the musical bay of the dogs change of a sudden to a fierce
growling and yelping as though they were in combat with some beast,
and running hastily up he and his men beheld, under a great tree, a
naked boy with long hair, and around him the hounds struggling to
seize him, but Bran and Sceolaun fighting with them and keeping them
off. And the lad was tall and shapely, and as the heroes gathered
round he gazed undauntedly on them, never heeding the rout of dogs at
his feet. The Fians beat off the dogs and brought the lad home with
them, and Finn was very silent and continually searched the lad's
countenance with his eyes. In time, the use of speech came to him, and
the story that he told was this:--

He had known no father, and no mother save a gentle hind with whom he
lived in a most green and pleasant valley shut in on every side by
towering cliffs that could not be scaled, or by deep chasms in the
earth. In the summer he lived on fruits and such-like, and in the
winter, store of provisions was laid for him in a cave. And there came
to them sometimes a tall dark-visaged man, who spoke to his mother,
now tenderly, and now in loud menace, but she always shrunk away in
fear, and the man departed in anger. At last there came a day when the
Dark Man spoke very long with his mother in all tones of entreaty and
of tenderness and of rage, but she would still keep aloof and give no
sign save of fear and abhorrence. Then at length the Dark Man drew
near and smote her with a hazel wand; and with that he turned and went
his way, but she, this time, followed him, still looking back at her
son and piteously complaining. And he, when he strove to follow, found
himself unable to move a limb; and crying out with rage and desolation
he fell to the earth and his senses left him. When he came to himself
he was on the mountain side, on Ben Gulban, where he remained some
days, searching for that green and hidden valley, which he never found
again. And after a while the dogs found him; but of the hind his
mother and of the Dark Druid, there is no man knows the end.

Finn called his name Oisín, and he became a warrior of fame, but far
more famous for the songs and tales that he made; so that of all
things to this day that are told of the Fianna of Erinn, men are wont
to say, "So sang the bard, Oisín, son of Finn."




CHAPTER XV

Oisín in the Land of Youth


It happened that on a misty summer morning as Finn and Oisín with many
companions were hunting on the shores of Loch Lena they saw coming
towards them a maiden, beautiful exceedingly, riding on a snow-white
steed. She wore the garb of a queen; a crown of gold was on her head,
and a dark brown mantle of silk, set with stars of red gold, fell
around her and trailed on the ground. Silver shoes were on her horse's
hoofs, and a crest of gold nodded on his head. When she came near she
said to Finn, "From very far away I have come, and now at last I have
found thee, Finn, son of Cumhal."

Then Finn said, "What is thy land and race, maiden, and what dost thou
seek from me?"

"My name," she said, "is Niam of the Golden Hair. I am the daughter of
the King of the Land of Youth, and that which has brought me here is
the love of thy son Oisín." Then she turned to Oisín and she spoke to
him in the voice of one who has never asked anything but it was
granted to her, "Wilt thou go with me, Oisín, to my father's land?"

And Oisín said, "That will I, and to the world's end"; for the fairy
spell had so wrought upon his heart that he cared no more for any
earthly thing but to have the love of Niam of the Head of Gold.

Then the maiden spoke of the Land Oversea to which she had summoned
her lover, and as she spoke a dreamy stillness fell on all things, nor
did a horse shake his bit nor a hound bay, nor the least breath of
wind stir in the forest trees till she had made an end. And what she
said seemed sweeter and more wonderful as she spoke it than anything
they could afterwards remember to have heard, but so far as they could
remember it, it was this:--

   "Delightful is the land beyond all dreams,
   Fairer than aught thine eyes have ever seen.
   There all the year the fruit is on the tree,
   And all the year the bloom is on the flower.

   "There with wild honey drip the forest trees;
   The stores of wine and mead shall never fail.
   Nor pain nor sickness knows the dweller there,
   Death and decay come near him never more.

   "The feast shall cloy not, nor the chase shall tire,
   Nor music cease for ever through the hall;
   The gold and jewels of the Land of Youth
   Outshine all splendours ever dreamed by man.

   "Thou shalt have horses of the fairy breed,
   Thou shalt have hounds that can outrun the wind;
   A hundred chiefs shall follow thee in war,
   A hundred maidens sing thee to thy sleep.

   "A crown of sovranty thy brow shall wear,
   And by thy side a magic blade shall hang.
   Thou shalt be lord of all the Land of Youth,
   And lord of Niam of the Head of Gold."

As the magic song ended, the Fians beheld Oisín mount the fairy steed
and hold the maiden in his arms, and ere they could stir or speak she
turned her horse's head and shook the ringing bridle and down the
forest glade they fled, as a beam of light flies over the land when
clouds drive across the sun; and never did the Fianna behold Oisín,
son of Finn, on earth again.

Yet what befell him afterwards is known. As his birth was strange so
was his end, for he saw the wonders of the Land of Youth with mortal
eyes and lived to tell them with mortal lips.

When the white horse with its riders reached the sea it ran lightly
over the waves and soon the green woods and headlands of Erinn faded
out of sight. And now the sun shone fiercely down, and the riders
passed into a golden haze in which Oisín lost all knowledge of where
he was or if sea or dry land were beneath his horse's hoofs. But
strange sights sometimes appeared to them in the mist, for towers and
palace gateways loomed up and disappeared, and once a hornless doe
bounded by them chased by a white hound with one red ear, and again
they saw a young maid ride by on a brown steed, bearing a golden apple
in her hand, and close behind her followed a young horseman on a white
steed, a purple cloak floating at his back and a gold-hilted sword in
his hand. And Oisín would have asked the princess who and what these
apparitions were, but Niam bade him ask nothing nor seem to notice any
phantom they might see until they were come to the Land of Youth.

[Illustration: "They rode up to a stately palace"]

At last the sky gloomed above them, and Niam urged their steed faster.
The wind lashed them with pelting rain, thunder roared across the sea
and lightning blazed, but they held on their way till at length they
came once more into a region of calm and sunshine. And now Oisín saw
before him a shore of yellow sand, lapped by the ripples of a summer
sea. Inland, there rose before his eye wooded hills amid which he
could discern the roofs and towers of a noble city. The white horse
bore them swiftly to the shore and Oisín and the maiden lighted down.
And Oisín marvelled at everything around him, for never was water so
blue or trees so stately as those he saw, and the forest was alive
with the hum of bees and the song of birds, and the creatures that are
wild in other lands, the deer and the red squirrel and the wood-dove,
came, without fear, to be caressed. Soon, as they went forward, the
walls of a city came in sight, and folk began to meet them on the
road, some riding, some afoot, all of whom were either youths or
maidens, all looking as joyous as if the morning of happy life had
just begun for them, and no old or feeble person was to be seen. Niam
led her companion through a towered gateway built of white and red
marble, and there they were met by a glittering company of a hundred
riders on black steeds and a hundred on white, and Oisín mounted a
black horse and Niam her white, and they rode up to a stately palace
where the King of the Land of Youth had his dwelling. And there he
received them, saying in a loud voice that all the folk could hear,
"Welcome, Oisín, son of Finn. Thou art come to the Land of Youth,
where sorrow and weariness and death shall never touch thee. This thou
hast won by thy faithfulness and valour and by the songs that thou
hast made for the men of Erinn, whereof the fame is come to us, for we
have here indeed all things that are delightful and joyous, but poesy
alone we had not. But now we have the chief poet of the race of men to
live with us, immortal among immortals, and the fair and cloudless
life that we lead here shall be praised in verses as fair; even as
thou, Oisín, did'st praise and adorn the short and toilsome and
chequered life that men live in the world thou hast left forever. And
Niam my daughter shall be thy bride, and thou shalt be in all things
even as myself in the Land of Youth."

Then the heart of Oisín was filled with glory and joy, and he turned
to Niam and saw her eyes burn with love as she gazed upon him. And
they were wedded the same day, and the joy they had in each other grew
sweeter and deeper with every day that passed. All that Niam had
promised in her magic song in the wild wood when first they met,
seemed faint beside the splendour and beauty of the life in the Land
of Youth. In the great palace they trod on silken carpets and ate off
plates of gold; the marble walls and doorways were wrought with carved
work, or hung with tapestries, where forest glades, and still lakes,
and flying deer were done in colours of unfading glow. Sunshine bathed
that palace always, and cool winds wandered through its dim corridors,
and in its courts there played fountains of bright water set about
with flowers. When Oisín wished to ride, a steed of fiery but gentle
temper bore him wherever he would through the pleasant land; when he
longed to hear music, there came upon his thought, as though borne on
the wind, crystal notes such as no hand ever struck from the strings
of any harp on earth.

But Oisín's hand now never touched the harp, and the desire of singing
and of making poetry never waked in him, for no one thing seemed so
much better than the rest, where all perfection bloomed and glowed
around him, as to make him long to praise it and to set it apart.

When seven days had passed, he said to Niam, "I would fain go
a-hunting." Niam said, "So be it, dear love; to-morrow we shall take
order for that." Oisín lay long awake that night, thinking of the
sound of Finn's hunting-horn, and of the smell of green boughs when
they kindled them to roast the deer-flesh in Fian ovens in the
wildwood.

So next day Oisín and Niam fared forth on horseback, with their
company of knights and maidens, and dogs leaping and barking with
eagerness for the chase. Anon they came to the forest, and the hunters
with the hounds made a wide circuit on this side and on that, till at
last the loud clamour of the hounds told that a stag was on foot, and
Oisín saw them streaming down an open glen, the stag with its great
antlers laid back and flying like the wind. So he shouted the Fian
hunting-cry and rode furiously on their track. All day long they
chased the stag through the echoing forest, and the fairy steed bore
him unfaltering over rough ground and smooth, till at last as darkness
began to fall the quarry was pulled down, and Oisín cut its throat
with his hunting-knife. Long it seemed to him since he had felt glad
and weary as he felt now, and since the woodland air with its odours
of pine and mint and wild garlic had tasted so sweet in his mouth; and
truly it was longer than he knew. But when he bade make ready the
wood-oven for their meal, and build a bothy of boughs for their
repose, Niam led him seven steps apart and seven to the left hand, and
yet seven back to the place where they had killed the deer, and lo,
there rose before him a stately Dún with litten windows and smoke
drifting above its roof. When they entered, there was a table spread
for a great company, and cooks and serving-men busy about a wide
hearth where roast and boiled meats of every sort were being prepared.
Casks of Greek wine stood open around the walls, and cups of gold were
on the board. So they all ate and drank their sufficiency, and all
night Oisín and Niam slept on a bed softer than swans-down in a
chamber no less fair than that which they had in the City of the Land
of Youth.

Next day, at the first light of dawn, they were on foot; and soon
again the forest rang to the baying of hounds and the music of the
hunting-horn. Oisín's steed bore him all day, tireless and swift as
before, and again the quarry fell at night's approach, and again a
palace rose in the wilderness for their night's entertainment, and all
things in it even more abundant and more sumptuous than before. And so
for seven days they fared in that forest, and seven stags were slain.
Then Oisín grew wearied of hunting, and as he plunged his sharp black
hunting-knife into the throat of the last stag, he thought of the
sword of magic temper that hung idle by his side in the City of Youth,
or rested from its golden nail in his bed-chamber, and he said to
Niam, "Has thy father never a foe to tame, never a wrong to avenge?
Surely the peasant is no man whose hand forgets the plough, nor the
warrior whose hand forgets the sword hilt." Niam looked on him
strangely for a while and as if she did not understand his words, or
sought some meaning in them which yet she feared to find. But at last
she said, "If deeds of arms be thy desire, Oisín, thou shalt have thy
sufficiency ere long." And so they rode home, and slept that night in
the palace of the City of Youth.

At daybreak on the following morn Niam roused Oisín, and she buckled
on him his golden-hilted sword and his corselet of blue steel inlaid
with gold. Then he put on his head a steel and gold helmet with dragon
crest, and slung on his back a shield of bronze wrought all over with
cunning hammer-work of serpentine lines that swelled and sank upon the
surface, and coiled in mazy knots, or flowed in long sweeping curves
like waves of the sea when they gather might and volume for their leap
upon the sounding shore. In the glimmering dawn, through the empty
streets of the fair city, they rode forth alone and took their way
through fields of corn and by apple orchards where red fruit hung down
to their hands. But by noontide their way began to mount upwards among
blue hills that they had marked from the city walls toward the west,
and of man's husbandry they saw no more, but tall red-stemmed pine
trees bordered the way on either side, and silence and loneliness
increased. At length they reached a broad table-land deep in the heart
of the mountains, where nothing grew but long coarse grass, drooping
by pools of black and motionless water, and where great boulders,
bleached white or stained with slimy lichens of livid red, lay
scattered far and wide about the plain. Against the sky the mountain
line now showed like a threat of bared and angry teeth, and as they
rode towards it Oisín perceived a huge fortress lying in the throat of
a wide glen or mountain pass. White as death was the stone of which it
was built, save where it was streaked with black or green from the
foulness of wet mosses that clung to its cornices and battlements, and
none seemed stirring about the place nor did any banner blow from its
towers.

Then said Niam, "This, O Oisín, is the Dún of the giant Fovor of the
Mighty Blows. In it he keeps prisoner a princess of the Fairy Folk
whom he would fain make his bride, but he may not do so, nor may she
escape, until Fovor has met in battle a champion who will undertake
her cause. Approach, then, to the gate, if thou art fain to undertake
this adventure, and blow the horn which hangs thereby, and then look
to thy weapons, for soon indeed will the battle be broken upon thee."

Then Oisín rode to the gate and thrice he blew on the great horn which
hung by it, and the clangour of it groaned drearily back from the
cliffs that overhung the glen. Not thus indeed sounded the _Dord_ of
Finn as its call blew lust of fighting and scorn of death into the
hearts of the Fianna amid the stress of battle. At the third blast the
rusty gates opened, grinding on their hinges, and Oisín rode into a
wide courtyard where servitors of evil aspect took his horse and
Niam's, and led them into the hall of Fovor. Dark it was and low, with
mouldering arras on its walls, and foul and withered rushes on the
floor, where dogs gnawed the bones thrown to them at the last meal,
and spilt ale and hacked fragments of flesh littered the bare oaken
table. And here rose languidly to greet them a maiden bound with seven
chains, to whom Niam spoke lovingly, saying that her champion was come
and that her long captivity should end. And the maiden looked upon
Oisín, whose proud bearing and jewelled armour made the mean place
seem meaner still, and a light of hope and of joy seemed to glimmer
upon her brow. So she gave them refreshment as she could, and
afterwards they betook them once more to the courtyard, where the
place of battle was set.

Here, at the further side, stood a huge man clad in rusty armour, who
when he saw Oisín rushed upon him, silent and furious, and swinging a
great battleaxe in his hand. But doubt and langour weighed upon
Oisín's heart, and it seemed to him as if he were in an evil dream,
which he knew was but a dream, and would be less than nothing when the
hour of awakening should come. Yet he raised his shield and gripped
the fairy sword, striving to shout the Fian battle-cry as he closed
with Fovor. But soon a heavy blow smote him to the ground, and his
armour clanged harshly on the stones. Then a cloud seemed to pass from
his spirit, and he leaped to his feet quicker than an arrow flies from
the string, and thrusting fiercely at the giant his sword-point gashed
the under side of Fovor's arm when it was raised to strike, and Oisín
saw his enemy's blood. Then the fight raged hither and thither about
the wide courtyard, with trampling of feet and clash of steel and
ringing of armour and shouts of onset as the heroes closed; Oisín,
agile as a wild stag, evading the sweep of the mighty axe and rushing
in with flickering blade at every unguarded moment, his whole soul
bent on one fierce thought, to drive his point into some gap at
shoulder or neck in Fovor's coat of mail. At length, when both were
weary and wounded men, with hacked and battered armour, Oisín's blade
cut the thong of Fovor's headpiece and it fell clattering to the
ground. Another blow laid the giant prostrate, and Oisín leaned, dizzy
and panting, upon his sword, while Fovor's serving-men took off their
master in a litter, and Niam came to aid her lord. Then Oisín stripped
off his armour in the great hall, and Niam tended to his wounds,
healing them with magic herbs and murmured incantations, and they saw
that one of the seven rusty chains that had bound the princess hung
loose from its iron staple in the wall.

All night long Oisín lay in deep and healing slumber, and next day he
arose, whole and strong, and hot to renew the fray. And the giant was
likewise healed and his might and fierceness returned to him. So they
fought till they were breathless and weary, and then to it again, and
again, till in the end Oisín drove his sword to the hilt in the
giant's shoulder where it joins the collar bone, and he fell aswoon,
and was borne away as before. And another chain of the seven fell from
the girdle of the captive maiden.

Thus for seven days went on the combat, and Oisín had seven nights of
healing and rest, with the tenderness and beauty of Niam about his
couch; and on the seventh day the maiden was free, and her folk
brought her away, rejoicing, with banners and with music that made a
brightness for a while in that forlorn and evil place.

But Oisín's heart was high with pride and victory, and a longing
uprose in his heart with a rush like a springtide for the days when
some great deed had been done among the Fianna, and the victors were
hailed and lauded by the home-folk in the Dún of Allen, men and women
leaving their toil or their pleasure to crowd round the heroes, and to
question again and again, and to learn each thing that had passed; and
the bards noting all to weave it into a glorious tale for after days;
and more than all the smile and the look of Finn as he learned how his
children had borne themselves in the face of death. And so Oisín said
to Niam, "Let me, for a short while, return to the land of Erinn, that
I may see there my friends and kin and tell them of the glory and joy
that are mine in the Land of Youth." But Niam wept and laid her white
arms about his neck, entreating him to think no more of the sad world
where all men live and move under a canopy of death, and where summer
is slain by winter, and youth by old age, and where love itself, if it
die not by falsehood and wrong, perishes many a time of too complete
a joy. But Oisín said, "The world of men compared with thy world is
like this dreary waste compared with the city of thy father; yet in
that city, Niam, none is better or worse than another, and I hunger to
tell my tale to ignorant and feeble folk that my words can move, as
words of mine have done of old, to wonder and delight. Then I shall
return to thee, Niam, and to thy fair and blissful land; and having
brought over to mortal men a tale that never man has told before, I
shall be happy and at peace for ever in the Land of Youth."

So they fared back to the golden city, and next day Niam brought to
Oisín the white steed that had borne them from Erinn, and bade him
farewell. "This our steed," she said, "will carry thee across the sea
to the land where I found thee, and whithersoever thou wilt, and what
folk are there thou shalt see, and what tale thou hast to tell can be
told. But never for even a moment must thou alight from his back, for
if thy foot once touch again the soil of earth, thou shalt never win
to me and to the Land of Youth again. And sorely do I fear some evil
chance. Was not the love of Niam of the Head of Gold enough to fill a
mortal's heart? But if thou must go, then go, and blessing and victory
be thine."

Then Oisín held her long in his arms and kissed her, and vowed to make
no long stay and never to alight from the fairy steed. And then he
shook the golden reins and the horse threw its head aloft and snorted
and bore him away in a pace like that of flowing water for speed and
smoothness. Anon they came to the margin of the blue sea, and still
the white steed galloped on, brushing the crests of the waves into
glittering spray. The sun glared upon the sea and Oisín's head swam
with the heat and motion, and in mist and dreams he rode where no day
was, nor night, nor any thought of time, till at last his horse's
hoofs ploughed through wet, yellow sands, and he saw black rocks
rising up at each side of a little bay, and inland were fields green
or brown, and white cottages thatched with reeds, and men and women,
toil-worn and clad in earth-coloured garments, went to and fro about
their tasks or stopped gazing at the rider in his crimson cloak and at
the golden trappings of his horse. But among the cottages was a small
house of stone such as Oisín had never seen in the land of Erinn;
stone was its roof as well as the walls, very steep and high, and
near-by from a rude frame of timber there hung a bell of bronze. Into
this house there passed one whom from his shaven crown Oisín guessed
to be a druid, and behind him two lads in white apparel. The druid
having seen the horseman turned his eyes again to the ground and
passed on, regarding him not, and the lads did likewise. And Oisín
rode on, eager to reach the Dún upon the Hill of Allen and to see the
faces of his kin and his friends.

[Illustration: "The white steed had vanished from their eyes like a
wreath of mist"]

At length, coming from the forest path into the great clearing where
the Hill of Allen was wont to rise broad and green, with its rampart
enclosing many white-walled dwellings, and the great hall towering
high in the midst, he saw but grassy mounds overgrown with rank weeds
and whin bushes, and among them pastured a peasant's kine.

Then a strange horror fell upon him, and he thought some enchantment
from the land of Faery held his eyes and mocked him with false
visions. He threw his arms abroad and shouted the names of Finn and
Oscar, but none replied, and he thought that perchance the hounds
might hear him, and he cried upon Bran and Sceolaun, and strained his
ears if they might catch the faintest rustle or whisper of the world
from the sight of which his eyes were holden, but he heard only the
sigh of the wind in the whins. Then he rode in terror from that place,
setting his face towards the eastern sea, for he meant to traverse
Ireland from side to side and end to end in the search of some escape
from his enchantment. But when he came near to the eastern sea and was
now in the place which is called the Valley of the Thrushes,[24] he
saw in a field upon the hillside a crowd of men striving to roll aside
a great boulder from their tilled land, and an overseer directing
them. Towards them he rode, meaning to ask them concerning Finn and
the Fianna. As he came near, they all stopped their work to gaze upon
him, for to them he appeared like a messenger of the Fairy Folk or an
angel from heaven. Taller and mightier he was than the men-folk they
knew, with sword-blue eyes and brown ruddy cheeks; in his mouth, as
it were, a shower of pearls, and bright hair clustered beneath the rim
of his helmet. And as Oisín looked upon their puny forms, marred by
toil and care, and at the stone which they feebly strove to heave from
its bed, he was filled with pity, and thought to himself, "not such
were even the churls of Erinn when I left them for the Land of Youth,"
and he stooped from his saddle to help them. His hand he set to the
boulder, and with a mighty heave he lifted it from where it lay and
set it rolling down the hill. And the men raised a shout of wonder and
applause, but their shouting changed in a moment into cries of terror
and dismay, and they fled, jostling and overthrowing each other to
escape from the place of fear; for a marvel horrible to see had taken
place. For Oisín's saddle-girth had burst as he heaved the stone, and
he fell headlong to the ground. In an instant the white steed had
vanished from their eyes like a wreath of mist, and that which rose,
feeble and staggering, from the ground was no youthful warrior but a
man stricken with extreme old age, white-bearded and withered, who
stretched out groping hands and moaned with feeble and bitter cries.
And his crimson cloak and yellow silken tunic were now but coarse
homespun stuff tied with a hempen girdle, and the gold-hilted sword
was a rough oaken staff such as a beggar carries who wanders the roads
from farmer's house to house.

   [24] Glanismole, near Dublin.

When the people saw that the doom that had been wrought was not for
them they returned, and found the old man prone on the ground with
his face hidden in his arms. So they lifted him up and asked who he
was and what had befallen him. Oisín gazed round on them with dim
eyes, and at last he said, "I was Oisín the son of Finn, and I pray ye
tell me where he now dwells, for his Dún on the Hill of Allen is now a
desolation, and I have neither seen him nor heard his hunting horn
from the Western to the Eastern Sea." Then the men gazed strangely on
each other and on Oisín, and the overseer asked, "Of what Finn dost
thou speak, for there be many of that name in Erinn?" Oisín said,
"Surely of Finn mac Cumhal mac Trenmor, captain of the Fianna of
Erinn." Then the overseer said, "Thou art daft, old man, and thou hast
made us daft to take thee for a youth as we did a while agone. But we
at least have now our wits again, and we know that Finn son of Cumhal
and all his generation have been dead these three hundred years. At
the battle of Gowra fell Oscar, son of Oisín, and Finn at the battle
of Brea, as the historians tell us; and the lays of Oisín, whose death
no man knows the manner of, are sung by our harpers at great men's
feasts. But now the Talkenn,[25] Patrick, has come into Ireland and
has preached to us the One God and Christ His Son, by whose might
these old days and ways are done away with, and Finn and his Fianna,
with their feasting and hunting and songs of war and of love, have no
such reverence among us as the monks and virgins of holy Patrick, and
the psalms and prayers that go up daily to cleanse us from sin and to
save us from the fire of judgment." But Oisín replied, half hearing
and still less comprehending what was said to him, "If thy God have
slain Finn and Oscar, I would say that God is a strong man." Then they
all cried out upon him, and some picked up stones, but the overseer
bade them let him be until the Talkenn had spoken with him, and till
he should order what was to be done.

   [25] Talkenn or "Adze-head" was a name given to St Patrick by
   the Irish. Probably it referred to the shape of his tonsure.

So they brought him to Patrick, who entreated him gently and
hospitably, and to Patrick he told the story of all that had befallen
him. But Patrick bade his scribes write all carefully down, that the
memory of the heroes whom Oisín had known, and of the joyous and free
life they had led in the woods and glens and wild places of Erinn,
should never be forgotten among men. And Oisín, during the short span
of life that yet remained to him, told to Patrick many tales of the
Fianna and their deeds, but of the three hundred years that he had
spent with Niam in the Land of Youth he rarely spoke, for they seemed
to him but as a vision or a dream of the night, set between a sunny
and a rainy day.




THE HISTORY OF KING CORMAC

CHAPTER XVI


I

THE BIRTH OF CORMAC

Of all the kings that ruled over Ireland, none had a better and more
loyal servant than was Finn mac Cumhal, and of all the captains and
counsellors of kings none ever served a more glorious and a nobler
monarch than did Finn, for the time that he served Cormac, son of Art,
son of Conn of the Hundred Battles. At the time at which this monarch
lived and reigned, the mist of sixteen centuries hangs between us and
the history of Ireland, but through this mist there shine a few great
and sunlike figures whose glory cannot be altogether hidden, and of
these figures Cormac is the greatest and the brightest. Much that is
told about him may be true, and much is certainly fable, but the
fables themselves are a witness to his greatness; they are like forms
seen in the mist when a great light is shining behind it, and we
cannot always say when we are looking at the true light and when at
the reflected glory.

The birth of Cormac was on this wise. His father, as we have said, was
Art, son of Conn, and his mother was named Achta, being the daughter
of a famous smith or ironworker of Connacht. Now before the birth of
Cormac, Achta had a strange dream, namely, that her head was struck
off from her body and that out of her neck there grew a great tree
which extended its branches over all Ireland and flourished
exceedingly, but a huge wave of the sea burst upon it and laid it low.
Then from the roots of this tree there grew up another, but it did not
attain the splendour of the first, and a blast of wind came from the
West and overthrew it. On this the woman started from her sleep, and
she woke her husband, Art, and told him her vision. "It is a true
dream," said Art. "I am thy head, and this portends that I shall be
violently taken from thee. But thou shalt bear me a son who shall be
King of all Ireland, and shall rule with great power and glory until
some disaster from the sea overtake him. But from him shall come yet
another king, my grandson and thine, who shall also be cut down, and I
think that the cause of his fall shall be the armies of the Fian host,
who are swift and keen as the wind."

Not long thereafter Art, son of Conn, fell in battle with the Picts
and Britons at the Plain of the Swine, which is between Athenry and
Galway in Connacht. Now the leader of the invaders then was mac Con, a
nephew to Art, who had been banished out of Ireland for rising against
the High King; and when he had slain Art he seized the sovranty of
Ireland and reigned there unlawfully for many years.

But before the battle, Art had counselled his wife:

"If things go ill with us in the fight, and I am slain, seek out my
faithful friend Luna who dwells in Corann in Connacht, and he will
protect thee till thy son be born." So Achta, with one maid, fled in
her chariot before the host of mac Con and sought to go to the Dún of
Luna. On her way thither, however, the hour came when her child should
be born, and the maid turned the chariot aside into the wild wood at
the place called Creevagh (the Place of the Twigs), and there, on a
couch of twigs and leaves, she gave birth to a noble son.

Then Achta, when she had cherished her boy and rejoiced over him, bade
her handmaid keep watch over both of them, and they fell asleep. But
the maid's eyes were heavy with weariness and long travelling, and ere
long she, too, was overpowered by slumber, and all three slept a deep
sleep while the horses wandered away grazing through the wood.

By and by there came a she-wolf roaming through the wood in search of
prey for her whelps, and it came upon the sleeping woman and the
little child. It did not wake the woman, but very softly it picked up
the infant and bore it off to the stony cave that is hard by to
Creevagh in the hill that was afterwards called Mount Cormac.

After a while the mother waked up and found her child gone. Then she
uttered a lamentable cry, and woke her handmaid, and both the women
searched hither and thither, but no trace of the child could they
find; and thus Luna found them; for he had heard news of the battle
and the death of his King, and he had come to succour Achta as he had
pledged his word to do. Luna and his men also made search for the
infant, but in vain; and at last he conveyed the two sorrowing women
to his palace; but Achta was somewhat comforted by her prophetic
dream. Luna then proclaimed that whoever should discover the King's
son, if he were yet alive, might claim of him what reward he would.

And so the time passed, till one day a man named Grec, a clansman of
Luna the lord of Corann, as he ranged the woods hunting, came on a
stony cavern in the side of a hill, and before it he saw wolf-cubs at
play, and among them a naked child on all fours gambolling with them,
and a great she-wolf that mothered them all. "Right," cried Grec, and
off he goes to Luna his lord. "What wilt thou give me for the King's
son?" said he. "What wilt thou have?" said Luna. So Grec asked for
certain lands, and Luna bound himself to give them to him and to his
posterity, and there lived and flourished the Clan Gregor for many a
generation to come. So Luna, guided by Grec, went to the cave on Mount
Cormac, and took the child and the wolf-cubs all together and brought
them home. And the child they called Cormac, or the Chariot-Child. Now
the lad grew up very comely and strong, and he abode with Luna in
Connacht, and no one told him of his descent.


II

THE JUDGMENT OF CORMAC

Once upon a time it happened that Cormac was at play with the two sons
of Luna, and the lads grew angry in their play and came to blows, and
Cormac struck one of them to the ground. "Sorrow on it," cried the
lad, "here I have been beaten by one that knows not his clan or
kindred, save that he is a fellow without a father." When Cormac heard
that he was troubled and ashamed, and he went to Luna and told him
what had been said.

And Luna seeing the trouble of the youth, and also that he was strong
and noble to look on, and wise and eloquent in speech, held that the
time was now come to reveal to him his descent. "Thou hadst indeed a
clan and kindred," he said, "and a father of the noblest, for thou art
the son of Art, the High King of Ireland, who was slain and
dispossessed by mac Con. But it is foretold that thou shalt yet come
to thy father's place, and the land pines for thee even now, for there
is no good yield from earth or sea under the unlawful rule of him who
now sits on the throne of Art."

"If that be so," said Cormac, "let us go to Tara, and bide our time
there in my father's house."

So the two of them set out for Tara on the morrow morn. And this was
the retinue they had with them: a body-guard of outlawed men that had
revolted against mac Con and other lords and had gathered themselves
together at Corann under Luna, and four wolves that had been cubs with
Cormac when the she-wolf suckled him.


When they came to Tara, the folk there wondered at the fierce-eyed
warriors and the grey beasts that played like dogs around Cormac, and
the lad was adopted as a pupil by the King, to be taught arms and
poetry and law. Much talk there was of his coming, and of his strange
companions that are not wont to be the friends of man, and as the lad
grew in comeliness and in knowledge the eyes of all were turned to him
more and more, because the rule of mac Con was not good.

So the time wore on, till one day a case came for judgment before the
King, in which the Queen sued a certain wealthy woman and an owner of
herds named Benna, for that the sheep of Benna had strayed into the
Queen's fields and had eaten to the ground a crop of woad[26] that was
growing there. The King gave judgment, that the sheep which had eaten
the woad were to be given to the Queen in compensation for what they
had destroyed. Then Cormac rose up before the people and said, "Nay,
but let the wool of the sheep, when they are next shorn, be given to
the Queen, for the woad will grow again and so shall the wool." "A
true judgment, a true judgment," cried all the folk that were present
in the place; "a very king's son is he that hath pronounced it." And
they murmured so loudly against mac Con that his druids counselled him
to quit Tara lest a worse thing befall him. So he gave up the sovranty
to Cormac and went southward into Munster to rally his friends there
and recover the kingdom, and there he was slain by Cormac's men as he
was distributing great largesse of gold and silver to his followers,
in the place called The Field of the Gold.

   [26] Woad is a cruciferous plant, _Isatis tinctoria_, used for
   dyeing.

So Cormac, son of Art, ruled in Tara and was High King of all Ireland.
And the land, it is said, knew its rightful lord, and yielded harvests
such as never were known, while the forest trees dripped with the
abundance of honey and the lakes and rivers were alive with fish. So
much game was there, too, that the folk could have lived on that alone
and never put a ploughshare in the soil. In Cormac's time the autumn
was not vexed with rain, nor the spring with icy winds, nor the summer
with parching heat, nor the winter with whelming snows. His rule in
Erinn, it is said, was like a wand of gold laid on a dish of silver.

Also he rebuilt the ramparts of Tara and made it strong, and he
enlarged the great banqueting hall and made pillars of cedar in it
ornamented with plates of bronze, and painted its lime-white walls in
patterns of red and blue. Palaces for the women he also made there,
and store-houses, and halls for the fighting men--never was Tara so
populous or so glorious before or since. And for his wisdom and
righteousness knowledge was given to him that none other in Ireland
had as yet, for it was revealed to him that the Immortal Ones whom the
Gael worshipped were but the names of One whom none can name, and that
his message should ere long come to Ireland from over the eastern sea,
calling the people to a sweeter and diviner faith.

And to the end of his life it was his way to have wolves about him,
for he knew their speech and they his, and they were friendly and tame
with him and his folk, since they were foster-brothers together in the
wild wood.


III

THE MARRIAGE OF KING CORMAC

It happened that in Cormac's time there was a very wealthy farmer
named Buicad[27] who dwelt in Leinster, and had vast herds of cattle
and sheep and horses. This Buicad and his wife had no children, but
they adopted a foster-child named Ethne, daughter of one Dunlang. Now
Buicad was the most hospitable of men, and never refused aught to
anyone, but he kept open house for all the nobles of Leinster who
came with their following and feasted there as they would, day after
day; and if any man fancied any of the cattle or other goods of
Buicad, he might take them home with him, and none said him nay. Thus
Buicad lived in great splendour, and his Dún was ever full to
profusion with store of food and clothing and rich weapons, until in
time it was all wasted away in boundless hospitality and generosity,
and so many had had a share in his goods that they could never be
recovered nor could it be said of any man that he was the cause of
Buicad's undoing. But undone he was at last, and when there remained
to him but one bull and seven cows he departed by night with his wife
and Ethne from Dún Buicad, leaving his mansion desolate. And he
travelled till he came to a place where there was a grove of oak trees
by a little stream in the county of Meath, near where Cormac had a
summer palace, and there he built himself a little hut and tended his
few cattle, and Ethne waited as a maid-servant upon him and his wife.

   [27] Pronounced Bweé-cad. His name is said to be preserved in
   the townland of Dunboyke, near Blessington, Co. Wicklow.

Now on a certain day it happened that King Cormac rode out on
horseback from his Dún in Meath, and in the course of his ride he came
upon the little herd of Buicad towards evening, and he saw Ethne
milking the cows. And this was the way she milked them: first she
milked a portion of each cow's milk into a certain vessel, then she
took a second vessel and milked into it the remaining portion, in
which was the richest cream, and these two vessels she kept apart.
Cormac watched all this. She then bore the vessels of milk into the
hut, and came out again with two other vessels and a small cup. These
she bore down to the river-side; and one of the vessels she filled by
means of the cup from the water at the brink of the stream, but the
other vessel she bore out into the middle of the stream and there
filled it from the deepest of the running water. After this she took a
sickle and began cutting rushes by the river-side, and Cormac saw that
when she cut a wisp of long rushes she would put it on one side, and
the short rushes on the other, and she bore them separately into the
house. But Cormac stopped her and saluted her, and said:

"For whom, maiden, art thou making this careful choice of the milk and
the rushes and the water?"

"I am making it," said she, "for one who is worthy that I should do
far more than that for him, if I could."

"What is his name?"

"Buicad, the farmer," said Ethne.

"Is it that Buicad, who was the rich farmer in Leinster that all
Ireland has heard of?" asked the King.

"It is even so."

"Then thou art his foster-child, Ethne the daughter of Dunlang?" said
Cormac.

"I am," said Ethne.

"Wilt thou be my wife and Queen of Erinn?" then said Cormac.

"If it please my foster-father to give me to thee, O King, I am
willing," replied Ethne.

Then Cormac took Ethne by the hand and they went before Buicad, and he
consented to give her to Cormac to wife. And Buicad was given rich
lands and great store of cattle in the district of Odran close by
Tara, and Ethne the Queen loved him and visited him so long as his
life endured.


IV

THE INSTRUCTIONS OF THE KING

Ethne bore to Cormac a son, her firstborn, named Cairbry, who was King
of Ireland after Cormac. It was during the lifetime of Cormac that
Cairbry came to the throne, for it happened that ere he died Cormac
was wounded by a chance cast of a spear and lost one of his eyes, and
it was forbidden that any man having a blemish should be a king in
Ireland. Cormac therefore gave up the kingdom into the hands of
Cairbry, but before he did so he told his son all the wisdom that he
had in the governing of men, and this was written down in a book which
is called _The Instructions of Cormac_.[28] These are among the things
which are found in it, of the wisdom of Cormac:--

   [28] _The Instructions of Cormac_ (Tecosa Cormaic) have been
   edited with a translation by Dr. Kuno Meyer in the Todd Lecture
   Series of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xv., April 1909.

  "Let him (the king) restrain the great,
   Let him exalt the good,
   Let him establish peace,
   Let him plant law,
   Let him protect the just,
   Let him bind the unjust,
   Let his warriors be many and his counsellors few,
   Let him shine in company and be the sun of the mead-hall,
   Let him punish with a full fine wrong done knowingly,
    and with a half-fine wrong done in ignorance."

Cairbry said, "What are good customs for a tribe to pursue?" "They are
as follows," replied Cormac:--

   "To have frequent assemblies,
    To be ever enquiring, to question the wise men,
    To keep order in assemblies,
    To follow ancient lore,
    Not to crush the miserable,
    To keep faith in treaties,
    To consolidate kinship,
    Fighting-men not to be arrogant,
    To keep contracts faithfully,
    To guard the frontiers against every ill."

"Tell me, O Cormac," said Cairbry, "what are good customs for the
giver of a feast?" and Cormac said:--

  "To have lighted lamps,
   To be active in entertaining the company,
   To be liberal in dispensing ale,
   To tell stories briefly,
   To be of joyous countenance,
   To keep silence during recitals."

"Tell me, O Cormac," said his son once, "what were thy habits when
thou wert a lad?" And Cormac said:--

   "I was a listener in woods,
    I was a gazer at stars,
    I pried into no man's secrets,
    I was mild in the hall,
    I was fierce in the fray,
    I was not given to making promises,
    I reverenced the aged,
    I spoke ill of no man in his absence,
    I was fonder of giving than of asking."

"If you listen to my teaching," said Cormac:--

  "Do not deride any old person though you be young
   Nor any poor man though you be rich,
   Nor any naked though you be well-clad,
   Nor any lame though you be swift,
   Nor any blind though you be keen-sighted,
   Nor any invalid though you be robust,
   Nor any dull though you be clever,
   Nor any fool though you be wise.

"Yet be not slothful, nor fierce, nor sleepy, nor niggardly, nor
feckless nor envious, for all these are hateful before God and men.

"Do not join in blasphemy, nor be the butt of an assembly; be not
moody in an alehouse, and never forget a tryst."

"What are the most lasting things on earth?" asked Cairbry.

"Not hard to tell," said Cormac; "they are grass, copper, and a
yew-tree."

"If you will listen to me," said Cormac, "this is my instruction for
the management of your household and your realm:--

  "Let not a man with many friends be your steward,
  Nor a woman with sons and foster-sons your housekeeper,
  Nor a greedy man your butler,
  Nor a man of much delay your miller,
  Nor a violent, foul-mouthed man your messenger,
  Nor a grumbling sluggard your servant,
  Nor a talkative man your counsellor,
  Nor a tippler your cup-bearer,
  Nor a short-sighted man your watchman,
  Nor a bitter, haughty man your doorkeeper,
  Nor a tender-hearted man your judge,
  Nor an ignorant man your leader,
  Nor an unlucky man your counsellor."


Such were the counsels that Cormac mac Art gave to his son Cairbry.
And Cairbry became King after his father's abdication, and reigned
seven and twenty years, till he and Oscar, son of Oisín, slew one
another at the battle of Gowra.


V

CORMAC SETS UP THE FIRST MILL IN ERINN

During the reign of Cormac it happened that some of the lords of
Ulster made a raid upon the Picts in Alba[29] and brought home many
captives. Among them was a Pictish maiden named Kiernit, daughter of a
king of that nation, who was strangely beautiful, and for that the
Ulstermen sent her as a gift to King Cormac. And Cormac gave her as a
household slave to his wife Ethne, who set her to grinding corn with a
hand-quern, as women in Erinn were used to do. One day as Cormac was
in the palace of the Queen he saw Kiernit labouring at her task and
weeping as she wrought, for the toil was heavy and she was unused to
it. Then Cormac was moved with compassion for the women that ground
corn throughout Ireland, and he sent to Alba for artificers to come
over and set up a mill, for up to then there were no mills in Ireland.
Now there was in Tara, as there is to this day, a well of water
called _The Pearly_, for the purity and brightness of the water that
sprang from it, and it ran in a stream down the hillside, as it still
runs, but now only in a slender trickle. Over this stream Cormac bade
them build the first mill that was in Ireland, and the bright water
turned the wheel merrily round, and the women in Tara toiled at the
quern no more.

   [29] Scotland.


VI

A PLEASANT STORY OF CORMAC'S BREHON

Among other affairs which Cormac regulated for himself and all kings
who should come after him was the number and quality of the officers
who should be in constant attendance on the King. Of these he ordained
that there should be ten, to wit one lord, one brehon, one druid, one
physician, one bard, one historian, one musician and three stewards.
The function of the brehon, or judge, was to know the ancient customs
and the laws of Ireland, and to declare them to the King whenever any
matter relating to them came before him. Now Cormac's chief brehon was
at first one Fithel. But Fithel's time came to die, and his son
Flahari,[30] a wise and learned man, trained by his father in all the
laws of the Gael, was to be brehon to the High King in his father's
stead. Fithel then called his son to his bedside and said:--

   [30] Pronounced Fla'-haree--accent on the first syllable.

"Thou art well acquainted, my son, with all the laws and customs of
the Gael, and worthy to be the chief brehon of King Cormac. But wisdom
of life thou hast not yet obtained, for it is written in no law-book.
This thou must learn for thyself, from life itself; yet somewhat of it
I can impart unto thee, and it will keep thee in the path of safety,
which is not easily trodden by those who are in the counsels of great
kings. Mark now these four precepts, and obey them, and thou wilt
avoid many of the pit-falls in thy way:--

  "Take not a king's son in fosterage,[31]
  Impart no dangerous secret to thy wife,
  Raise not the son of a serf to a high position,
  Commit not thy purse or treasure to a sister's keeping."

   [31] The institution of fosterage, by which the children of
   kings and lords were given to trusted persons among their
   friends or followers to bring up and educate, was a marked
   feature of social life in ancient Ireland, and the bonds of
   affection and loyalty between such foster-parents and their
   children were held peculiarly sacred.

Having said this Fithel died, and Flahari became chief brehon in his
stead.

After a time Flahari thought to himself, "I am minded to test my
father's wisdom of life and to see if it be true wisdom or but
wise-seeming babble. For knowledge is no knowledge until it be tried
by life."

So he went before the King and said, "If thou art willing, Cormac, I
would gladly have one of thy sons in fosterage." At this Cormac was
well pleased, and a young child of the sons of Cormac was given to
Flahari to bring up, and Flahari took the child to his own Dún, and
there began to nurture and to train him as it was fitting.

After a time, however, Flahari one day took the child by the hand and
went with him into the deep recesses of the forest where dwelt one of
the swine-herds who minded the swine of Flahari. To him Flahari handed
over the child and bade him guard him as the apple of his eye, and to
be ready deliver him up again when he was required. The Flahari went
home, and for some days went about like a man weighed down by gloomy
and bitter thoughts. His wife marked that, and sought to know the
reason, but Flahari put her off. At last when she continually pressed
him to reveal the cause of his trouble, he said "If them must needs
learn what ails me, and if thou canst keep a secret full of danger to
me and thee, know that I am gloomy and distraught because I have
killed the son of Cormac." At this the woman cried out, "Murderer
parricide, hast thou spilled the King's blood, and shall Cormac not
know it, and do justice on thee?" And she sent word to Cormac that he
should come and seize her husband for that crime.

But before the officers came, Flahari took a young man, the son of his
butler, and placed him in charge of his lands to manage them, while
Flahari was away for his trial at Tara. And he also gave to his sister
a treasure of gold and silver to keep for him, lest it should be made
a spoil of while he was absent. Then he went with the officers to
Tara, denying his offence and his confession, but when Cormac had
heard all, and the child could not be found, he sentenced him to be
put to death.

Flahari then sent a messenger to his sister, begging her to send him
at once a portion of the treasure he had left with her, that he might
use it to make himself friends among the folk at court, and perchance
obtain a remission of his sentence; but she sent the messenger back
again empty, saying she knew not of what he spoke.

On this Flahari deemed that the time was come to reveal the truth, so
he obtained permission from the King to send a message to his
swineherd before he died, and to hear the man's reply. And the message
was this, that Murtach the herd should come without delay to Tara and
bring with him the child that Flahari had committed to him. Howbeit
this messenger also came back empty, and reported that on reaching Dún
Flahari he had been met by the butler's son that was over the estate,
who had questioned him of his errand, and had then said, "Murtach the
serf has run away as soon as he heard of his lord's downfall, and if
he had any child in his care he has taken it away with him, and he
cannot be found." This he said because, on hearing of the child, he
guessed what this might mean, and he had been the bitterest of all in
urging Flahari's death, hoping to be rewarded with a share of his
lands.

Then Flahari said to himself, "Truly the proving of my father's wisdom
of life has brought me very near to death." So he sent for the King
and entreated him that he might be suffered to go himself to the
dwelling of Murtach the herd, promising that the King's son should be
then restored to him, "or if not," said he, "let me then be slain
there without more ado." With great difficulty Cormac was moved to
consent to this, for he believed it was but a subterfuge of Flahari's
to put off the evil day or perchance to find a way of escape. But next
day Flahari was straitly bound and set in a chariot, and, with a guard
of spearmen about him and Cormac himself riding behind, they set out
for Dún Flahari. Then Flahari guided them through the wild wood till
at last they came to the clearing where stood the dwelling of Murtach
the swineherd, and lo! there was the son of Cormac playing merrily
before the door. And the child ran to his foster-father to kiss him,
but when he saw Flahari in bonds he burst out weeping and would not be
at peace until he was set free.

Then Murtach slew one of the boars of his herd and made an oven in the
earth after the manner of the Fianna, and made over it a fire of
boughs that he had drying in a shed. And when the boar was baked he
set it before the company with ale and mead in methers of beechwood,
and they all feasted and were glad of heart.

Cormac then asked of Flahari why he had suffered himself to be
brought into this trouble. "I did so," said Flahari, "to prove the
four counsels which my father gave them ere he died, and I have proved
them and found them to be wise. In the first place, it is not wise for
any man that is not a king to take the fosterage of a king's son, for
if aught shall happen to the lad, his own life is in the king's hands
and with his life he shall answer for it. Secondly, the keeping of a
secret, said my father, is not in the nature of women in general,
therefore no dangerous secret should be entrusted to them. The third
counsel my father gave me was not to raise up or enrich the son of a
serf, for such persons are apt to forget benefits conferred on them,
and moreover it irks them that he who raised them up should know the
poor estate from which they sprang. And good, too, is the fourth
counsel my father gave me, not to entrust my treasure to my sister,
for it is the nature of most women to regard as spoil any valuables
that are entrusted to them to keep for others."


VII

THE JUDGMENT CONCERNING CORMAC'S SWORD

When Cormac, son of Art, son of Conn of the Hundred Battles, was High
King in Erinn, great was the peace and splendour of his reign, and no
provincial king or chief in any part of the country lifted up his
head against Cormac. At his court in Tara were many noble youths, who
were trained up there in all matters befitting their rank and station.

One of these youths was named Socht, son of Fithel. Socht had a
wonderful sword, named "The Hard-headed Steeling," which was said to
have been long ago the sword of Cuchulain. It had a hilt of gold and a
belt of silver, and its point was double-edged. At night it shone like
a candle. If its point were bent back to the hilt it would fly back
again and be as straight as before. If it was held in running water
and a hair were floated down against the edge, it would sever the
hair. It was a saying that this sword would make two halves of a man,
and for a while he would not perceive what had befallen him. This
sword was held by Socht for a tribal possession from father and
grandfather.

There was at this time a famous steward to the High King in Tara whose
name was Dubdrenn. This man asked Socht to sell him the sword. He
promised to Socht such a ration as he, Dubdrenn, had every night, and
four men's food for the family of Socht, and, after that, Socht to
have the full value of the sword at his own appraisement. "No," said
Socht. "I may not sell my father's treasures while he is alive."

And thus they went on, Dubdrenn's mind ever running on the sword. At
last he bade Socht to a drinking-bout, and plied him so with wine and
mead that Socht became drunken, and knew not where he was, and
finally fell asleep.

Then the steward takes the sword and goes to the King's brazier, by
name Connu.

"Art thou able," says Dubdrenn, "to open the hilt of this sword?" "I
am that," says the brazier.

Then the brazier took apart the hilt, and within, upon the tang of the
blade, he wrote the steward's name, even Dubdrenn, and the steward
laid the sword again by the side of Socht.

So it was for three months after that, and the steward continued to
ask Socht to sell him the sword, but he could not get it from him.

Then the steward brought a suit for the sword before the High King,
and he claimed that it was his own and that it had been taken from
him. But Socht declared that the sword was his by long possession and
by equity, and he would not give it up.

Then Socht went to his father, Fithel the brehon, and begged him to
take part in the action and to defend his claim. But Fithel said,
"Nay, thou art too apt to blame the pleadings of other men; plead for
thyself."

So the court was set, and Socht was called upon to prove that the
sword was his. He swore that it was a family treasure, and thus it had
come down to him.

The steward said, "Well, O Cormac, the oath that Socht has uttered is
a lie."

"What proof hast thou of that?" asked Cormac.

"Not hard to declare," replied the steward. "If the sword be mine, my
name stands graved therein, concealed within the hilt of the sword."

"That will soon be known," says Cormac, and therewith he had the
brazier summoned. The brazier comes and breaks open the hilt and the
name of Dubdrenn stands written within it. Thus a dead thing testified
in law against a living man.

Then Socht said, "Hear ye, O men of Erinn and Cormac the King! I
acknowledge that this man is the owner of the sword." And to Dubdrenn
he said, "The property therein and all the obligations of it pass from
me to thee."

Dubdrenn said, "I acknowledge property in the sword and all its
obligations."

Then said Socht, "This sword was found in the neck of my grandfather
Angus, and till this day it never was known who had done that murder.
Do justice, O King, for this crime."

Said the King to Dubdrenn, "Thou art liable for more than the sword is
worth." So he awarded to Socht the price of seven bondwomen as
blood-fine for the slaying of Angus, and restitution of the sword to
Socht. Then the steward confessed the story of the sword, and Cormac
levied seven other cumals from the brazier. But Cormac said, "This is
in truth the sword of Cuchulain, and by it was slain my grandfather,
even Conn of the Hundred Battles, at the hands of the King of Ulster,
of whom it is written:--

"With a host, with a valiant band Well did he go into Connacht. Alas,
that he saw the blood of Conn On the side of Cuchulain's sword!"

Then Cormac and Fithel agreed that the sword be given to Cormac as
blood-fine for the death of Conn, and his it was; and it was the third
best of the royal treasures that were in Erin: namely, Cormac's Cup,
that broke if a falsehood were spoken over it and became whole if a
truth were spoken; and the Bell Branch that he got in Fairyland, whose
music when it was shaken would put to sleep wounded men, and women in
travail; and the Sword of Cuchulain, against which, and against the
man that held it in his hand, no victory could ever be won.


VIII

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CORMAC

In the chronicle of the Kings of Ireland that was written by Tierna
the Historian in the eleventh century after Christ's coming, there is
noted down in the annals of the year 248, "Disappearance of Cormac,
grandson of Conn, for seven months." That which happened to Cormac
during these seven months is told in one of the bardic stories of
Ireland, being the Story of Cormac's Journey to Fairyland, and this
was the manner of it.

One day Cormac, son of Art, was looking over the ramparts of his royal
Dún of Tara, when he saw a young man, glorious to look on in his
person and his apparel, coming towards him across the plain of Bregia.
The young man bore in his hand, as it were, a branch, from which hung
nine golden bells formed like apples. When he shook the branch the
nine apples beat against each other and made music so sweet that there
was no pain or sorrow in the world that a man would not forget while
he hearkened to it.

"Does this branch belong to thee?" asked Cormac of the youth.

"Truly it does," replied the youth.

"Wilt thou sell it to me?" said Cormac.

"I never had aught that I would not sell for a price," said the young
man.

"What is thy price?" asked Cormac.

"The price shall be what I will," said the young man.

"I will give thee whatever thou desirest of all that is mine," said
Cormac, for he coveted the branch exceedingly, and the enchantment was
heavy upon him.

So the youth gave him the bell-branch, and then said, "My price is thy
wife and thy son and thy daughter."

Then they went together into the palace and found there Cormac's wife
and his children. "That is a wonderful jewel thou hast in thy hand,
Cormac," said Ethne.

"It is," said Cormac, "and great is the price I have paid for it."

"What is that price?" said Ethne.

"Even thou and thy children twain," said the King.

"Never hast thou done such a thing," cried Ethne, "as to prefer any
treasure in the world before us three!" And they all three lamented
and implored, but Cormac shook the branch and immediately their sorrow
was forgotten, and they went away willingly with the young man across
the plain of Bregia until a mist hid them from the eyes of Cormac. And
when the people murmured and complained against Cormac, for Ethne and
her children were much beloved of them, Cormac shook the bell-branch
and their grief was turned into joy.

A year went by after this, and then Cormac longed for his wife and
children again, nor could the bell-branch any longer bring him
forgetfulness of them. So one morning he took the branch and went out
alone from Tara over the plain, taking the direction in which they had
passed away a year agone; and ere long little wreathes of mist began
to curl about his feet, and then to flit by him like long trailing
robes, and he knew no more where he was. After a time, however, he
came out again into sunshine and clear sky, and found himself in a
country of flowery meadows and of woods filled with singing-birds
where he had never journeyed before. He walked on, till at last he
came to a great and stately mansion with a crowd of builders at work
upon it, and they were roofing it with a thatch made of the wings of
strange birds. But when they had half covered the house, their supply
of feathers ran short, and they rode off in haste to seek for more.
While they were gone, however, a wind arose and whirled away the
feathers already laid on, so that the rafters were left bare as
before. And this happened again and again, as Cormac gazed on them for
he knew not how long. At last his patience left him and he said, "I
see with that ye have been doing this since the beginning of the
world, and that ye will still be doing it in the end thereof," and
with that he went on his way.

And many other strange things he saw, but of them we say nothing now,
till he came to the gateway of a great and lofty Dún, where he entered
in and asked hospitality. Then there came to him a tall man clad in a
cloak of blue that changed into silver or to purple as its folds waved
in the light, and with him was a woman more beautiful than the
daughters of men, even she of whom it was said her beauty was as that
of a tear when it drops from the eyelid, so crystal-pure it was and
bright.[32] They greeted Cormac courteously and begged him to stay
with them for the night.

   [32] See Miss Hull's CUCHULAIN, THE HOUND OF ULSTER, p. 175.
   The pair were Mananan, god of the sea, and Fand his wife, of
   whom a tale of great interest is told in the Cuchulain Cycle of
   legends. The sea-cloak of Mananan is the subject of a
   magnificent piece of descriptive poetry in Ferguson's CONGAL.

Cormac then entered a great hall with pillars of cedar and
many-coloured silken hangings on the walls. In the midst of it was a
fire-place whereon the host threw a huge log, and shortly afterwards
brought in a young pig which Cormac cut up to roast before the fire.
He first put one quarter of the pig to roast, and then his host said
to him,

"Tell us a tale, stranger, and if it be a true one the quarter will be
done as soon as the tale is told."

"Do thou begin," said Cormac, "and then thy wife, and after that my
turn will come."

"Good," said the host. "This is my tale. I have seven of these swine,
and with their flesh the whole world could be fed. When one of them is
killed and eaten, I need but put its bones into the pig-trough and on
the morrow it is alive and well again." They looked at the fireplace,
and behold, the first quarter of the pig was done and ready to be
served.

Then Cormac put on the second quarter, and the woman took up her tale.
"I have seven white cows," she said, "and seven pails are filled with
the milk of them each day. Though all the folk in the world were
gathered together to drink of this milk, there would be enough and to
spare for all." As soon as she had said that, they saw that the second
quarter of the pig was roasted.

Then Cormac said: "I know you now, who you are; for it is Mananan that
owns the seven swine of Faery, and it is out of the Land of Promise
that he fetched Fand his wife and her seven cows." Then immediately
the third quarter of the pig was done.

"Tell us now," said Mananan, "who thou art and why thou art come
hither."

Cormac then told his story, of the branch with its nine golden apples
and how he had bartered for it his wife and his children, and he was
now-seeking them through the world. And when he had made an end, the
last quarter of the pig was done.

"Come, let us set to the feast," then said Mananan; but Cormac said,
"Never have I sat down to meat in a company of two only." "Nay," said
Mananan, "but there are more to come." With that he opened a door in
the hall and in it appeared Queen Ethne and her two children. And when
they had embraced and rejoiced in each other Mananan said, "It was I
who took them from thee, Cormac, and who gave thee the bell-branch,
for I wished to bring thee hither to be my guest for the sake of thy
nobleness and thy wisdom."

Then they all sat down to table and feasted and made merry, and when
they had satisfied themselves with meat and drink, Mananan showed the
wonders of his household to King Cormac. And he took up a golden cup
which stood on the table, and said: "This cup hath a magical property,
for if a lie be spoken over it, it will immediately break in pieces,
and if a truth be spoken it will be made whole again." "Prove this to
me," said Cormac. "That is easily done," said Mananan. "Thy wife hath
had a new husband since I carried her off from thee." Straightway the
cup fell apart into four pieces. "My husband has lied to thee,
Cormac," said Fand, and immediately the cup became whole again.

Cormac then began to question Mananan as to the things he had seen on
his way thither, and he told him of the house that was being thatched
with the wings of birds, and of the men that kept returning ever and
again to their work as the wind destroyed it. And Mananan said,
"These, O Cormac, are the men of art, who seek to gather together much
money and gear of all kinds by the exercise of their craft, but as
fast as they get it, so they spend it, or faster and the result is
that they will never be rich." But when he had said this it is related
that the golden cup broke into pieces where it stood. Then Cormac
said, "The explanation thou hast given of this mystery is not true."
Mananan smiled, and said, "Nevertheless it must suffice thee, O King,
for the truth of this matter may not be known, lest the men of art
give over the roofing of the house and it be covered with common
thatch."

So when they had talked their fill, Cormac and his wife and children
were brought to a chamber where they lay down to sleep. But when they
woke up on the morrow morn, they found themselves in the Queen's
chamber in the royal palace of Tara, and by Cormac's side were found
the bell-branch and the magical cup and the cloth of gold that had
covered the table where they sat in the palace of Mananan. Seven
months it was since Cormac had gone out from Tara to search for his
wife and children, but it seemed to him that he had been absent but
for the space of a single day and night.


IX

DESCRIPTION OF CORMAC[33]

   [33] The original from the BOOK OF BALLYMOTE (14th century) is
   given in O'Curry's MS. MATERIALS OF IRISH HISTORY, Appendix
   xxvi. I have in the main followed O'Curry's translation.

"A noble and illustrious king assumed the sovranty and rule of Erinn,
namely Cormac, grandson of Conn of the Hundred Battles. The world was
full of all goodness in his time; there were fruit and fatness of the
land, and abundant produce of the sea, with peace and ease and
happiness. There were no killings or plunderings in his time, but
everyone occupied his land in happiness.

"The nobles of Ireland assembled to drink the Banquet of Tara with
Cormac at a certain time.... Magnificently did Cormac come to this
great Assembly; for no man, his equal in beauty, had preceded him,
excepting Conary Mór or Conor son of Caffa, or Angus Óg son of the
Dagda.[34] Splendid, indeed, was Cormac's appearance in that Assembly.
His hair was slightly curled, and of golden colour; a scarlet shield
he had, with engraved devices, and golden bosses and ridges of silver.
A wide-folding purple cloak was on him with a gem-set gold brooch over
his breast; a golden torque round his neck; a white-collared shirt
embroidered with gold was on him; a girdle with golden buckles and
studded with precious stones was around him; two golden net-work
sandals with golden buckles upon his feet; two spears with golden
sockets and many red bronze rivets in his hand; while he stood in the
full glow of beauty, without defect or blemish. You would think it was
a shower of pearls that was set in his mouth, his lips were rubies,
his symmetrical body was as white as snow, his cheek was ruddy as the
berry of the mountain-ash, his eyes were like the sloe, his brows and
eye-lashes were like the sheen of a blue-black lance."

   [34] Angus Óg was really a deity or fairy king. He appears also
   in the story of Midir and Etain. _q.v._


X

THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF CORMAC

Strange was the birth and childhood of Cormac strange his life and
strange the manner of his death and burial, as we now have to narrate.

Cormac, it is said, was the third man in Ireland who heard of the
Christian Faith before the coming of Patrick. One was Conor mac Nessa,
King of Ulster, whose druid told him of the crucifixion of Christ and
who died of that knowledge.[35] The second was the wise judge, Morann,
and the third Cormac, son of Art. This knowledge was revealed to him
by divine illumination, and thenceforth he refused to consult the
druids or to worship the images which they made as emblems of the
Immortal Ones.

   [35] See the conclusion of the _Vengeance of Mesgedra_.

One day it happened that Cormac after he had laid down the kingship of
Ireland, was present when the druids and a concourse of people were
worshipping the great golden image which was set up in the plain
called Moy Slaught. When the ceremony was done, the chief druid, whose
name was Moylann, spoke to Cormac and said: "Why, O Cormac, didst thou
not bow down and adore the golden image of the god like the rest of
the people?"

And Cormac said: "Never will I worship a stock[36] that my own
carpenter has made. Rather would I worship the man that made it, for
he is nobler than the work of his hands."

   [36] The image was doubtless of wood overlaid with gold.

Then it is told that Moylann by magic art caused the image to move and
leap before the eyes of Cormac. "Seest thou that?" said Moylann.

"Although I see," said Cormac, "I will do no worship save to the God
of Heaven and Earth and Hell."

Then Cormac went to his own home at Sletty on the Boyne, for there he
lived after he had given up the kingdom to his son Cairbry. But the
druids of Erinn came together and consulted over this matter, and they
determined solemnly to curse Cormac and invoke the vengeance of their
gods upon him lest the people should think that any man could despise
and reject their gods, and suffer no ill for it.

So they cursed Cormac in his flesh and bones, in his waking and
sleeping, in his down sitting and his uprising, and each day they
turned over the Wishing Stone upon the altar of their god,[37] and
wove mighty spells against his life. And whether it was that these
took effect, or that the druids prevailed upon some traitorous servant
of Cormac's to work their will, so it was that he died not long
thereafter; and some say that he was choked by a fish bone as he sat
at meat in his house at Sletty on the Boyne.

   [37] There are still Wishing Stones, which are used in
   connexion with petitions for good or ill, on the ancient altars
   of Inishmurray and of Caher Island, and possibly other places
   on the west coast of Ireland.

But when he felt his end approaching, and had still the power to
speak, he said to those that gathered round his bed:--"When I am gone
I charge you that ye bury me not at Brugh of the Boyne where is the
royal cemetery of the Kings of Erinn.[38] For all these kings paid
adoration to gods of wood or stone, or to the Sun and the Elements,
whose signs are carved on the walls of their tombs, but I have learned
to know the One God, immortal, invisible, by whom the earth and
heavens were made. Soon there will come into Erinn one from the East
who will declare Him unto us, and then wooden gods and cursing priests
shall plague us no longer in this land. Bury me then not at
Brugh-na-Boyna, but on the hither-side of Boyne, at Ross-na-ree, where
there is a sunny, eastward-sloping hill, there would I await the
coming of the sun of truth."

   [38] This famous cemetery of the kings of pagan Ireland lies on
   the north bank of the Boyne and consists of a number of
   sepulchral mounds, sometimes of great extent, containing, in
   their interior, stone walled chambers decorated with symbolic
   and ornamental carvings. The chief of these mounds, now known
   as Newgrange, has been explored and described by Mr George
   Coffey in his valuable work NEWGRANGE, published by the Royal
   Irish Academy. _Brugh_=mansion.

So spake Cormac, and he died, and there was a very great mourning for
him in the land. But when the time came for his burial, the princes
and lords of the Gael vowed that he should lie in Brugh with Art, his
father, and Conn of the Hundred Battles, and many another king, in the
great stone chambers of the royal dead. For Ross-na-ree, they said, is
but a green hill of no note; and Cormac's expectation of the message
of the new God they took to be but the wanderings of a dying man.

Now Brugh-na-Boyna lay at the farther side of the Boyne from Sletty,
and near by was a shallow ford where the river could be crossed. But
when the funeral train came down to the ford, bearing aloft the body
of the King, lo! the river had risen as though a tempest had burst
upon it at its far-off sources in the hills, and between them and the
farther bank was now a broad and foaming flood, and the stakes that
marked the ford were washed clean away. Even so they made trial of the
ford, and thrice the bearers waded in and thrice they were forced to
turn back lest the flood should sweep them down. At length six of the
tallest and mightiest of the warriors of the High King took up the
bier upon their shoulders, and strode in. And first the watchers on
the bank saw the brown water swirl about their knees, and then they
sank thigh-deep, and at last it foamed against their shoulders, yet
still they braced themselves against the current, moving forward very
slowly as they found foothold among the slippery rocks in the
river-bed. But when they had almost reached the mid-stream it seemed
as if a great surge overwhelmed them, and caught the bier from their
shoulders as they plunged and clutched around it, and they must needs
make back for the shore as best they could, while Boyne swept down the
body of Cormac to the sea.

On the following morning, however, shepherds driving their flocks to
pasture on the hillside of Ross-na-ree found cast upon the shore the
body of an aged man of noble countenance, half wrapped in a silken
pall; and knowing not who this might be they dug a grave in the grassy
hill, and there laid the stranger, and laid the green sods over him
again.

There still sleeps Cormac the King, and neither Ogham-lettered stone
nor sculptured cross marks his solitary grave. But he lies in the
place where he would be, of which a poet of the Gael in our day has
written:--

  "A tranquil spot: a hopeful sound
     Comes from the ever-youthful stream,
   And still on daisied mead and mound
     The dawn delays with tenderer beam.

   "Round Cormac, spring renews her buds:
     In march perpetual by his side
   Down come the earth-fresh April floods,
     And up the sea-fresh salmon glide;

   "And life and time rejoicing run
     From age to age their wonted way;
   But still he waits the risen sun,
     For still 'tis only dawning day."[39]

   [39] These lines are taken from Sir S. Ferguson's noble poem,
   _The Burial of King Cormac_, from which I have also borrowed
   some of the details of the foregoing narrative.



       *       *       *       *       *




Notes on the Sources


_The Story of the Children of Lir_ and _The Quest of the Sons of
Turenn_ are two of the three famous and popular tales entitled "The
Three Sorrows of Storytelling." The third is the _Tragedy of the Sons
of Usna_, rendered by Miss Eleanor Hull in her volume CUCHULAIN. I
have taken the two stories which are given here from the versions in
modern Irish published by the Society for the Preservation of the
Irish Language, with notes and translation. Neither of them is found
in any very early MS., but their subject-matter certainly goes back to
very primitive times.


_The Secret of Labra_ is taken from Keating's FORUS FEASA AR EIRINN,
edited with translation by the Rev. P.S. Dineen for the Irish Texts
Society, vol. i. p. 172.


_The Carving of mac Datho's Boar_. This is a clean, fierce, fighting
story, notable both for its intensely dramatic _dénouement_, and for
the complete absence from it of the magical or supernatural element
which is so common a feature in Gaelic tales. It has been edited and
translated from one MS. by Dr Kuno Meyer, in _Hibernica Minora_
(ANECDOTA OXONIENSIA), 1894, and translated from THE BOOK OF LEINSTER
(twelfth century) in Leahy's HEROIC ROMANCES.


_The Vengeance of Mesgedra_. This story, as I have given it, is a
combination of two tales, _The Siege of Howth_ and _The Death of King
Conor_. The second really completes the first, though they are not
found united in Irish literature. Both pieces are given in O'Curry's
MS. MATERIALS OF IRISH HISTORY, and Miss Hull has printed translations
of them in her CUCHULLIN SAGA, the translation of the _Siege_ being by
Dr Whitly Stokes and that of the _Death of Conor_ by O'Curry. These
are very ancient tales and contain a strong barbaric element. Versions
of both of them are found in the great MS. collection known as the
BOOK OF LEINSTER (twelfth century).


_King Iubdan and King Fergus_ is a brilliant piece of fairy
literature. The imaginative grace, the humour, and, at the close, the
tragic dignity of this tale make it worthy of being much more widely
known than it has yet become. The original, taken from one of the
Egerton MSS. in the British Museum, will be found with a translation
in O'Grady's SILVA GADELICA. For the conclusion, I have in the main
followed another version (containing the death of Fergus only), given
in the SEANCUS MOR and finely versified by Sir Samuel Ferguson in his
POEMS, 1880.


_The Story of Etain and Midir_. This beautiful and very ancient
romance is extant in two distinct versions, both of which are
translated by Mr A.H. Leahy in his HEROIC ROMANCES. The tale is found
in several MSS., among others, in the twelfth century BOOK OF THE DUN
COW (LEABHAR NA H-UIDHRE). It has been recently made the subject of a
dramatic poem by "Fiona Macleod."


_How Ethne quitted Fairyland_ is taken from D'Arbois de Jubainville's
CYCLE MYTHOLOGIQUE IRLANDAIS, ch. xii. 4. The original is to be found
in the fifteenth century MS., entitled THE BOOK OF FERMOY.


_The Boyhood of Finn_ is based chiefly on the MACGNIOMHARTHA FHINN,
published in 1856, with a translation, in the _TRANSACTIONS OF THE
OSSIANIC SOCIETY_, vol. iv. I am also indebted, particularly for the
translation of the difficult _Song of Finn in Praise of May_, to Dr
Kuno Meyer's translation published in _Ériu_ (the Journal of the
School of Irish Learning), vol. i. pt. 2.


_The Coming of Finn_, _Finns Chief Men_, the _Tale of Vivionn_ and
_The Chase of the Gilla Dacar_, are all handfuls from that rich mine
of Gaelic literature, Mr Standish Hayes O'Grady's SILVA GADELICA. In
the _Gilla Dacar_ I have modified the second half of the story rather
freely. It appears to have been originally an example of a well-known
class of folk-tales dealing with the subject of the Rescue of
Fairyland. The same motive occurs in the famous tale called _The
Sickbed of Cuchulain_. The idea is that some fairy potentate, whose
realm is invaded and oppressed, entices a mortal champion to come to
his aid and rewards him with magical gifts. But the eighteenth
century narrator whose MS. was edited by Mr S.H. O'Grady, apparently
had not the clue to the real meaning of his material, and after going
on brilliantly up to the point where Dermot plunges into the magic
well, he becomes incoherent, and the rest of the tale is merely a
string of episodes having no particular connexion with each other or
with the central theme. The latter I have here endeavoured to restore
to view. The _Gilla Dacar_ is given from another Gaelic version by Dr
P.W. Joyce in his invaluable book, OLD CELTIC ROMANCES.


_The Birth of Oisín_ I have found in Patrick Kennedy's LEGENDARY
FICTIONS OF THE IRISH CELTS. I do not know the Gaelic original.


_Oisín in the Land of Youth_ is based, as regards the outlines of this
remarkable story, on the LAOI OISÍN AR TIR NA N-ÓG, written by Michael
Comyn about 1750, and edited with a translation by Thomas Flannery in
1896 (Gill & Son, Dublin). Comyn's poem was almost certainly based on
earlier traditional sources, either oral or written or both, but these
have not hitherto been discovered.


_The History of King Cormac_. The story of the birth of Cormac and his
coming into his kingdom is to be found in SILVA GADELICA, where it is
edited from THE BOOK OF BALLYMOTE, an MS. dating from about the year
1400.

The charming tale, of his marriage with Ethne ni Dunlaing is taken
from Keating's FORUS FEASA. From this source also I have taken the
tales of the Brehon Flahari, of Kiernit and the mill, and of Cormac's
death and burial. The _Instructions of Cormac_ have been edited and
translated by Dr Kuno Meyer in the Todd Lecture Series of the Royal
Irish Academy, xiv., April 1909. They are found in numerous MSS., and
their date is fixed by Dr Meyer about the ninth century. With some
other Irish matter of the same description they constitute, says Mr
Alfred Nutt, "the oldest body of gnomic wisdom" extant in any European
vernacular. (_FOLK-LORE_, Sept. 30, 1909.)

The story of Cormac's adventures in Fairyland has been published with
a translation by Standish Hayes O'Grady in the _TRANSACTIONS OF THE
OSSIANIC SOCIETY_, vol. iii., and is also given very fully by d'Arbois
de Jubainvilie in his CYCLE MYTHOLOGIQUE IRLANDAIS. The tale is found,
among other MSS., in the BOOK OF BALLYMOTE, but is known to have been
extant at least as early as the tenth century, since in that year it
figures in a list of Gaelic tales drawn up by the historian Tierna.

The ingenious story of the _Judgment concerning Cormac's Sword_ is
found in the BOOK OF BALLYMOTE, and is printed with a translation by
Dr Whitly Stokes in _IRISCHE TEXTE_, iii. Serie, 7 Heft, 1891.




Pronouncing Index


The correct pronunciation of Gaelic proper names can only be learned
from the living voice. It cannot be accurately represented by any
combination of letters from the English alphabet. I have spared the
reader as much trouble as possible on this score by simplifying, as
far as I could, the forms of the names occurring in the text, and if
the reader will note the following general rules, he will get quite as
near to the pronunciation intended as there is any necessity for him
to do. A few names which might present some unusual difficulty are
given with their approximate English pronunciations in the Index.

The chief rule to observe is that vowels are pronounced as in the
Continental languages, not according to the custom peculiar to
England. Thus _a_ is like _a_ in _father_, never like _a_ in _fate,
I_(when long) is like _ee_, _u_ like _oo_, or like _u_ in _put_ (never
like _u_ in _tune_). An accent implies length, thus _Dún_, a fortress
or mansion, is pronounced _Doon_. The letters _ch_ are never to be
pronounced with a _t_ sound, as in the word _chip_, but like a rough
_h_ or a softened _k_, rather as in German. _Gh_ is silent as in
English, and _g_ is always hard, as in _give_. _C_ is always as _k_,
never as _s_.

In the following Index an accent placed after a syllable indicates
that the stress is to be laid on that syllable. Only those words are
given, the pronunciation of which is not easily ascertainable by
attention to the foregoing rules.




INDEX

Æda is to be pronounced  Ee'-da.
Ailill          "        Al'-yill.
Anluan          "        An'-looan.
Aoife           "        Ee'-fa.
Bacarach        "        Bac'-ara_h_.
Belachgowran    "        Bel'-a_h_-gow'-ran.
Cearnach        "        Kar'-na_h_.
Cuchulain       "        Coo-_h_oo'-lin.
Cumhal          "        Coo'wal, Cool.
Dacar           "        Dak'-ker.
Derryvaragh     "        Derry-var'-a.

Eisirt          "        Eye'sert.
Eochy           "        Yeo'_h_ee.

Fiachra         "        Fee'-a_k_ra.
Fianna          "        Fee'-anna.
Finegas         "        Fin'-egas.
Fionnuala       "        Fee-on-oo'-ala, shortened in modern Irish
                          into Fino'-la.

Flahari         "        Fla'-haree.

Iorroway        "        Yor'-oway.
Iubdan          "        Youb'-dan.
Iuchar          "        You'-_h_ar.
Iucharba        "        You-_h_ar'-ba.

Liagan          "        Lee'-agan.
Lir             "        Leer.
Logary          "        Lo'-garee.

Maev            "        rhyming to _wave_.
Mananan         "        Man'-anan.
Mesgedra        "        Mes-ged'-ra.
Midir           "        Mid'-eer.
Mochaen         "        Mo-_hain'.
Mochaovóg       "        Mo-_h_wee'-vogue.
Moonremur       "        Moon'-ray-mur.

Oisín           "        Ush'-een (Ossian).

Peisear         "        Pye'-sar.

Sceolaun        "        Ske-o'-lawn (the _e_ very short).
Slievenamuck    "        Sleeve-na-muck'.
Slievenamon     "        Sleeve-na-mon'.

Tuish           "        Too'-ish.