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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Irish Fairy Tales, by James Stephens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Irish Fairy Tales
+
+Author: James Stephens
+
+Posting Date: December 31, 2008 [EBook #2892]
+Release Date: November, 2001
+Last Updated: November 19, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRISH FAIRY TALES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by A. Elizabeth Warren
+
+
+
+
+
+IRISH FAIRY TALES
+
+By James Stephens
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+      THE STORY OF TUAN MAC CAIRILL
+      THE BOYHOOD OF FIONN
+      THE BIRTH OF BRAN
+      OISI’N’S MOTHER
+      THE WOOING OF BECFOLA
+      THE LITTLE BRAWL AT ALLEN
+      THE CARL OF THE DRAB COAT
+      THE ENCHANTED CAVE OF CESH CORRAN
+      BECUMA OF THE WHITE SKIN
+      MONGAN’S FRENZY
+
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF TUAN MAC CAIRILL
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Finnian, the Abbott of Moville, went southwards and eastwards in great
+haste. News had come to him in Donegal that there were yet people in his
+own province who believed in gods that he did not approve of, and the
+gods that we do not approve of are treated scurvily, even by saintly
+men.
+
+He was told of a powerful gentleman who observed neither Saint’s day nor
+Sunday.
+
+“A powerful person!” said Finnian.
+
+“All that,” was the reply.
+
+“We shall try this person’s power,” said Finnian.
+
+“He is reputed to be a wise and hardy man,” said his informant.
+
+“We shall test his wisdom and his hardihood.”
+
+“He is,” that gossip whispered--“he is a magician.”
+
+“I will magician him,” cried Finnian angrily. “Where does that man
+live?”
+
+He was informed, and he proceeded to that direction without delay.
+
+In no great time he came to the stronghold of the gentleman who followed
+ancient ways, and he demanded admittance in order that he might preach
+and prove the new God, and exorcise and terrify and banish even the
+memory of the old one; for to a god grown old Time is as ruthless as to
+a beggarman grown old.
+
+But the Ulster gentleman refused Finnian admittance. He barricaded
+his house, he shuttered his windows, and in a gloom of indignation and
+protest he continued the practices of ten thousand years, and would
+not hearken to Finnian calling at the window or to Time knocking at his
+door.
+
+But of those adversaries it was the first he redoubted.
+
+Finnian loomed on him as a portent and a terror; but he had no fear of
+Time. Indeed he was the foster-brother of Time, and so disdainful of the
+bitter god that he did not even disdain him; he leaped over the scythe,
+he dodged under it, and the sole occasions on which Time laughs is when
+he chances on Tuan, the son of Cairill, the son of Muredac Red-neck.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Now Finnian could not abide that any person should resist both the
+Gospel and himself, and he proceeded to force the stronghold by peaceful
+but powerful methods. He fasted on the gentleman, and he did so to such
+purpose that he was admitted to the house; for to an hospitable heart
+the idea that a stranger may expire on your doorstep from sheer famine
+cannot be tolerated. The gentleman, however, did not give in without a
+struggle: he thought that when Finnian had grown sufficiently hungry he
+would lift the siege and take himself off to some place where he might
+get food. But he did not know Finnian. The great abbot sat down on a
+spot just beyond the door, and composed himself to all that might follow
+from his action. He bent his gaze on the ground between his feet,
+and entered into a meditation from which he would Only be released by
+admission or death.
+
+The first day passed quietly.
+
+Often the gentleman would send a servitor to spy if that deserter of the
+gods was still before his door, and each time the servant replied that
+he was still there.
+
+“He will be gone in the morning,” said the hopeful master.
+
+On the morrow the state of siege continued, and through that day the
+servants were sent many times to observe through spy-holes.
+
+“Go,” he would say, “and find out if the worshipper of new gods has
+taken himself away.”
+
+But the servants returned each time with the same information.
+
+“The new druid is still there,” they said.
+
+All through that day no one could leave the stronghold. And the enforced
+seclusion wrought on the minds of the servants, while the cessation
+of all work banded them together in small groups that whispered and
+discussed and disputed. Then these groups would disperse to peep through
+the spy-hole at the patient, immobile figure seated before the door,
+wrapped in a meditation that was timeless and unconcerned. They
+took fright at the spectacle, and once or twice a woman screamed
+hysterically, and was bundled away with a companion’s hand clapped on
+her mouth, so that the ear of their master should not be affronted.
+
+“He has his own troubles,” they said. “It is a combat of the gods that
+is taking place.”
+
+So much for the women; but the men also were uneasy. They prowled up and
+down, tramping from the spy-hole to the kitchen, and from the kitchen
+to the turreted roof. And from the roof they would look down on the
+motionless figure below, and speculate on many things, including
+the staunchness of man, the qualities of their master, and even the
+possibility that the new gods might be as powerful as the old.
+From these peepings and discussions they would return languid and
+discouraged.
+
+“If,” said one irritable guard, “if we buzzed a spear at the persistent
+stranger, or if one slung at him with a jagged pebble!”
+
+“What!” his master demanded wrathfully, “is a spear to be thrown at
+an unarmed stranger? And from this house!” And he soundly cuffed that
+indelicate servant.
+
+“Be at peace all of you,” he said, “for hunger has a whip, and he will
+drive the stranger away in the night.”
+
+The household retired to wretched beds; but for the master of the house
+there was no sleep. He marched his halls all night, going often to
+the spy-hole to see if that shadow was still sitting in the shade, and
+pacing thence, tormented, preoccupied, refusing even the nose of his
+favourite dog as it pressed lovingly into his closed palm.
+
+On the morrow he gave in.
+
+The great door was swung wide, and two of his servants carried Finnian
+into the house, for the saint could no longer walk or stand upright by
+reason of the hunger and exposure to which he had submitted. But his
+frame was tough as the unconquerable spirit that dwelt within it, and
+in no long time he was ready for whatever might come of dispute or
+anathema.
+
+Being quite re-established he undertook the conversion of the master of
+the house, and the siege he laid against that notable intelligence was
+long spoken of among those who are interested in such things.
+
+He had beaten the disease of Mugain; he had beaten his own pupil the
+great Colm Cille; he beat Tuan also, and just as the latter’s door had
+opened to the persistent stranger, so his heart opened, and Finnian
+marched there to do the will of God, and his own will.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+One day they were talking together about the majesty of God and His
+love, for although Tuan had now received much instruction on this
+subject he yet needed more, and he laid as close a siege on Finnian
+as Finnian had before that laid on him. But man works outwardly and
+inwardly. After rest he has energy, after energy he needs repose; so,
+when we have given instruction for a time, we need instruction, and must
+receive it or the spirit faints and wisdom herself grows bitter.
+
+Therefore Finnian said: “Tell me now about yourself, dear heart.”
+
+But Tuan was avid of information about the True God. “No, no,” he
+said, “the past has nothing more of interest for me, and I do not wish
+anything to come between my soul and its instruction; continue to teach
+me, dear friend and saintly father.”
+
+“I will do that,” Finnian replied, “but I must first meditate deeply on
+you, and must know you well. Tell me your past, my beloved, for a man is
+his past, and is to be known by it.”
+
+But Tuan pleaded: “Let the past be content with itself, for man needs
+forgetfulness as well as memory.”
+
+“My son,” said Finnian, “all that has ever been done has been done for
+the glory of God, and to confess our good and evil deeds is part of
+instruction; for the soul must recall its acts and abide by them, or
+renounce them by confession and penitence. Tell me your genealogy first,
+and by what descent you occupy these lands and stronghold, and then I
+will examine your acts and your conscience.”
+
+Tuan replied obediently: “I am known as Tuan, son of Cairill, son of
+Muredac Red-neck, and these are the hereditary lands of my father.”
+
+The saint nodded.
+
+“I am not as well acquainted with Ulster genealogies as I should be, yet
+I know something of them. I am by blood a Leinsterman,” he continued.
+
+“Mine is a long pedigree,” Tuan murmured.
+
+Finnian received that information with respect and interest.
+
+“I also,” he said, “have an honourable record.”
+
+His host continued: “I am indeed Tuan, the son of Starn, the son of
+Sera, who was brother to Partholon.”
+
+“But,” said Finnian in bewilderment, “there is an error here, for you
+have recited two different genealogies.”
+
+“Different genealogies, indeed,” replied Tuan thoughtfully, “but they
+are my genealogies.”
+
+“I do not understand this,” Finnian declared roundly.
+
+“I am now known as Tuan mac Cairill,” the other replied, “but in the
+days of old I was known as Tuan mac Starn, mac Sera.”
+
+“The brother of Partholon,” the saint gasped.
+
+“That is my pedigree,” Tuan said.
+
+“But,” Finnian objected in bewilderment, “Partholon came to Ireland not
+long after the Flood.”
+
+“I came with him,” said Tuan mildly.
+
+The saint pushed his chair back hastily, and sat staring at his host,
+and as he stared the blood grew chill in his veins, and his hair crept
+along his scalp and stood on end.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+But Finnian was not one who remained long in bewilderment. He thought on
+the might of God and he became that might, and was tranquil.
+
+He was one who loved God and Ireland, and to the person who could
+instruct him in these great themes he gave all the interest of his mind
+and the sympathy of his heart.
+
+“It is a wonder you tell me, my beloved,” he said. “And now you must
+tell me more.”
+
+“What must I tell?” asked Tuan resignedly.
+
+“Tell me of the beginning of time in Ireland, and of the bearing of
+Partholon, the son of Noah’s son.”
+
+“I have almost forgotten him,” said Tuan. “A greatly bearded, greatly
+shouldered man he was. A man of sweet deeds and sweet ways.”
+
+“Continue, my love,” said Finnian.
+
+“He came to Ireland in a ship. Twenty-four men and twenty-four women
+came with him. But before that time no man had come to Ireland, and in
+the western parts of the world no human being lived or moved. As we drew
+on Ireland from the sea the country seemed like an unending forest. Far
+as the eye could reach, and in whatever direction, there were trees; and
+from these there came the unceasing singing of birds. Over all that land
+the sun shone warm and beautiful, so that to our sea-weary eyes, our
+wind-tormented ears, it seemed as if we were driving on Paradise.
+
+“We landed and we heard the rumble of water going gloomily through the
+darkness of the forest. Following the water we came to a glade where
+the sun shone and where the earth was warmed, and there Partholon rested
+with his twenty-four couples, and made a city and a livelihood.
+
+“There were fish in the rivers of Eire’, there were animals in her
+coverts. Wild and shy and monstrous creatures ranged in her plains and
+forests. Creatures that one could see through and walk through. Long we
+lived in ease, and we saw new animals grow,--the bear, the wolf, the
+badger, the deer, and the boar.
+
+“Partholon’s people increased until from twenty-four couples there came
+five thousand people, who lived in amity and contentment although they
+had no wits.”
+
+“They had no wits!” Finnian commented.
+
+“They had no need of wits,” Tuan said.
+
+“I have heard that the first-born were mindless,” said Finnian.
+“Continue your story, my beloved.”
+
+“Then, sudden as a rising wind, between one night and a morning, there
+came a sickness that bloated the stomach and purpled the skin, and on
+the seventh day all of the race of Partholon were dead, save one man
+only.” “There always escapes one man,” said Finnian thoughtfully.
+
+“And I am that man,” his companion affirmed.
+
+Tuan shaded his brow with his hand, and he remembered backwards through
+incredible ages to the beginning of the world and the first days of
+Eire’. And Finnian, with his blood again running chill and his scalp
+crawling uneasily, stared backwards with him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+“Tell on, my love,” Finnian murmured
+
+“I was alone,” said Tuan. “I was so alone that my own shadow frightened
+me. I was so alone that the sound of a bird in flight, or the creaking
+of a dew-drenched bough, whipped me to cover as a rabbit is scared to
+his burrow.
+
+“The creatures of the forest scented me and knew I was alone. They stole
+with silken pad behind my back and snarled when I faced them; the long,
+grey wolves with hanging tongues and staring eyes chased me to my cleft
+rock; there was no creature so weak but it might hunt me, there was no
+creature so timid but it might outface me. And so I lived for two tens
+of years and two years, until I knew all that a beast surmises and had
+forgotten all that a man had known.
+
+“I could pad as gently as any; I could run as tirelessly. I could be
+invisible and patient as a wild cat crouching among leaves; I could
+smell danger in my sleep and leap at it with wakeful claws; I could bark
+and growl and clash with my teeth and tear with them.”
+
+“Tell on, my beloved,” said Finnian, “you shall rest in God, dear
+heart.”
+
+“At the end of that time,” said Tuan, “Nemed the son of Agnoman came to
+Ireland with a fleet of thirty-four barques, and in each barque there
+were thirty couples of people.”
+
+“I have heard it,” said Finnian.
+
+“My heart leaped for joy when I saw the great fleet rounding the land,
+and I followed them along scarped cliffs, leaping from rock to rock like
+a wild goat, while the ships tacked and swung seeking a harbour. There I
+stooped to drink at a pool, and I saw myself in the chill water.
+
+“I saw that I was hairy and tufty and bristled as a savage boar; that I
+was lean as a stripped bush; that I was greyer than a badger; withered
+and wrinkled like an empty sack; naked as a fish; wretched as a starving
+crow in winter; and on my fingers and toes there were great curving
+claws, so that I looked like nothing that was known, like nothing that
+was animal or divine. And I sat by the pool weeping my loneliness and
+wildness and my stern old age; and I could do no more than cry and
+lament between the earth and the sky, while the beasts that tracked me
+listened from behind the trees, or crouched among bushes to stare at me
+from their drowsy covert.
+
+“A storm arose, and when I looked again from my tall cliff I saw that
+great fleet rolling as in a giant’s hand. At times they were pitched
+against the sky and staggered aloft, spinning gustily there like
+wind-blown leaves. Then they were hurled from these dizzy tops to the
+flat, moaning gulf, to the glassy, inky horror that swirled and whirled
+between ten waves. At times a wave leaped howling under a ship, and with
+a buffet dashed it into air, and chased it upwards with thunder stroke
+on stroke, and followed again, close as a chasing wolf, trying with
+hammering on hammering to beat in the wide-wombed bottom and suck out
+the frightened lives through one black gape. A wave fell on a ship and
+sunk it down with a thrust, stern as though a whole sky had tumbled at
+it, and the barque did not cease to go down until it crashed and sank in
+the sand at the bottom of the sea.
+
+“The night came, and with it a thousand darknesses fell from the
+screeching sky. Not a round-eyed creature of the night might pierce an
+inch of that multiplied gloom. Not a creature dared creep or stand. For
+a great wind strode the world lashing its league-long whips in cracks
+of thunder, and singing to itself, now in a world-wide yell, now in an
+ear-dizzying hum and buzz; or with a long snarl and whine it hovered
+over the world searching for life to destroy.
+
+“And at times, from the moaning and yelping blackness of the sea, there
+came a sound--thin-drawn as from millions of miles away, distinct as
+though uttered in the ear like a whisper of confidence--and I knew that
+a drowning man was calling on his God as he thrashed and was battered
+into silence, and that a blue-lipped woman was calling on her man as her
+hair whipped round her brows and she whirled about like a top.
+
+“Around me the trees were dragged from earth with dying groans; they
+leaped into the air and flew like birds. Great waves whizzed from the
+sea: spinning across the cliffs and hurtling to the earth in monstrous
+clots of foam; the very rocks came trundling and sidling and grinding
+among the trees; and in that rage, and in that horror of blackness I
+fell asleep, or I was beaten into slumber.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+“THERE I dreamed, and I saw myself changing into a stag in dream, and
+I felt in dream the beating of a new heart within me, and in dream I
+arched my neck and braced my powerful limbs.
+
+“I awoke from the dream, and I was that which I had dreamed.
+
+“I stood a while stamping upon a rock, with my bristling head swung
+high, breathing through wide nostrils all the savour of the world. For
+I had come marvellously from decrepitude to strength. I had writhed from
+the bonds of age and was young again. I smelled the turf and knew for
+the first time how sweet that smelled. And like lightning my moving nose
+sniffed all things to my heart and separated them into knowledge.
+
+“Long I stood there, ringing my iron hoof on stone, and learning all
+things through my nose. Each breeze that came from the right hand or the
+left brought me a tale. A wind carried me the tang of wolf, and against
+that smell I stared and stamped. And on a wind there came the scent of
+my own kind, and at that I belled. Oh, loud and clear and sweet was the
+voice of the great stag. With what ease my lovely note went lilting.
+With what joy I heard the answering call. With what delight I bounded,
+bounded, bounded; light as a bird’s plume, powerful as a storm, untiring
+as the sea.
+
+“Here now was ease in ten-yard springings, with a swinging head, with
+the rise and fall of a swallow, with the curve and flow and urge of an
+otter of the sea. What a tingle dwelt about my heart! What a thrill spun
+to the lofty points of my antlers! How the world was new! How the sun
+was new! How the wind caressed me!
+
+“With unswerving forehead and steady eye I met all that came. The old,
+lone wolf leaped sideways, snarling, and slunk away. The lumbering bear
+swung his head of hesitations and thought again; he trotted his small
+red eye away with him to a near-by brake. The stags of my race fled from
+my rocky forehead, or were pushed back and back until their legs broke
+under them and I trampled them to death. I was the beloved, the well
+known, the leader of the herds of Ireland.
+
+“And at times I came back from my boundings about Eire’, for the strings
+of my heart were drawn to Ulster; and, standing away, my wide nose took
+the air, while I knew with joy, with terror, that men were blown on the
+wind. A proud head hung to the turf then, and the tears of memory rolled
+from a large, bright eye.
+
+“At times I drew near, delicately, standing among thick leaves or
+crouched in long grown grasses, and I stared and mourned as I looked on
+men. For Nemed and four couples had been saved from that fierce storm,
+and I saw them increase and multiply until four thousand couples lived
+and laughed and were riotous in the sun, for the people of Nemed had
+small minds but great activity. They were savage fighters and hunters.
+
+“But one time I came, drawn by that intolerable anguish of memory, and
+all of these people were gone: the place that knew them was silent: in
+the land where they had moved there was nothing of them but their bones
+that glinted in the sun.
+
+“Old age came on me there. Among these bones weariness crept into my
+limbs. My head grew heavy, my eyes dim, my knees jerked and trembled,
+and there the wolves dared chase me.
+
+“I went again to the cave that had been my home when I was an old man.
+
+“One day I stole from the cave to snatch a mouthful of grass, for I was
+closely besieged by wolves. They made their rush, and I barely escaped
+from them. They sat beyond the cave staring at me.
+
+“I knew their tongue. I knew all that they said to each other, and all
+that they said to me. But there was yet a thud left in my forehead, a
+deadly trample in my hoof. They did not dare come into the cave.
+
+“‘To-morrow,’ they said, ‘we will tear out your throat, and gnaw on your
+living haunch’.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+“Then my soul rose to the height of Doom, and I intended all that might
+happen to me, and agreed to it.
+
+“‘To-morrow,’ I said, ‘I will go out among ye, and I will die,’ and at
+that the wolves howled joyfully, hungrily, impatiently.
+
+“I slept, and I saw myself changing into a boar in dream, and I felt in
+dream the beating of a new heart within me, and in dream I stretched my
+powerful neck and braced my eager limbs. I awoke from my dream, and I
+was that which I had dreamed.
+
+“The night wore away, the darkness lifted, the day came; and from
+without the cave the wolves called to me: “‘Come out, O Skinny Stag.
+Come out and die.’
+
+“And I, with joyful heart, thrust a black bristle through the hole of
+the cave, and when they saw that wriggling snout, those curving tusks,
+that red fierce eye, the wolves fled yelping, tumbling over each other,
+frantic with terror; and I behind them, a wild cat for leaping, a giant
+for strength, a devil for ferocity; a madness and gladness of lusty,
+unsparing life; a killer, a champion, a boar who could not be defied.
+
+“I took the lordship of the boars of Ireland.
+
+“Wherever I looked among my tribes I saw love and obedience: whenever
+I appeared among the strangers they fled away. And the wolves feared me
+then, and the great, grim bear went bounding on heavy paws. I charged
+him at the head of my troop and rolled him over and over; but it is not
+easy to kill the bear, so deeply is his life packed under that stinking
+pelt. He picked himself up and ran, and was knocked down, and ran again
+blindly, butting into trees and stones. Not a claw did the big bear
+flash, not a tooth did he show, as he ran whimpering like a baby, or
+as he stood with my nose rammed against his mouth, snarling up into his
+nostrils.
+
+“I challenged all that moved. All creatures but one. For men had again
+come to Ireland. Semion, the son of Stariath, with his people, from whom
+the men of Domnann and the Fir Bolg and the Galiuin are descended. These
+I did not chase, and when they chased me I fled.
+
+“Often I would go, drawn by my memoried heart, to look at them as they
+moved among their fields; and I spoke to my mind in bitterness: ‘When
+the people of Partholon were gathered in counsel my voice was heard; it
+was sweet to all who heard it, and the words I spoke were wise. The eyes
+of women brightened and softened when they looked at me. They loved to
+hear him when he sang who now wanders in the forest with a tusky herd.’”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+“OLD age again overtook me. Weariness stole into my limbs, and anguish
+dozed into my mind. I went to my Ulster cave and dreamed my dream, and I
+changed into a hawk.
+
+“I left the ground. The sweet air was my kingdom, and my bright eye
+stared on a hundred miles. I soared, I swooped; I hung, motionless as a
+living stone, over the abyss; I lived in joy and slept in peace, and had
+my fill of the sweetness of life.
+
+“During that time Beothach, the son of Iarbonel the Prophet, came to
+Ireland with his people, and there was a great battle between his men
+and the children of Semion. Long I hung over that combat, seeing every
+spear that hurtled, every stone that whizzed from a sling, every sword
+that flashed up and down, and the endless glittering of the shields. And
+at the end I saw that the victory was with Iarbonel. And from his people
+the Tuatha De’ and the Ande’ came, although their origin is forgotten,
+and learned people, because of their excellent wisdom and intelligence,
+say that they came from heaven.
+
+“These are the people of Faery. All these are the gods.
+
+“For long, long years I was a hawk. I knew every hill and stream; every
+field and glen of Ireland. I knew the shape of cliffs and coasts, and
+how all places looked under the sun or moon. And I was still a hawk when
+the sons of Mil drove the Tuatha De’ Danann under the ground, and held
+Ireland against arms or wizardry; and this was the coming of men and the
+beginning of genealogies.
+
+“Then I grew old, and in my Ulster cave close to the sea I dreamed my
+dream, and in it I became a salmon. The green tides of ocean rose over
+me and my dream, so that I drowned in the sea and did not die, for I
+awoke in deep waters, and I was that which I dreamed. I had been a man,
+a stag, a boar, a bird, and now I was a fish. In all my changes I had
+joy and fulness of life. But in the water joy lay deeper, life pulsed
+deeper. For on land or air there is always something excessive and
+hindering; as arms that swing at the sides of a man, and which the
+mind must remember. The stag has legs to be tucked away for sleep, and
+untucked for movement; and the bird has wings that must be folded and
+pecked and cared for. But the fish has but one piece from his nose to
+his tail. He is complete, single and unencumbered. He turns in one turn,
+and goes up and down and round in one sole movement.
+
+“How I flew through the soft element: how I joyed in the country where
+there is no harshness: in the element which upholds and gives way; which
+caresses and lets go, and will not let you fall. For man may stumble in
+a furrow; the stag tumble from a cliff; the hawk, wing-weary and beaten,
+with darkness around him and the storm behind, may dash his brains
+against a tree. But the home of the salmon is his delight, and the sea
+guards all her creatures.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+“I became the king of the salmon, and, with my multitudes, I ranged on
+the tides of the world. Green and purple distances were under me: green
+and gold the sunlit regions above. In these latitudes I moved through a
+world of amber, myself amber and gold; in those others, in a sparkle
+of lucent blue, I curved, lit like a living jewel: and in these again,
+through dusks of ebony all mazed with silver, I shot and shone, the
+wonder of the sea.
+
+“I saw the monsters of the uttermost ocean go heaving by; and the long
+lithe brutes that are toothed to their tails: and below, where gloom
+dipped down on gloom, vast, livid tangles that coiled and uncoiled, and
+lapsed down steeps and hells of the sea where even the salmon could not
+go.
+
+“I knew the sea. I knew the secret caves where ocean roars to ocean; the
+floods that are icy cold, from which the nose of a salmon leaps back as
+at a sting; and the warm streams in which we rocked and dozed and were
+carried forward without motion. I swam on the outermost rim of the great
+world, where nothing was but the sea and the sky and the salmon; where
+even the wind was silent, and the water was clear as clean grey rock.
+
+“And then, far away in the sea, I remembered Ulster, and there came on
+me an instant, uncontrollable anguish to be there. I turned, and through
+days and nights I swam tirelessly, jubilantly; with terror wakening in
+me, too, and a whisper through my being that I must reach Ireland or
+die.
+
+“I fought my way to Ulster from the sea.
+
+“Ah, how that end of the journey was hard! A sickness was racking in
+every one of my bones, a languor and weariness creeping through my every
+fibre and muscle. The waves held me back and held me back; the soft
+waters seemed to have grown hard; and it was as though I were urging
+through a rock as I strained towards Ulster from the sea.
+
+“So tired I was! I could have loosened my frame and been swept away;
+I could have slept and been drifted and wafted away; swinging on
+grey-green billows that had turned from the land and were heaving and
+mounting and surging to the far blue water.
+
+“Only the unconquerable heart of the salmon could brave that end of
+toil. The sound of the rivers of Ireland racing down to the sea came to
+me in the last numb effort: the love of Ireland bore me up: the gods of
+the rivers trod to me in the white-curled breakers, so that I left
+the sea at long, long last; and I lay in sweet water in the curve of a
+crannied rock, exhausted, three parts dead, triumphant.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+“Delight and strength came to me again, and now I explored all the
+inland ways, the great lakes of Ireland, and her swift brown rivers.
+
+“What a joy to lie under an inch of water basking in the sun, or beneath
+a shady ledge to watch the small creatures that speed like lightning on
+the rippling top. I saw the dragon-flies flash and dart and turn, with
+a poise, with a speed that no other winged thing knows: I saw the hawk
+hover and stare and swoop: he fell like a falling stone, but he could
+not catch the king of the salmon: I saw the cold-eyed cat stretching
+along a bough level with the water, eager to hook and lift the creatures
+of the river. And I saw men.
+
+“They saw me also. They came to know me and look for me. They lay in
+wait at the waterfalls up which I leaped like a silver flash. They held
+out nets for me; they hid traps under leaves; they made cords of the
+colour of water, of the colour of weeds--but this salmon had a nose that
+knew how a weed felt and how a string--they drifted meat on a sightless
+string, but I knew of the hook; they thrust spears at me, and threw
+lances which they drew back again with a cord. Many a wound I got from
+men, many a sorrowful scar.
+
+“Every beast pursued me in the waters and along the banks; the barking,
+black-skinned otter came after me in lust and gust and swirl; the wild
+cat fished for me; the hawk and the steep-winged, spear-beaked birds
+dived down on me, and men crept on me with nets the width of a river,
+so that I got no rest. My life became a ceaseless scurry and wound and
+escape, a burden and anguish of watchfulness--and then I was caught.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+“THE fisherman of Cairill, the King of Ulster, took me in his net. Ah,
+that was a happy man when he saw me! He shouted for joy when he saw the
+great salmon in his net.
+
+“I was still in the water as he hauled delicately. I was still in the
+water as he pulled me to the bank. My nose touched air and spun from it
+as from fire, and I dived with all my might against the bottom of the
+net, holding yet to the water, loving it, mad with terror that I must
+quit that loveliness. But the net held and I came up.
+
+“‘Be quiet, King of the River,’ said the fisherman, ‘give in to Doom,’
+said he.
+
+“I was in air, and it was as though I were in fire. The air pressed on
+me like a fiery mountain. It beat on my scales and scorched them. It
+rushed down my throat and scalded me. It weighed on me and squeezed me,
+so that my eyes felt as though they must burst from my head, my head as
+though it would leap from my body, and my body as though it would swell
+and expand and fly in a thousand pieces.
+
+“The light blinded me, the heat tormented me, the dry air made me
+shrivel and gasp; and, as he lay on the grass, the great salmon whirled
+his desperate nose once more to the river, and leaped, leaped, leaped,
+even under the mountain of air. He could leap upwards, but not forwards,
+and yet he leaped, for in each rise he could see the twinkling waves,
+the rippling and curling waters.
+
+“‘Be at ease, O King,’ said the fisherman. ‘Be at rest, my beloved. Let
+go the stream. Let the oozy marge be forgotten, and the sandy bed where
+the shades dance all in green and gloom, and the brown flood sings
+along.’
+
+“And as he carried me to the palace he sang a song of the river, and a
+song of Doom, and a song in praise of the King of the Waters.
+
+“When the king’s wife saw me she desired me. I was put over a fire and
+roasted, and she ate me. And when time passed she gave birth to me, and
+I was her son and the son of Cairill the king. I remember warmth and
+darkness and movement and unseen sounds. All that happened I remember,
+from the time I was on the gridiron until the time I was born. I forget
+nothing of these things.”
+
+“And now,” said Finnian, “you will be born again, for I shall baptize
+you into the family of the Living God.” ---- So far the story of Tuan,
+the son of Cairill.
+
+No man knows if he died in those distant ages when Finnian was Abbot of
+Moville, or if he still keeps his fort in Ulster, watching all things,
+and remembering them for the glory of God and the honour of Ireland.
+
+
+
+
+THE BOYHOOD OF FIONN
+
+
+
+
+He was a king, a seer and a poet. He was a lord with a manifold and
+great train. He was our magician, our knowledgable one, our soothsayer.
+All that he did was sweet with him. And, however ye deem my testimony
+of Fionn excessive, and, although ye hold my praising overstrained,
+nevertheless, and by the King that is above me, he was three times
+better than all I say.--Saint PATRICK.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Fionn [pronounce Fewn to rhyme with “tune”] got his first training among
+women. There is no wonder in that, for it is the pup’s mother teaches it
+to fight, and women know that fighting is a necessary art although men
+pretend there are others that are better. These were the women druids,
+Bovmall and Lia Luachra. It will be wondered why his own mother did not
+train him in the first natural savageries of existence, but she could
+not do it. She could not keep him with her for dread of the clann-Morna.
+The sons of Morna had been fighting and intriguing for a long time to
+oust her husband, Uail, from the captaincy of the Fianna of Ireland,
+and they had ousted him at last by killing him. It was the only way
+they could get rid of such a man; but it was not an easy way, for what
+Fionn’s father did not know in arms could not be taught to him even by
+Morna. Still, the hound that can wait will catch a hare at last, and
+even Manana’nn sleeps. Fionn’s mother was beautiful, long-haired Muirne:
+so she is always referred to. She was the daughter of Teigue, the son of
+Nuada from Faery, and her mother was Ethlinn. That is, her brother
+was Lugh of the Long Hand himself, and with a god, and such a god, for
+brother we may marvel that she could have been in dread of Morna or his
+sons, or of any one. But women have strange loves, strange fears, and
+these are so bound up with one another that the thing which is presented
+to us is not often the thing that is to be seen.
+
+However it may be, when Uall died Muirne got married again to the King
+of Kerry. She gave the child to Bovmall and Lia Luachra to rear, and we
+may be sure that she gave injunctions with him, and many of them. The
+youngster was brought to the woods of Slieve Bloom and was nursed there
+in secret.
+
+It is likely the women were fond of him, for other than Fionn there
+was no life about them. He would be their life; and their eyes may
+have seemed as twin benedictions resting on the small fair head. He was
+fair-haired, and it was for his fairness that he was afterwards called
+Fionn; but at this period he was known as Deimne. They saw the food they
+put into his little frame reproduce itself length-ways and sideways in
+tough inches, and in springs and energies that crawled at first, and
+then toddled, and then ran. He had birds for playmates, but all the
+creatures that live in a wood must have been his comrades. There would
+have been for little Fionn long hours of lonely sunshine, when the world
+seemed just sunshine and a sky. There would have been hours as long,
+when existence passed like a shade among shadows, in the multitudinous
+tappings of rain that dripped from leaf to leaf in the wood, and slipped
+so to the ground. He would have known little snaky paths, narrow enough
+to be filled by his own small feet, or a goat’s; and he would have
+wondered where they went, and have marvelled again to find that,
+wherever they went, they came at last, through loops and twists of the
+branchy wood, to his own door. He may have thought of his own door as
+the beginning and end of the world, whence all things went, and whither
+all things came.
+
+Perhaps he did not see the lark for a long time, but he would have heard
+him, far out of sight in the endless sky, thrilling and thrilling until
+the world seemed to have no other sound but that clear sweetness; and
+what a world it was to make that sound! Whistles and chirps, coos and
+caws and croaks, would have grown familiar to him. And he could at last
+have told which brother of the great brotherhood was making the noise
+he heard at any moment. The wind too: he would have listened to its
+thousand voices as it moved in all seasons and in all moods. Perhaps a
+horse would stray into the thick screen about his home, and would look
+as solemnly on Fionn as Fionn did on it. Or, coming suddenly on him,
+the horse might stare, all a-cock with eyes and ears and nose, one
+long-drawn facial extension, ere he turned and bounded away with
+manes all over him and hoofs all under him and tails all round him. A
+solemn-nosed, stern-eyed cow would amble and stamp in his wood to find a
+flyless shadow; or a strayed sheep would poke its gentle muzzle through
+leaves.
+
+“A boy,” he might think, as he stared on a staring horse, “a boy cannot
+wag his tail to keep the flies off,” and that lack may have saddened
+him. He may have thought that a cow can snort and be dignified at
+the one moment, and that timidity is comely in a sheep. He would have
+scolded the jackdaw, and tried to out-whistle the throstle, and wondered
+why his pipe got tired when the blackbird’s didn’t. There would be flies
+to be watched, slender atoms in yellow gauze that flew, and filmy specks
+that flittered, and sturdy, thick-ribbed brutes that pounced like cats
+and bit like dogs and flew like lightning. He may have mourned for the
+spider in bad luck who caught that fly. There would be much to see and
+remember and compare, and there would be, always, his two guardians. The
+flies change from second to second; one cannot tell if this bird is a
+visitor or an inhabitant, and a sheep is just sister to a sheep; but the
+women were as rooted as the house itself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Were his nurses comely or harsh-looking? Fionn would not know. This was
+the one who picked him up when he fell, and that was the one who patted
+the bruise. This one said: “Mind you do not tumble in the well!”
+
+And that one: “Mind the little knees among the nettles.”
+
+But he did tumble and record that the only notable thing about a well
+is that it is wet. And as for nettles, if they hit him he hit back. He
+slashed into them with a stick and brought them low. There was nothing
+in wells or nettles, only women dreaded them. One patronised women and
+instructed them and comforted them, for they were afraid about one.
+
+They thought that one should not climb a tree!
+
+“Next week,” they said at last, “you may climb this one,” and “next
+week” lived at the end of the world!
+
+But the tree that was climbed was not worth while when it had been
+climbed twice. There was a bigger one near by. There were trees that no
+one could climb, with vast shadow on one side and vaster sunshine on
+the other. It took a long time to walk round them, and you could not see
+their tops.
+
+It was pleasant to stand on a branch that swayed and sprung, and it was
+good to stare at an impenetrable roof of leaves and then climb into it.
+How wonderful the loneliness was up there! When he looked down there
+was an undulating floor of leaves, green and green and greener to a very
+blackness of greeniness; and when he looked up there were leaves
+again, green and less green and not green at all, up to a very snow and
+blindness of greeniness; and above and below and around there was sway
+and motion, the whisper of leaf on leaf, and the eternal silence to
+which one listened and at which one tried to look.
+
+When he was six years of age his mother, beautiful, long-haired Muirne,
+came to see him. She came secretly, for she feared the sons of Morna,
+and she had paced through lonely places in many counties before she
+reached the hut in the wood, and the cot where he lay with his fists
+shut and sleep gripped in them.
+
+He awakened to be sure. He would have one ear that would catch an
+unusual voice, one eye that would open, however sleepy the other one
+was. She took him in her arms and kissed him, and she sang a sleepy song
+until the small boy slept again.
+
+We may be sure that the eye that could stay open stayed open that night
+as long as it could, and that the one ear listened to the sleepy song
+until the song got too low to be heard, until it was too tender to be
+felt vibrating along those soft arms, until Fionn was asleep again, with
+a new picture in his little head and a new notion to ponder on.
+
+The mother of himself! His own mother!
+
+But when he awakened she was gone.
+
+She was going back secretly, in dread of the sons of Morna, slipping
+through gloomy woods, keeping away from habitations, getting by desolate
+and lonely ways to her lord in Kerry.
+
+Perhaps it was he that was afraid of the sons of Morna, and perhaps she
+loved him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE women druids, his guardians, belonged to his father’s people.
+Bovmall was Uail’s sister, and, consequently, Fionn’s aunt. Only such
+a blood-tie could have bound them to the clann-Baiscne, for it is not
+easy, having moved in the world of court and camp, to go hide with a
+baby in a wood; and to live, as they must have lived, in terror.
+
+What stories they would have told the child of the sons of Morna. Of
+Morna himself, the huge-shouldered, stern-eyed, violent Connachtman; and
+of his sons--young Goll Mor mac Morna in particular, as huge-shouldered
+as his father, as fierce in the onset, but merry-eyed when the other
+was grim, and bubbling with a laughter that made men forgive even his
+butcheries. Of Cona’n Mael mac Morna his brother, gruff as a badger,
+bearded like a boar, bald as a crow, and with a tongue that could manage
+an insult where another man would not find even a stammer. His boast was
+that when he saw an open door he went into it, and when he saw a closed
+door he went into it. When he saw a peaceful man he insulted him, and
+when he met a man who was not peaceful he insulted him. There was Garra
+Duv mac Morna, and savage Art Og, who cared as little for their own
+skins as they did for the next man’s, and Garra must have been rough
+indeed to have earned in that clan the name of the Rough mac Morna.
+There were others: wild Connachtmen all, as untameable, as unaccountable
+as their own wonderful countryside.
+
+Fionn would have heard much of them, and it is likely that he practised
+on a nettle at taking the head off Goll, and that he hunted a sheep
+from cover in the implacable manner he intended later on for Cona’n the
+Swearer.
+
+But it is of Uail mac Baiscne he would have heard most. With what a
+dilation of spirit the ladies would have told tales of him, Fionn’s
+father. How their voices would have become a chant as feat was added
+to feat, glory piled on glory. The most famous of men and the most
+beautiful; the hardest fighter; the easiest giver; the kingly champion;
+the chief of the Fianna na h-Eirinn. Tales of how he had been way-laid
+and got free; of how he had been generous and got free; of how he had
+been angry and went marching with the speed of an eagle and the direct
+onfall of a storm; while in front and at the sides, angled from the prow
+of his terrific advance, were fleeing multitudes who did not dare to
+wait and scarce had time to run. And of how at last, when the time
+came to quell him, nothing less than the whole might of Ireland was
+sufficient for that great downfall.
+
+We may be sure that on these adventures Fionn was with his father, going
+step for step with the long-striding hero, and heartening him mightily.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+He was given good training by the women in running and leaping and
+swimming.
+
+One of them would take a thorn switch in her hand, and Fionn would
+take a thorn switch in his hand, and each would try to strike the other
+running round a tree.
+
+You had to go fast to keep away from the switch behind, and a small boy
+feels a switch. Fionn would run his best to get away from that prickly
+stinger, but how he would run when it was his turn to deal the strokes!
+
+With reason too, for his nurses had suddenly grown implacable. They
+pursued him with a savagery which he could not distinguish from hatred,
+and they swished him well whenever they got the chance.
+
+Fionn learned to run. After a while he could buzz around a tree like
+a maddened fly, and oh, the joy, when he felt himself drawing from the
+switch and gaining from behind on its bearer! How he strained and panted
+to catch on that pursuing person and pursue her and get his own switch
+into action.
+
+He learned to jump by chasing hares in a bumpy field. Up went the hare
+and up went Fionn, and away with the two of them, hopping and popping
+across the field. If the hare turned while Fionn was after her it was
+switch for Fionn; so that in a while it did not matter to Fionn which
+way the hare jumped for he could jump that way too. Long-ways, sideways
+or baw-ways, Fionn hopped where the hare hopped, and at last he was the
+owner of a hop that any hare would give an ear for.
+
+He was taught to swim, and it may be that his heart sank when he fronted
+the lesson. The water was cold. It was deep. One could see the bottom,
+leagues below, millions of miles below. A small boy might shiver as he
+stared into that wink and blink and twink of brown pebbles and murder.
+And these implacable women threw him in!
+
+Perhaps he would not go in at first. He may have smiled at them, and
+coaxed, and hung back. It was a leg and an arm gripped then; a swing for
+Fionn, and out and away with him; plop and flop for him; down into chill
+deep death for him, and up with a splutter; with a sob; with a grasp
+at everything that caught nothing; with a wild flurry; with a raging
+despair; with a bubble and snort as he was hauled again down, and down,
+and down, and found as suddenly that he had been hauled out.
+
+Fionn learned to swim until he could pop into the water like an otter
+and slide through it like an eel.
+
+He used to try to chase a fish the way he chased hares in the bumpy
+field--but there are terrible spurts in a fish. It may be that a fish
+cannot hop, but he gets there in a flash, and he isn’t there in another.
+Up or down, sideways or endways, it is all one to a fish. He goes and
+is gone. He twists this way and disappears the other way. He is over
+you when he ought to be under you, and he is biting your toe when you
+thought you were biting his tail.
+
+You cannot catch a fish by swimming, but you can try, and Fionn tried.
+He got a grudging commendation from the terrible women when he was able
+to slip noiselessly in the tide, swim under water to where a wild duck
+was floating and grip it by the leg.
+
+“Qu--,” said the duck, and he disappeared before he had time to get the
+“-ack” out of him.
+
+So the time went, and Fionn grew long and straight and tough like a
+sapling; limber as a willow, and with the flirt and spring of a young
+bird. One of the ladies may have said, “He is shaping very well, my
+dear,” and the other replied, as is the morose privilege of an aunt,
+“He will never be as good as his father,” but their hearts must have
+overflowed in the night, in the silence, in the darkness, when they
+thought of the living swiftness they had fashioned, and that dear fair
+head.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ONE day his guardians were agitated: they held confabulations at which
+Fionn was not permitted to assist. A man who passed by in the morning
+had spoken to them. They fed the man, and during his feeding Fionn had
+been shooed from the door as if he were a chicken. When the stranger
+took his road the women went with him a short distance. As they passed
+the man lifted a hand and bent a knee to Fionn.
+
+“My soul to you, young master,” he said, and as he said it, Fionn
+knew that he could have the man’s soul, or his boots, or his feet, or
+anything that belonged to him.
+
+When the women returned they were mysterious and whispery. They chased
+Fionn into the house, and when they got him in they chased him out
+again. They chased each other around the house for another whisper. They
+calculated things by the shape of clouds, by lengths of shadows, by the
+flight of birds, by two flies racing on a flat stone, by throwing bones
+over their left shoulders, and by every kind of trick and game and
+chance that you could put a mind to.
+
+They told Fionn he must sleep in a tree that night, and they put him
+under bonds not to sing or whistle or cough or sneeze until the morning.
+
+Fionn did sneeze. He never sneezed so much in his life. He sat up in his
+tree and nearly sneezed himself out of it. Flies got up his nose, two
+at a time, one up each nose, and his head nearly fell off the way he
+sneezed.
+
+“You are doing that on purpose,” said a savage whisper from the foot of
+the tree.
+
+But Fionn was not doing it on purpose. He tucked himself into a fork the
+way he had been taught, and he passed the crawliest, tickliest night he
+had ever known. After a while he did not want to sneeze, he wanted to
+scream: and in particular he wanted to come down from the tree. But he
+did not scream, nor did he leave the tree. His word was passed, and he
+stayed in his tree as silent as a mouse and as watchful, until he fell
+out of it.
+
+In the morning a band of travelling poets were passing, and the
+women handed Fionn over to them. This time they could not prevent him
+overhearing.
+
+“The sons of Morna!” they said.
+
+And Fionn’s heart might have swelled with rage, but that it was already
+swollen with adventure. And also the expected was happening. Behind
+every hour of their day and every moment of their lives lay the sons of
+Morna. Fionn had run after them as deer: he jumped after them as hares:
+he dived after them as fish. They lived in the house with him: they
+sat at the table and ate his meat. One dreamed of them, and they were
+expected in the morning as the sun is. They knew only too well that the
+son of Uail was living, and they knew that their own sons would know
+no ease while that son lived; for they believed in those days that like
+breeds like, and that the son of Uail would be Uail with additions.
+
+His guardians knew that their hiding-place must at last be discovered,
+and that, when it was found, the sons of Morna would come. They had
+no doubt of that, and every action of their lives was based on that
+certainty. For no secret can remain secret. Some broken soldier tramping
+home to his people will find it out; a herd seeking his strayed cattle
+or a band of travelling musicians will get the wind of it. How many
+people will move through even the remotest wood in a year! The crows
+will tell a secret if no one else does; and under a bush, behind a clump
+of bracken, what eyes may there not be! But if your secret is legged
+like a young goat! If it is tongued like a wolf! One can hide a baby,
+but you cannot hide a boy. He will rove unless you tie him to a post,
+and he will whistle then.
+
+The sons of Morna came, but there were only two grim women living in a
+lonely hut to greet them. We may be sure they were well greeted. One can
+imagine Goll’s merry stare taking in all that could be seen; Cona’n’s
+grim eye raking the women’s faces while his tongue raked them again; the
+Rough mac Morna shouldering here and there in the house and about it,
+with maybe a hatchet in his hand, and Art Og coursing further afield and
+vowing that if the cub was there he would find him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+But Fionn was gone. He was away, bound with his band of poets for the
+Galtees.
+
+It is likely they were junior poets come to the end of a year’s
+training, and returning to their own province to see again the people at
+home, and to be wondered at and exclaimed at as they exhibited bits of
+the knowledge which they had brought from the great schools. They would
+know tags of rhyme and tricks about learning which Fionn would hear of;
+and now and again, as they rested in a glade or by the brink of a river,
+they might try their lessons over. They might even refer to the ogham
+wands on which the first words of their tasks and the opening lines of
+poems were cut; and it is likely that, being new to these things, they
+would talk of them to a youngster, and, thinking that his wits could be
+no better than their own, they might have explained to him how ogham was
+written. But it is far more likely that his women guardians had already
+started him at those lessons.
+
+Still this band of young bards would have been of infinite interest to
+Fionn, not on account of what they had learned, but because of what they
+knew. All the things that he should have known as by nature: the look,
+the movement, the feeling of crowds; the shouldering and intercourse of
+man with man; the clustering of houses and how people bore themselves
+in and about them; the movement of armed men, and the homecoming look
+of wounds; tales of births, and marriages and deaths; the chase with its
+multitudes of men and dogs; all the noise, the dust, the excitement of
+mere living. These, to Fionn, new come from leaves and shadows and the
+dipple and dapple of a wood, would have seemed wonderful; and the tales
+they would have told of their masters, their looks, fads, severities,
+sillinesses, would have been wonderful also.
+
+That band should have chattered like a rookery.
+
+They must have been young, for one time a Leinsterman came on them, a
+great robber named Fiacuil mac Cona, and he killed the poets. He chopped
+them up and chopped them down. He did not leave one poeteen of them
+all. He put them out of the world and out of life, so that they stopped
+being, and no one could tell where they went or what had really happened
+to them; and it is a wonder indeed that one can do that to anything let
+alone a band. If they were not youngsters, the bold Fiacuil could not
+have managed them all. Or, perhaps, he too had a band, although the
+record does not say so; but kill them he did, and they died that way.
+
+Fionn saw that deed, and his blood may have been cold enough as he
+watched the great robber coursing the poets as a wild dog rages in a
+flock. And when his turn came, when they were all dead, and the grim,
+red-handed man trod at him, Fionn may have shivered, but he would have
+shown his teeth and laid roundly on the monster with his hands. Perhaps
+he did that, and perhaps for that he was spared.
+
+“Who are you?” roared the staring black-mouth with the red tongue
+squirming in it like a frisky fish.
+
+“The son of Uail, son of Baiscne,” quoth hardy Fionn. And at that the
+robber ceased to be a robber, the murderer disappeared, the black-rimmed
+chasm packed with red fish and precipices changed to something else, and
+the round eyes that had been popping out of their sockets and trying
+to bite, changed also. There remained a laughing and crying and loving
+servant who wanted to tie himself into knots if that would please the
+son of his great captain. Fionn went home on the robber’s shoulder, and
+the robber gave great snorts and made great jumps and behaved like a
+first-rate horse. For this same Fiacuil was the husband of Bovmall,
+Fionn’s aunt. He had taken to the wilds when clann-Baiscne was broken,
+and he was at war with a world that had dared to kill his Chief.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A new life for Fionn in the robber’s den that was hidden in a vast cold
+marsh.
+
+A tricky place that would be, with sudden exits and even suddener
+entrances, and with damp, winding, spidery places to hoard treasure in,
+or to hide oneself in.
+
+If the robber was a solitary he would, for lack of someone else,
+have talked greatly to Fionn. He would have shown his weapons and
+demonstrated how he used them, and with what slash he chipped his
+victim, and with what slice he chopped him. He would have told why a
+slash was enough for this man and why that man should be sliced. All men
+are masters when one is young, and Fionn would have found knowledge here
+also. He would have seen Fiacuil’s great spear that had thirty rivets
+of Arabian gold in its socket, and that had to be kept wrapped up and
+tied down so that it would not kill people out of mere spitefulness. It
+had come from Faery, out of the Shi’ of Aillen mac Midna, and it would
+be brought back again later on between the same man’s shoulder-blades.
+
+What tales that man could tell a boy, and what questions a boy could ask
+him. He would have known a thousand tricks, and because our instinct is
+to teach, and because no man can keep a trick from a boy, he would show
+them to Fionn.
+
+There was the marsh too; a whole new life to be learned; a complicated,
+mysterious, dank, slippery, reedy, treacherous life, but with its own
+beauty and an allurement that could grow on one, so that you could
+forget the solid world and love only that which quaked and gurgled.
+
+In this place you may swim. By this sign and this you will know if it is
+safe to do so, said Fiacuil mac Cona; but in this place, with this sign
+on it and that, you must not venture a toe.
+
+But where Fionn would venture his toes his ears would follow.
+
+There are coiling weeds down there, the robber counselled him; there are
+thin, tough, snaky binders that will trip you and grip you, that will
+pull you and will not let you go again until you are drowned; until
+you are swaying and swinging away below, with outstretched arms, with
+outstretched legs, with a face all stares and smiles and jockeyings,
+gripped in those leathery arms, until there is no more to be gripped of
+you even by them.
+
+“Watch these and this and that,” Fionn would have been told, “and always
+swim with a knife in your teeth.”
+
+He lived there until his guardians found out where he was and came after
+him. Fiacuil gave him up to them, and he was brought home again to
+the woods of Slieve Bloom, but he had gathered great knowledge and new
+supplenesses.
+
+The sons of Morna left him alone for a long time. Having made their
+essay they grew careless.
+
+“Let him be,” they said. “He will come to us when the time comes.”
+
+But it is likely too that they had had their own means of getting
+information about him. How he shaped? what muscles he had? and did
+he spring clean from the mark or had he to get off with a push? Fionn
+stayed with his guardians and hunted for them. He could run a deer down
+and haul it home by the reluctant skull. “Come on, Goll,” he would say
+to his stag, or, lifting it over a tussock with a tough grip on the
+snout, “Are you coming, bald Cona’n, or shall I kick you in the neck?”
+
+The time must have been nigh when he would think of taking the world
+itself by the nose, to haul it over tussocks and drag it into his
+pen; for he was of the breed in whom mastery is born, and who are good
+masters.
+
+But reports of his prowess were getting abroad. Clann-Morna began to
+stretch itself uneasily, and, one day, his guardians sent him on his
+travels.
+
+“It is best for you to leave us now,” they said to the tall stripling,
+“for the sons of Morna are watching again to kill you.”
+
+The woods at that may have seemed haunted. A stone might sling at one
+from a tree-top; but from which tree of a thousand trees did it come? An
+arrow buzzing by one’s ear would slide into the ground and quiver there
+silently, menacingly, hinting of the brothers it had left in the quiver
+behind; to the right? to the left? how many brothers? in how many
+quivers...? Fionn was a woodsman, but he had only two eyes to look with,
+one set of feet to carry him in one sole direction. But when he was
+looking to the front what, or how many whats, could be staring at him
+from the back? He might face in this direction, away from, or towards a
+smile on a hidden face and a finger on a string. A lance might slide at
+him from this bush or from the one yonder.. In the night he might have
+fought them; his ears against theirs; his noiseless feet against their
+lurking ones; his knowledge of the wood against their legion: but during
+the day he had no chance.
+
+Fionn went to seek his fortune, to match himself against all that might
+happen, and to carve a name for himself that will live while Time has an
+ear and knows an Irishman.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Fionn went away, and now he was alone. But he was as fitted for
+loneliness as the crane is that haunts the solitudes and bleak wastes
+of the sea; for the man with a thought has a comrade, and Fionn’s mind
+worked as featly as his body did. To be alone was no trouble to him who,
+however surrounded, was to be lonely his life long; for this will be
+said of Fionn when all is said, that all that came to him went from him,
+and that happiness was never his companion for more than a moment.
+
+But he was not now looking for loneliness. He was seeking the
+instruction of a crowd, and therefore when he met a crowd he went into
+it. His eyes were skilled to observe in the moving dusk and dapple of
+green woods. They were trained to pick out of shadows birds that were
+themselves dun-coloured shades, and to see among trees the animals that
+are coloured like the bark of trees. The hare crouching in the fronds
+was visible to him, and the fish that swayed in-visibly in the sway and
+flicker of a green bank. He would see all that was to be seen, and he
+would see all that is passed by the eye that is half blind from use and
+wont.
+
+At Moy Life’ he came on lads swimming in a pool; and, as he looked
+on them sporting in the flush tide, he thought that the tricks they
+performed were not hard for him, and that he could have shown them new
+ones.
+
+Boys must know what another boy can do, and they will match themselves
+against everything. They did their best under these observing eyes, and
+it was not long until he was invited to compete with them and show his
+mettle. Such an invitation is a challenge; it is almost, among boys, a
+declaration of war. But Fionn was so far beyond them in swimming that
+even the word master did not apply to that superiority.
+
+While he was swimming one remarked: “He is fair and well shaped,” and
+thereafter he was called “Fionn” or the Fair One. His name came from
+boys, and will, perhaps, be preserved by them.
+
+He stayed with these lads for some time, and it may be that they
+idolised him at first, for it is the way with boys to be astounded and
+enraptured by feats; but in the end, and that was inevitable, they grew
+jealous of the stranger. Those who had been the champions before he came
+would marshal each other, and, by social pressure, would muster all the
+others against him; so that in the end not a friendly eye was turned on
+Fionn in that assembly. For not only did he beat them at swimming, he
+beat their best at running and jumping, and when the sport degenerated
+into violence, as it was bound to, the roughness of Fionn would be ten
+times as rough as the roughness of the roughest rough they could put
+forward. Bravery is pride when one is young, and Fionn was proud.
+
+There must have been anger in his mind as he went away leaving that lake
+behind him, and those snarling and scowling boys, but there would have
+been disappointment also, for his desire at this time should have been
+towards friendliness.
+
+He went thence to Lock Le’in and took service with the King of
+Finntraigh. That kingdom may have been thus called from Fionn himself
+and would have been known by another name when he arrived there.
+
+He hunted for the King of Finntraigh, and it soon grew evident that
+there was no hunter in his service to equal Fionn. More, there was no
+hunter of them all who even distantly approached him in excellence. The
+others ran after deer, using the speed of their legs, the noses of their
+dogs and a thousand well-worn tricks to bring them within reach, and,
+often enough, the animal escaped them. But the deer that Fionn got the
+track of did not get away, and it seemed even that the animals sought
+him so many did he catch.
+
+The king marvelled at the stories that were told of this new hunter, but
+as kings are greater than other people so they are more curious; and,
+being on the plane of excellence, they must see all that is excellently
+told of.
+
+The king wished to see him, and Fionn must have wondered what the king
+thought as that gracious lord looked on him. Whatever was thought, what
+the king said was as direct in utterance as it was in observation.
+
+“If Uail the son of Baiscne has a son,” said the king, “you would surely
+be that son.”
+
+We are not told if the King of Finntraigh said anything more, but we
+know that Fionn left his service soon afterwards.
+
+He went southwards and was next in the employment of the King of Kerry,
+the same lord who had married his own mother. In that service he came to
+such consideration that we hear of him as playing a match of chess with
+the king, and by this game we know that he was still a boy in his mind
+however mightily his limbs were spreading. Able as he was in sports and
+huntings, he was yet too young to be politic, but he remained impolitic
+to the end of his days, for whatever he was able to do he would do, no
+matter who was offended thereat; and whatever he was not able to do he
+would do also. That was Fionn.
+
+Once, as they rested on a chase, a debate arose among the Fianna-Finn as
+to what was the finest music in the world.
+
+“Tell us that,” said Fionn turning to Oisi’n [pronounced Usheen]
+
+“The cuckoo calling from the tree that is highest in the hedge,” cried
+his merry son.
+
+“A good sound,” said Fionn. “And you, Oscar,” he asked, “what is to your
+mind the finest of music?”
+
+“The top of music is the ring of a spear on a shield,” cried the stout
+lad.
+
+“It is a good sound,” said Fionn. And the other champions told their
+delight; the belling of a stag across water, the baying of a tuneful
+pack heard in the distance, the song of a lark, the laugh of a gleeful
+girl, or the whisper of a moved one.
+
+“They are good sounds all,” said Fionn.
+
+“Tell us, chief,” one ventured, “what you think?”
+
+“The music of what happens,” said great Fionn, “that is the finest music
+in the world.”
+
+He loved “what happened,” and would not evade it by the swerve of
+a hair; so on this occasion what was occurring he would have occur,
+although a king was his rival and his master. It may be that his mother
+was watching the match and that he could not but exhibit his skill
+before her. He committed the enormity of winning seven games in
+succession from the king himself!!!
+
+It is seldom indeed that a subject can beat a king at chess, and this
+monarch was properly amazed.
+
+“Who are you at all?” he cried, starting back from the chessboard and
+staring on Fionn.
+
+“I am the son of a countryman of the Luigne of Tara,” said Fionn.
+
+He may have blushed as he said it, for the king, possibly for the first
+time, was really looking at him, and was looking back through twenty
+years of time as he did so. The observation of a king is faultless--it
+is proved a thousand times over in the tales, and this king’s equipment
+was as royal as the next.
+
+“You are no such son,” said the indignant monarch, “but you are the son
+that Muirne my wife bore to Uall mac Balscne.”
+
+And at that Fionn had no more to say; but his eyes may have flown to his
+mother and stayed there.
+
+“You cannot remain here,” his step-father continued. “I do not want you
+killed under my protection,” he explained, or complained.
+
+Perhaps it was on Fionn’s account he dreaded the sons of Morna, but no
+one knows what Fionn thought of him for he never thereafter spoke of his
+step-father. As for Muirne she must have loved her lord; or she may have
+been terrified in truth of the sons of Morna and for Fionn; but it is so
+also, that if a woman loves her second husband she can dislike all that
+reminds her of the first one. Fionn went on his travels again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+All desires save one are fleeting, but that one lasts for ever. Fionn,
+with all desires, had the lasting one, for he would go anywhere and
+forsake anything for wisdom; and it was in search of this that he went
+to the place where Finegas lived on a bank of the Boyne Water. But
+for dread of the clann-Morna he did not go as Fionn. He called himself
+Deimne on that journey.
+
+We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered we
+get wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as
+a snail carries its shell. Fionn asked every question he could think of,
+and his master, who was a poet, and so an honourable man, answered them
+all, not to the limit of his patience, for it was limitless, but to the
+limit of his ability.
+
+“Why do you live on the bank of a river?” was one of these questions.
+“Because a poem is a revelation, and it is by the brink of running water
+that poetry is revealed to the mind.”
+
+“How long have you been here?” was the next query. “Seven years,” the
+poet answered.
+
+“It is a long time,” said wondering Fionn.
+
+“I would wait twice as long for a poem,” said the inveterate bard.
+
+“Have you caught good poems?” Fionn asked him.
+
+“The poems I am fit for,” said the mild master. “No person can get more
+than that, for a man’s readiness is his limit.”
+
+“Would you have got as good poems by the Shannon or the Suir or by sweet
+Ana Life’?”
+
+“They are good rivers,” was the answer. “They all belong to good gods.”
+
+“But why did you choose this river out of all the rivers?”
+
+Finegas beamed on his pupil.
+
+“I would tell you anything,” said he, “and I will tell you that.”
+
+Fionn sat at the kindly man’s feet, his hands absent among tall grasses,
+and listening with all his ears. “A prophecy was made to me,” Finegas
+began. “A man of knowledge foretold that I should catch the Salmon of
+Knowledge in the Boyne Water.”
+
+“And then?” said Fionn eagerly.
+
+“Then I would have All Knowledge.”
+
+“And after that?” the boy insisted.
+
+“What should there be after that?” the poet retorted.
+
+“I mean, what would you do with All Knowledge?”
+
+“A weighty question,” said Finegas smilingly. “I could answer it if I
+had All Knowledge, but not until then. What would you do, my dear?”
+
+“I would make a poem,” Fionn cried.
+
+“I think too,” said the poet, “that that is what would be done.”
+
+In return for instruction Fionn had taken over the service of his
+master’s hut, and as he went about the household duties, drawing the
+water, lighting the fire, and carrying rushes for the floor and the
+beds, he thought over all the poet had taught him, and his mind dwelt on
+the rules of metre, the cunningness of words, and the need for a clean,
+brave mind. But in his thousand thoughts he yet remembered the Salmon of
+Knowledge as eagerly as his master did. He already venerated Finegas
+for his great learning, his poetic skill, for an hundred reasons; but,
+looking on him as the ordained eater of the Salmon of Knowledge, he
+venerated him to the edge of measure. Indeed, he loved as well as
+venerated this master because of his unfailing kindness, his patience,
+his readiness to teach, and his skill in teaching.
+
+“I have learned much from you, dear master,” said Fionn gratefully.
+
+“All that I have is yours if you can take it,” the poet answered, “for
+you are entitled to all that you can take, but to no more than that.
+Take, so, with both hands.”
+
+“You may catch the salmon while I am with you,” the hopeful boy mused.
+“Would not that be a great happening!” and he stared in ecstasy across
+the grass at those visions which a boy’s mind knows.
+
+“Let us pray for that,” said Finegas fervently.
+
+“Here is a question,” Fionn continued. “How does this salmon get wisdom
+into his flesh?”
+
+“There is a hazel bush overhanging a secret pool in a secret place. The
+Nuts of Knowledge drop from the Sacred Bush into the pool, and as they
+float, a salmon takes them in his mouth and eats them.”
+
+“It would be almost as easy,” the boy submitted, “if one were to set on
+the track of the Sacred Hazel and eat the nuts straight from the bush.”
+
+“That would not be very easy,” said the poet, “and yet it is not as easy
+as that, for the bush can only be found by its own knowledge, and that
+knowledge can only be got by eating the nuts, and the nuts can only be
+got by eating the salmon.”
+
+“We must wait for the salmon,” said Fionn in a rage of resignation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Life continued for him in a round of timeless time, wherein days and
+nights were uneventful and were yet filled with interest. As the day
+packed its load of strength into his frame, so it added its store of
+knowledge to his mind, and each night sealed the twain, for it is in the
+night that we make secure what we have gathered in the day.
+
+If he had told of these days he would have told of a succession of meals
+and sleeps, and of an endless conversation, from which his mind would
+now and again slip away to a solitude of its own, where, in large hazy
+atmospheres, it swung and drifted and reposed. Then he would be back
+again, and it was a pleasure for him to catch up on the thought that was
+forward and re-create for it all the matter he had missed. But he could
+not often make these sleepy sallies; his master was too experienced a
+teacher to allow any such bright-faced, eager-eyed abstractions, and as
+the druid women had switched his legs around a tree, so Finegas chased
+his mind, demanding sense in his questions and understanding in his
+replies.
+
+To ask questions can become the laziest and wobbliest occupation of a
+mind, but when you must yourself answer the problem that you have posed,
+you will meditate your question with care and frame it with precision.
+Fionn’s mind learned to jump in a bumpier field than that in which he
+had chased rabbits. And when he had asked his question, and given his
+own answer to it, Finegas would take the matter up and make clear to him
+where the query was badly formed or at what point the answer had begun
+to go astray, so that Fionn came to understand by what successions a
+good question grows at last to a good answer.
+
+One day, not long after the conversation told of, Finegas came to the
+place where Fionn was. The poet had a shallow osier basket on his arm,
+and on his face there was a look that was at once triumphant and gloomy.
+He was excited certainly, but he was sad also, and as he stood gazing on
+Fionn his eyes were so kind that the boy was touched, and they were yet
+so melancholy that it almost made Fionn weep. “What is it, my master?”
+ said the alarmed boy.
+
+The poet placed his osier basket on the grass.
+
+“Look in the basket, dear son,” he said. Fionn looked.
+
+“There is a salmon in the basket.”
+
+“It is The Salmon,” said Finegas with a great sigh. Fionn leaped for
+delight.
+
+“I am glad for you, master,” he cried. “Indeed I am glad for you.”
+
+“And I am glad, my dear soul,” the master rejoined.
+
+But, having said it, he bent his brow to his hand and for a long time he
+was silent and gathered into himself.
+
+“What should be done now?” Fionn demanded, as he stared on the beautiful
+fish.
+
+Finegas rose from where he sat by the osier basket.
+
+“I will be back in a short time,” he said heavily. “While I am away you
+may roast the salmon, so that it will be ready against my return.”
+
+“I will roast it indeed,” said Fionn.
+
+The poet gazed long and earnestly on him.
+
+“You will not eat any of my salmon while I am away?” he asked.
+
+“I will not eat the littlest piece,” said Fionn.
+
+“I am sure you will not,” the other murmured, as he turned and walked
+slowly across the grass and behind the sheltering bushes on the ridge.
+
+Fionn cooked the salmon. It was beautiful and tempting and savoury as
+it smoked on a wooden platter among cool green leaves; and it looked all
+these to Finegas when he came from behind the fringing bushes and sat
+in the grass outside his door. He gazed on the fish with more than his
+eyes. He looked on it with his heart, with his soul in his eyes, and
+when he turned to look on Fionn the boy did not know whether the love
+that was in his eyes was for the fish or for himself. Yet he did know
+that a great moment had arrived for the poet.
+
+“So,” said Finegas, “you did not eat it on me after all?” “Did I not
+promise?” Fionn replied.
+
+“And yet,” his master continued, “I went away so that you might eat the
+fish if you felt you had to.”
+
+“Why should I want another man’s fish?” said proud Fionn.
+
+“Because young people have strong desires. I thought you might have
+tasted it, and then you would have eaten it on me.”
+
+“I did taste it by chance,” Fionn laughed, “for while the fish was
+roasting a great blister rose on its skin. I did not like the look of
+that blister, and I pressed it down with my thumb. That burned my thumb,
+so I popped it in my mouth to heal the smart. If your salmon tastes as
+nice as my thumb did,” he laughed, “it will taste very nice.”
+
+“What did you say your name was, dear heart?” the poet asked.
+
+“I said my name was Deimne.”
+
+“Your name is not Deimne,” said the mild man, “your name is Fionn.”
+
+“That is true,” the boy answered, “but I do not know how you know it.”
+
+“Even if I have not eaten the Salmon of Knowledge I have some small
+science of my own.”
+
+“It is very clever to know things as you know them,” Fionn replied
+wonderingly. “What more do you know of me, dear master?”
+
+“I know that I did not tell you the truth,” said the heavy-hearted man.
+
+“What did you tell me instead of it?”
+
+“I told you a lie.”
+
+“It is not a good thing to do,” Fionn admitted. “What sort of a lie was
+the lie, master?” “I told you that the Salmon of Knowledge was to be
+caught by me, according to the prophecy.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“That was true indeed, and I have caught the fish. But I did not tell
+you that the salmon was not to be eaten by me, although that also was in
+the prophecy, and that omission was the lie.”
+
+“It is not a great lie,” said Fionn soothingly.
+
+“It must not become a greater one,” the poet replied sternly.
+
+“Who was the fish given to?” his companion wondered.
+
+“It was given to you,” Finegas answered. “It was given to Fionn, the son
+of Uail, the son of Baiscne, and it will be given to him.”
+
+“You shall have a half of the fish,” cried Fionn.
+
+“I will not eat a piece of its skin that is as small as the point of its
+smallest bone,” said the resolute and trembling bard. “Let you now eat
+up the fish, and I shall watch you and give praise to the gods of the
+Underworld and of the Elements.”
+
+Fionn then ate the Salmon of Knowledge, and when it had disappeared a
+great jollity and tranquillity and exuberance returned to the poet.
+
+“Ah,” said he, “I had a great combat with that fish.”
+
+“Did it fight for its life?” Fionn inquired.
+
+“It did, but that was not the fight I meant.”
+
+“You shall eat a Salmon of Knowledge too,” Fionn assured him.
+
+“You have eaten one,” cried the blithe poet, “and if you make such a
+promise it will be because you know.”
+
+“I promise it and know it,” said Fionn, “you shall eat a Salmon of
+Knowledge yet.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+He had received all that he could get from Finegas. His education was
+finished and the time had come to test it, and to try all else that he
+had of mind and body. He bade farewell to the gentle poet, and set out
+for Tara of the Kings.
+
+It was Samhain-tide, and the feast of Tara was being held, at which all
+that was wise or skilful or well-born in Ireland were gathered together.
+
+This is how Tara was when Tara was. There was the High King’s palace
+with its fortification; without it was another fortification enclosing
+the four minor palaces, each of which was maintained by one of the four
+provincial kings; without that again was the great banqueting hall, and
+around it and enclosing all of the sacred hill in its gigantic bound ran
+the main outer ramparts of Tara. From it, the centre of Ireland, four
+great roads went, north, south, east, and west, and along these roads,
+from the top and the bottom and the two sides of Ireland, there moved
+for weeks before Samhain an endless stream of passengers.
+
+Here a gay band went carrying rich treasure to decorate the pavilion of
+a Munster lord. On another road a vat of seasoned yew, monstrous as a
+house on wheels and drawn by an hundred laborious oxen, came bumping and
+joggling the ale that thirsty Connaught princes would drink. On a road
+again the learned men of Leinster, each with an idea in his head that
+would discomfit a northern ollav and make a southern one gape and
+fidget, would be marching solemnly, each by a horse that was piled high
+on the back and widely at the sides with clean-peeled willow or oaken
+wands, that were carved from the top to the bottom with the ogham signs;
+the first lines of poems (for it was an offence against wisdom to commit
+more than initial lines to writing), the names and dates of kings, the
+procession of laws of Tara and of the sub-kingdoms, the names of places
+and their meanings. On the brown stallion ambling peacefully yonder
+there might go the warring of the gods for two or ten thousand years;
+this mare with the dainty pace and the vicious eye might be sidling
+under a load of oaken odes in honour of her owner’s family, with a
+few bundles of tales of wonder added in case they might be useful; and
+perhaps the restive piebald was backing the history of Ireland into a
+ditch.
+
+On such a journey all people spoke together, for all were friends, and
+no person regarded the weapon in another man’s hand other than as an
+implement to poke a reluctant cow with, or to pacify with loud wallops
+some hoof-proud colt.
+
+Into this teem and profusion of jolly humanity Fionn slipped, and if his
+mood had been as bellicose as a wounded boar he would yet have found
+no man to quarrel with, and if his eye had been as sharp as a jealous
+husband’s he would have found no eye to meet it with calculation or
+menace or fear; for the Peace of Ireland was in being, and for six weeks
+man was neighbour to man, and the nation was the guest of the High King.
+Fionn went in with the notables.
+
+His arrival had been timed for the opening day and the great feast of
+welcome. He may have marvelled, looking on the bright city, with its
+pillars of gleaming bronze and the roofs that were painted in many
+colours, so that each house seemed to be covered by the spreading wings
+of some gigantic and gorgeous bird. And the palaces themselves, mellow
+with red oak, polished within and without by the wear and the care of
+a thousand years, and carved with the patient skill of unending
+generations of the most famous artists of the most artistic country of
+the western world, would have given him much to marvel at also. It
+must have seemed like a city of dream, a city to catch the heart, when,
+coming over the great plain, Fionn saw Tara of the Kings held on its
+hill as in a hand to gather all the gold of the falling sun, and to
+restore a brightness as mellow and tender as that universal largess.
+
+In the great banqueting hall everything was in order for the feast. The
+nobles of Ireland with their winsome consorts, the learned and artistic
+professions represented by the pick of their time were in place. The
+Ard-Ri, Corm of the Hundred Battles, had taken his place on the raised
+dais which commanded the whole of that vast hall. At his Right hand his
+son Art, to be afterwards as famous as his famous father, took his seat,
+and on his left Goll mor mac Morna, chief of the Fianna of Ireland, had
+the seat of honour. As the High King took his place he could see every
+person who was noted in the land for any reason. He would know every one
+who was present, for the fame of all men is sealed at Tara, and behind
+his chair a herald stood to tell anything the king might not know or had
+forgotten.
+
+Conn gave the signal and his guests seated themselves.
+
+The time had come for the squires to take their stations behind their
+masters and mistresses. But, for the moment, the great room was seated,
+and the doors were held to allow a moment of respect to pass before the
+servers and squires came in.
+
+Looking over his guests, Conn observed that a young man was yet
+standing.
+
+“There is a gentleman,” he murmured, “for whom no seat has been found.”
+
+We may be sure that the Master of the Banquet blushed at that.
+
+“And,” the king continued, “I do not seem to know the young man.”
+
+Nor did his herald, nor did the unfortunate Master, nor did anybody; for
+the eyes of all were now turned where the king’s went.
+
+“Give me my horn,” said the gracious monarch.
+
+The horn of state was put to his hand.
+
+“Young gentleman,” he called to the stranger, “I wish to drink to your
+health and to welcome you to Tara.”
+
+The young man came forward then, greater-shouldered than any mighty
+man of that gathering, longer and cleaner limbed, with his fair curls
+dancing about his beardless face. The king put the great horn into his
+hand.
+
+“Tell me your name,” he commanded gently.
+
+“I am Fionn, the son of Uail, the son of Baiscne,” said the youth.
+
+And at that saying a touch as of lightning went through the gathering
+so that each person quivered, and the son of the great, murdered captain
+looked by the king’s shoulder into the twinkling eye of Goll. But no
+word was uttered, no movement made except the movement and the utterance
+of the Ard-Ri’.
+
+“You are the son of a friend,” said the great-hearted monarch. “You
+shall have the seat of a friend.”
+
+He placed Fionn at the right hand of his own son Art.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+It is to be known that on the night of the Feast of Samhain the doors
+separating this world and the next one are opened, and the inhabitants
+of either world can leave their respective spheres and appear in the
+world of the other beings.
+
+Now there was a grandson to the Dagda Mor, the Lord of the Underworld,
+and he was named Aillen mac Midna, out of Shi’ Finnachy, and this Aillen
+bore an implacable enmity to Tara and the Ard-Ri’.
+
+As well as being monarch of Ireland her High King was chief of the
+people learned in magic, and it is possible that at some time Conn had
+adventured into Tir na n-Og, the Land of the Young, and had done some
+deed or misdeed in Aillen’s lordship or in his family. It must have been
+an ill deed in truth, for it was in a very rage of revenge that Aillen
+came yearly at the permitted time to ravage Tara.
+
+Nine times he had come on this mission of revenge, but it is not to be
+supposed that he could actually destroy the holy city: the Ard-Ri’
+and magicians could prevent that, but he could yet do a damage so
+considerable that it was worth Conn’s while to take special extra
+precautions against him, including the precaution of chance.
+
+Therefore, when the feast was over and the banquet had commenced, the
+Hundred Fighter stood from his throne and looked over his assembled
+people.
+
+The Chain of Silence was shaken by the attendant whose duty and honour
+was the Silver Chain, and at that delicate chime the halt went silent,
+and a general wonder ensued as to what matter the High King would submit
+to his people.
+
+“Friends and heroes,” said Conn, “Aillen, the son of Midna, will come
+to-night from Slieve Fuaid with occult, terrible fire against our
+city. Is there among you one who loves Tara and the king, and who will
+undertake our defence against that being?”
+
+He spoke in silence, and when he had finished he listened to the same
+silence, but it was now deep, ominous, agonized. Each man glanced
+uneasily on his neighbour and then stared at his wine-cup or his
+fingers. The hearts of young men went hot for a gallant moment and were
+chilled in the succeeding one, for they had all heard of Aillen out of
+Shl Finnachy in the north. The lesser gentlemen looked under their brows
+at the greater champions, and these peered furtively at the greatest of
+all. Art og mac Morna of the Hard Strokes fell to biting his fingers,
+Cona’n the Swearer and Garra mac Morna grumbled irritably to each other
+and at their neighbours, even Caelte, the son of Rona’n, looked down
+into his own lap, and Goll Mor sipped at his wine without any twinkle
+in his eye. A horrid embarrassment came into the great hall, and as the
+High King stood in that palpitating silence his noble face changed
+from kindly to grave and from that to a terrible sternness. In another
+moment, to the undying shame of every person present, he would have been
+compelled to lift his own challenge and declare himself the champion of
+Tara for that night, but the shame that was on the faces of his people
+would remain in the heart of their king. Goll’s merry mind would help
+him to forget, but even his heart would be wrung by a memory that he
+would not dare to face. It was at that terrible moment that Fionn stood
+up.
+
+“What,” said he, “will be given to the man who undertakes this defence?”
+
+“All that can be rightly asked will be royally bestowed,” was the king’s
+answer.
+
+“Who are the sureties?” said Fionn.
+
+“The kings of Ireland, and Red Cith with his magicians.”
+
+“I will undertake the defence,” said Fionn. And on that, the kings and
+magicians who were present bound themselves to the fulfilment of the
+bargain.
+
+Fionn marched from the banqueting hall, and as he went, all who were
+present of nobles and retainers and servants acclaimed him and wished
+him luck. But in their hearts they were bidding him good-bye, for all
+were assured that the lad was marching to a death so unescapeable that
+he might already be counted as a dead man.
+
+It is likely that Fionn looked for help to the people of the Shi’
+themselves, for, through his mother, he belonged to the tribes of Dana,
+although, on the father’s side, his blood was well compounded with
+mortal clay. It may be, too, that he knew how events would turn, for he
+had eaten the Salmon of Knowledge. Yet it is not recorded that on this
+occasion he invoked any magical art as he did on other adventures.
+
+Fionn’s way of discovering whatever was happening and hidden was always
+the same and is many times referred to. A shallow, oblong dish of pure,
+pale gold was brought to him. This dish was filled with clear water.
+Then Fionn would bend his head and stare into the water, and as he
+stared he would place his thumb in his mouth under his “Tooth of
+Knowledge,” his “wisdom tooth.”
+
+Knowledge, may it be said, is higher than magic and is more to be
+sought. It is quite possible to see what is happening and yet not know
+what is forward, for while seeing is believing it does not follow that
+either seeing or believing is knowing. Many a person can see a thing and
+believe a thing and know just as little about it as the person who does
+neither. But Fionn would see and know, or he would under-stand a decent
+ratio of his visions. That he was versed in magic is true, for he was
+ever known as the Knowledgeable man, and later he had two magicians
+in his household named Dirim and mac-Reith to do the rough work of
+knowledge for their busy master.
+
+It was not from the Shi’, however, that assistance came to Fionn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+He marched through the successive fortifications until he came to the
+outer, great wall, the boundary of the city, and when he had passed this
+he was on the wide plain of Tara.
+
+Other than himself no person was abroad, for on the night of the Feast
+of Samhain none but a madman would quit the shelter of a house even if
+it were on fire; for whatever disasters might be within a house would be
+as nothing to the calamities without it.
+
+The noise of the banquet was not now audible to Fionn--it is possible,
+however, that there was a shamefaced silence in the great hall--and the
+lights of the city were hidden by the successive great ramparts. The sky
+was over him; the earth under him; and than these there was nothing, or
+there was but the darkness and the wind.
+
+But darkness was not a thing to terrify him, bred in the nightness of
+a wood and the very fosterling of gloom; nor could the wind afflict his
+ear or his heart. There was no note in its orchestra that he had not
+brooded on and become, which becoming is magic. The long-drawn moan of
+it; the thrilling whisper and hush; the shrill, sweet whistle, so thin
+it can scarcely be heard, and is taken more by the nerves than by the
+ear; the screech, sudden as a devil’s yell and loud as ten thunders; the
+cry as of one who flies with backward look to the shelter of leaves and
+darkness; and the sob as of one stricken with an age-long misery, only
+at times remembered, but remembered then with what a pang! His ear
+knew by what successions they arrived, and by what stages they grew and
+diminished. Listening in the dark to the bundle of noises which make a
+noise he could disentangle them and assign a place and a reason to each
+gradation of sound that formed the chorus: there was the patter of a
+rabbit, and there the scurrying of a hare; a bush rustled yonder,
+but that brief rustle was a bird; that pressure was a wolf, and this
+hesitation a fox; the scraping yonder was but a rough leaf against bark,
+and the scratching beyond it was a ferret’s claw.
+
+Fear cannot be where knowledge is, and Fionn was not fearful.
+
+His mind, quietly busy on all sides, picked up one sound and dwelt on
+it. “A man,” said Fionn, and he listened in that direction, back towards
+the city.
+
+A man it was, almost as skilled in darkness as Fionn himself “This is no
+enemy,” Fionn thought; “his walking is open.”
+
+“Who comes?” he called.
+
+“A friend,” said the newcomer.
+
+“Give a friend’s name,” said Fionn.
+
+“Fiacuil mac Cona,” was the answer.
+
+“Ah, my pulse and heart!” cried Fionn, and he strode a few paces to meet
+the great robber who had fostered him among the marshes.
+
+“So you are not afraid,” he said joyfully.
+
+“I am afraid in good truth,” Fiacuil whispered, “and the minute my
+business with you is finished I will trot back as quick as legs will
+carry me. May the gods protect my going as they protected my coming,”
+ said the robber piously.
+
+“Amen,” said Fionn, “and now, tell me what you have come for?”
+
+“Have you any plan against this lord of the Shl?” Fiacuil whispered.
+
+“I will attack him,” said Fionn.
+
+“That is not a plan,” the other groaned, “we do not plan to deliver an
+attack but to win a victory.”
+
+“Is this a very terrible person?” Fionn asked.
+
+“Terrible indeed. No one can get near him or away from him. He comes out
+of the Shi’ playing sweet, low music on a timpan and a pipe, and all who
+hear this music fall asleep.”
+
+“I will not fall asleep,” said Fionn.
+
+“You will indeed, for everybody does.”
+
+“What happens then?” Fionn asked.
+
+“When all are asleep Aillen mac Midna blows a dart of fire out of his
+mouth, and everything that is touched by that fire is destroyed, and he
+can blow his fire to an incredible distance and to any direction.”
+
+“You are very brave to come to help me,” Fionn murmured, “especially
+when you are not able to help me at all.”
+
+“I can help,” Fiacuil replied, “but I must be paid.”
+
+“What payment?”
+
+“A third of all you earn and a seat at your council.”
+
+“I grant that,” said Fionn, “and now, tell me your plan?”
+
+“You remember my spear with the thirty rivets of Arabian gold in its
+socket?”
+
+“The one,” Fionn queried, “that had its head wrapped in a blanket and
+was stuck in a bucket of water and was chained to a wall as well--the
+venomous Birgha?” “That one,” Fiacuil replied.
+
+“It is Aillen mac Midna’s own spear,” he continued, “and it was taken
+out of his Shi’ by your father.”
+
+“Well?” said Fionn, wondering nevertheless where Fiacuil got the spear,
+but too generous to ask.
+
+“When you hear the great man of the Shi’ coming, take the wrappings off
+the head of the spear and bend your face over it; the heat of the spear,
+the stench of it, all its pernicious and acrid qualities will prevent
+you from going to sleep.”
+
+“Are you sure of that?” said Fionn.
+
+“You couldn’t go to sleep close to that stench; nobody could,” Fiacuil
+replied decidedly.
+
+He continued: “Aillen mac Midna will be off his guard when he stops
+playing and begins to blow his fire; he will think everybody is asleep;
+then you can deliver the attack you were speaking of, and all good luck
+go with it.”
+
+“I will give him back his spear,” said Fionn.
+
+“Here it is,” said Fiacuil, taking the Birgha from under his cloak. “But
+be as careful of it, my pulse, be as frightened of it as you are of the
+man of Dana.”
+
+“I will be frightened of nothing,” said Fionn, “and the only person I
+will be sorry for is that Aillen mac Midna, who is going to get his own
+spear back.”
+
+“I will go away now,” his companion whispered, “for it is growing darker
+where you would have thought there was no more room for darkness, and
+there is an eerie feeling abroad which I do not like. That man from the
+Shi’ may come any minute, and if I catch one sound of his music I am
+done for.”
+
+The robber went away and again Fionn was alone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+He listened to the retreating footsteps until they could be heard no
+more, and the one sound that came to his tense ears was the beating of
+his own heart.
+
+Even the wind had ceased, and there seemed to be nothing in the world
+but the darkness and himself. In that gigantic blackness, in that unseen
+quietude and vacancy, the mind could cease to be personal to itself. It
+could be overwhelmed and merged in space, so that consciousness would
+be transferred or dissipated, and one might sleep standing; for the mind
+fears loneliness more than all else, and will escape to the moon rather
+than be driven inwards on its own being.
+
+But Fionn was not lonely, and he was not afraid when the son of Midna
+came.
+
+A long stretch of the silent night had gone by, minute following minute
+in a slow sequence, wherein as there was no change there was no time;
+wherein there was no past and no future, but a stupefying, endless
+present which is almost the annihilation of consciousness. A change
+came then, for the clouds had also been moving and the moon at last was
+sensed behind them--not as a radiance, but as a percolation of light,
+a gleam that was strained through matter after matter and was less than
+the very wraith or remembrance of itself; a thing seen so narrowly,
+so sparsely, that the eye could doubt if it was or was not seeing, and
+might conceive that its own memory was re-creating that which was still
+absent.
+
+But Fionn’s eye was the eye of a wild creature that spies on darkness
+and moves there wittingly. He saw, then, not a thing but a movement;
+something that was darker than the darkness it loomed on; not a being
+but a presence, and, as it were, impending pressure. And in a little he
+heard the deliberate pace of that great being.
+
+Fionn bent to his spear and unloosed its coverings.
+
+Then from the darkness there came another sound; a low, sweet sound;
+thrillingly joyous, thrillingly low; so low the ear could scarcely note
+it, so sweet the ear wished to catch nothing else and would strive to
+hear it rather than all sounds that may be heard by man: the music of
+another world! the unearthly, dear melody of the Shi’! So sweet it was
+that the sense strained to it, and having reached must follow drowsily
+in its wake, and would merge in it, and could not return again to its
+own place until that strange harmony was finished and the ear restored
+to freedom.
+
+But Fionn had taken the covering from his spear, and with his brow
+pressed close to it he kept his mind and all his senses engaged on that
+sizzling, murderous point.
+
+The music ceased and Aillen hissed a fierce blue flame from his mouth,
+and it was as though he hissed lightning.
+
+Here it would seem that Fionn used magic, for spreading out his fringed
+mantle he caught the flame. Rather he stopped it, for it slid from the
+mantle and sped down into the earth to the depth of twenty-six spans;
+from which that slope is still called the Glen of the Mantle, and the
+rise on which Aillen stood is known as the Ard of Fire.
+
+One can imagine the surprise of Aillen mac Midna, seeing his fire caught
+and quenched by an invisible hand. And one can imagine that at this
+check he might be frightened, for who would be more terrified than a
+magician who sees his magic fail, and who, knowing of power, will guess
+at powers of which he has no conception and may well dread.
+
+Everything had been done by him as it should be done. His pipe had been
+played and his timpan, all who heard that music should be asleep, and
+yet his fire was caught in full course and was quenched.
+
+Aillen, with all the terrific strength of which he was master, blew
+again, and the great jet of blue flame came roaring and whistling from
+him and was caught and disappeared.
+
+Panic swirled into the man from Faery; he turned from that terrible spot
+and fled, not knowing what might be behind, but dreading it as he
+had never before dreaded anything, and the unknown pursued him; that
+terrible defence became offence and hung to his heel as a wolf pads by
+the flank of a bull.
+
+And Aillen was not in his own world! He was in the world of men, where
+movement is not easy and the very air a burden. In his own sphere, in
+his own element, he might have outrun Fionn, but this was Fionn’s world,
+Fionn’s element, and the flying god was not gross enough to outstrip
+him. Yet what a race he gave, for it was but at the entrance to his
+own Shi’ that the pursuer got close enough. Fionn put a finger into
+the thong of the great spear, and at that cast night fell on Aillen
+mac Midna. His eyes went black, his mind whirled and ceased, there
+came nothingness where he had been, and as the Birgha whistled into his
+shoulder-blades he withered away, he tumbled emptily and was dead. Fionn
+took his lovely head from its shoulders and went back through the night
+to Tara.
+
+Triumphant Fionn, who had dealt death to a god, and to whom death would
+be dealt, and who is now dead!
+
+He reached the palace at sunrise.
+
+On that morning all were astir early. They wished to see what
+destruction had been wrought by the great being, but it was young Fionn
+they saw and that redoubtable head swinging by its hair. “What is your
+demand?” said the Ard-Ri’. “The thing that it is right I should ask,”
+ said Fionn: “the command of the Fianna of Ireland.”
+
+“Make your choice,” said Conn to Goll Mor; “you will leave Ireland, or
+you will place your hand in the hand of this champion and be his man.”
+
+Goll could do a thing that would be hard for another person, and he
+could do it so beautifully that he was not diminished by any action.
+
+“Here is my hand,” said Goll.
+
+And he twinkled at the stern, young eyes that gazed on him as he made
+his submission.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRTH OF BRAN
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+There are people who do not like dogs a bit--they are usually women--but
+in this story there is a man who did not like dogs. In fact, he hated
+them. When he saw one he used to go black in the face, and he threw
+rocks at it until it got out of sight. But the Power that protects all
+creatures had put a squint into this man’s eye, so that he always threw
+crooked.
+
+This gentleman’s name was Fergus Fionnliath, and his stronghold was near
+the harbour of Galway. Whenever a dog barked he would leap out of his
+seat, and he would throw everything that he owned out of the window in
+the direction of the bark. He gave prizes to servants who disliked dogs,
+and when he heard that a man had drowned a litter of pups he used to
+visit that person and try to marry his daughter.
+
+Now Fionn, the son of Uail, was the reverse of Fergus Fionnliath in this
+matter, for he delighted in dogs, and he knew everything about them from
+the setting of the first little white tooth to the rocking of the last
+long yellow one. He knew the affections and antipathies which are proper
+in a dog; the degree of obedience to which dogs may be trained without
+losing their honourable qualities or becoming servile and suspicious;
+he knew the hopes that animate them, the apprehensions which tingle in
+their blood, and all that is to be demanded from, or forgiven in, a
+paw, an ear, a nose, an eye, or a tooth; and he understood these things
+because he loved dogs, for it is by love alone that we understand
+anything.
+
+Among the three hundred dogs which Fionn owned there were two to whom
+he gave an especial tenderness, and who were his daily and nightly
+companions. These two were Bran and Sceo’lan, but if a person were to
+guess for twenty years he would not find out why Fionn loved these two
+dogs and why he would never be separated from them.
+
+Fionn’s mother, Muirne, went to wide Allen of Leinster to visit her son,
+and she brought her young sister Tuiren with her. The mother and aunt
+of the great captain were well treated among the Fianna, first, because
+they were parents to Fionn, and second, because they were beautiful and
+noble women.
+
+No words can describe how delightful Muirne was--she took the branch;
+and as to Tuiren, a man could not look at her without becoming angry
+or dejected. Her face was fresh as a spring morning; her voice more
+cheerful than the cuckoo calling from the branch that is highest in the
+hedge; and her form swayed like a reed and flowed like a river, so that
+each person thought she would surely flow to him.
+
+Men who had wives of their own grew moody and downcast because they
+could not hope to marry her, while the bachelors of the Fianna stared at
+each other with truculent, bloodshot eyes, and then they gazed on Tuiren
+so gently that she may have imagined she was being beamed on by the mild
+eyes of the dawn.
+
+It was to an Ulster gentleman, Iollan Eachtach, that she gave her love,
+and this chief stated his rights and qualities and asked for her in
+marriage.
+
+Now Fionn did not dislike the man of Ulster, but either he did not
+know them well or else he knew them too well, for he made a curious
+stipulation before consenting to the marriage. He bound Iollan to return
+the lady if there should be occasion to think her unhappy, and Iollan
+agreed to do so. The sureties to this bargain were Caelte mac Ronan,
+Goll mac Morna, and Lugaidh. Lugaidh himself gave the bride away, but
+it was not a pleasant ceremony for him, because he also was in love with
+the lady, and he would have preferred keeping her to giving her away.
+When she had gone he made a poem about her, beginning:
+
+       “There is no more light in the sky--”
+
+And hundreds of sad people learned the poem by heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+When Iollan and Tuiren were married they went to Ulster, and they lived
+together very happily. But the law of life is change; nothing
+continues in the same way for any length of time; happiness must become
+unhappiness, and will be succeeded again by the joy it had displaced.
+The past also must be reckoned with; it is seldom as far behind us as we
+could wish: it is more often in front, blocking the way, and the future
+trips over it just when we think that the road is clear and joy our own.
+
+Iollan had a past. He was not ashamed of it; he merely thought it
+was finished, although in truth it was only beginning, for it is that
+perpetual beginning of the past that we call the future.
+
+Before he joined the Fianna he had been in love with a lady of the Shi’,
+named Uct Dealv (Fair Breast), and they had been sweethearts for years.
+How often he had visited his sweetheart in Faery! With what eagerness
+and anticipation he had gone there; the lover’s whistle that he used to
+give was known to every person in that Shi’, and he had been discussed
+by more than one of the delicate sweet ladies of Faery. “That is your
+whistle, Fair Breast,” her sister of the Shi’ would say.
+
+And Uct Dealv would reply: “Yes, that is my mortal, my lover, my pulse,
+and my one treasure.”
+
+She laid her spinning aside, or her embroidery if she was at that, or if
+she were baking a cake of fine wheaten bread mixed with honey she would
+leave the cake to bake itself and fly to Iollan. Then they went hand in
+hand in the country that smells of apple-blossom and honey, looking on
+heavy-boughed trees and on dancing and beaming clouds. Or they stood
+dreaming together, locked in a clasping of arms and eyes, gazing up
+and down on each other, Iollan staring down into sweet grey wells that
+peeped and flickered under thin brows, and Uct Dealv looking up into
+great black ones that went dreamy and went hot in endless alternation.
+
+Then Iollan would go back to the world of men, and Uct Dealv would
+return to her occupations in the Land of the Ever Young.
+
+“What did he say?” her sister of the Shi’ would ask.
+
+“He said I was the Berry of the Mountain, the Star of Knowledge, and the
+Blossom of the Raspberry.”
+
+“They always say the same thing,” her sister pouted.
+
+“But they look other things,” Uct Dealv insisted. “They feel other
+things,” she murmured; and an endless conversation recommenced.
+
+Then for some time Iollan did not come to Faery, and Uct Dealv marvelled
+at that, while her sister made an hundred surmises, each one worse than
+the last.
+
+“He is not dead or he would be here,” she said. “He has forgotten you,
+my darling.”
+
+News was brought to Tlr na n-Og of the marriage of Iollan and Tuiren,
+and when Uct Dealv heard that news her heart ceased to beat for a
+moment, and she closed her eyes.
+
+“Now!” said her sister of the Shi’. “That is how long the love of a
+mortal lasts,” she added, in the voice of sad triumph which is proper to
+sisters.
+
+But on Uct Dealv there came a rage of jealousy and despair such as no
+person in the Shi’ had ever heard of, and from that moment she
+became capable of every ill deed; for there are two things not easily
+controlled, and they are hunger and jealousy. She determined that the
+woman who had supplanted her in Iollan’s affections should rue the day
+she did it. She pondered and brooded revenge in her heart, sitting in
+thoughtful solitude and bitter collectedness until at last she had a
+plan.
+
+She understood the arts of magic and shape-changing, so she changed
+her shape into that of Fionn’s female runner, the best-known woman in
+Ireland; then she set out from Faery and appeared in the world. She
+travelled in the direction of Iollan’s stronghold.
+
+Iollan knew the appearance of Fionn’s messenger, but he was surprised to
+see her.
+
+She saluted him.
+
+“Health and long life, my master.”.
+
+“Health and good days,” he replied. “What brings you here, dear heart?”
+
+“I come from Fionn.”
+
+“And your message?” said he.
+
+“The royal captain intends to visit you.”
+
+“He will be welcome,” said Iollan. “We shall give him an Ulster feast.”
+
+“The world knows what that is,” said the messenger courteously. “And
+now,” she continued, “I have messages for your queen.”
+
+Tuiren then walked from the house with the messenger, but when they had
+gone a short distance Uct Dealv drew a hazel rod from beneath her cloak
+and struck it on the queen’s shoulder, and on the instant Tuiren’s
+figure trembled and quivered, and it began to whirl inwards and
+downwards, and she changed into the appearance of a hound.
+
+It was sad to see the beautiful, slender dog standing shivering and
+astonished, and sad to see the lovely eyes that looked out pitifully
+in terror and amazement. But Uct Dealv did not feel sad. She clasped
+a chain about the hound’s neck, and they set off westward towards the
+house of Fergus Fionnliath, who was reputed to be the unfriendliest man
+in the world to a dog. It was because of his reputation that Uct Dealv
+was bringing the hound to him. She did not want a good home for this
+dog: she wanted the worst home that could be found in the world, and she
+thought that Fergus would revenge for her the rage and jealousy which
+she felt towards Tuiren.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+As they paced along Uct Dealv railed bitterly against the hound, and
+shook and jerked her chain. Many a sharp cry the hound gave in that
+journey, many a mild lament.
+
+“Ah, supplanter! Ah, taker of another girl’s sweetheart!” said Uct Dealv
+fiercely. “How would your lover take it if he could see you now? How
+would he look if he saw your pointy ears, your long thin snout, your
+shivering, skinny legs, and your long grey tail. He would not love you
+now, bad girl!”
+
+“Have you heard of Fergus Fionnliath,” she said again, “the man who does
+not like dogs?”
+
+Tuiren had indeed heard of him.
+
+“It is to Fergus I shall bring you,” cried Uct Dealv. “He will throw
+stones at you. You have never had a stone thrown at you. Ah, bad girl!
+You do not know how a stone sounds as it nips the ear with a whirling
+buzz, nor how jagged and heavy it feels as it thumps against a skinny
+leg. Robber! Mortal! Bad girl! You have never been whipped, but you will
+be whipped now. You shall hear the song of a lash as it curls forward
+and bites inward and drags backward. You shall dig up old bones
+stealthily at night, and chew them against famine. You shall whine and
+squeal at the moon, and shiver in the cold, and you will never take
+another girl’s sweetheart again.”
+
+And it was in those terms and in that tone that she spoke to Tuiren
+as they journeyed forward, so that the hound trembled and shrank, and
+whined pitifully and in despair.
+
+They came to Fergus Fionnliath’s stronghold, and Uct Dealv demanded
+admittance.
+
+“Leave that dog outside,” said the servant.
+
+“I will not do so,” said the pretended messenger.
+
+“You can come in without the dog, or you can stay out with the dog,”
+ said the surly guardian.
+
+“By my hand,” cried Uct Dealv, “I will come in with this dog, or your
+master shall answer for it to Fionn.”
+
+At the name of Fionn the servant almost fell out of his standing. He
+flew to acquaint his master, and Fergus himself came to the great door
+of the stronghold.
+
+“By my faith,” he cried in amazement, “it is a dog.”
+
+“A dog it is,” growled the glum servant.
+
+“Go you away,” said Fergus to Uct Dealv, “and when you have killed the
+dog come back to me and I will give you a present.”
+
+“Life and health, my good master, from Fionn, the son of Uail, the son
+of Baiscne,” said she to Fergus.
+
+“Life and health back to Fionn,” he replied. “Come into the house and
+give your message, but leave the dog outside, for I don’t like dogs.”
+
+“The dog comes in,” the messenger replied.
+
+“How is that?” cried Fergus angrily.
+
+“Fionn sends you this hound to take care of until he comes for her,”
+ said the messenger.
+
+“I wonder at that,” Fergus growled, “for Fionn knows well that there is
+not a man in the world has less of a liking for dogs than I have.”
+
+“However that may be, master, I have given Fionn’s message, and here at
+my heel is the dog. Do you take her or refuse her?”
+
+“If I could refuse anything to Fionn it would be a dog,” said Fergus,
+“but I could not refuse anything to Fionn, so give me the hound.”
+
+Uct Dealv put the chain in his hand.
+
+“Ah, bad dog!” said she.
+
+And then she went away well satisfied with her revenge, and returned to
+her own people in the Shi.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+On the following day Fergus called his servant.
+
+“Has that dog stopped shivering yet?” he asked.
+
+“It has not, sir,” said the servant.
+
+“Bring the beast here,” said his master, “for whoever else is
+dissatisfied Fionn must be satisfied.”
+
+The dog was brought, and he examined it with a jaundiced and bitter eye.
+
+“It has the shivers indeed,” he said.
+
+“The shivers it has,” said the servant.
+
+“How do you cure the shivers?” his master demanded, for he thought that
+if the animal’s legs dropped off Fionn would not be satisfied.
+
+“There is a way,” said the servant doubtfully.
+
+“If there is a way, tell it to me,” cried his master angrily.
+
+“If you were to take the beast up in your arms and hug it and kiss it,
+the shivers would stop,” said the man.
+
+“Do you mean--?” his master thundered, and he stretched his hand for a
+club.
+
+“I heard that,” said the servant humbly.
+
+“Take that dog up,” Fergus commanded, “and hug it and kiss it, and if I
+find a single shiver left in the beast I’ll break your head.”
+
+The man bent to the hound, but it snapped a piece out of his hand, and
+nearly bit his nose off as well.
+
+“That dog doesn’t like me,” said the man.
+
+“Nor do I,” roared Fergus; “get out of my sight.”
+
+The man went away and Fergus was left alone with the hound, but the poor
+creature was so terrified that it began to tremble ten times worse than
+before.
+
+“Its legs will drop off,” said Fergus. “Fionn will blame me,” he cried
+in despair.
+
+He walked to the hound.
+
+“If you snap at my nose, or if you put as much as the start of a tooth
+into the beginning of a finger!” he growled.
+
+He picked up the dog, but it did not snap, it only trembled. He held it
+gingerly for a few moments.
+
+“If it has to be hugged,” he said, “I’ll hug it. I’d do more than that
+for Fionn.”
+
+He tucked and tightened the animal into his breast, and marched moodily
+up and down the room. The dog’s nose lay along his breast under his
+chin, and as he gave it dutiful hugs, one hug to every five paces, the
+dog put out its tongue and licked him timidly under the chin.
+
+“Stop,” roared Fergus, “stop that forever,” and he grew very red in
+the face, and stared truculently down along his nose. A soft brown eye
+looked up at him and the shy tongue touched again on his chin.
+
+“If it has to be kissed,” said Fergus gloomily, “I’ll kiss it; I’d do
+more than that for Fionn,” he groaned.
+
+He bent his head, shut his eyes, and brought the dog’s jaw against his
+lips. And at that the dog gave little wriggles in his arms, and little
+barks, and little licks, so that he could scarcely hold her. He put the
+hound down at last.
+
+“There is not a single shiver left in her,” he said.
+
+And that was true.
+
+Everywhere he walked the dog followed him, giving little prances and
+little pats against him, and keeping her eyes fixed on his with such
+eagerness and intelligence that he marvelled.
+
+“That dog likes me,” he murmured in amazement.
+
+“By my hand,” he cried next day, “I like that dog.”
+
+The day after that he was calling her “My One Treasure, My Little
+Branch.” And within a week he could not bear her to be out of his sight
+for an instant.
+
+He was tormented by the idea that some evil person might throw a stone
+at the hound, so he assembled his servants and retainers and addressed
+them.
+
+He told them that the hound was the Queen of Creatures, the Pulse of his
+Heart, and the Apple of his Eye, and he warned them that the person who
+as much as looked sideways on her, or knocked one shiver out of her,
+would answer for the deed with pains and indignities. He recited a list
+of calamities which would befall such a miscreant, and these woes began
+with flaying and ended with dismemberment, and had inside bits of such
+complicated and ingenious torment that the blood of the men who heard it
+ran chill in their veins, and the women of the household fainted where
+they stood.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+In course of time the news came to Fionn that his mother’s sister
+was not living with Iollan. He at once sent a messenger calling
+for fulfilment of the pledge that had been given to the Fianna, and
+demanding the instant return of Tuiren. Iollan was in a sad condition
+when this demand was made. He guessed that Uct Dealv had a hand in the
+disappearance of his queen, and he begged that time should be given him
+in which to find the lost girl. He promised if he could not discover
+her within a certain period that he would deliver his body into Fionn’s
+hands, and would abide by whatever judgement Fionn might pronounce. The
+great captain agreed to that.
+
+“Tell the wife-loser that I will have the girl or I will have his head,”
+ said Fionn.
+
+Iollan set out then for Faery. He knew the way, and in no great time he
+came to the hill where Uct Dealv was.
+
+It was hard to get Uct Dealv to meet him, but at last she consented, and
+they met under the apple boughs of Faery.
+
+“Well!” said Uct Dealv. “Ah! Breaker of Vows and Traitor to Love,” said
+she.
+
+“Hail and a blessing,” said Iollan humbly.
+
+“By my hand,” she cried, “I will give you no blessing, for it was no
+blessing you left with me when we parted.”
+
+“I am in danger,” said Iollan.
+
+“What is that to me?” she replied fiercely.
+
+“Fionn may claim my head,” he murmured.
+
+“Let him claim what he can take,” said she.
+
+“No,” said Iollan proudly, “he will claim what I can give.”
+
+“Tell me your tale,” said she coldly.
+
+Iollan told his story then, and, he concluded, “I am certain that you
+have hidden the girl.”
+
+“If I save your head from Fionn,” the woman of the Shi’ replied, “then
+your head will belong to me.”
+
+“That is true,” said Iollan.
+
+“And if your head is mine, the body that goes under it is mine. Do you
+agree to that?”
+
+“I do,” said Iollan.
+
+“Give me your pledge,” said Uct Dealv, “that if I save you from this
+danger you will keep me as your sweetheart until the end of life and
+time.”
+
+“I give that pledge,” said Iollan.
+
+Uct Dealv went then to the house of Fergus Fionnliath, and she broke the
+enchantment that was on the hound, so that Tuiren’s own shape came back
+to her; but in the matter of two small whelps, to which the hound had
+given birth, the enchantment could not be broken, so they had to remain
+as they were. These two whelps were Bran and Sceo’lan. They were sent
+to Fionn, and he loved them for ever after, for they were loyal and
+affectionate, as only dogs can be, and they were as intelligent as human
+beings. Besides that, they were Fionn’s own cousins.
+
+Tuiren was then asked in marriage by Lugaidh who had loved her so long.
+He had to prove to her that he was not any other woman’s sweetheart,
+and when he proved that they were married, and they lived happily ever
+after, which is the proper way to live. He wrote a poem beginning:
+
+     “Lovely the day. Dear is the eye of the dawn--”
+
+And a thousand merry people learned it after him.
+
+But as to Fergus Fionnliath, he took to his bed, and he stayed there for
+a year and a day suffering from blighted affection, and he would have
+died in the bed only that Fionn sent him a special pup, and in a week
+that young hound became the Star of Fortune and the very Pulse of his
+Heart, so that he got well again, and he also lived happily ever after.
+
+
+
+
+OISIN’S MOTHER
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+EVENING was drawing nigh, and the Fianna-Finn had decided to hunt no
+more that day. The hounds were whistled to heel, and a sober, homeward
+march began. For men will walk soberly in the evening, however they go
+in the day, and dogs will take the mood from their masters. They were
+pacing so, through the golden-shafted, tender-coloured eve, when a
+fawn leaped suddenly from covert, and, with that leap, all quietness
+vanished: the men shouted, the dogs gave tongue, and a furious chase
+commenced.
+
+Fionn loved a chase at any hour, and, with Bran and Sceo’lan, he
+outstripped the men and dogs of his troop, until nothing remained in the
+limpid world but Fionn, the two hounds, and the nimble, beautiful fawn.
+These, and the occasional boulders, round which they raced, or over
+which they scrambled; the solitary tree which dozed aloof and beautiful
+in the path, the occasional clump of trees that hived sweet shadow as
+a hive hoards honey, and the rustling grass that stretched to infinity,
+and that moved and crept and swung under the breeze in endless, rhythmic
+billowings.
+
+In his wildest moment Fionn was thoughtful, and now, although running
+hard, he was thoughtful. There was no movement of his beloved hounds
+that he did not know; not a twitch or fling of the head, not a cock
+of the ears or tail that was not significant to him. But on this chase
+whatever signs the dogs gave were not understood by their master.
+
+He had never seen them in such eager flight. They were almost utterly
+absorbed in it, but they did not whine with eagerness, nor did they cast
+any glance towards him for the encouraging word which he never failed to
+give when they sought it.
+
+They did look at him, but it was a look which he could not comprehend.
+There was a question and a statement in those deep eyes, and he could
+not understand what that question might be, nor what it was they sought
+to convey. Now and again one of the dogs turned a head in full flight,
+and stared, not at Fionn, but distantly backwards, over the spreading
+and swelling plain where their companions of the hunt had disappeared.
+“They are looking for the other hounds,” said Fionn.
+
+“And yet they do not give tongue! Tongue it, a Vran!” he shouted, “Bell
+it out, a Heo’lan!”
+
+It was then they looked at him, the look which he could not understand
+and had never seen on a chase. They did not tongue it, nor bell it, but
+they added silence to silence and speed to speed, until the lean grey
+bodies were one pucker and lashing of movement.
+
+Fionn marvelled. “They do not want the other dogs to hear or to come on
+this chase,” he murmured, and he wondered what might be passing within
+those slender heads.
+
+“The fawn runs well,” his thought continued. “What is it, a Vran, my
+heart? After her, a Heo’lan! Hist and away, my loves!”
+
+“There is going and to spare in that beast yet,” his mind went on. “She
+is not stretched to the full, nor half stretched. She may outrun even
+Bran,” he thought ragingly.
+
+They were racing through a smooth valley in a steady, beautiful, speedy
+flight when, suddenly, the fawn stopped and lay on the grass, and it lay
+with the calm of an animal that has no fear, and the leisure of one that
+is not pressed.
+
+“Here is a change,” said Fionn, staring in astonishment.
+
+“She is not winded,” he said. “What is she lying down for?” But Bran and
+Sceo’lan did not stop; they added another inch to their long-stretched
+easy bodies, and came up on the fawn.
+
+“It is an easy kill,” said Fionn regretfully. “They have her,” he cried.
+
+But he was again astonished, for the dogs did not kill. They leaped and
+played about the fawn, licking its face, and rubbing delighted noses
+against its neck.
+
+Fionn came up then. His long spear was lowered in his fist at the
+thrust, and his sharp knife was in its sheath, but he did not use them,
+for the fawn and the two hounds began to play round him, and the fawn
+was as affectionate towards him as the hounds were; so that when a
+velvet nose was thrust in his palm, it was as often a fawn’s muzzle as a
+hound’s.
+
+In that joyous company he came to wide Allen of Leinster, where the
+people were surprised to see the hounds and the fawn and the Chief and
+none other of the hunters that had set out with them.
+
+When the others reached home, the Chief told of his chase, and it was
+agreed that such a fawn must not be killed, but that it should be kept
+and well treated, and that it should be the pet fawn of the Fianna.
+But some of those who remembered Brah’s parentage thought that as Bran
+herself had come from the Shi so this fawn might have come out of the
+Shi also.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Late that night, when he was preparing for rest, the door of Fionn’s
+chamber opened gently and a young woman came into the room. The captain
+stared at her, as he well might, for he had never seen or imagined to
+see a woman so beautiful as this was. Indeed, she was not a woman, but
+a young girl, and her bearing was so gently noble, her look so modestly
+high, that the champion dared scarcely look at her, although he could
+not by any means have looked away.
+
+As she stood within the doorway, smiling, and shy as a flower,
+beautifully timid as a fawn, the Chief communed with his heart.
+
+“She is the Sky-woman of the Dawn,” he said. “She is the light on the
+foam. She is white and odorous as an apple-blossom. She smells of spice
+and honey. She is my beloved beyond the women of the world. She shall
+never be taken from me.”
+
+And that thought was delight and anguish to him: delight because of such
+sweet prospect, anguish because it was not yet realised, and might not
+be.
+
+As the dogs had looked at him on the chase with a look that he did not
+understand, so she looked at him, and in her regard there was a question
+that baffled him and a statement which he could not follow.
+
+He spoke to her then, mastering his heart to do it.
+
+“I do not seem to know you,” he said.
+
+“You do not know me indeed,” she replied.
+
+“It is the more wonderful,” he continued gently, “for I should know
+every person that is here. What do you require from me?”
+
+“I beg your protection, royal captain.”
+
+“I give that to all,” he answered. “Against whom do you desire
+protection?”
+
+“I am in terror of the Fear Doirche.”
+
+“The Dark Man of the Shi?”
+
+“He is my enemy,” she said.
+
+“He is mine now,” said Fionn. “Tell me your story.”
+
+“My name is Saeve, and I am a woman of Faery,” she commenced. “In the
+Shi’ many men gave me their love, but I gave my love to no man of my
+country.”
+
+“That was not reasonable,” the other chided with a blithe heart.
+
+“I was contented,” she replied, “and what we do not want we do not lack.
+But if my love went anywhere it went to a mortal, a man of the men of
+Ireland.”
+
+“By my hand,” said Fionn in mortal distress, “I marvel who that man can
+be!”
+
+“He is known to you,” she murmured. “I lived thus in the peace of Faery,
+hearing often of my mortal champion, for the rumour of his great deeds
+had gone through the Shi’, until a day came when the Black Magician
+of the Men of God put his eye on me, and, after that day, in whatever
+direction I looked I saw his eye.”
+
+She stopped at that, and the terror that was in her heart was on her
+face. “He is everywhere,” she whispered. “He is in the bushes, and on
+the hill. He looked up at me from the water, and he stared down on
+me from the sky. His voice commands out of the spaces, and it demands
+secretly in the heart. He is not here or there, he is in all places at
+all times. I cannot escape from him,” she said, “and I am afraid,” and
+at that she wept noiselessly and stared on Fionn.
+
+“He is my enemy,” Fionn growled. “I name him as my enemy.”
+
+“You will protect me,” she implored.
+
+“Where I am let him not come,” said Fionn. “I also have knowledge. I am
+Fionn, the son of Uail, the son of Baiscne, a man among men and a god
+where the gods are.”
+
+“He asked me in marriage,” she continued, “but my mind was full of my
+own dear hero, and I refused the Dark Man.”
+
+“That was your right, and I swear by my hand that if the man you desire
+is alive and unmarried he shall marry you or he will answer to me for
+the refusal.”
+
+“He is not married,” said Saeve, “and you have small control over him.”
+ The Chief frowned thoughtfully. “Except the High King and the kings I
+have authority in this land.”
+
+“What man has authority over himself?” said Saeve.
+
+“Do you mean that I am the man you seek?” said Fionn.
+
+“It is to yourself I gave my love,” she replied. “This is good news,”
+ Fionn cried joyfully, “for the moment you came through the door I loved
+and desired you, and the thought that you wished for another man went
+into my heart like a sword.” Indeed, Fionn loved Saeve as he had not
+loved a woman before and would never love one again. He loved her as he
+had never loved anything before. He could not bear to be away from her.
+When he saw her he did not see the world, and when he saw the world
+without her it was as though he saw nothing, or as if he looked on a
+prospect that was bleak and depressing. The belling of a stag had been
+music to Fionn, but when Saeve spoke that was sound enough for him. He
+had loved to hear the cuckoo calling in the spring from the tree that
+is highest in the hedge, or the blackbird’s jolly whistle in an autumn
+bush, or the thin, sweet enchantment that comes to the mind when a lark
+thrills out of sight in the air and the hushed fields listen to the
+song. But his wife’s voice was sweeter to Fionn than the singing of a
+lark. She filled him with wonder and surmise. There was magic in the
+tips of her fingers. Her thin palm ravished him. Her slender foot set
+his heart beating; and whatever way her head moved there came a new
+shape of beauty to her face.
+
+“She is always new,” said Fionn. “She is always better than any other
+woman; she is always better than herself.”
+
+He attended no more to the Fianna. He ceased to hunt. He did not listen
+to the songs of poets or the curious sayings of magicians, for all of
+these were in his wife, and something that was beyond these was in her
+also.
+
+“She is this world and the next one; she is completion,” said Fionn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+It happened that the men of Lochlann came on an expedition against
+Ireland. A monstrous fleet rounded the bluffs of Ben Edair, and the
+Danes landed there, to prepare an attack which would render them masters
+of the country. Fionn and the Fianna-Finn marched against them. He did
+not like the men of Lochlann at any time, but this time he moved against
+them in wrath, for not only were they attacking Ireland, but they had
+come between him and the deepest joy his life had known.
+
+It was a hard fight, but a short one. The Lochlannachs were driven back
+to their ships, and within a week the only Danes remaining in Ireland
+were those that had been buried there.
+
+That finished, he left the victorious Fianna and returned swiftly to the
+plain of Allen, for he could not bear to be one unnecessary day parted
+from Saeve.
+
+“You are not leaving us!” exclaimed Goll mac Morna.
+
+“I must go,” Fionn replied.
+
+“You will not desert the victory feast,” Conan reproached him.
+
+“Stay with us, Chief,” Caelte begged.
+
+“What is a feast without Fionn?” they complained.
+
+But he would not stay.
+
+“By my hand,” he cried, “I must go. She will be looking for me from the
+window.”
+
+“That will happen indeed,” Goll admitted.
+
+“That will happen,” cried Fionn. “And when she sees me far out on the
+plain, she will run through the great gate to meet me.”
+
+“It would be the queer wife would neglect that run,” Cona’n growled.
+
+“I shall hold her hand again,” Fionn entrusted to Caelte’s ear.
+
+“You will do that, surely.”
+
+“I shall look into her face,” his lord insisted. But he saw that not
+even beloved Caelte understood the meaning of that, and he knew sadly
+and yet proudly that what he meant could not be explained by any one and
+could not be comprehended by any one.
+
+“You are in love, dear heart,” said Caelte.
+
+“In love he is,” Cona’n grumbled. “A cordial for women, a disease for
+men, a state of wretchedness.”
+
+“Wretched in truth,” the Chief murmured. “Love makes us poor We have not
+eyes enough to see all that is to be seen, nor hands enough to seize the
+tenth of all we want. When I look in her eyes I am tormented because I
+am not looking at her lips, and when I see her lips my soul cries out,
+‘Look at her eyes, look at her eyes.’”
+
+“That is how it happens,” said Goll rememberingly.
+
+“That way and no other,” Caelte agreed.
+
+And the champions looked backwards in time on these lips and those, and
+knew their Chief would go.
+
+When Fionn came in sight of the great keep his blood and his feet
+quickened, and now and again he waved a spear in the air.
+
+“She does not see me yet,” he thought mournfully.
+
+“She cannot see me yet,” he amended, reproaching himself.
+
+But his mind was troubled, for he thought also, or he felt without
+thinking, that had the positions been changed he would have seen her at
+twice the distance.
+
+“She thinks I have been unable to get away from the battle, or that I
+was forced to remain for the feast.”
+
+And, without thinking it, he thought that had the positions been changed
+he would have known that nothing could retain the one that was absent.
+
+“Women,” he said, “are shamefaced, they do not like to appear eager when
+others are observing them.”
+
+But he knew that he would not have known if others were observing him,
+and that he would not have cared about it if he had known. And he knew
+that his Saeve would not have seen, and would not have cared for any
+eyes than his.
+
+He gripped his spear on that reflection, and ran as he had not run in
+his life, so that it was a panting, dishevelled man that raced heavily
+through the gates of the great Dun.
+
+Within the Dun there was disorder. Servants were shouting to one
+another, and women were running to and fro aimlessly, wringing their
+hands and screaming; and, when they saw the Champion, those nearest to
+him ran away, and there was a general effort on the part of every
+person to get behind every other person. But Fionn caught the eye of his
+butler, Gariv Crona’n, the Rough Buzzer, and held it.
+
+“Come you here,” he said.
+
+And the Rough Buzzer came to him without a single buzz in his body.
+
+“Where is the Flower of Allen?” his master demanded.
+
+“I do not know, master,” the terrified servant replied.
+
+“You do not know!” said Fionn. “Tell what you do know.”
+
+And the man told him this story.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+“When you had been away for a day the guards were surprised. They were
+looking from the heights of the Dun, and the Flower of Allen was with
+them. She, for she had a quest’s eye, called out that the master of the
+Fianna was coming over the ridges to the Dun, and she ran from the keep
+to meet you.”
+
+“It was not I,” said Fionn.
+
+“It bore your shape,” replied Gariv Cronan. “It had your armour and your
+face, and the dogs, Bran and Sceo’lan, were with it.”
+
+“They were with me,” said Fionn.
+
+“They seemed to be with it,” said the servant humbly
+
+“Tell us this tale,” cried Fionn.
+
+“We were distrustful,” the servant continued. “We had never known Fionn
+to return from a combat before it had been fought, and we knew you could
+not have reached Ben Edar or encountered the Lochlannachs. So we urged
+our lady to let us go out to meet you, but to remain herself in the
+Dun.”
+
+“It was good urging,” Fionn assented.
+
+“She would not be advised,” the servant wailed. “She cried to us, ‘Let
+me go to meet my love’.”
+
+“Alas!” said Fionn.
+
+“She cried on us, ‘Let me go to meet my husband, the father of the child
+that is not born.’”
+
+“Alas!” groaned deep-wounded Fionn. “She ran towards your appearance
+that had your arms stretched out to her.”
+
+At that wise Fionn put his hand before his eyes, seeing all that
+happened.
+
+“Tell on your tale,” said he.
+
+“She ran to those arms, and when she reached them the figure lifted
+its hand. It touched her with a hazel rod, and, while we looked, she
+disappeared, and where she had been there was a fawn standing and
+shivering. The fawn turned and bounded towards the gate of the Dun, but
+the hounds that were by flew after her.”
+
+Fionn stared on him like a lost man.
+
+“They took her by the throat--” the shivering servant whispered.
+
+“Ah!” cried Fionn in a terrible voice.
+
+“And they dragged her back to the figure that seemed to be Fionn. Three
+times she broke away and came bounding to us, and three times the dogs
+took her by the throat and dragged her back.”
+
+“You stood to look!” the Chief snarled.
+
+“No, master, we ran, but she vanished as we got to her; the great hounds
+vanished away, and that being that seemed to be Fionn disappeared with
+them. We were left in the rough grass, staring about us and at each
+other, and listening to the moan of the wind and the terror of our
+hearts.”
+
+“Forgive us, dear master,” the servant cried. But the great captain made
+him no answer. He stood as though he were dumb and blind, and now and
+again he beat terribly on his breast with his closed fist, as though he
+would kill that within him which should be dead and could not die. He
+went so, beating on his breast, to his inner room in the Dun, and he was
+not seen again for the rest of that day, nor until the sun rose over Moy
+Life’ in the morning.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+For many years after that time, when he was not fighting against the
+enemies of Ireland, Fionn was searching and hunting through the length
+and breadth of the country in the hope that he might again chance on his
+lovely lady from the Shi’. Through all that time he slept in misery each
+night and he rose each day to grief. Whenever he hunted he brought only
+the hounds that he trusted, Bran and Sceo’lan, Lomaire, Brod, and Lomlu;
+for if a fawn was chased each of these five great dogs would know if
+that was a fawn to be killed or one to be protected, and so there was
+small danger to Saeve and a small hope of finding her.
+
+Once, when seven years had passed in fruitless search, Fionn and the
+chief nobles of the Fianna were hunting Ben Gulbain. All the hounds of
+the Fianna were out, for Fionn had now given up hope of encountering
+the Flower of Allen. As the hunt swept along the sides of the hill there
+arose a great outcry of hounds from a narrow place high on the slope
+and, over all that uproar there came the savage baying of Fionn’s own
+dogs.
+
+“What is this for?” said Fionn, and with his companions he pressed to
+the spot whence the noise came.
+
+“They are fighting all the hounds of the Fianna,” cried a champion.
+
+And they were. The five wise hounds were in a circle and were giving
+battle to an hundred dogs at once. They were bristling and terrible, and
+each bite from those great, keen jaws was woe to the beast that received
+it. Nor did they fight in silence as was their custom and training, but
+between each onslaught the great heads were uplifted, and they pealed
+loudly, mournfully, urgently, for their master.
+
+“They are calling on me,” he roared.
+
+And with that he ran, as he had only once before run, and the men who
+were nigh to him went racing as they would not have run for their lives.
+They came to the narrow place on the slope of the mountain, and they saw
+the five great hounds in a circle keeping off the other dogs, and in
+the middle of the ring a little boy was standing. He had long, beautiful
+hair, and he was naked. He was not daunted by the terrible combat and
+clamour of the hounds. He did not look at the hounds, but he stared like
+a young prince at Fionn and the champions as they rushed towards him
+scattering the pack with the butts of their spears. When the fight was
+over, Bran and Sceo’lan ran whining to the little boy and licked his
+hands.
+
+“They do that to no one,” said a bystander. “What new master is this
+they have found?”
+
+Fionn bent to the boy. “Tell me, my little prince and pulse, what your
+name is, and how you have come into the middle of a hunting-pack, and
+why you are naked?”
+
+But the boy did not understand the language of the men of Ireland. He
+put his hand into Fionn’s, and the Chief felt as if that little hand had
+been put into his heart. He lifted the lad to his great shoulder.
+
+“We have caught something on this hunt,” said he to Caelte mac Rongn.
+“We must bring this treasure home. You shall be one of the Fianna-Finn,
+my darling,” he called upwards.
+
+The boy looked down on him, and in the noble trust and fearlessness of
+that regard Fionn’s heart melted away.
+
+“My little fawn!” he said.
+
+And he remembered that other fawn. He set the boy between his knees and
+stared at him earnestly and long.
+
+“There is surely the same look,” he said to his wakening heart; “that is
+the very eye of Saeve.”
+
+The grief flooded out of his heart as at a stroke, and joy foamed into
+it in one great tide. He marched back singing to the encampment, and men
+saw once more the merry Chief they had almost forgotten.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Just as at one time he could not be parted from Saeve, so now he could
+not be separated from this boy. He had a thousand names for him, each
+one more tender than the last: “My Fawn, My Pulse, My Secret Little
+Treasure,” or he would call him “My Music, My Blossoming Branch, My
+Store in the Heart, My Soul.” And the dogs were as wild for the boy as
+Fionn was. He could sit in safety among a pack that would have torn any
+man to pieces, and the reason was that Bran and Sceo’lan, with their
+three whelps, followed him about like shadows. When he was with the pack
+these five were with him, and woeful indeed was the eye they turned
+on their comrades when these pushed too closely or were not properly
+humble. They thrashed the pack severally and collectively until every
+hound in Fionn’s kennels knew that the little lad was their master, and
+that there was nothing in the world so sacred as he was.
+
+In no long time the five wise hounds could have given over their
+guardianship, so complete was the recognition of their young lord. But
+they did not so give over, for it was not love they gave the lad but
+adoration.
+
+Fionn even may have been embarrassed by their too close attendance. If
+he had been able to do so he might have spoken harshly to his dogs, but
+he could not; it was unthinkable that he should; and the boy might have
+spoken harshly to him if he had dared to do it. For this was the order
+of Fionn’s affection: first there was the boy; next, Bran and Sceo’lan
+with their three whelps; then Caelte mac Rona’n, and from him down
+through the champions. He loved them all, but it was along that
+precedence his affections ran. The thorn that went into Bran’s foot ran
+into Fionn’s also. The world knew it, and there was not a champion but
+admitted sorrowfully that there was reason for his love.
+
+Little by little the boy came to understand their speech and to speak it
+himself, and at last he was able to tell his story to Fionn.
+
+There were many blanks in the tale, for a young child does not remember
+very well. Deeds grow old in a day and are buried in a night. New
+memories come crowding on old ones, and one must learn to forget as well
+as to remember. A whole new life had come on this boy, a life that was
+instant and memorable, so that his present memories blended into and
+obscured the past, and he could not be quite sure if that which he told
+of had happened in this world or in the world he had left.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+“I used to live,” he said, “in a wide, beautiful place. There were hills
+and valleys there, and woods and streams, but in whatever direction I
+went I came always to a cliff, so tall it seemed to lean against the
+sky, and so straight that even a goat would not have imagined to climb
+it.”
+
+“I do not know of any such place,” Fionn mused.
+
+“There is no such place in Ireland,” said Caelte, “but in the Shi’ there
+is such a place.”
+
+“There is in truth,” said Fionn.
+
+“I used to eat fruits and roots in the summer,” the boy continued, “but
+in the winter food was left for me in a cave.”
+
+“Was there no one with you?” Fionn asked.
+
+“No one but a deer that loved me, and that I loved.”
+
+“Ah me!” cried Fionn in anguish, “tell me your tale, my son.”
+
+“A dark stern man came often after us, and he used to speak with the
+deer. Sometimes he talked gently and softly and coaxingly, but at times
+again he would shout loudly and in a harsh, angry voice. But whatever
+way he talked the deer would draw away from him in dread, and he always
+left her at last furiously.”
+
+“It is the Dark Magician of the Men of God,” cried Fionn despairingly.
+
+“It is indeed, my soul,” said Caelte.
+
+“The last time I saw the deer,” the child continued, “the dark man was
+speaking to her. He spoke for a long time. He spoke gently and angrily,
+and gently and angrily, so that I thought he would never stop talking,
+but in the end he struck her with a hazel rod, so that she was forced
+to follow him when he went away. She was looking back at me all the time
+and she was crying so bitterly that any one would pity her. I tried to
+follow her also, but I could not move, and I cried after her too, with
+rage and grief, until I could see her no more and hear her no more. Then
+I fell on the grass, my senses went away from me, and when I awoke I was
+on the hill in the middle of the hounds where you found me.”
+
+That was the boy whom the Fianna called Oisi’n, or the Little Fawn. He
+grew to be a great fighter afterwards, and he was the chief maker of
+poems in the world. But he was not yet finished with the Shi. He was to
+go back into Faery when the time came, and to come thence again to tell
+these tales, for it was by him these tales were told.
+
+
+
+
+THE WOOING OF BECFOLA
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+We do not know where Becfola came from. Nor do we know for certain where
+she went to. We do not even know her real name, for the name Becfola,
+“Dowerless” or “Small-dowered,” was given to her as a nickname. This
+only is certain, that she disappeared from the world we know of, and
+that she went to a realm where even conjecture may not follow her.
+
+It happened in the days when Dermod, son of the famous Ae of Slane, was
+monarch of all Ireland. He was unmarried, but he had many foster-sons,
+princes from the Four Provinces, who were sent by their fathers as
+tokens of loyalty and affection to the Ard-Ri, and his duties as a
+foster-father were righteously acquitted. Among the young princes of his
+household there was one, Crimthann, son of Ae, King of Leinster, whom
+the High King preferred to the others over whom he held fatherly sway.
+Nor was this wonderful, for the lad loved him also, and was as eager and
+intelligent and modest as becomes a prince.
+
+The High King and Crimthann would often set out from Tara to hunt and
+hawk, sometimes unaccompanied even by a servant; and on these excursions
+the king imparted to his foster-son his own wide knowledge of forest
+craft, and advised him generally as to the bearing and duties of a
+prince, the conduct of a court, and the care of a people.
+
+Dermod mac Ae delighted in these solitary adventures, and when he
+could steal a day from policy and affairs he would send word privily to
+Crimthann. The boy, having donned his hunting gear, would join the king
+at a place arranged between them, and then they ranged abroad as chance
+might direct.
+
+On one of these adventures, as they searched a flooded river to find the
+ford, they saw a solitary woman in a chariot driving from the west.
+
+“I wonder what that means?” the king exclaimed thoughtfully.
+
+“Why should you wonder at a woman in a chariot?” his companion inquired,
+for Crimthann loved and would have knowledge.
+
+“Good, my Treasure,” Dermod answered, “our minds are astonished when we
+see a woman able to drive a cow to pasture, for it has always seemed to
+us that they do not drive well.”
+
+Crimthann absorbed instruction like a sponge and digested it as rapidly.
+
+“I think that is justly said,” he agreed.
+
+“But,” Dermod continued, “when we see a woman driving a chariot of two
+horses, then we are amazed indeed.”
+
+When the machinery of anything is explained to us we grow interested,
+and Crimthann became, by instruction, as astonished as the king was.
+
+“In good truth,” said he, “the woman is driving two horses.”
+
+“Had you not observed it before?” his master asked with kindly malice.
+
+“I had observed but not noticed,” the young man admitted.
+
+“Further,” said the king, “surmise is aroused in us when we discover a
+woman far from a house; for you will have both observed and noticed that
+women are home-dwellers, and that a house without a woman or a woman
+without a house are imperfect objects, and although they be but half
+observed, they are noticed on the double.”
+
+“There is no doubting it,” the prince answered from a knitted and
+thought-tormented brow.
+
+“We shall ask this woman for information about herself,” said the king
+decidedly.
+
+“Let us do so,” his ward agreed
+
+“The king’s majesty uses the words ‘we’ and ‘us’ when referring to
+the king’s majesty,” said Dermod, “but princes who do not yet
+rule territories must use another form of speech when referring to
+themselves.”
+
+“I am very thoughtless,” said Crimthann humbly.
+
+The king kissed him on both cheeks.
+
+“Indeed, my dear heart and my son, we are not scolding you, but you must
+try not to look so terribly thoughtful when you think. It is part of the
+art of a ruler.”
+
+“I shall never master that hard art,” lamented his fosterling.
+
+“We must all master it,” Dermod replied. “We may think with our minds
+and with our tongues, but we should never think with our noses and with
+our eyebrows.”
+
+The woman in the chariot had drawn nigh to the ford by which they were
+standing, and, without pause, she swung her steeds into the shallows and
+came across the river in a tumult of foam and spray.
+
+“Does she not drive well?” cried Crimthann admiringly.
+
+“When you are older,” the king counselled him, “you will admire that
+which is truly admirable, for although the driving is good the lady is
+better.”
+
+He continued with enthusiasm.
+
+“She is in truth a wonder of the world and an endless delight to the
+eye.”
+
+She was all that and more, and, as she took the horses through the river
+and lifted them up the bank, her flying hair and parted lips and all the
+young strength and grace of her body went into the king’s eye and could
+not easily come out again.
+
+Nevertheless, it was upon his ward that the lady’s gaze rested, and if
+the king could scarcely look away from her, she could, but only with an
+equal effort, look away from Crimthann.
+
+“Halt there!” cried the king.
+
+“Who should I halt for?” the lady demanded, halting all the same, as is
+the manner of women, who rebel against command and yet receive it.
+
+“Halt for Dermod!”
+
+“There are Dermods and Dermods in this world,” she quoted.
+
+“There is yet but one Ard-Ri’,” the monarch answered.
+
+She then descended from the chariot and made her reverence.
+
+“I wish to know your name?” said he.
+
+But at this demand the lady frowned and answered decidedly:
+
+“I do not wish to tell it.”
+
+“I wish to know also where you come from and to what place you are
+going?”
+
+“I do not wish to tell any of these things.”
+
+“Not to the king!”
+
+“I do not wish to tell them to any one.”
+
+Crimthann was scandalised.
+
+“Lady,” he pleaded, “you will surely not withhold information from the
+Ard-Ri’?”
+
+But the lady stared as royally on the High King as the High King did on
+her, and, whatever it was he saw in those lovely eyes, the king did not
+insist.
+
+He drew Crimthann apart, for he withheld no instruction from that lad.
+
+“My heart,” he said, “we must always try to act wisely, and we should
+only insist on receiving answers to questions in which we are personally
+concerned.”
+
+Crimthann imbibed all the justice of that remark.
+
+“Thus I do not really require to know this lady’s name, nor do I care
+from what direction she comes.”
+
+“You do not?” Crimthann asked.
+
+“No, but what I do wish to know is, Will she marry me?”
+
+“By my hand that is a notable question,” his companion stammered.
+
+“It is a question that must be answered,” the king cried triumphantly.
+“But,” he continued, “to learn what woman she is, or where she comes
+from, might bring us torment as well as information. Who knows in what
+adventures the past has engaged her!”
+
+And he stared for a profound moment on disturbing, sinister horizons,
+and Crimthann meditated there with him.
+
+“The past is hers,” he concluded, “but the future is ours, and we shall
+only demand that which is pertinent to the future.”
+
+He returned to the lady.
+
+“We wish you to be our wife,” he said. And he gazed on her benevolently
+and firmly and carefully when he said that, so that her regard could
+not stray otherwhere. Yet, even as he looked, a tear did well into those
+lovely eyes, and behind her brow a thought moved of the beautiful boy
+who was looking at her from the king’s side.
+
+But when the High King of Ireland asks us to marry him we do not refuse,
+for it is not a thing that we shall be asked to do every day in the
+week, and there is no woman in the world but would love to rule it in
+Tara.
+
+No second tear crept on the lady’s lashes, and, with her hand in the
+king’s hand, they paced together towards the palace, while behind them,
+in melancholy mood, Crimthann mac Ae led the horses and the chariot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+They were married in a haste which equalled the king’s desire; and as he
+did not again ask her name, and as she did not volunteer to give it, and
+as she brought no dowry to her husband and received none from him, she
+was called Becfola, the Dowerless.
+
+Time passed, and the king’s happiness was as great as his expectation
+of it had promised. But on the part of Becfola no similar tidings can be
+given.
+
+There are those whose happiness lies in ambition and station, and to
+such a one the fact of being queen to the High King of Ireland is a
+satisfaction at which desire is sated. But the mind of Becfola was not
+of this temperate quality, and, lacking Crimthann, it seemed to her that
+she possessed nothing.
+
+For to her mind he was the sunlight in the sun, the brightness in the
+moonbeam; he was the savour in fruit and the taste in honey; and when
+she looked from Crimthann to the king she could not but consider that
+the right man was in the wrong place. She thought that crowned only with
+his curls Crlmthann mac Ae was more nobly diademed than are the masters
+of the world, and she told him so.
+
+His terror on hearing this unexpected news was so great that he
+meditated immediate flight from Tara; but when a thing has been uttered
+once it is easier said the second time and on the third repetition it is
+patiently listened to.
+
+After no great delay Crimthann mac Ae agreed and arranged that he and
+Becfola should fly from Tara, and it was part of their understanding
+that they should live happily ever after.
+
+One morning, when not even a bird was astir, the king felt that his dear
+companion was rising. He looked with one eye at the light that stole
+greyly through the window, and recognised that it could not in justice
+be called light.
+
+“There is not even a bird up,” he murmured.
+
+And then to Becfola.
+
+“What is the early rising for, dear heart?”
+
+“An engagement I have,” she replied.
+
+“This is not a time for engagements,” said the calm monarch.
+
+“Let it be so,” she replied, and she dressed rapidly.
+
+“And what is the engagement?” he pursued.
+
+“Raiment that I left at a certain place and must have. Eight silken
+smocks embroidered with gold, eight precious brooches of beaten gold,
+three diadems of pure gold.”
+
+“At this hour,” said the patient king, “the bed is better than the
+road.”
+
+“Let it be so,” said she.
+
+“And moreover,” he continued, “a Sunday journey brings bad luck.”
+
+“Let the luck come that will come,” she answered.
+
+“To keep a cat from cream or a woman from her gear is not work for a
+king,” said the monarch severely.
+
+The Ard-Ri’ could look on all things with composure, and regard all
+beings with a tranquil eye; but it should be known that there was one
+deed entirely hateful to him, and he would punish its commission with
+the very last rigour--this was, a transgression of the Sunday. During
+six days of the week all that could happen might happen, so far as
+Dermod was concerned, but on the seventh day nothing should happen at
+all if the High King could restrain it. Had it been possible he would
+have tethered the birds to their own green branches on that day, and
+forbidden the clouds to pack the upper world with stir and colour. These
+the king permitted, with a tight lip, perhaps, but all else that came
+under his hand felt his control.
+
+It was his custom when he arose on the morn of Sunday to climb to the
+most elevated point of Tara, and gaze thence on every side, so that
+he might see if any fairies or people of the Shi’ were disporting
+themselves in his lordship; for he absolutely prohibited the usage of
+the earth to these beings on the Sunday, and woe’s worth was it for the
+sweet being he discovered breaking his law.
+
+We do not know what ill he could do to the fairies, but during Dermod’s
+reign the world said its prayers on Sunday and the Shi’ folk stayed in
+their hills.
+
+It may be imagined, therefore, with what wrath he saw his wife’s
+preparations for her journey, but, although a king can do everything,
+what can a husband do...? He rearranged himself for slumber.
+
+“I am no party to this untimely journey,” he said angrily.
+
+“Let it be so,” said Becfola.
+
+She left the palace with one maid, and as she crossed the doorway
+something happened to her, but by what means it happened would be hard
+to tell; for in the one pace she passed out of the palace and out of the
+world, and the second step she trod was in Faery, but she did not know
+this.
+
+Her intention was to go to Cluain da chaillech to meet Crimthann, but
+when she left the palace she did not remember Crimthann any more.
+
+To her eye and to the eye of her maid the world was as it always had
+been, and the landmarks they knew were about them. But the object for
+which they were travelling was different, although unknown, and the
+people they passed on the roads were unknown, and were yet people that
+they knew.
+
+They set out southwards from Tara into the Duffry of Leinster, and after
+some time they came into wild country and went astray. At last Becfola
+halted, saying:
+
+“I do not know where we are.”
+
+The maid replied that she also did not know.
+
+“Yet,” said Becfola, “if we continue to walk straight on we shall arrive
+somewhere.”
+
+They went on, and the maid watered the road with her tears.
+
+Night drew on them; a grey chill, a grey silence, and they were
+enveloped in that chill and silence; and they began to go in expectation
+and terror, for they both knew and did not know that which they were
+bound for.
+
+As they toiled desolately up the rustling and whispering side of a
+low hill the maid chanced to look back, and when she looked back she
+screamed and pointed, and clung to Becfola’s arm. Becfola followed the
+pointing finger, and saw below a large black mass that moved jerkily
+forward.
+
+“Wolves!” cried the maid. “Run to the trees yonder,” her mistress
+ordered. “We will climb them and sit among the branches.”
+
+They ran then, the maid moaning and lamenting all the while.
+
+“I cannot climb a tree,” she sobbed, “I shall be eaten by the wolves.”
+
+And that was true.
+
+But her mistress climbed a tree, and drew by a hand’s breadth from the
+rap and snap and slaver of those steel jaws. Then, sitting on a branch,
+she looked with angry woe at the straining and snarling horde below,
+seeing many a white fang in those grinning jowls, and the smouldering,
+red blink of those leaping and prowling eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+But after some time the moon arose and the wolves went away, for their
+leader, a sagacious and crafty chief, declared that as long as they
+remained where they were, the lady would remain where she was; and so,
+with a hearty curse on trees, the troop departed. Becfola had pains in
+her legs from the way she had wrapped them about the branch, but there
+was no part of her that did not ache, for a lady does not sit with any
+ease upon a tree.
+
+For some time she did not care to come down from the branch. “Those
+wolves may return,” she said, “for their chief is crafty and sagacious,
+and it is certain, from the look I caught in his eye as he departed,
+that he would rather taste of me than cat any woman he has met.”
+
+She looked carefully in every direction to see if one might discover
+them in hiding; she looked closely and lingeringly at the shadows under
+distant trees to see if these shadows moved; and she listened on every
+wind to try if she could distinguish a yap or a yawn or a sneeze. But
+she saw or heard nothing; and little by little tranquillity crept into
+her mind, and she began to consider that a danger which is past is a
+danger that may be neglected.
+
+Yet ere she descended she looked again on the world of jet and silver
+that dozed about her, and she spied a red glimmer among distant trees.
+
+“There is no danger where there is light,” she said, and she thereupon
+came from the tree and ran in the direction that she had noted.
+
+In a spot between three great oaks she came upon a man who was roasting
+a wild boar over a fire. She saluted this youth and sat beside him. But
+after the first glance and greeting he did not look at her again, nor
+did he speak.
+
+When the boar was cooked he ate of it and she had her share. Then he
+arose from the fire and walked away among the trees. Becfola followed,
+feeling ruefully that something new to her experience had arrived;
+“for,” she thought, “it is usual that young men should not speak to me
+now that I am the mate of a king, but it is very unusual that young men
+should not look at me.”
+
+But if the young man did not look at her she looked well at him, and
+what she saw pleased her so much that she had no time for further
+cogitation. For if Crimthann had been beautiful, this youth was ten
+times more beautiful. The curls on Crimthann’s head had been indeed as
+a benediction to the queen’s eye, so that she had eaten the better and
+slept the sounder for seeing him. But the sight of this youth left her
+without the desire to eat, and, as for sleep, she dreaded it, for if she
+closed an eye she would be robbed of the one delight in time, which was
+to look at this young man, and not to cease looking at him while her eye
+could peer or her head could remain upright.
+
+They came to an inlet of the sea all sweet and calm under the round,
+silver-flooding moon, and the young man, with Becfola treading on his
+heel, stepped into a boat and rowed to a high-jutting, pleasant island.
+There they went inland towards a vast palace, in which there was no
+person but themselves alone, and there the young man went to sleep,
+while Becfola sat staring at him until the unavoidable peace pressed
+down her eyelids and she too slumbered.
+
+She was awakened in the morning by a great shout.
+
+“Come out, Flann, come out, my heart!”
+
+The young man leaped from his couch, girded on his harness, and strode
+out. Three young men met him, each in battle harness, and these four
+advanced to meet four other men who awaited them at a little distance on
+the lawn. Then these two sets of four fought togethor with every warlike
+courtesy but with every warlike severity, and at the end of that combat
+there was but one man standing, and the other seven lay tossed in death.
+
+Becfola spoke to the youth.
+
+“Your combat has indeed been gallant,” she said.
+
+“Alas,” he replied, “if it has been a gallant deed it has not been a
+good one, for my three brothers are dead and my four nephews are dead.”
+
+“Ah me!” cried Becfola, “why did you fight that fight?”
+
+“For the lordship of this island, the Isle of Fedach, son of Dali.”
+
+But, although Becfola was moved and horrified by this battle, it was in
+another direction that her interest lay; therefore she soon asked the
+question which lay next her heart:
+
+“Why would you not speak to me or look at me?”
+
+“Until I have won the kingship of this land from all claimants, I am no
+match for the mate of the High King of Ireland,” he replied.
+
+And that reply was llke balm to the heart of Becfola.
+
+“What shall I do?” she inquired radiantly. “Return to your home,” he
+counselled. “I will escort you there with your maid, for she is not
+really dead, and when I have won my lordship I will go seek you in
+Tara.”
+
+“You will surely come,” she insisted.
+
+“By my hand,” quoth he, “I will come.”
+
+These three returned then, and at the end of a day and night they saw
+far off the mighty roofs of Tara massed in the morning haze. The
+young man left them, and with many a backward look and with dragging,
+reluctant feet, Becfola crossed the threshold of the palace, wondering
+what she should say to Dermod and how she could account for an absence
+of three days’ duration.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IT was so early that not even a bird was yet awake, and the dull grey
+light that came from the atmosphere enlarged and made indistinct all
+that one looked at, and swathed all things in a cold and livid gloom.
+
+As she trod cautiously through dim corridors Becfola was glad that,
+saving the guards, no creature was astir, and that for some time yet
+she need account to no person for her movements. She was glad also of
+a respite which would enable her to settle into her home and draw about
+her the composure which women feel when they are surrounded by the walls
+of their houses, and can see about them the possessions which, by the
+fact of ownership, have become almost a part of their personality.
+Sundered from her belongings, no woman is tranquil, her heart is not
+truly at ease, however her mind may function, so that under the broad
+sky or in the house of another she is not the competent, precise
+individual which she becomes when she sees again her household in order
+and her domestic requirements at her hand.
+
+Becfola pushed the door of the king’s sleeping chamber and entered
+noiselessly. Then she sat quietly in a seat gazing on the recumbent
+monarch, and prepared to consider how she should advance to him when
+he awakened, and with what information she might stay his inquiries or
+reproaches.
+
+“I will reproach him,” she thought. “I will call him a bad husband
+and astonish him, and he will forget everything but his own alarm and
+indignation.”
+
+But at that moment the king lifted his head from the pillow and looked
+kindly at her. Her heart gave a great throb, and she prepared to speak
+at once and in great volume before he could formulate any question.
+But the king spoke first, and what he said so astonished her that the
+explanation and reproach with which her tongue was thrilling fled
+from it at a stroke, and she could only sit staring and bewildered and
+tongue-tied.
+
+“Well, my dear heart,” said the king, “have you decided not to keep that
+engagement?”
+
+“I--I--!” Becfola stammered.
+
+“It is truly not an hour for engagements,” Dermod insisted, “for not
+a bird of the birds has left his tree; and,” he continued maliciously,
+“the light is such that you could not see an engagement even if you met
+one.”
+
+“I,” Becfola gasped. “I---!”
+
+“A Sunday journey,” he went on, “is a notorious bad journey. No good can
+come from it. You can get your smocks and diadems to-morrow. But at this
+hour a wise person leaves engagements to the bats and the staring owls
+and the round-eyed creatures that prowl and sniff in the dark. Come back
+to the warm bed, sweet woman, and set on your journey in the morning.”
+
+Such a load of apprehension was lifted from Becfola’s heart that she
+instantly did as she had been commanded, and such a bewilderment had yet
+possession of her faculties that she could not think or utter a word on
+any subject.
+
+Yet the thought did come into her head as she stretched in the warm
+gloom that Crimthann the son of Ae must be now attending her at
+Cluain da chaillech, and she thought of that young man as of something
+wonderful and very ridiculous, and the fact that he was waiting for
+her troubled her no more than if a sheep had been waiting for her or a
+roadside bush.
+
+She fell asleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+In the morning as they sat at breakfast four clerics were announced, and
+when they entered the king looked on them with stern disapproval.
+
+“What is the meaning of this journey on Sunday?” he demanded.
+
+A lank-jawed, thin-browed brother, with uneasy, intertwining fingers,
+and a deep-set, venomous eye, was the spokesman of those four.
+
+“Indeed,” he said, and the fingers of his right hand strangled and did
+to death the fingers of his left hand, “indeed, we have transgressed by
+order.”
+
+“Explain that.”
+
+“We have been sent to you hurriedly by our master, Molasius of
+Devenish.”
+
+“A pious, a saintly man,” the king interrupted, “and one who does not
+countenance transgressions of the Sunday.”
+
+“We were ordered to tell you as follows,” said the grim cleric, and he
+buried the fingers of his right hand in his left fist, so that one could
+not hope to see them resurrected again. “It was the duty of one of
+the Brothers of Devenish,” he continued, “to turn out the cattle this
+morning before the dawn of day, and that Brother, while in his duty, saw
+eight comely young men who fought together.”
+
+“On the morning of Sunday,” Dermod exploded.
+
+The cleric nodded with savage emphasis.
+
+“On the morning of this self-same and instant sacred day.”
+
+“Tell on,” said the king wrathfully.
+
+But terror gripped with sudden fingers at Becfola’s heart.
+
+“Do not tell horrid stories on the Sunday,” she pleaded. “No good can
+come to any one from such a tale.”
+
+“Nay, this must be told, sweet lady,” said the king. But the cleric
+stared at her glumly, forbiddingly, and resumed his story at a gesture.
+
+“Of these eight men, seven were killed.”
+
+“They are in hell,” the king said gloomily.
+
+“In hell they are,” the cleric replied with enthusiasm.
+
+“And the one that was not killed?”
+
+“He is alive,” that cleric responded.
+
+“He would be,” the monarch assented. “Tell your tale.”
+
+“Molasius had those seven miscreants buried, and he took from their
+unhallowed necks and from their lewd arms and from their unblessed
+weapons the load of two men in gold and silver treasure.”
+
+“Two men’s load!” said Dermod thoughtfully.
+
+“That much,” said the lean cleric. “No more, no less. And he has sent us
+to find out what part of that hellish treasure belongs to the Brothers
+of Devenish and how much is the property of the king.”
+
+Becfola again broke in, speaking graciously, regally, hastily: “Let
+those Brothers have the entire of the treasure, for it is Sunday
+treasure, and as such it will bring no luck to any one.”
+
+The cleric again looked at her coldly, with a harsh-lidded, small-set,
+grey-eyed glare, and waited for the king’s reply.
+
+Dermod pondered, shaking his head as to an argument on his left side,
+and then nodding it again as to an argument on his right.
+
+“It shall be done as this sweet queen advises. Let a reliquary be formed
+with cunning workmanship of that gold and silver, dated with my date and
+signed with my name, to be in memory of my grandmother who gave birth to
+a lamb, to a salmon, and then to my father, the Ard-Ri’. And, as to the
+treasure that remains over, a pastoral staff may be beaten from it in
+honour of Molasius, the pious man.”
+
+“The story is not ended,” said that glum, spike-chinned cleric.
+
+The king moved with jovial impatience.
+
+“If you continue it,” he said, “it will surely come to an end some time.
+A stone on a stone makes a house, dear heart, and a word on a word tells
+a tale.”
+
+The cleric wrapped himself into himself, and became lean and menacing.
+He whispered: “Besides the young man, named Flann, who was not slain,
+there was another person present at the scene and the combat and the
+transgression of Sunday.”
+
+“Who was that person?” said the alarmed monarch.
+
+The cleric spiked forward his chin, and then butted forward his brow.
+
+“It was the wife of the king,” he shouted. “It was the woman called
+Becfola. It was that woman,” he roared, and he extended a lean,
+inflexible, unending first finger at the queen.
+
+“Dog!” the king stammered, starting up.
+
+“If that be in truth a woman,” the cleric screamed.
+
+“What do you mean?” the king demanded in wrath and terror.
+
+“Either she is a woman of this world to be punished, or she is a woman
+of the Shi’ to be banished, but this holy morning she was in the Shi’,
+and her arms were about the neck of Flann.”
+
+The king sank back in his chair stupefied, gazing from one to the other,
+and then turned an unseeing, fear-dimmed eye towards Becfola.
+
+“Is this true, my pulse?” he murmured.
+
+“It is true,” Becfola replied, and she became suddenly to the king’s eye
+a whiteness and a stare. He pointed to the door.
+
+“Go to your engagement,” he stammered. “Go to that Flann.”
+
+“He is waiting for me,” said Becfola with proud shame, “and the thought
+that he should wait wrings my heart.”
+
+She went out from the palace then. She went away from Tara: and in all
+Ireland and in the world of living men she was not seen again, and she
+was never heard of again.
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE BRAWL AT ALLEN
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+“I think,” said Cairell Whiteskin, “that although judgement was given
+against Fionn, it was Fionn had the rights of it.”
+
+“He had eleven hundred killed,” said Cona’n amiably, “and you may call
+that the rights of it if you like.”
+
+“All the same--” Cairell began argumentatively.
+
+“And it was you that commenced it,” Cona’n continued.
+
+“Ho! Ho!” Cairell cried. “Why, you are as much to blame as I am.”
+
+“No,” said Cona’n, “for you hit me first.”
+
+“And if we had not been separated--” the other growled.
+
+“Separated!” said Cona’n, with a grin that made his beard poke all
+around his face.
+
+“Yes, separated. If they had not come between us I still think--”
+
+“Don’t think out loud, dear heart, for you and I are at peace by law.”
+
+“That is true,” said Cairell, “and a man must stick by a judgement. Come
+with me, my dear, and let us see how the youngsters are shaping in the
+school. One of them has rather a way with him as a swordsman.”
+
+“No youngster is any good with a sword,” Conan replied.
+
+“You are right there,” said Cairell. “It takes a good ripe man for that
+weapon.”
+
+“Boys are good enough with slings,” Confro continued, “but except for
+eating their fill and running away from a fight, you can’t count on
+boys.”
+
+The two bulky men turned towards the school of the Fianna.
+
+It happened that Fionn mac Uail had summoned the gentlemen of the Fianna
+and their wives to a banquet. Everybody came, for a banquet given by
+Fionn was not a thing to be missed. There was Goll mor mac Morna and his
+people; Fionn’s son Oisi’n and his grandson Oscar. There was Dermod of
+the Gay Face, Caelte mac Ronan--but indeed there were too many to be
+told of, for all the pillars of war and battle-torches of the Gael were
+there.
+
+The banquet began.
+
+Fionn sat in the Chief Captain’s seat in the middle of the fort; and
+facing him, in the place of honour, he placed the mirthful Goll mac
+Morna; and from these, ranging on either side, the nobles of the Fianna
+took each the place that fitted his degree and patrimony.
+
+After good eating, good conversation; and after good conversation,
+sleep--that is the order of a banquet: so when each person had been
+served with food to the limit of desire the butlers carried in shining,
+and jewelled drinking-horns, each having its tide of smooth, heady
+liquor. Then the young heroes grew merry and audacious, the ladies
+became gentle and kind, and the poets became wonders of knowledge and
+prophecy. Every eye beamed in that assembly, and on Fionn every eye was
+turned continually in the hope of a glance from the great, mild hero.
+
+Goll spoke to him across the table enthusiastically.
+
+“There is nothing wanting to this banquet, O Chief,” said he.
+
+And Fionn smiled back into that eye which seemed a well of tenderness
+and friendship.
+
+“Nothing is wanting,” he replied, “but a well-shaped poem.” A crier
+stood up then, holding in one hand a length of coarse iron links and in
+the other a chain of delicate, antique silver. He shook the iron chain
+so that the servants and followers of the household should be silent,
+and he shook the silver one so that the nobles and poets should hearken
+also.
+
+Fergus, called True-Lips, the poet of the Fianna-Finn, then sang of
+Fionn and his ancestors and their deeds. When he had finished Fionn and
+Oisi’n and Oscar and mac Lugac of the Terrible Hand gave him rare and
+costly presents, so that every person wondered at their munificence, and
+even the poet, accustomed to the liberality of kings and princes, was
+astonished at his gifts.
+
+Fergus then turned to the side of Goll mac Morna, and he sang of the
+Forts, the Destructions, the Raids, and the Wooings of clann-Morna; and
+as the poems succeeded each other, Goll grew more and more jovial and
+contented. When the songs were finished Goll turned in his seat.
+
+“Where is my runner?” he cried.
+
+He had a woman runner, a marvel for swiftness and trust. She stepped
+forward.
+
+“I am here, royal captain.”
+
+“Have you collected my tribute from Denmark?”
+
+“It is here.”
+
+And, with help, she laid beside him the load of three men of doubly
+refined gold. Out of this treasure, and from the treasure of rings and
+bracelets and torques that were with him, Goll mac Morna paid Fergus for
+his songs, and, much as Fionn had given, Goll gave twice as much.
+
+But, as the banquet proceeded, Goll gave, whether it was to harpers or
+prophets or jugglers, more than any one else gave, so that Fionn became
+displeased, and as the banquet proceeded he grew stern and silent.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+[This version of the death of Uail is not correct. Also Cnocha is not in
+Lochlann but in Ireland.]
+
+
+The wonderful gift-giving of Goll continued, and an uneasiness and
+embarrassment began to creep through the great banqueting hall.
+
+Gentlemen looked at each other questioningly, and then spoke again on
+indifferent matters, but only with half of their minds. The singers, the
+harpers, and jugglers submitted to that constraint, so that every person
+felt awkward and no one knew what should be done or what would happen,
+and from that doubt dulness came, with silence following on its heels.
+
+There is nothing more terrible than silence. Shame grows in that blank,
+or anger gathers there, and we must choose which of these is to be our
+master.
+
+That choice lay before Fionn, who never knew shame.
+
+“Goll,” said he, “how long have you been taking tribute from the people
+of Lochlann?”
+
+“A long time now,” said Goll.
+
+And he looked into an eye that was stern and unfriendly.
+
+“I thought that my rent was the only one those people had to pay,” Fionn
+continued.
+
+“Your memory is at fault,” said Goll.
+
+“Let it be so,” said Fionn. “How did your tribute arise?”
+
+“Long ago, Fionn, in the days when your father forced war on me.”
+
+“Ah!” said Fionn.
+
+“When he raised the High King against me and banished me from Ireland.”
+
+“Continue,” said Fionn, and he held Goll’s eye under the great beetle of
+his brow.
+
+“I went into Britain,” said Goll, “and your father followed me there. I
+went into White Lochlann (Norway) and took it. Your father banished me
+thence also.”
+
+“I know it,” said Fionn.
+
+“I went into the land of the Saxons and your father chased me out of
+that land. And then, in Lochlann, at the battle of Cnocha your father
+and I met at last, foot to foot, eye to eye, and there, Fionn!”
+
+“And there, Goll?”
+
+“And there I killed your father.”
+
+Fionn sat rigid and unmoving, his face stony and terrible as the face of
+a monument carved on the side of a cliff.
+
+“Tell all your tale,” said he.
+
+“At that battle I beat the Lochlannachs. I penetrated to the hold of the
+Danish king, and I took out of his dungeon the men who had lain
+there for a year and were awaiting their deaths. I liberated fifteen
+prisoners, and one of them was Fionn.”
+
+“It is true,” said Fionn.
+
+Goll’s anger fled at the word.
+
+“Do not be jealous of me, dear heart, for if I had twice the tribute I
+would give it to you and to Ireland.”
+
+But at the word jealous the Chief’s anger revived.
+
+“It is an impertinence,” he cried, “to boast at this table that you
+killed my father.”
+
+“By my hand,” Goll replied, “if Fionn were to treat me as his father did
+I would treat Fionn the way I treated Fionn’s father.”
+
+Fionn closed his eyes and beat away the anger that was rising within
+him. He smiled grimly.
+
+“If I were so minded, I would not let that last word go with you, Goll,
+for I have here an hundred men for every man of yours.”
+
+Goll laughed aloud.
+
+“So had your father,” he said.
+
+Fionn’s brother, Cairell Whiteskin, broke into the conversation with a
+harsh laugh.
+
+“How many of Fionn’s household has the wonderful Goll put down?” he
+cried.
+
+But Goll’s brother, bald Cona’n the Swearer, turned a savage eye on
+Cairell.
+
+“By my weapons,” said he, “there were never less than an hundred-and-one
+men with Goll, and the least of them could have put you down easily
+enough.”
+
+“Ah?” cried Cairell. “And are you one of the hundred-and-one, old
+scaldhead?”
+
+“One indeed, my thick-witted, thin-livered Cairell, and I undertake to
+prove on your hide that what my brother said was true and that what your
+brother said was false.”
+
+“You undertake that,” growled Cairell, and on the word he loosed a
+furious buffet at Con’an, which Cona’n returned with a fist so big that
+every part of Cairell’s face was hit with the one blow. The two then
+fell into grips, and went lurching and punching about the great hall.
+Two of Oscar’s sons could not bear to see their uncle being worsted, and
+they leaped at Cona’n, and two of Goll’s sons rushed at them. Then Oscar
+himself leaped up, and with a hammer in either hand he went battering
+into the melee.
+
+“I thank the gods,” said Cona’n, “for the chance of killing yourself,
+Oscar.”
+
+These two encountered then, and Oscar knocked a groan of distress out of
+Cona’n. He looked appealingly at his brother Art og mac Morna, and that
+powerful champion flew to his aid and wounded Oscar. Oisi’n, Oscar’s
+father, could not abide that; he dashed in and quelled Art Og. Then
+Rough Hair mac Morna wounded Oisin and was himself tumbled by mac Lugac,
+who was again wounded by Gara mac Morna.
+
+The banqueting hall was in tumult. In every part of it men were giving
+and taking blows. Here two champions with their arms round each other’s
+necks were stamping round and round in a slow, sad dance. Here were two
+crouching against each other, looking for a soft place to hit. Yonder a
+big-shouldered person lifted another man in his arms and threw him at a
+small group that charged him. In a retired corner a gentleman stood in
+a thoughtful attitude while he tried to pull out a tooth that had been
+knocked loose.
+
+“You can’t fight,” he mumbled, “with a loose shoe or a loose tooth.”
+
+“Hurry up with that tooth,” the man in front of him grum-bled, “for I
+want to knock out another one.”
+
+Pressed against the wall was a bevy of ladies, some of whom were
+screaming and some laughing and all of whom were calling on the men to
+go back to their seats.
+
+Only two people remained seated in the hall.
+
+Goll sat twisted round watching the progress of the brawl critically,
+and Fionn, sitting opposite, watched Goll.
+
+Just then Faelan, another of Fionn’s sons, stormed the hall with three
+hundred of the Fianna, and by this force all Goll’s people were put out
+of doors, where the fight continued.
+
+Goll looked then calmly on Fionn.
+
+“Your people are using their weapons,” said he.
+
+“Are they?” Fionn inquired as calmly, and as though addressing the air.
+
+“In the matter of weapons--!” said Goll.
+
+And the hard-fighting pillar of battle turned to where his arms hung on
+the wall behind him. He took his solid, well-balanced sword in his fist,
+over his left arm his ample, bossy shield, and, with another side-look
+at Fionn, he left the hall and charged irresistibly into the fray.
+
+Fionn then arose. He took his accoutrements from the wall also and
+strode out. Then he raised the triumphant Fenian shout and went into the
+combat.
+
+That was no place for a sick person to be. It was not the corner which
+a slender-fingered woman would choose to do up her hair; nor was it the
+spot an ancient man would select to think quietly in, for the tumult of
+sword on sword, of axe on shield, the roar of the contending parties,
+the crying of wounded men, and the screaming of frightened women
+destroyed peace, and over all was the rallying cry of Goll mac Morna and
+the great shout of Fionn.
+
+Then Fergus True-Lips gathered about him all the poets of the Fianna,
+and they surrounded the combatants. They began to chant and intone
+long, heavy rhymes and incantations, until the rhythmic beating of their
+voices covered even the noise of war, so that the men stopped hacking
+and hewing, and let their weapons drop from their hands. These were
+picked up by the poets and a reconciliation was effected between the two
+parties.
+
+But Fionn affirmed that he would make no peace with clann-Morna until
+the matter had been judged by the king, Cormac mac Art, and by his
+daughter Ailve, and by his son Cairbre of Ana Life’ and by Fintan the
+chief poet. Goll agreed that the affair should be submitted to that
+court, and a day was appointed, a fortnight from that date, to meet
+at Tara of the Kings for judgement. Then the hall was cleansed and the
+banquet recommenced.
+
+Of Fionn’s people eleven hundred of men and women were dead, while of
+Goll’s people eleven men and fifty women were dead. But it was through
+fright the women died, for not one of them had a wound or a bruise or a
+mark.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+AT the end of a fortnight Fionn and Goll and the chief men of the Fianna
+attended at Tara. The king, his son and daughter, with Flahri, Feehal,
+and Fintan mac Bocna sat in the place of judgement, and Cormac called on
+the witnesses for evidence.
+
+Fionn stood up, but the moment he did so Goll mac Morna arose also.
+
+“I object to Fionn giving evidence,” said he.
+
+“Why so?” the king asked.
+
+“Because in any matter that concerned me Fionn would turn a lie into
+truth and the truth into a lie.”
+
+“I do not think that is so,” said Fionn.
+
+“You see, he has already commenced it,” cried Goll.
+
+“If you object to the testimony of the chief person present, in what way
+are we to obtain evidence?” the king demanded.
+
+“I,” said Goll, “will trust to the evidence of Fergus True-Lips. He is
+Fionn’s poet, and will tell no lie against his master; he is a poet, and
+will tell no lie against any one.”
+
+“I agree to that,” said Fionn.
+
+“I require, nevertheless,” Goll continued, “that Fergus should swear
+before the Court, by his gods, that he will do justice between us.”
+
+Fergus was accordingly sworn, and gave his evidence. He stated that
+Fionn’s brother Cairell struck Cona’n mac Morna, that Goll’s two sons
+came to help Cona’n, that Oscar went to help Cairell, and with that
+Fionn’s people and the clann-Morna rose at each other, and what had
+started as a brawl ended as a battle with eleven hundred of Fionn’s
+people and sixty-one of Goll’s people dead.
+
+“I marvel,” said the king in a discontented voice, “that, considering
+the numbers against them, the losses of clann-Morna should be so small.”
+
+Fionn blushed when he heard that.
+
+Fergus replied:
+
+“Goll mac Morna covered his people with his shield. All that slaughter
+was done by him.”
+
+“The press was too great,” Fionn grumbled. “I could not get at him in
+time or---”
+
+“Or what?” said Goll with a great laugh.
+
+Fionn shook his head sternly and said no more.
+
+“What is your judgement?” Cormac demanded of his fellow-judges.
+
+Flahri pronounced first.
+
+“I give damages to clann-Morna.”
+
+“Why?” said Cormac.
+
+“Because they were attacked first.”
+
+Cormac looked at him stubbornly.
+
+“I do not agree with your judgement,” he said.
+
+“What is there faulty in it?” Flahri asked.
+
+“You have not considered,” the king replied, “that a soldier owes
+obedience to his captain, and that, given the time and the place, Fionn
+was the captain and Goll was only a simple soldier.”
+
+Flahri considered the king’s suggestion.
+
+“That,” he said, “would hold good for the white-striking or blows of
+fists, but not for the red-striking or sword-strokes.”
+
+“What is your judgement?” the king asked Feehal. Feehal then pronounced:
+
+“I hold that clann-Morna were attacked first, and that they are to be
+free from payment of damages.”
+
+“And as regards Fionn?” said Cormac.
+
+“I hold that on account of his great losses Fionn is to be exempt
+from payment of damages, and that his losses are to be considered as
+damages.”
+
+“I agree in that judgement,” said Fintan.
+
+The king and his son also agreed, and the decision was imparted to the
+Fianna.
+
+“One must abide by a judgement,” said Fionn.
+
+“Do you abide by it?” Goll demanded.
+
+“I do,” said Fionn.
+
+Goll and Fionn then kissed each other, and thus peace was made. For,
+notwithstanding the endless bicker of these two heroes, they loved each
+other well.
+
+
+Yet, now that the years have gone by, I think the fault lay with Goll
+and not with Fionn, and that the judgement given did not consider
+everything. For at that table Goll should not have given greater gifts
+than his master and host did. And it was not right of Goll to take by
+force the position of greatest gift-giver of the Fianna, for there was
+never in the world one greater at giving gifts, or giving battle, or
+making poems than Fionn was.
+
+That side of the affair was not brought before the Court. But perhaps it
+was suppressed out of delicacy for Fionn, for if Goll could be accused
+of ostentation, Fionn was open to the uglier charge of jealousy. It
+was, nevertheless, Goll’s forward and impish temper which commenced the
+brawl, and the verdict of time must be to exonerate Fionn and to let the
+blame go where it is merited.
+
+There is, however, this to be added and remembered, that whenever Fionn
+was in a tight corner it was Goll that plucked him out of it; and, later
+on, when time did his worst on them all and the Fianna were sent to hell
+as unbelievers, it was Goll mac Morna who assaulted hell, with a chain
+in his great fist and three iron balls swinging from it, and it was
+he who attacked the hosts of great devils and brought Fionn and the
+Fianna-Finn out with him.
+
+
+
+
+THE CARL OF THE DRAB COAT
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+One day something happened to Fionn, the son of Uail; that is, he
+departed from the world of men, and was set wandering in great distress
+of mind through Faery. He had days and nights there and adventures
+there, and was able to bring back the memory of these.
+
+That, by itself, is wonderful, for there are few people who remember
+that they have been to Faery or aught of all that happened to them in
+that state.
+
+In truth we do not go to Faery, we become Faery, and in the beating of a
+pulse we may live for a year or a thousand years. But when we return
+the memory is quickly clouded, and we seem to have had a dream or seen a
+vision, although we have verily been in Faery.
+
+It was wonderful, then, that Fionn should have remembered all that
+happened to him in that wide-spun moment, but in this tale there is yet
+more to marvel at; for not only did Fionn go to Faery, but the great
+army which he had marshalled to Ben Edair [The Hill of Howth] were
+translated also, and neither he nor they were aware that they had
+departed from the world until they came back to it.
+
+Fourteen battles, seven of the reserve and seven of the regular Fianna,
+had been taken by the Chief on a great march and manoeuvre. When they
+reached Ben Edair it was decided to pitch camp so that the troops
+might rest in view of the warlike plan which Fionn had imagined for the
+morrow. The camp was chosen, and each squadron and company of the host
+were lodged into an appropriate place, so there was no overcrowding and
+no halt or interruption of the march; for where a company halted that
+was its place of rest, and in that place it hindered no other company,
+and was at its own ease.
+
+When this was accomplished the leaders of battalions gathered on a
+level, grassy plateau overlooking the sea, where a consultation began
+as to the next day’s manoeuvres, and during this discussion they looked
+often on the wide water that lay wrinkling and twinkling below them.
+
+A roomy ship under great press of sall was bearing on Ben Edair from the
+east.
+
+Now and again, in a lull of the discussion, a champion would look and
+remark on the hurrying vessel; and it may have been during one of these
+moments that the adventure happened to Fionn and the Fianna.
+
+“I wonder where that ship comes from?” said Cona’n idly.
+
+But no person could surmise anything about it beyond that it was a
+vessel well equipped for war.
+
+As the ship drew by the shore the watchers observed a tall man swing
+from the side by means of his spear shafts, and in a little while this
+gentleman was announced to Fionn, and was brought into his presence.
+
+A sturdy, bellicose, forthright personage he was indeed. He was equipped
+in a wonderful solidity of armour, with a hard, carven helmet on
+his head, a splendid red-bossed shield swinging on his shoulder, a
+wide-grooved, straight sword clashing along his thigh. On his shoulders
+under the shield he carried a splendid scarlet mantle; over his breast
+was a great brooch of burnt gold, and in his fist he gripped a pair of
+thick-shafted, unburnished spears.
+
+Fionn and the champions looked on this gentleman, and they admired
+exceedingly his bearing and equipment.
+
+“Of what blood are you, young gentleman?” Fionn demanded, “and from
+which of the four corners of the world do you come?”
+
+“My name is Cael of the Iron,” the stranger answered, “and I am son to
+the King of Thessaly.”
+
+“What errand has brought you here?”
+
+“I do not go on errands,” the man replied sternly, “but on the affairs
+that please me.”
+
+“Be it so. What is the pleasing affair which brings you to this land?”
+
+“Since I left my own country I have not gone from a land or an island
+until it paid tribute to me and acknowledged my lordship.”
+
+“And you have come to this realm,” cried Fionn, doubting his ears.
+
+“For tribute and sovereignty,” growled that other, and he struck the
+haft of his spear violently on the ground.
+
+“By my hand,” said Cona’n, “we have never heard of a warrior, however
+great, but his peer was found in Ireland, and the funeral songs of all
+such have been chanted by the women of this land.”
+
+“By my hand and word,” said the harsh stranger, “your talk makes me
+think of a small boy or of an idiot.”
+
+“Take heed, sir,” said Fionn, “for the champions and great dragons of
+the Gael are standing by you, and around us there are fourteen battles
+of the Fianna of Ireland.”
+
+“If all the Fianna who have died in the last seven years were added to
+all that are now here,” the stranger asserted, “I would treat all of
+these and those grievously, and would curtail their limbs and their
+lives.”
+
+“It is no small boast,” Cona’n murmured, staring at him.
+
+“It is no boast at all,” said Cael, “and, to show my quality and
+standing, I will propose a deed to you.”
+
+“Give out your deed,” Fionn commanded.
+
+“Thus,” said Cael with cold savagery. “If you can find a man among your
+fourteen battalions who can outrun or outwrestle or outfight me, I will
+take myself off to my own country, and will trouble you no more.”
+
+And so harshly did he speak, and with such a belligerent eye did he
+stare, that dismay began to seize on the champions, and even Fionn felt
+that his breath had halted.
+
+“It is spoken like a hero,” he admitted after a moment, “and if you
+cannot be matched on those terms it will not be from a dearth of
+applicants.”
+
+“In running alone,” Fionn continued thoughtfully, “we have a notable
+champion, Caelte mac Rona’n.”
+
+“This son of Rona’n will not long be notable,” the stranger asserted.
+
+“He can outstrip the red deer,” said Cona’n.
+
+“He can outrun the wind,” cried Fionn.
+
+“He will not be asked to outrun the red deer or the wind,” the stranger
+sneered. “He will be asked to outrun me,” he thundered. “Produce this
+runner, and we shall discover if he keeps as great heart in his feet as
+he has made you think.”
+
+“He is not with us,” Cona’n lamented.
+
+“These notable warriors are never with us when the call is made,” said
+the grim stranger.
+
+“By my hand,” cried Fionn, “he shall be here in no great time, for I
+will fetch him myself.”
+
+“Be it so,” said Cael. “And during my absence,” Fionn continued, “I
+leave this as a compact, that you make friends with the Fianna here
+present, and that you observe all the conditions and ceremonies of
+friendship.”
+
+Cael agreed to that.
+
+“I will not hurt any of these people until you return,” he said.
+
+Fionn then set out towards Tara of the Kings, for he thought Caelte mac
+Romin would surely be there; “and if he is not there,” said the champion
+to himself, “then I shall find him at Cesh Corran of the Fianna.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+He had not gone a great distance from Ben Edair when he came to
+an intricate, gloomy wood, where the trees grew so thickly and the
+undergrowth was such a sprout and tangle that one could scarcely pass
+through it. He remembered that a path had once been hacked through the
+wood, and he sought for this. It was a deeply scooped, hollow way, and
+it ran or wriggled through the entire length of the wood.
+
+Into this gloomy drain Fionn descended and made progress, but when he
+had penetrated deeply in the dank forest he heard a sound of thumping
+and squelching footsteps, and he saw coming towards him a horrible,
+evil-visaged being; a wild, monstrous, yellow-skinned, big-boned giant,
+dressed in nothing but an ill-made, mud-plastered, drab-coloured coat,
+which swaggled and clapped against the calves of his big bare legs. On
+his stamping feet there were great brogues of boots that were shaped
+like, but were bigger than, a boat, and each time he put a foot down it
+squashed and squirted a barrelful of mud from the sunk road.
+
+Fionn had never seen the like of this vast person, and he stood gazing
+on him, lost in a stare of astonishment.
+
+The great man saluted him.
+
+“All alone, Fionn?” he cried. “How does it happen that not one Fenian
+of the Fianna is at the side of his captain?” At this inquiry Fionn got
+back his wits.
+
+“That is too long a story and it is too intricate and pressing to be
+told, also I have no time to spare now.”
+
+“Yet tell it now,” the monstrous man insisted.
+
+Fionn, thus pressed, told of the coming of Cael of the Iron, of the
+challenge the latter had issued, and that he, Fionn, was off to Tara of
+the Kings to find Caelte mac Rona’n.
+
+“I know that foreigner well,” the big man commented.
+
+“Is he the champion he makes himself out to be?” Fionn inquired.
+
+“He can do twice as much as he said he would do,” the monster replied.
+
+“He won’t outrun Caelte mac Rona’n,” Fionn asserted. The big man jeered.
+
+“Say that he won’t outrun a hedgehog, dear heart. This Cael will end the
+course by the time your Caelte begins to think of starting.”
+
+“Then,” said Fionn, “I no longer know where to turn, or how to protect
+the honour of Ireland.”
+
+“I know how to do these things,” the other man commented with a slow nod
+of the head.
+
+“If you do,” Fionn pleaded, “tell it to me upon your honour.”
+
+“I will do that,” the man replied.
+
+“Do not look any further for the rusty-kneed, slow-trotting son of
+Rona’n,” he continued, “but ask me to run your race, and, by this hand,
+I will be first at the post.”
+
+At this the Chief began to laugh.
+
+“My good friend, you have work enough to carry the two tons of mud that
+are plastered on each of your coat-tails, to say nothing of your weighty
+boots.”
+
+“By my hand,” the man cried, “there is no person in Ireland but myself
+can win that race. I claim a chance.”
+
+Fionn agreed then. “Be it so,” said he. “And now, tell me your name?”
+
+“I am known as the Carl of the Drab Coat.”
+
+“All names are names,” Fionn responded, “and that also is a name.”
+
+They returned then to Ben Edair.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+When they came among the host the men of Ireland gathered about the vast
+stranger; and there were some who hid their faces in their mantles so
+that they should not be seen to laugh, and there were some who rolled
+along the ground in merriment, and there were others who could only hold
+their mouths open and crook their knees and hang their arms and stare
+dumbfoundedly upon the stranger, as though they were utterly dazed.
+
+Cael of the Iron came also on the scene, and he examined the stranger
+with close and particular attention.
+
+“What in the name of the devil is this thing?” he asked of Fionn.
+
+“Dear heart,” said Fionn, “this is the champion I am putting against you
+in the race.”
+
+Cael of the Iron grew purple in the face, and he almost swallowed his
+tongue through wrath.
+
+“Until the end of eternity,” he roared, “and until the very last moment
+of doom I will not move one foot in a race with this greasy, big-hoofed,
+ill-assembled resemblance of a beggarman.”
+
+But at this the Carl burst into a roar of laughter, so that the eardrums
+of the warriors present almost burst inside of their heads.
+
+“Be reassured, my darling, I am no beggarman, and my quality is not more
+gross than is the blood of the most delicate prince in this assembly.
+You will not evade your challenge in that way, my love, and you shall
+run with me or you shall run to your ship with me behind you. What
+length of course do you propose, dear heart?”
+
+“I never run less than sixty miles,” Cael replied sullenly.
+
+“It is a small run,” said the Carl, “but it will do. From this place
+to the Hill of the Rushes, Slieve Luachra of Munster, is exactly sixty
+miles. Will that suit you?”
+
+“I don’t care how it is done,” Cael answered.
+
+“Then,” said the Carl, “we may go off to Slieve Luachra now, and in the
+morning we can start our race there to here.”
+
+“Let it be done that way,” said Cael.
+
+These two set out then for Munster, and as the sun was setting they
+reached Slieve Luachra and prepared to spend the night there.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+“Cael, my pulse,” said the Carl, “we had better build a house or a hut
+to pass the night in.”
+
+“I’Il build nothing,” Cael replied, looking on the Carl with great
+disfavour.
+
+“No!”
+
+“I won’t build house or hut for the sake of passing one night here, for
+I hope never to see this place again.”
+
+“I’Il build a house myself,” said the Carl, “and the man who does not
+help in the building can stay outside of the house.”
+
+The Carl stumped to a near-by wood, and he never rested until he had
+felled and tied together twenty-four couples of big timber. He thrust
+these under one arm and under the other he tucked a bundle of rushes for
+his bed, and with that one load he rushed up a house, well thatched and
+snug, and with the timber that remained over he made a bonfire on the
+floor of the house.
+
+His companion sat at a distance regarding the work with rage and
+aversion.
+
+“Now Cael, my darling,” said the Carl, “if you are a man help me to look
+for something to eat, for there is game here.”
+
+“Help yourself,” roared Cael, “for all that I want is not to be near
+you.”
+
+“The tooth that does not help gets no helping,” the other replied.
+
+In a short time the Carl returned with a wild boar which he had run
+down. He cooked the beast over his bonfire and ate one half of it,
+leaving the other half for his breakfast. Then he lay down on the
+rushes, and in two turns he fell asleep.
+
+But Cael lay out on the side of the hill, and if he went to sleep that
+night he slept fasting. It was he, however, who awakened the Carl in the
+morning.
+
+“Get up, beggarman, if you are going to run against me.”
+
+The Carl rubbed his eyes.
+
+“I never get up until I have had my fill of sleep, and there is another
+hour of it due to me. But if you are in a hurry, my delight, you can
+start running now with a blessing. I will trot on your track when I
+waken up.”
+
+Cael began to race then, and he was glad of the start, for his
+antagonist made so little account of him that he did not know what to
+expect when the Carl would begin to run.
+
+“Yet,” said Cael to himself, “with an hour’s start the beggarman will
+have to move his bones if he wants to catch on me,” and he settled down
+to a good, pelting race.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+At the end of an hour the Carl awoke. He ate the second half of the
+boar, and he tied the unpicked bones in the tail of his coat. Then with
+a great rattling of the boar’s bones he started.
+
+It is hard to tell how he ran or at what speed he ran, but he went
+forward in great two-legged jumps, and at times he moved in
+immense one-legged, mud-spattering hops, and at times again, with
+wide-stretched, far-flung, terrible-tramping, space-destroying legs he
+ran.
+
+He left the swallows behind as if they were asleep. He caught up on
+a red deer, jumped over it, and left it standing. The wind was always
+behind him, for he outran it every time; and he caught up in jumps and
+bounces on Cael of the Iron, although Cael was running well, with
+his fists up and his head back and his two legs flying in and out so
+vigorously that you could not see them because of that speedy movement.
+
+Trotting by the side of Cael, the Carl thrust a hand into the tail of
+his coat and pulled out a fistfull of red bones.
+
+“Here, my heart, is a meaty bone,” said he, “for you fasted all night,
+poor friend, and if you pick a bit off the bone your stomach will get a
+rest.”
+
+“Keep your filth, beggarman,” the other replied, “for I would rather be
+hanged than gnaw on a bone that you have browsed.”
+
+“Why don’t you run, my pulse?” said the Carl earnestly; “why don’t you
+try to win the race?”
+
+Cael then began to move his limbs as if they were the wings of a fly,
+or the fins of a little fish, or as if they were the six legs of a
+terrified spider.
+
+“I am running,” he gasped.
+
+“But try and run like this,” the Carl admonished, and he gave a
+wriggling bound and a sudden outstretching and scurrying of shanks, and
+he disappeared from Cael’s sight in one wild spatter of big boots.
+
+Despair fell on Cael of the Iron, but he had a great heart. “I will run
+until I burst,” he shrieked, “and when I burst, may I burst to a great
+distance, and may I trip that beggar-man up with my burstings and make
+him break his leg.”
+
+He settled then to a determined, savage, implacable trot. He caught up
+on the Carl at last, for the latter had stopped to eat blackberries from
+the bushes on the road, and when he drew nigh, Cael began to jeer and
+sneer angrily at the Carl.
+
+“Who lost the tails of his coat?” he roared.
+
+“Don’t ask riddles of a man that’s eating blackberries,” the Carl
+rebuked him.
+
+“The dog without a tall and the coat without a tail,” cried Cael.
+
+“I give it up,” the Carl mumbled.
+
+“It’s yourself, beggarman,” jeered Cael.
+
+“I am myself,” the Carl gurgled through a mouthful of blackberries,
+“and as I am myself, how can it be myself? That is a silly riddle,” he
+burbled.
+
+“Look at your coat, tub of grease?”
+
+The Carl did so.
+
+“My faith,” said he, “where are the two tails of my coat?” “I could
+smell one of them and it wrapped around a little tree thirty miles
+back,” said Cael, “and the other one was dishonouring a bush ten miles
+behind that.”
+
+“It is bad luck to be separated from the tails of your own coat,” the
+Carl grumbled. “I’ll have to go back for them. Wait here, beloved, and
+eat blackberries until I come back, and we’ll both start fair.”
+
+“Not half a second will I wait,” Cael replied, and he began to run
+towards Ben Edair as a lover runs to his maiden or as a bee flies to his
+hive.
+
+“I haven’t had half my share of blackberries either,” the Carl lamented
+as he started to run backwards for his coat-tails.
+
+He ran determinedly on that backward journey, and as the path he had
+travelled was beaten out as if it had been trampled by an hundred bulls
+yoked neck to neck, he was able to find the two bushes and the two
+coat-tails. He sewed them on his coat.
+
+Then he sprang up, and he took to a fit and a vortex and an exasperation
+of running for which no description may be found. The thumping of his
+big boots grew as con-tinuous as the pattering of hailstones on a
+roof, and the wind of his passage blew trees down. The beasts that were
+ranging beside his path dropped dead from concussion, and the steam that
+snored from his nose blew birds into bits and made great lumps of cloud
+fall out of the sky.
+
+He again caught up on Cael, who was running with his head down and his
+toes up.
+
+“If you won’t try to run, my treasure,” said the Carl, “you will never
+get your tribute.”
+
+And with that he incensed and exploded himself into an eye-blinding,
+continuous, waggle and complexity of boots that left Cael behind him in
+a flash.
+
+“I will run until I burst,” sobbed Cael, and he screwed agitation and
+despair into his legs until he hummed and buzzed like a blue-bottle on a
+window.
+
+Five miles from Ben Edair the Carl stopped, for he had again come among
+blackberries.
+
+He ate of these until he was no more than a sack of juice, and when
+he heard the humming and buzzing of Cael of the Iron he mourned and
+lamented that he could not wait to eat his fill He took off his coat,
+stuffed it full of blackberries, swung it on his shoulders, and went
+bounding stoutly and nimbly for Ben Edair.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+It would be hard to tell of the terror that was in Fionn’s breast and
+in the hearts of the Fianna while they attended the conclusion of that
+race.
+
+They discussed it unendingly, and at some moment of the day a man
+upbraided Fionn because he had not found Caelte the son of Rona’n as had
+been agreed on.
+
+“There is no one can run like Caelte,” one man averred.
+
+“He covers the ground,” said another.
+
+“He is light as a feather.”
+
+“Swift as a stag.” “Lunged like a bull.”
+
+“Legged like a wolf.”
+
+“He runs!”
+
+These things were said to Fionn, and Fionn said these things to himself.
+
+With every passing minute a drop of lead thumped down into every heart,
+and a pang of despair stabbed up to every brain.
+
+“Go,” said Fionn to a hawk-eyed man, “go to the top of this hill and
+watch for the coming of the racers.”
+
+And he sent lithe men with him so that they might run back in endless
+succession with the news.
+
+The messengers began to run through his tent at minute intervals calling
+“nothing,” “nothing,” “nothing,” as they paused and darted away.
+
+And the words, “nothing, nothing, nothing,” began to drowse into the
+brains of every person present.
+
+“What can we hope from that Carl?” a champion demanded savagely.
+
+“Nothing,” cried a messenger who stood and sped.
+
+“A clump!” cried a champion.
+
+“A hog!” said another.
+
+“A flat-footed.”
+
+“Little-wlnded.”
+
+“Big-bellied.”
+
+“Lazy-boned.”
+
+“Pork!”
+
+“Did you think, Fionn, that a whale could swim on land, or what did you
+imagine that lump could do?”
+
+“Nothing,” cried a messenger, and was sped as he spoke.
+
+Rage began to gnaw in Fionn’s soul, and a red haze danced and flickered
+before his eyes. His hands began to twitch and a desire crept over him
+to seize on champions by the neck, and to shake and worry and rage among
+them like a wild dog raging among sheep.
+
+He looked on one, and yet he seemed to look on all at once.
+
+“Be silent,” he growled. “Let each man be silent as a dead man.”
+
+And he sat forward, seeing all, seeing none, with his mouth drooping
+open, and such a wildness and bristle lowering from that great glum brow
+that the champions shivered as though already in the chill of death, and
+were silent.
+
+He rose and stalked to the tent-door.
+
+“Where to, O Fionn?” said a champion humbly.
+
+“To the hill-top,” said Fionn, and he stalked on.
+
+They followed him, whispering among themselves, keeping their eyes on
+the ground as they climbed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+“What do you see?” Fionn demanded of the watcher.
+
+“Nothing,” that man replied.
+
+“Look again,” said Fionn.
+
+The eagle-eyed man lifted a face, thin and sharp as though it had been
+carven on the wind, and he stared forward with an immobile intentness.
+
+“What do you see?” said Fionn.
+
+“Nothing,” the man replied.
+
+“I will look myself,” said Fionn, and his great brow bent forward and
+gloomed afar.
+
+The watcher stood beside, staring with his tense face and unwinking,
+lidless eye.
+
+“What can you see, O Fionn?” said the watcher.
+
+“I can see nothing,” said Fionn, and he projected again his grim, gaunt
+forehead. For it seemed as if the watcher stared with his whole face,
+aye, and with his hands; but Fionn brooded weightedly on distance with
+his puckered and crannied brow.
+
+They looked again.
+
+“What can you see?” said Fionn.
+
+“I see nothing,” said the watcher.
+
+“I do not know if I see or if I surmise, but something moves,” said
+Fionn. “There is a trample,” he said.
+
+The watcher became then an eye, a rigidity, an intense out-thrusting and
+ransacking of thin-spun distance. At last he spoke.
+
+“There is a dust,” he said.
+
+And at that the champions gazed also, straining hungrily afar, until
+their eyes became filled with a blue darkness and they could no longer
+see even the things that were close to them.
+
+“I,” cried Cona’n triumphantly, “I see a dust.”
+
+“And I,” cried another.
+
+“And I.”
+
+“I see a man,” said the eagle-eyed watcher.
+
+And again they stared, until their straining eyes grew dim with tears
+and winks, and they saw trees that stood up and sat down, and fields
+that wobbled and spun round and round in a giddily swirling world.
+
+“There is a man,” Cona’n roared.
+
+
+“A man there is,” cried another.
+
+“And he is carrying a man on his back,” said the watcher.
+
+“It is Cael of the Iron carrying the Carl on his back,” he groaned.
+
+“The great pork!” a man gritted.
+
+“The no-good!” sobbed another.
+
+“The lean-hearted.”
+
+“Thick-thighed.”
+
+“Ramshackle.”
+
+“Muddle-headed.”
+
+“Hog!” screamed a champion.
+
+And he beat his fists angrily against a tree.
+
+But the eagle-eyed watcher watched until his eyes narrowed and became
+pin-points, and he ceased to be a man and became an optic.
+
+“Wait,” he breathed, “wait until I screw into one other inch of sight.”
+
+And they waited, looking no longer on that scarcely perceptible speck in
+the distance, but straining upon the eye of the watcher as though they
+would penetrate it and look through it.
+
+“It is the Carl,” he said, “carrying something on his back, and behind
+him again there is a dust.”
+
+“Are you sure?” said Fionn in a voice that rumbled and vibrated like
+thunder.
+
+“It is the Carl,” said the watcher, “and the dust behind him is Cael of
+the Iron trying to catch him up.”
+
+Then the Fianna gave a roar of exultation, and each man seized his
+neighbour and kissed him on both cheeks; and they gripped hands about
+Fionn, and they danced round and round in a great circle, roaring with
+laughter and relief, in the ecstasy which only comes where grisly fear
+has been and whence that bony jowl has taken itself away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The Carl of the Drab Coat came bumping and stumping and clumping into
+the camp, and was surrounded by a multitude that adored him and hailed
+him with tears.
+
+“Meal!” he bawled, “meal for the love of the stars!”
+
+And he bawled, “Meal, meal!” until he bawled everybody into silence.
+
+Fionn addressed him.
+
+“What for the meal, dear heart?”
+
+“For the inside of my mouth,” said the Carl, “for the recesses and
+crannies and deep-down profundities of my stomach. Meal, meal!” he
+lamented.
+
+Meal was brought.
+
+The Carl put his coat on the ground, opened it carefully, and revealed
+a store of blackberries, squashed, crushed, mangled, democratic,
+ill-looking.
+
+“The meal!” he groaned, “the meal!”
+
+It was given to him.
+
+“What of the race, my pulse?” said Fionn.
+
+“Wait, wait,” cried the Carl. “I die, I die for meal and blackberries.”
+
+Into the centre of the mess of blackberries he discharged a barrel of
+meal, and be mixed the two up and through, and round and down, until
+the pile of white-black, red-brown slibber-slobber reached up to his
+shoulders. Then he commenced to paw and impel and project and cram the
+mixture into his mouth, and between each mouthful he sighed a contented
+sigh, and during every mouthful he gurgled an oozy gurgle.
+
+But while Fionn and the Fianna stared like lost minds upon the Carl,
+there came a sound of buzzing, as if a hornet or a queen of the wasps or
+a savage, steep-winged griffin was hovering about them, and looking away
+they saw Cael of the Iron charging on them with a monstrous extension
+and scurry of his legs. He had a sword in his hand, and there was
+nothing in his face but redness and ferocity.
+
+Fear fell llke night around the Fianna, and they stood with slack knees
+and hanging hands waiting for death. But the Carl lifted a pawful of his
+oozy slop and discharged this at Cael with such a smash that the man’s
+head spun off his shoulders and hopped along the ground. The Carl then
+picked up the head and threw it at the body with such aim and force
+that the neck part of the head jammed into the neck part of the body and
+stuck there, as good a head as ever, you would have said, but that it
+bad got twisted the wrong way round. The Carl then lashed his opponent
+hand and foot.
+
+“Now, dear heart, do you still claim tribute and lordship of Ireland?”
+ said he.
+
+“Let me go home,” groaned Cael, “I want to go home.”
+
+“Swear by the sun and moon, if I let you go home, that you will send to
+Fionn, yearly and every year, the rent of the land of Thessaly.”
+
+“I swear that,” said Cael, “and I would swear anything to get home.”
+
+The Carl lifted him then and put him sitting into his ship. Then he
+raised his big boot and gave the boat a kick that drove it seven leagues
+out into the sea, and that was how the adventure of Cael of the Iron
+finished.
+
+“Who are you, sir?” said Fionn to the Carl.
+
+But before answering the Carl’s shape changed into one of splendour and
+delight.
+
+“I am ruler of the Shi’ of Rath Cruachan,” he said.
+
+Then Fionn mac Uail made a feast and a banquet for the jovial god, and
+with that the tale is ended of the King of Thessaly’s son and the Carl
+of the Drab Coat.
+
+
+
+
+THE ENCHANTED CAVE OF CESH CORRAN
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Fionn mac Uail was the most prudent chief of an army in the world, but
+he was not always prudent on his own account. Discipline sometimes
+irked him, and he would then take any opportunity that presented for an
+adventure; for he was not only a soldier, he was a poet also, that is, a
+man of science, and whatever was strange or unusual had an irresistible
+at-traction for him. Such a soldier was he that, single-handed, he could
+take the Fianna out of any hole they got into, but such an inveterate
+poet was he that all the Fianna together could scarcely retrieve him
+from the abysses into which he tumbled. It took him to keep the Fianna
+safe, but it took all the Fianna to keep their captain out of danger.
+They did not complain of this, for they loved every hair of Fionn’s head
+more than they loved their wives and children, and that was reasonable
+for there was never in the world a person more worthy of love than Fionn
+was.
+
+Goll mac Morna did not admit so much in words, but he admitted it in
+all his actions, for although he never lost an opportunity of killing
+a member of Fionn’s family (there was deadly feud between clann-Baiscne
+and clann-Morna), yet a call from Fionn brought Goll raging to his
+assistance like a lion that rages tenderly by his mate. Not even a call
+was necessary, for Goll felt in his heart when Fionn was threatened, and
+he would leave Fionn’s own brother only half-killed to fly where his arm
+was wanted. He was never thanked, of course, for although Fionn loved
+Goll he did not like him, and that was how Goll felt towards Fionn.
+
+Fionn, with Cona’n the Swearer and the dogs Bran and Sceo’lan, was
+sitting on the hunting-mound at the top of Cesh Corran. Below and around
+on every side the Fianna were beating the coverts in Legney and Brefny,
+ranging the fastnesses of Glen Dallan, creeping in the nut and beech
+forests of Carbury, spying among the woods of Kyle Conor, and ranging
+the wide plain of Moy Conal.
+
+The great captain was happy: his eyes were resting on the sights he
+liked best--the sunlight of a clear day, the waving trees, the pure
+sky, and the lovely movement of the earth; and his ears were filled with
+delectable sounds--the baying of eager dogs, the clear calling of young
+men, the shrill whistling that came from every side, and each sound of
+which told a definite thing about the hunt. There was also the plunge
+and scurry of the deer, the yapping of badgers, and the whirr of birds
+driven into reluctant flight.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Now the king of the Shi’ of Cesh Corran, Conaran, son of Imidel, was
+also watching the hunt, but Fionn did not see him, for we cannot see the
+people of Faery until we enter their realm, and Fionn was not thinking
+of Faery at that moment. Conaran did not like Fionn, and, seeing that
+the great champion was alone, save for Cona’n and the two hounds Bran
+and Sceo’lan, he thought the time had come to get Fionn into his power.
+We do not know what Fionn had done to Conaran, but it must have been bad
+enough, for the king of the Shi’ of Cesh Cotran was filled with joy
+at the sight of Fionn thus close to him, thus unprotected, thus
+unsuspicious.
+
+This Conaran had four daughters. He was fond of them and proud of them,
+but if one were to search the Shi’s of Ireland or the land of Ireland,
+the equal of these four would not be found for ugliness and bad humour
+and twisted temperaments.
+
+Their hair was black as ink and tough as wire: it stuck up and poked out
+and hung down about their heads in bushes and spikes and tangles. Their
+eyes were bleary and red. Their mouths were black and twisted, and in
+each of these mouths there was a hedge of curved yellow fangs. They had
+long scraggy necks that could turn all the way round like the neck of
+a hen. Their arms were long and skinny and muscular, and at the end of
+each finger they had a spiked nail that was as hard as horn and as sharp
+as a briar. Their bodies were covered with a bristle of hair and fur
+and fluff, so that they looked like dogs in some parts and like cats
+in others, and in other parts again they looked like chickens. They had
+moustaches poking under their noses and woolly wads growing out of their
+ears, so that when you looked at them the first time you never wanted
+to look at them again, and if you had to look at them a second time you
+were likely to die of the sight.
+
+They were called Caevo’g, Cuillen, and Iaran. The fourth daughter,
+Iarnach, was not present at that moment, so nothing need be said of her
+yet.
+
+Conaran called these three to him.
+
+“Fionn is alone,” said he. “Fionn is alone, my treasures.”
+
+“Ah!” said Caevo’g, and her jaw crunched upwards and stuck outwards, as
+was usual with her when she was satisfied.
+
+“When the chance comes take it,” Conaran continued, and he smiled a
+black, beetle-browed, unbenevolent smile.
+
+“It’s a good word,” quoth Cuillen, and she swung her jaw loose and made
+it waggle up and down, for that was the way she smiled.
+
+“And here is the chance,” her father added.
+
+“The chance is here,” Iaran echoed, with a smile that was very like
+her sister’s, only that it was worse, and the wen that grew on her nose
+joggled to and fro and did not get its balance again for a long time.
+
+Then they smiled a smile that was agreeable to their own eyes, but which
+would have been a deadly thing for anybody else to see.
+
+“But Fionn cannot see us,” Caevo’g objected, and her brow set downwards
+and her chin set upwards and her mouth squeezed sidewards, so that her
+face looked like a badly disappointed nut.
+
+“And we are worth seeing,” Cuillen continued, and the disappointment
+that was set in her sister’s face got carved and twisted into hers, but
+it was worse in her case.
+
+“That is the truth,” said Iaran in a voice of lamentation, and her face
+took on a gnarl and a writhe and a solidity of ugly woe that beat the
+other two and made even her father marvel.
+
+“He cannot see us now,” Conaran replied, “but he will see us in a
+minute.”
+
+“Won’t Fionn be glad when he sees us!” said the three sisters.
+
+And then they joined hands and danced joyfully around their father, and
+they sang a song, the first line of which is:
+
+      “Fionn thinks he is safe. But who knows when the sky will
+   fall?”
+
+Lots of the people in the Shi’ learned that song by heart, and they
+applied it to every kind of circumstance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BY his arts Conaran changed the sight of Fionn’s eyes, and he did the
+same for Cona’n.
+
+In a few minutes Fionn stood up from his place on the mound. Everything
+was about him as before, and he did not know that he had gone into
+Faery. He walked for a minute up and down the hillock. Then, as by
+chance, he stepped down the sloping end of the mound and stood with his
+mouth open, staring. He cried out:
+
+“Come down here, Cona’n, my darling.”
+
+Cona’n stepped down to him.
+
+“Am I dreaming?” Fionn demanded, and he stretched out his finger before
+him.
+
+“If you are dreaming,” said Congn, “I’m dreaming too. They weren’t here
+a minute ago,” he stammered.
+
+Fionn looked up at the sky and found that it was still there. He stared
+to one side and saw the trees of Kyle Conor waving in the distance. He
+bent his ear to the wind and heard the shouting of hunters, the yapping
+of dogs, and the clear whistles, which told how the hunt was going.
+
+“Well!” said Fionn to himself.
+
+“By my hand!” quoth Cona’n to his own soul.
+
+And the two men stared into the hillside as though what they were
+looking at was too wonderful to be looked away from.
+
+“Who are they?” said Fionn.
+
+“What are they?” Cona’n gasped. And they stared again.
+
+For there was a great hole like a doorway in the side of the mound, and
+in that doorway the daughters of Conaran sat spinning. They had three
+crooked sticks of holly set up before the cave, and they were reeling
+yarn off these. But it was enchantment they were weaving.
+
+“One could not call them handsome,” said Cona’n.
+
+“One could,” Fionn replied, “but it would not be true.”
+
+“I cannot see them properly,” Fionn complained. “They are hiding behind
+the holly.”
+
+“I would be contented if I could not see them at all,” his companion
+grumbled.
+
+But the Chief insisted.
+
+“I want to make sure that it is whiskers they are wearing.”
+
+“Let them wear whiskers or not wear them,” Cona’n counselled. “But let
+us have nothing to do with them.”
+
+“One must not be frightened of anything,” Fionn stated.
+
+“I am not frightened,” Cona’n explained. “I only want to keep my good
+opinion of women, and if the three yonder are women, then I feel sure I
+shall begin to dislike females from this minute out.”
+
+“Come on, my love,” said Fionn, “for I must find out if these whiskers
+are true.”
+
+He strode resolutely into the cave. He pushed the branches of holly
+aside and marched up to Conaran’s daughters, with Cona’n behind him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The instant they passed the holly a strange weakness came over the
+heroes. Their fists seemed to grow heavy as lead, and went dingle-dangle
+at the ends of their arms; their legs became as light as straws and
+began to bend in and out; their necks became too delicate to hold
+anything up, so that their heads wibbled and wobbled from side to side.
+
+“What’s wrong at all?” said Cona’n, as he tumbled to the ground.
+
+“Everything is,” Fionn replied, and he tumbled beside him.
+
+The three sisters then tied the heroes with every kind of loop and twist
+and knot that could be thought of.
+
+“Those are whiskers!” said Fionn.
+
+“Alas!” said Conan.
+
+“What a place you must hunt whiskers in?” he mumbled savagely. “Who
+wants whiskers?” he groaned.
+
+But Fionn was thinking of other things.
+
+“If there was any way of warning the Fianna not to come here,” Fionn
+murmured.
+
+“There is no way, my darling,” said Caevo’g, and she smiled a smile that
+would have killed Fionn, only that he shut his eyes in time.
+
+After a moment he murmured again:
+
+“Cona’n, my dear love, give the warning whistle so that the Fianna will
+keep out of this place.”
+
+A little whoof, like the sound that would be made by a baby and it
+asleep, came from Cona’n.
+
+“Fionn,” said he, “there isn’t a whistle in me. We are done for,” said
+he.
+
+“You are done for, indeed,” said Cuillen, and she smiled a hairy and
+twisty and fangy smile that almost finished Cona’n.
+
+By that time some of the Fianna had returned to the mound to see why
+Bran and Sceo’lan were barking so outrageously. They saw the cave and
+went into it, but no sooner had they passed the holly branches than
+their strength went from them, and they were seized and bound by the
+vicious hags. Little by little all the members of the Fianna returned to
+the hill, and each of them was drawn into the cave, and each was bound
+by the sisters.
+
+Oisi’n and Oscar and mac Lugac came, with the nobles of clann-Baiscne,
+and with those of clann-Corcoran and clann-Smo’l; they all came, and
+they were all bound.
+
+It was a wonderful sight and a great deed this binding of the Fianna,
+and the three sisters laughed with a joy that was terrible to hear and
+was almost death to see. As the men were captured they were carried by
+the hags into dark mysterious holes and black perplexing labyrinths.
+
+“Here is another one,” cried Caevo’g as she bundled a trussed champion
+along.
+
+“This one is fat,” said Cuillen, and she rolled a bulky Fenian along
+like a wheel.
+
+“Here,” said Iaran, “is a love of a man. One could eat this kind of
+man,” she murmured, and she licked a lip that had whiskers growing
+inside as well as out.
+
+And the corded champion whimpered in her arms, for he did not know
+but eating might indeed be his fate, and he would have preferred to be
+coffined anywhere in the world rather than to be coffined inside of that
+face. So far for them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Within the cave there was silence except for the voices of the hags and
+the scarcely audible moaning of the Fianna-Finn, but without there was
+a dreadful uproar, for as each man returned from the chase his dogs came
+with him, and although the men went into the cave the dogs did not.
+
+They were too wise.
+
+They stood outside, filled with savagery and terror, for they could
+scent their masters and their masters’ danger, and perhaps they could
+get from the cave smells till then unknown and full of alarm.
+
+From the troop of dogs there arose a baying and barking, a snarling and
+howling and growling, a yelping and squealing and bawling for which no
+words can be found. Now and again a dog nosed among a thousand smells
+and scented his master; the ruff of his neck stood up like a hog’s
+bristles and a netty ridge prickled along his spine. Then with red eyes,
+with bared fangs, with a hoarse, deep snort and growl he rushed at the
+cave, and then he halted and sneaked back again with all his ruffles
+smoothed, his tail between his legs, his eyes screwed sideways in
+miserable apology and alarm, and a long thin whine of woe dribbling out
+of his nose.
+
+The three sisters took their wide-channelled, hard-tempered swords in
+their hands, and prepared to slay the Fianna, but before doing so they
+gave one more look from the door of the cave to see if there might be a
+straggler of the Fianna who was escaping death by straggling, and they
+saw one coming towards them with Bran and Sceo’lan leaping beside him,
+while all the other dogs began to burst their throats with barks and
+split their noses with snorts and wag their tails off at sight of the
+tall, valiant, white-toothed champion, Goll mor mac Morna. “We will kill
+that one first,” said Caevo’g.
+
+“There is only one of him,” said Cuillen.
+
+“And each of us three is the match for an hundred,” said Iaran.
+
+The uncanny, misbehaved, and outrageous harridans advanced then to meet
+the son of Morna, and when he saw these three Goll whipped the sword
+from his thigh, swung his buckler round, and got to them in ten great
+leaps.
+
+Silence fell on the world during that conflict. The wind went down; the
+clouds stood still; the old hill itself held its breath; the warriors
+within ceased to be men and became each an ear; and the dogs sat in
+a vast circle round the combatants, with their heads all to one side,
+their noses poked forward, their mouths half open, and their tails
+forgotten. Now and again a dog whined in a whisper and snapped a
+little snap on the air, but except for that there was neither sound nor
+movement.
+
+It was a long fight. It was a hard and a tricky fight, and Goll won it
+by bravery and strategy and great good luck; for with one shrewd slice
+of his blade he carved two of these mighty termagants into equal halves,
+so that there were noses and whiskers to his right hand and knees and
+toes to his left: and that stroke was known afterwards as one of the
+three great sword-strokes of Ireland. The third hag, however, had
+managed to get behind Goll, and she leaped on to his back with the bound
+of a panther, and hung here with the skilful, many-legged, tight-twisted
+clutching of a spider. But the great champion gave a twist of his hips
+and a swing of his shoulders that whirled her around him like a sack.
+He got her on the ground and tied her hands with the straps of a shield,
+and he was going to give her the last blow when she appealed to his
+honour and bravery.
+
+“I put my life under your protection,” said she. “And if you let me go
+free I will lift the enchantment from the Fianna-Finn and will give them
+all back to you again.”
+
+“I agree to that,” said Goll, and he untied her straps. The harridan did
+as she had promised, and in a short time Fionn and Oisi’n and Oscar and
+Cona’n were released, and after that all the Fianna were released.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+As each man came out of the cave he gave a jump and a shout; the courage
+of the world went into him and he felt that he could fight twenty. But
+while they were talking over the adventure and explaining how it had
+happened, a vast figure strode over the side of the hill and descended
+among them. It was Conaran’s fourth daughter.
+
+If the other three had been terrible to look on, this one was more
+terrible than the three together. She was clad in iron plate, and she
+had a wicked sword by her side and a knobby club in her hand She halted
+by the bodies of her sisters, and bitter tears streamed down into her
+beard.
+
+“Alas, my sweet ones,” said she, “I am too late.”
+
+And then she stared fiercely at Fionn.
+
+“I demand a combat,” she roared.
+
+“It is your right,” said Fionn. He turned to his son.
+
+“Oisi’n, my heart, kill me this honourable hag.” But for the only time
+in his life Oisi’n shrank from a combat.
+
+“I cannot do it,” he said, “I feel too weak.”
+
+Fionn was astounded. “Oscar,” he said, “will you kill me this great
+hag?”
+
+Oscar stammered miserably. “I would not be able to,” he said.
+
+Cona’n also refused, and so did Caelte mac Rona’n and mac Lugac, for
+there was no man there but was terrified by the sight of that mighty and
+valiant harridan.
+
+Fionn rose to his feet. “I will take this combat myself,” he said
+sternly.
+
+And he swung his buckler forward and stretched his right hand to the
+sword. But at that terrible sight Goll mae Morna blushed deeply and
+leaped from the ground.
+
+“No, no,” he cried; “no, my soul, Fionn, this would not be a proper
+combat for you. I take this fight.”
+
+“You have done your share, Goll,” said the captain.
+
+“I should finish the fight I began,” Goll continued, “for it was I who
+killed the two sisters of this valiant hag, and it is against me the
+feud lies.”
+
+“That will do for me,” said the horrible daughter of Conaran. “I will
+kill Goll mor mac Morna first, and after that I will kill Fionn, and
+after that I will kill every Fenian of the Fianna-Finn.”
+
+“You may begin, Goll,” said Fionn, “and I give you my blessing.”
+
+Goll then strode forward to the fight, and the hag moved against him
+with equal alacrity. In a moment the heavens rang to the clash of swords
+on bucklers. It was hard to with-stand the terrific blows of that mighty
+female, for her sword played with the quickness of lightning and smote
+like the heavy crashing of a storm. But into that din and encirclement
+Goll pressed and ventured, steady as a rock in water, agile as a
+creature of the sea, and when one of the combatants retreated it was
+the hag that gave backwards. As her foot moved a great shout of joy rose
+from the Fianna. A snarl went over the huge face of the monster and
+she leaped forward again, but she met Goll’s point in the road; it went
+through her, and in another moment Goll took her head from its shoulders
+and swung it on high before Fionn.
+
+As the Fianna turned homewards Fionn spoke to his great champion and
+enemy.
+
+“Goll,” he said, “I have a daughter.”
+
+“A lovely girl, a blossom of the dawn,” said Goll.
+
+“Would she please you as a wife?” the chief demanded.
+
+“She would please me,” said Goll.
+
+“She is your wife,” said Fionn.
+
+
+But that did not prevent Goll from killing Fionn’s brother Cairell later
+on, nor did it prevent Fionn from killing Goll later on again, and
+the last did not prevent Goll from rescuing Fionn out of hell when the
+Fianna-Finn were sent there under the new God. Nor is there any reason
+to complain or to be astonished at these things, for it is a mutual
+world we llve in, a give-and-take world, and there is no great harm in
+it.
+
+
+
+
+BECUMA OF THE WHITE SKIN
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+There are more worlds than one, and in many ways they are unlike each
+other. But joy and sorrow, or, in other words, good and evil, are not
+absent in their degree from any of the worlds, for wherever there is
+life there is action, and action is but the expression of one or other
+of these qualities.
+
+After this Earth there is the world of the Shi’. Beyond it again lies
+the Many-Coloured Land. Next comes the Land of Wonder, and after that
+the Land of Promise awaits us. You will cross clay to get into the Shi’;
+you will cross water to attain the Many-Coloured Land; fire must be
+passed ere the Land of Wonder is attained, but we do not know what will
+be crossed for the fourth world.
+
+This adventure of Conn the Hundred Fighter and his son Art was by the
+way of water, and therefore he was more advanced in magic than Fionn
+was, all of whose adventures were by the path of clay and into Faery
+only, but Conn was the High King and so the arch-magician of Ireland.
+
+A council had been called in the Many-Coloured Land to discuss the case
+of a lady named Becuma Cneisgel, that is, Becuma of the White Skin, the
+daughter of Eogan Inver. She had run away from her husband Labraid and
+had taken refuge with Gadiar, one of the sons of Mananna’n mac Lir, the
+god of the sea, and the ruler, therefore, of that sphere.
+
+It seems, then, that there is marriage in two other spheres. In the
+Shi’ matrimony is recorded as being parallel in every respect with
+earth-marriage, and the desire which urges to it seems to be as violent
+and inconstant as it is with us; but in the Many-Coloured Land marriage
+is but a contemplation of beauty, a brooding and meditation wherein all
+grosser desire is unknown and children are born to sinless parents.
+
+In the Shi’ the crime of Becuma would have been lightly considered, and
+would have received none or but a nominal punishment, but in the second
+world a horrid gravity attaches to such a lapse, and the retribution
+meted is implacable and grim. It may be dissolution by fire, and that
+can note a destruction too final for the mind to contemplate; or it may
+be banishment from that sphere to a lower and worse one.
+
+This was the fate of Becuma of the White Skin.
+
+One may wonder how, having attained to that sphere, she could have
+carried with her so strong a memory of the earth. It is certain that she
+was not a fit person to exist in the Many-Coloured Land, and it is to be
+feared that she was organised too grossly even for life in the Shi’.
+
+She was an earth-woman, and she was banished to the earth.
+
+Word was sent to the Shi’s of Ireland that this lady should not be
+permitted to enter any of them; from which it would seem that the
+ordinances of the Shi come from the higher world, and, it might follow,
+that the conduct of earth lies in the Shi’.
+
+In that way, the gates of her own world and the innumerable doors of
+Faery being closed against her, Becuma was forced to appear in the world
+of men.
+
+It is pleasant, however, notwithstanding her terrible crime and her
+woeful punishment, to think how courageous she was. When she was told
+her sentence, nay, her doom, she made no outcry, nor did she waste any
+time in sorrow. She went home and put on her nicest clothes.
+
+She wore a red satin smock, and, over this, a cloak of green silk out of
+which long fringes of gold swung and sparkled, and she had light sandals
+of white bronze on her thin, shapely feet. She had long soft hair that
+was yellow as gold, and soft as the curling foam of the sea. Her eyes
+were wide and clear as water and were grey as a dove’s breast. Her teeth
+were white as snow and of an evenness to marvel at. Her lips were thin
+and beautifully curved: red lips in truth, red as winter berries and
+tempting as the fruits of summer. The people who superintended her
+departure said mournfully that when she was gone there would be no more
+beauty left in their world.
+
+She stepped into a coracle, it was pushed on the enchanted waters, and
+it went forward, world within world, until land appeared, and her boat
+swung in low tide against a rock at the foot of Ben Edair.
+
+So far for her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Conn the Hundred Fighter, Ard-Ri’ of Ireland, was in the lowest spirits
+that can be imagined, for his wife was dead. He had been Ard-Ri for nine
+years, and during his term the corn used to be reaped three times in
+each year, and there was full and plenty of everything. There are few
+kings who can boast of more kingly results than he can, but there was
+sore trouble in store for him.
+
+He had been married to Eithne, the daughter of Brisland Binn, King of
+Norway, and, next to his subjects, he loved his wife more than all that
+was lovable in the world. But the term of man and woman, of king or
+queen, is set in the stars, and there is no escaping Doom for any one;
+so, when her time came, Eithne died.
+
+Now there were three great burying-places in Ireland--the Brugh of the
+Boyne in Ulster, over which Angus Og is chief and god; the Shi’ mound
+of Cruachan Ahi, where Ethal Anbual presides over the underworld of
+Connacht, and Tailltin, in Royal Meath. It was in this last, the sacred
+place of his own lordship, that Conn laid his wife to rest.
+
+Her funeral games were played during nine days. Her keen was sung by
+poets and harpers, and a cairn ten acres wide was heaved over her clay.
+Then the keening ceased and the games drew to an end; the princes of the
+Five Prov-inces returned by horse or by chariot to their own places;
+the concourse of mourners melted away, and there was nothing left by
+the great cairn but the sun that dozed upon it in the daytime, the heavy
+clouds that brooded on it in the night, and the desolate, memoried king.
+
+For the dead queen had been so lovely that Conn could not forget her;
+she had been so kind at every moment that he could not but miss her at
+every moment; but it was in the Council Chamber and the Judgement
+Hall that he most pondered her memory. For she had also been wise, and
+lack-ing her guidance, all grave affairs seemed graver, shadowing each
+day and going with him to the pillow at night.
+
+The trouble of the king becomes the trouble of the subject, for how
+shall we live if judgement is withheld, or if faulty decisions are
+promulgated? Therefore, with the sorrow of the king, all Ireland was in
+grief, and it was the wish of every person that he should marry again.
+
+Such an idea, however, did not occur to him, for he could not conceive
+how any woman should fill the place his queen had vacated. He grew more
+and more despondent, and less and less fitted to cope with affairs of
+state, and one day he instructed his son Art to take the rule during his
+absence, and he set out for Ben Edair.
+
+For a great wish had come upon him to walk beside the sea; to listen
+to the roll and boom of long, grey breakers; to gaze on an unfruitful,
+desolate wilderness of waters; and to forget in those sights all that
+he could forget, and if he could not forget then to remember all that he
+should remember.
+
+He was thus gazing and brooding when one day he observed a coracle
+drawing to the shore. A young girl stepped from it and walked to him
+among black boulders and patches of yellow sand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Being a king he had authority to ask questions. Conn asked her,
+therefore, all the questions that he could think of, for it is not every
+day that a lady drives from the sea, and she wearing a golden-fringed
+cloak of green silk through which a red satin smock peeped at the
+openings. She replied to his questions, but she did not tell him all the
+truth; for, indeed, she could not afford to.
+
+She knew who he was, for she retained some of the powers proper to the
+worlds she had left, and as he looked on her soft yellow hair and on her
+thin red lips, Conn recognised, as all men do, that one who is lovely
+must also be good, and so he did not frame any inquiry on that count;
+for everything is forgotten in the presence of a pretty woman, and a
+magician can be bewitched also.
+
+She told Conn that the fame of his son Art had reached even the
+Many-Coloured Land, and that she had fallen in love with the boy. This
+did not seem unreasonable to one who had himself ventured much in Faery,
+and who had known so many of the people of that world leave their own
+land for the love of a mortal.
+
+“What is your name, my sweet lady?” said the king.
+
+“I am called Delvcaem (Fair Shape) and I am the daughter of Morgan,” she
+replied.
+
+“I have heard much of Morgan,” said the king. “He is a very great
+magician.”
+
+During this conversation Conn had been regarding her with the minute
+freedom which is right only in a king. At what precise instant he forgot
+his dead consort we do not know, but it is certain that at this moment
+his mind was no longer burdened with that dear and lovely memory. His
+voice was melancholy when he spoke again.
+
+“You love my son!”
+
+“Who could avoid loving him?” she murmured.
+
+“When a woman speaks to a man about the love she feels for another man
+she is not liked. And,” he continued, “when she speaks to a man who has
+no wife of his own about her love for another man then she is disliked.”
+
+“I would not be disliked by you,” Becuma murmured.
+
+“Nevertheless,” said he regally, “I will not come between a woman and
+her choice.”
+
+“I did not know you lacked a wife,” said Becuma, but indeed she did.
+
+“You know it now,” the king replied sternly.
+
+“What shall I do?” she inquired, “am I to wed you or your son?”
+
+“You must choose,” Conn answered.
+
+“If you allow me to choose it means that you do not want me very badly,”
+ said she with a smile.
+
+“Then I will not allow you to choose,” cried the king, “and it is with
+myself you shall marry.”
+
+He took her hand in his and kissed it.
+
+“Lovely is this pale thin hand. Lovely is the slender foot that I see in
+a small bronze shoe,” said the king.
+
+After a suitable time she continued:
+
+“I should not like your son to be at Tara when I am there, or for a year
+afterwards, for I do not wish to meet him until I have forgotten him and
+have come to know you well.”
+
+“I do not wish to banish my son,” the king protested.
+
+“It would not really be a banishment,” she said. “A prince’s duty could
+be set him, and in such an absence he would improve his knowledge both
+of Ireland and of men. Further,” she continued with downcast eyes,
+“when you remember the reason that brought me here you will see that his
+presence would be an embarrassment to us both, and my presence would be
+unpleasant to him if he remembers his mother.”
+
+“Nevertheless,” said Conn stubbornly, “I do not wish to banish my son;
+it is awkward and unnecessary.”
+
+“For a year only,” she pleaded.
+
+“It is yet,” he continued thoughtfully, “a reasonable reason that you
+give and I will do what you ask, but by my hand and word I don’t like
+doing it.”
+
+They set out then briskly and joyfully on the homeward journey, and in
+due time they reached Tara of the Kings.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+It is part of the education of a prince to be a good chess player, and
+to continually exercise his mind in view of the judgements that he will
+be called upon to give and the knotty, tortuous, and perplexing matters
+which will obscure the issues which he must judge. Art, the son of Conn,
+was sitting at chess with Cromdes, his father’s magician.
+
+“Be very careful about the move you are going to make,” said Cromdes.
+
+“CAN I be careful?” Art inquired. “Is the move that you are thinking of
+in my power?”
+
+“It is not,” the other admitted.
+
+“Then I need not be more careful than usual,” Art replied, and he made
+his move.
+
+“It is a move of banishment,” said Cromdes.
+
+“As I will not banish myself, I suppose my father will do it, but I do
+not know why he should.”
+
+“Your father will not banish you.”
+
+“Who then?” “Your mother.”
+
+“My mother is dead.”
+
+“You have a new one,” said the magician.
+
+“Here is news,” said Art. “I think I shall not love my new mother.”
+
+“You will yet love her better than she loves you,” said Cromdes, meaning
+thereby that they would hate each other.
+
+While they spoke the king and Becuma entered the palace.
+
+“I had better go to greet my father,” said the young man.
+
+“You had better wait until he sends for you,” his companion advised, and
+they returned to their game.
+
+In due time a messenger came from the king directing Art to leave Tara
+instantly, and to leave Ireland for one full year.
+
+He left Tara that night, and for the space of a year he was not seen
+again in Ireland. But during that period things did not go well with the
+king nor with Ireland. Every year before that time three crops of corn
+used to be lifted off the land, but during Art’s absence there was no
+corn in Ireland and there was no milk. The whole land went hungry.
+
+Lean people were in every house, lean cattle in every field; the bushes
+did not swing out their timely berries or seasonable nuts; the bees went
+abroad as busily as ever, but each night they returned languidly, with
+empty pouches, and there was no honey in their hives when the honey
+season came. People began to look at each other questioningly,
+meaningly, and dark remarks passed between them, for they knew that a
+bad harvest means, somehow, a bad king, and, although this belief can be
+combated, it is too firmly rooted in wisdom to be dismissed.
+
+The poets and magicians met to consider why this disaster should have
+befallen the country and by their arts they discovered the truth about
+the king’s wife, and that she was Becuma of the White Skin, and they
+discovered also the cause of her banishment from the Many-Coloured Land
+that is beyond the sea, which is beyond even the grave.
+
+They told the truth to the king, but he could not bear to be parted from
+that slender-handed, gold-haired, thin-lipped, blithe enchantress, and
+he required them to discover some means whereby he might retain his wife
+and his crown. There was a way and the magicians told him of it.
+
+“If the son of a sinless couple can be found and if his blood be mixed
+with the soll of Tara the blight and ruin will depart from Ireland,”
+ said the magicians.
+
+“If there is such a boy I will find him,” cried the Hundred Fighter.
+
+At the end of a year Art returned to Tara. His father delivered to him
+the sceptre of Ireland, and he set out on a journey to find the son of a
+sinless couple such as he had been told of.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The High King did not know where exactly he should look for such a
+saviour, but he was well educated and knew how to look for whatever was
+lacking. This knowledge will be useful to those upon whom a similar duty
+should ever devolve.
+
+He went to Ben Edair. He stepped into a coracle and pushed out to the
+deep, and he permitted the coracle to go as the winds and the waves
+directed it.
+
+In such a way he voyaged among the small islands of the sea until he
+lost all knowledge of his course and was adrift far out in ocean. He was
+under the guidance of the stars and the great luminaries.
+
+He saw black seals that stared and barked and dived dancingly, with the
+round turn of a bow and the forward onset of an arrow. Great whales came
+heaving from the green-hued void, blowing a wave of the sea high
+into the air from their noses and smacking their wide flat tails
+thunder-ously on the water. Porpoises went snorting past in bands and
+clans. Small fish came sliding and flickering, and all the outlandish
+creatures of the deep rose by his bobbing craft and swirled and sped
+away.
+
+Wild storms howled by him so that the boat climbed painfully to the sky
+on a mile-high wave, balanced for a tense moment on its level top, and
+sped down the glassy side as a stone goes furiously from a sling.
+
+Or, again, caught in the chop of a broken sea, it stayed shuddering and
+backing, while above his head there was only a low sad sky, and around
+him the lap and wash of grey waves that were never the same and were
+never different.
+
+After long staring on the hungry nothingness of air and water he would
+stare on the skin-stretched fabric of his boat as on a strangeness, or
+he would examine his hands and the texture of his skin and the stiff
+black hairs that grew behind his knuckles and sprouted around his ring,
+and he found in these things newness and wonder.
+
+Then, when days of storm had passed, the low grey clouds shivered and
+cracked in a thousand places, each grim islet went scudding to the
+horizon as though terrified by some great breadth, and when they had
+passed he stared into vast after vast of blue infinity, in the depths
+of which his eyes stayed and could not pierce, and wherefrom they could
+scarcely be withdrawn. A sun beamed thence that filled the air with
+sparkle and the sea with a thousand lights, and looking on these he was
+reminded of his home at Tara: of the columns of white and yellow bronze
+that blazed out sunnily on the sun, and the red and white and yellow
+painted roofs that beamed at and astonished the eye.
+
+Sailing thus, lost in a succession of days and nights, of winds and
+calms, he came at last to an island.
+
+His back was turned to it, and long before he saw it he smelled it and
+wondered; for he had been sitting as in a daze, musing on a change that
+had seemed to come in his changeless world; and for a long time he could
+not tell what that was which made a difference on the salt-whipped wind
+or why he should be excited. For suddenly he had become excited and his
+heart leaped in violent expectation.
+
+“It is an October smell,” he said.
+
+“It is apples that I smell.”
+
+He turned then and saw the island, fragrant with apple trees, sweet with
+wells of wine; and, hearkening towards the shore, his ears, dulled yet
+with the unending rhythms of the sea, distinguished and were filled
+with song; for the isle was, as it were, a nest of birds, and they sang
+joyously, sweetly, triumphantly.
+
+He landed on that lovely island, and went forward under the darting
+birds, under the apple boughs, skirting fragrant lakes about which were
+woods of the sacred hazel and into which the nuts of knowledge fell and
+swam; and he blessed the gods of his people because of the ground that
+did not shiver and because of the deeply rooted trees that could not gad
+or budge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Having gone some distance by these pleasant ways he saw a shapely house
+dozing in the sunlight.
+
+It was thatched with the wings of birds, blue wings and yellow and white
+wings, and in the centre of the house there was a door of crystal set in
+posts of bronze.
+
+The queen of this island lived there, Rigru (Large-eyed), the daughter
+of Lodan, and wife of Daire Degamra. She was seated on a crystal
+throne with her son Segda by her side, and they welcomed the High King
+courteously.
+
+There were no servants in this palace; nor was there need for them. The
+High King found that his hands had washed themselves, and when later on
+he noticed that food had been placed before him he noticed also that
+it had come without the assistance of servile hands. A cloak was laid
+gently about his shoulders, and he was glad of it, for his own was
+soiled by exposure to sun and wind and water, and was not worthy of a
+lady’s eye.
+
+Then he was invited to eat.
+
+He noticed, however, that food had been set for no one but himself, and
+this did not please him, for to eat alone was contrary to the hospitable
+usage of a king, and was contrary also to his contract with the gods.
+
+“Good, my hosts,” he remonstrated, “it is geasa (taboo) for me to eat
+alone.”
+
+“But we never eat together,” the queen replied.
+
+“I cannot violate my geasa,” said the High King.
+
+“I will eat with you,” said Segda (Sweet Speech), “and thus, while you
+are our guest you will not do violence to your vows.”
+
+“Indeed,” said Conn, “that will be a great satisfaction, for I have
+already all the trouble that I can cope with and have no wish to add to
+it by offending the gods.”
+
+“What is your trouble?” the gentle queen asked. “During a year,” Conn
+replied, “there has been neither corn nor milk in Ireland. The land is
+parched, the trees are withered, the birds do not sing in Ireland, and
+the bees do not make honey.”
+
+“You are certainly in trouble,” the queen assented.
+
+“But,” she continued, “for what purpose have you come to our island?”
+
+“I have come to ask for the loan of your son.”
+
+“A loan of my son!”
+
+“I have been informed,” Conn explained, “that if the son of a sinless
+couple is brought to Tara and is bathed in the waters of Ireland the
+land will be delivered from those ills.”
+
+The king of this island, Daire, had not hitherto spoken, but he now did
+so with astonishment and emphasis.
+
+“We would not lend our son to any one, not even to gain the kingship of
+the world,” said he.
+
+But Segda, observing that the guest’s countenance was discomposed, broke
+in:
+
+“It is not kind to refuse a thing that the Ard-Ri’ of Ireland asks for,
+and I will go with him.”
+
+“Do not go, my pulse,” his father advised.
+
+“Do not go, my one treasure,” his mother pleaded.
+
+“I must go indeed,” the boy replied, “for it is to do good I am
+required, and no person may shirk such a requirement.”
+
+“Go then,” said his father, “but I will place you under the protection
+of the High King and of the Four Provincial Kings of Ireland, and under
+the protection of Art, the son of Conn, and of Fionn, the son of Uail,
+and under the protection of the magicians and poets and the men of art
+in Ireland.” And he thereupon bound these protections and safeguards on
+the Ard-Ri’ with an oath.
+
+“I will answer for these protections,” said Conn.
+
+He departed then from the island with Segda and in three days they
+reached Ireland, and in due time they arrived at Tara.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+On reaching the palace Conn called his magicians and poets to a council
+and informed them that he had found the boy they sought--the son of a
+virgin. These learned people consulted together, and they stated that
+the young man must be killed, and that his blood should be mixed with
+the earth of Tara and sprinkled under the withered trees.
+
+When Segda heard this he was astonished and defiant; then, seeing that
+he was alone and without prospect of succour, he grew downcast and was
+in great fear for his life. But remembering the safeguards under which
+he had been placed, he enumerated these to the assembly, and called on
+the High King to grant him the protections that were his due.
+
+Conn was greatly perturbed, but, as in duty bound, he placed the boy
+under the various protections that were in his oath, and, with the
+courage of one who has no more to gain or lose, he placed Segda,
+furthermore, under the protection of all the men of Ireland.
+
+But the men of Ireland refused to accept that bond, saying that although
+the Ard-Ri’ was acting justly towards the boy he was not acting justly
+towards Ireland.
+
+“We do not wish to slay this prince for our pleasure,” they argued, “but
+for the safety of Ireland he must be killed.”
+
+Angry parties were formed. Art, and Fionn the son of Uail, and the
+princes of the land were outraged at the idea that one who had been
+placed under their protection should be hurt by any hand. But the men of
+Ireland and the magicians stated that the king had gone to Faery for a
+special purpose, and that his acts outside or contrary to that purpose
+were illegal, and committed no person to obedience.
+
+There were debates in the Council Hall, in the market-place, in the
+streets of Tara, some holding that national honour dissolved and
+absolved all personal honour, and others protesting that no man had
+aught but his personal honour, and that above it not the gods, not even
+Ireland, could be placed--for it is to be known that Ireland is a god.
+
+Such a debate was in course, and Segda, to whom both sides addressed
+gentle and courteous arguments, grew more and more disconsolate.
+
+“You shall die for Ireland, dear heart,” said one of them, and he gave
+Segda three kisses on each cheek.
+
+“Indeed,” said Segda, returning those kisses, “indeed I had not
+bargained to die for Ireland, but only to bathe in her waters and to
+remove her pestilence.”
+
+“But dear child and prince,” said another, kissing him likewise, “if any
+one of us could save Ireland by dying for her how cheerfully we would
+die.”
+
+And Segda, returning his three kisses, agreed that the death was noble,
+but that it was not in his undertaking.
+
+Then, observing the stricken countenances about him, and the faces of
+men and women hewn thin by hunger, his resolution melted away, and he
+said:
+
+“I think I must die for you,” and then he said:
+
+“I will die for you.”
+
+And when he had said that, all the people present touched his cheek with
+their lips, and the love and peace of Ireland entered into his soul, so
+that he was tranquil and proud and happy.
+
+The executioner drew his wide, thin blade and all those present covered
+their eyes with their cloaks, when a wailing voice called on the
+executioner to delay yet a moment. The High King uncovered his eyes and
+saw that a woman had approached driving a cow before her.
+
+“Why are you killing the boy?” she demanded.
+
+The reason for this slaying was explained to her.
+
+“Are you sure,” she asked, “that the poets and magicians really know
+everything?”
+
+“Do they not?” the king inquired.
+
+“Do they?” she insisted.
+
+And then turning to the magicians:
+
+“Let one magician of the magicians tell me what is hidden in the bags
+that are lying across the back of my cow.”
+
+But no magician could tell it, nor did they try to.
+
+“Questions are not answered thus,” they said. “There is formulae, and
+the calling up of spirits, and lengthy complicated preparations in our
+art.”
+
+“I am not badly learned in these arts,” said the woman, “and I say that
+if you slay this cow the effect will be the same as if you had killed
+the boy.”
+
+“We would prefer to kill a cow or a thousand cows rather than harm this
+young prince,” said Conn, “but if we spare the boy will these evils
+return?”
+
+“They will not be banished until you have banished their cause.”
+
+“And what is their cause?”
+
+“Becuma is the cause, and she must be banished.”
+
+“If you must tell me what to do,” said Conn, “tell me at least to do
+something that I can do.”
+
+“I will tell you certainly. You can keep Becuma and your ills as long as
+you want to. It does not matter to me. Come, my son,” she said to
+Segda, for it was Segda’s mother who had come to save him; and then
+that sinless queen and her son went back to their home of enchantment,
+leaving the king and Fionn and the magicians and nobles of Ireland
+astonished and ashamed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+There are good and evil people in this and in every other world, and the
+person who goes hence will go to the good or the evil that is native
+to him, while those who return come as surely to their due. The trouble
+which had fallen on Becuma did not leave her repentant, and the sweet
+lady began to do wrong as instantly and innocently as a flower begins
+to grow. It was she who was responsible for the ills which had come on
+Ireland, and we may wonder why she brought these plagues and droughts to
+what was now her own country.
+
+Under all wrong-doing lies personal vanity or the feeling that we are
+endowed and privileged beyond our fellows. It is probable that, however
+courageously she had accepted fate, Becuma had been sharply stricken in
+her pride; in the sense of personal strength, aloofness, and identity,
+in which the mind likens itself to god and will resist every domination
+but its own. She had been punished, that is, she had submitted to
+control, and her sense of freedom, of privilege, of very being, was
+outraged. The mind flinches even from the control of natural law, and
+how much more from the despotism of its own separated likenesses, for if
+another can control me that other has usurped me, has become me, and how
+terribly I seem diminished by the seeming addition!
+
+This sense of separateness is vanity, and is the bed of all wrong-doing.
+For we are not freedom, we are control, and we must submit to our own
+function ere we can exercise it. Even unconsciously we accept the rights
+of others to all that we have, and if we will not share our good with
+them, it is because we cannot, having none; but we will yet give what
+we have, although that be evil. To insist on other people sharing in
+our personal torment is the first step towards insisting that they shall
+share in our joy, as we shall insist when we get it.
+
+Becuma considered that if she must suffer all else she met should suffer
+also. She raged, therefore, against Ireland, and in particular she raged
+against young Art, her husband’s son, and she left undone nothing that
+could afflict Ireland or the prince. She may have felt that she could
+not make them suffer, and that is a maddening thought to any woman. Or
+perhaps she had really desired the son instead of the father, and her
+thwarted desire had perpetuated itself as hate. But it is true that Art
+regarded his mother’s successor with intense dislike, and it is true
+that she actively returned it.
+
+One day Becuma came on the lawn before the palace, and seeing that Art
+was at chess with Cromdes she walked to the table on which the match was
+being played and for some time regarded the game. But the young prince
+did not take any notice of her while she stood by the board, for he knew
+that this girl was the enemy of Ireland, and he could not bring himself
+even to look at her.
+
+Becuma, looking down on his beautiful head, smiled as much in rage as in
+disdain.
+
+“O son of a king,” said she, “I demand a game with you for stakes.”
+
+Art then raised his head and stood up courteously, but he did not look
+at her.
+
+“Whatever the queen demands I will do,” said he.
+
+“Am I not your mother also?” she replied mockingly, as she took the seat
+which the chief magician leaped from.
+
+The game was set then, and her play was so skilful that Art was hard put
+to counter her moves. But at a point of the game Becuma grew thoughtful,
+and, as by a lapse of memory, she made a move which gave the victory to
+her opponent. But she had intended that. She sat then, biting on her lip
+with her white small teeth and staring angrily at Art.
+
+“What do you demand from me?” she asked.
+
+“I bind you to eat no food in Ireland until you find the wand of Curoi,
+son of Dare’.”
+
+Becuma then put a cloak about her and she went from Tara northward and
+eastward until she came to the dewy, sparkling Brugh of Angus mac an Og
+in Ulster, but she was not admitted there. She went thence to the Shi’
+ruled over by Eogabal, and although this lord would not admit her, his
+daughter Aine’, who was her foster-sister, let her into Faery.
+
+She made inquiries and was informed where the dun of Curoi mac Dare’
+was, and when she had received this intelligence she set out for Sliev
+Mis. By what arts she coaxed Curoi to give up his wand it matters not,
+enough that she was able to return in triumph to Tara. When she handed
+the wand to Art, she said:
+
+“I claim my game of revenge.”
+
+“It is due to you,” said Art, and they sat on the lawn before the palace
+and played.
+
+A hard game that was, and at times each of the combatants sat for an
+hour staring on the board before the next move was made, and at times
+they looked from the board and for hours stared on the sky seeking as
+though in heaven for advice. But Becuma’s foster-sister, Aine’, came
+from the Shi’, and, unseen by any, she interfered with Art’s play, so
+that, suddenly, when he looked again on the board, his face went pale,
+for he saw that the game was lost.
+
+“I didn’t move that piece,” said he sternly.
+
+“Nor did I,” Becuma replied, and she called on the onlookers to confirm
+that statement.
+
+She was smiling to herself secretly, for she had seen what the mortal
+eyes around could not see.
+
+“I think the game is mine,” she insisted softly.
+
+“I think that your friends in Faery have cheated,” he replied, “but the
+game is yours if you are content to win it that way.”
+
+“I bind you,” said Becuma, “to eat no food in Ireland until you have
+found Delvcaem, the daughter of Morgan.”
+
+“Where do I look for her?” said Art in despair.
+
+“She is in one of the islands of the sea,” Becuma replied, “that is
+all I will tell you,” and she looked at him maliciously, joyously,
+contentedly, for she thought he would never return from that journey,
+and that Morgan would see to it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Art, as his father had done before him, set out for the Many-Coloured
+Land, but it was from Inver Colpa he embarked and not from Ben Edair.
+
+At a certain time he passed from the rough green ridges of the sea to
+enchanted waters, and he roamed from island to island asking all people
+how he might come to Delvcaem, the daughter of Morgan. But he got no
+news from any one, until he reached an island that was fragrant with
+wild apples, gay with flowers, and joyous with the song of birds and the
+deep mellow drumming of the bees. In this island he was met by a lady,
+Crede’, the Truly Beautiful, and when they had exchanged kisses, he told
+her who he was and on what errand he was bent.
+
+“We have been expecting you,” said Crede’, “but alas, poor soul, it is
+a hard, and a long, bad way that you must go; for there is sea and land,
+danger and difficulty between you and the daughter of Morgan.”
+
+“Yet I must go there,” he answered.
+
+“There is a wild dark ocean to be crossed. There is a dense wood where
+every thorn on every tree is sharp as a spear-point and is curved and
+clutching. There is a deep gulf to be gone through,” she said, “a place
+of silence and terror, full of dumb, venomous monsters. There is an
+immense oak forest--dark, dense, thorny, a place to be strayed in,
+a place to be utterly bewildered and lost in. There is a vast dark
+wilderness, and therein is a dark house, lonely and full of echoes, and
+in it there are seven gloomy hags, who are warned already of your coming
+and are waiting to plunge you in a bath of molten lead.”
+
+“It is not a choice journey,” said Art, “but I have no choice and must
+go.”
+
+“Should you pass those hags,” she continued, “and no one has yet passed
+them, you must meet Ailill of the Black Teeth, the son of Mongan Tender
+Blossom, and who could pass that gigantic and terrible fighter?”
+
+“It is not easy to find the daughter of Morgan,” said Art in a
+melancholy voice.
+
+“It is not easy,” Crede’ replied eagerly, “and if you will take my
+advice--”
+
+“Advise me,” he broke in, “for in truth there is no man standing in such
+need of counsel as I do.”
+
+“I would advise you,” said Crede’ in a low voice, “to seek no more for
+the sweet daughter of Morgan, but to stay in this place where all that
+is lovely is at your service.”
+
+“But, but--” cried Art in astonishment.
+
+“Am I not as sweet as the daughter of Morgan?” she demanded, and she
+stood before him queenly and pleadingly, and her eyes took his with
+imperious tenderness.
+
+“By my hand,” he answered, “you are sweeter and lovelier than any being
+under the sun, but--”
+
+“And with me,” she said, “you will forget Ireland.”
+
+“I am under bonds,” cried Art, “I have passed my word, and I would
+not forget Ireland or cut myself from it for all the kingdoms of the
+Many-Coloured Land.”
+
+Crede’ urged no more at that time, but as they were parting she
+whispered, “There are two girls, sisters of my own, in Morgan’s palace.
+They will come to you with a cup in either hand; one cup will be filled
+with wine and one with poison. Drink from the right-hand cup, O my
+dear.”
+
+Art stepped into his coracle, and then, wringing her hands, she made yet
+an attempt to dissuade him from that drear journey.
+
+“Do not leave me,” she urged. “Do not affront these dangers. Around the
+palace of Morgan there is a palisade of copper spikes, and on the top of
+each spike the head of a man grins and shrivels. There is one spike only
+which bears no head, and it is for your head that spike is waiting. Do
+not go there, my love.”
+
+“I must go indeed,” said. Art earnestly.
+
+“There is yet a danger,” she called. “Beware of Delvcaem’s mother, Dog
+Head, daughter of the King of the Dog Heads. Beware of her.”
+
+“Indeed,” said Art to himself, “there is so much to beware of that I
+will beware of nothing. I will go about my business,” he said to the
+waves, “and I will let those beings and monsters and the people of the
+Dog Heads go about their business.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+He went forward in his light bark, and at some moment found that he
+had parted from those seas and was adrift on vaster and more turbulent
+billows. From those dark-green surges there gaped at him monstrous
+and cavernous jaws; and round, wicked, red-rimmed, bulging eyes stared
+fixedly at the boat. A ridge of inky water rushed foaming mountainously
+on his board, and behind that ridge came a vast warty head that gurgled
+and groaned. But at these vile creatures he thrust with his lengthy
+spear or stabbed at closer reach with a dagger.
+
+He was not spared one of the terrors which had been foretold. Thus, in
+the dark thick oak forest he slew the seven hags and buried them in the
+molten lead which they had heated for him. He climbed an icy mountain,
+the cold breath of which seemed to slip into his body and chip off
+inside of his bones, and there, until he mastered the sort of climbing
+on ice, for each step that he took upwards he slipped back ten steps.
+Almost his heart gave way before he learned to climb that venomous hill.
+In a forked glen into which he slipped at night-fall he was surrounded
+by giant toads, who spat poison, and were icy as the land they lived
+in, and were cold and foul and savage. At Sliav Saev he encountered the
+long-maned lions who lie in wait for the beasts of the world, growling
+woefully as they squat above their prey and crunch those terrified
+bones. He came on Ailill of the Black Teeth sitting on the bridge that
+spanned a torrent, and the grim giant was grinding his teeth on a pillar
+stone. Art drew nigh unobserved and brought him low.
+
+It was not for nothing that these difficulties and dangers were in his
+path. These things and creatures were the invention of Dog Head, the
+wife of Morgan, for it had become known to her that she would die on the
+day her daughter was wooed. Therefore none of the dangers encountered
+by Art were real, but were magical chimeras conjured against him by the
+great witch.
+
+Affronting all, conquering all, he came in time to Morgan’s dun, a place
+so lovely that after the miseries through which he had struggled he
+almost wept to see beauty again.
+
+Delvcaem knew that he was coming. She was waiting for him, yearning for
+him. To her mind Art was not only love, he was freedom, for the poor
+girl was a captive in her father’s home. A great pillar an hundred feet
+high had been built on the roof of Morgan’s palace, and on the top of
+this pillar a tiny room had been constructed, and in this room Delvcaem
+was a prisoner.
+
+She was lovelier in shape than any other princess of the Many-Coloured
+Land. She was wiser than all the other women of that land, and she
+was skilful in music, embroidery, and chastity, and in all else that
+pertained to the knowledge of a queen.
+
+Although Delvcaem’s mother wished nothing but ill to Art, she yet
+treated him with the courtesy proper in a queen on the one hand and
+fitting towards the son of the King of Ireland on the other. Therefore,
+when Art entered the palace he was met and kissed, and he was bathed and
+clothed and fed. Two young girls came to him then, having a cup in
+each of their hands, and presented him with the kingly drink, but,
+remembering the warning which Credl had given him, he drank only from
+the right-hand cup and escaped the poison. Next he was visited by
+Delvcaem’s mother, Dog Head, daughter of the King of the Dog Heads, and
+Morgan’s queen. She was dressed in full armour, and she challenged Art
+to fight with her.
+
+It was a woeful combat, for there was no craft or sagacity unknown to
+her, and Art would infallibly have perished by her hand but that her
+days were numbered, her star was out, and her time had come. It was her
+head that rolled on the ground when the combat was over, and it was
+her head that grinned and shrivelled on the vacant spike which she had
+reserved for Art’s.
+
+Then Art liberated Delvcaem from her prison at the top of the pillar
+and they were affianced together. But the ceremony had scarcely been
+completed when the tread of a single man caused the palace to quake and
+seemed to jar the world.
+
+It was Morgan returning to the palace.
+
+The gloomy king challenged him to combat also, and in his honour Art
+put on the battle harness which he had brought from Ireland. He wore a
+breastplate and helmet of gold, a mantle of blue satin swung from his
+shoulders, his left hand was thrust into the grips of a purple
+shield, deeply bossed with silver, and in the other hand he held the
+wide-grooved, blue hilted sword which had rung so often into fights and
+combats, and joyous feats and exercises.
+
+Up to this time the trials through which he had passed had seemed so
+great that they could not easily be added to. But if all those trials
+had been gathered into one vast calamity they would not equal one half
+of the rage and catastrophe of his war with Morgan.
+
+For what he could not effect by arms Morgan would endeavour by guile,
+so that while Art drove at him or parried a crafty blow, the shape of
+Morgan changed before his eyes, and the monstrous king was having at him
+in another form, and from a new direction.
+
+It was well for the son of the Ard-Ri’ that he had been beloved by the
+poets and magicians of his land, and that they had taught him all that
+was known of shape-changing and words of power.
+
+He had need of all these.
+
+At times, for the weapon must change with the enemy, they fought with
+their foreheads as two giant stags, and the crash of their monstrous
+onslaught rolled and lingered on the air long after their skulls had
+parted. Then as two lions, long-clawed, deep-mouthed, snarling, with
+rigid mane, with red-eyed glare, with flashing, sharp-white fangs, they
+prowled lithely about each other seeking for an opening. And then as two
+green-ridged, white-topped, broad-swung, overwhelming, vehement billows
+of the deep, they met and crashed and sunk into and rolled away from
+each other; and the noise of these two waves was as the roar of all
+ocean when the howl of the tempest is drowned in the league-long fury of
+the surge.
+
+But when the wife’s time has come the husband is doomed. He is required
+elsewhere by his beloved, and Morgan went to rejoin his queen in the
+world that comes after the Many-Coloured Land, and his victor shore that
+knowledgeable head away from its giant shoulders.
+
+He did not tarry in the Many-Coloured Land, for he had nothing further
+to seek there. He gathered the things which pleased him best from among
+the treasures of its grisly king, and with Delvcaem by his side they
+stepped into the coracle.
+
+Then, setting their minds on Ireland, they went there as it were in a
+flash.
+
+The waves of all the world seemed to whirl past them in one huge, green
+cataract. The sound of all these oceans boomed in their ears for one
+eternal instant. Nothing was for that moment but a vast roar and pour
+of waters. Thence they swung into a silence equally vast, and so sudden
+that it was as thunderous in the comparison as was the elemental rage
+they quitted. For a time they sat panting, staring at each other,
+holding each other, lest not only their lives but their very souls
+should be swirled away in the gusty passage of world within world; and
+then, looking abroad, they saw the small bright waves creaming by the
+rocks of Ben Edair, and they blessed the power that had guided and
+protected them, and they blessed the comely land of Ir.
+
+On reaching Tara, Delvcaem, who was more powerful in art and magic than
+Becuma, ordered the latter to go away, and she did so.
+
+She left the king’s side. She came from the midst of the counsellors and
+magicians. She did not bid farewell to any one. She did not say good-bye
+to the king as she set out for Ben Edair.
+
+Where she could go to no man knew, for she had been ban-ished from the
+Many-Coloured Land and could not return there. She was forbidden entry
+to the Shi’ by Angus Og, and she could not remain in Ireland. She went
+to Sasana and she became a queen in that country, and it was she who
+fostered the rage against the Holy Land which has not ceased to this
+day.
+
+
+
+
+MONGAN’S FRENZY
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The abbot of the Monastery of Moville sent word to the story-tellers of
+Ireland that when they were in his neighbourhood they should call at
+the monastery, for he wished to collect and write down the stories which
+were in danger of being forgotten.
+
+“These things also must be told,” said he.
+
+In particular he wished to gather tales which told of the deeds that had
+been done before the Gospel came to Ireland.
+
+“For,” said he, “there are very good tales among those ones, and it
+would be a pity if the people who come after us should be ignorant of
+what happened long ago, and of the deeds of their fathers.”
+
+So, whenever a story-teller chanced in that neighbourhood he was
+directed to the monastery, and there he received a welcome and his fill
+of all that is good for man.
+
+The abbot’s manuscript boxes began to fill up, and he used to regard
+that growing store with pride and joy. In the evenings, when the days
+grew short and the light went early, he would call for some one of these
+manuscripts and have it read to him by candle-light, in order that he
+might satisfy himself that it was as good as he had judged it to be on
+the previous hearing.
+
+One day a story-teller came to the monastery, and, like all the others,
+he was heartily welcomed and given a great deal more than his need.
+
+He said that his name was Cairide’, and that he had a story to tell
+which could not be bettered among the stories of Ireland.
+
+The abbot’s eyes glistened when he heard that. He rubbed his hands
+together and smiled on his guest.
+
+“What is the name of your story?” he asked.
+
+“It is called ‘Mongan’s Frenzy.’”
+
+“I never heard of it before,” cried the abbot joyfully.
+
+“I am the only man that knows it,” Cairide’ replied.
+
+“But how does that come about?” the abbot inquired.
+
+“Because it belongs to my family,” the story-teller answered. “There
+was a Cairide’ of my nation with Mongan when he went into Faery. This
+Cairide’ listened to the story when it was first told. Then he told
+it to his son, and his son told it to his son, and that son’s
+great-great-grandson’s son told it to his son’s son, and he told it to
+my father, and my father told it to me.”
+
+“And you shall tell it to me,” cried the abbot triumphantly.
+
+“I will indeed,” said Cairide’. Vellum was then brought and quills. The
+copyists sat at their tables. Ale was placed beside the story-teller,
+and he told this tale to the abbot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Said Cairide’:
+
+Mongan’s wife at that time was Bro’tiarna, the Flame Lady. She was
+passionate and fierce, and because the blood would flood suddenly to her
+cheek, so that she who had seemed a lily became, while you looked upon
+her, a rose, she was called Flame Lady. She loved Mongan with ecstasy
+and abandon, and for that also he called her Flame Lady.
+
+But there may have been something of calculation even in her wildest
+moment, for if she was delighted in her affection she was tormented in
+it also, as are all those who love the great ones of life and strive to
+equal themselves where equality is not possible.
+
+For her husband was at once more than himself and less than himself.
+He was less than himself because he was now Mongan. He was more than
+himself because he was one who had long disappeared from the world of
+men. His lament had been sung and his funeral games played many,
+many years before, and Bro’tiarna sensed in him secrets, experiences,
+knowledges in which she could have no part, and for which she was
+greedily envious.
+
+So she was continually asking him little, simple questions a’ propos of
+every kind of thing.
+
+She weighed all that he said on whatever subject, and when he talked in
+his sleep she listened to his dream.
+
+The knowledge that she gleaned from those listenings tormented her
+far more than it satisfied her, for the names of other women were
+continually on his lips, sometimes in terms of dear affection, sometimes
+in accents of anger or despair, and in his sleep he spoke familiarly
+of people whom the story-tellers told of, but who had been dead for
+centuries. Therefore she was perplexed, and became filled with a very
+rage of curiosity.
+
+Among the names which her husband mentioned there was one which, because
+of the frequency with which it appeared, and because of the tone of
+anguish and love and longing in which it was uttered, she thought of
+oftener than the others: this name was Duv Laca. Although she questioned
+and cross-questioned Cairide’, her story-teller, she could discover
+nothing about a lady who had been known as the Black Duck. But one night
+when Mongan seemed to speak with Duv Laca he mentioned her father as
+Fiachna Duv mac Demain, and the story-teller said that king had been
+dead for a vast number of years.
+
+She asked her husband then, boldly, to tell her the story of Duv Laca,
+and under the influence of their mutual love he promised to tell it to
+her some time, but each time she reminded him of his promise he became
+confused, and said that he would tell it some other time.
+
+As time went on the poor Flame Lady grew more and more jealous of Duv
+Laca, and more and more certain that, if only she could know what
+had happened, she would get some ease to her tormented heart and some
+assuagement of her perfectly natural curiosity. Therefore she lost no
+opportunity of reminding Mongan of his promise, and on each occasion he
+renewed the promise and put it back to another time.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+In the year when Ciaran the son of the Carpenter died, the same year
+when Tuathal Maelgariv was killed and the year when Diarmait the son of
+Cerrbel became king of all Ireland, the year 538 of our era in short, it
+happened that there was a great gathering of the men of Ireland at the
+Hill of Uisneach in Royal Meath.
+
+In addition to the Council which was being held, there were games and
+tournaments and brilliant deployments of troops, and universal feastings
+and enjoyments. The gathering lasted for a week, and on the last day
+of the week Mongan was moving through the crowd with seven guards, his
+story-teller Cairide’, and his wife.
+
+It had been a beautiful day, with brilliant sunshine and great sport,
+but suddenly clouds began to gather in the sky to the west, and others
+came rushing blackly from the east. When these clouds met the world went
+dark for a space, and there fell from the sky a shower of hailstones, so
+large that each man wondered at their size, and so swift and heavy that
+the women and young people of the host screamed from the pain of the
+blows they received.
+
+Mongan’s men made a roof of their shields, and the hailstones battered
+on the shields so terribly that even under them they were afraid. They
+began to move away from the host looking for shelter, and when they had
+gone apart a little way they turned the edge of a small hill and a knoll
+of trees, and in the twinkling of an eye they were in fair weather.
+
+One minute they heard the clashing and bashing of the hailstones, the
+howling of the venomous wind, the screams of women and the uproar of the
+crowd on the Hill of Uisneach, and the next minute they heard nothing
+more of those sounds and saw nothing more of these sights, for they had
+been permitted to go at one step out of the world of men and into the
+world of Faery.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+There is a difference between this world and the world of Faery, but it
+is not immediately perceptible. Everything that is here is there, but
+the things that are there are better than those that are here. All
+things that are bright are there brighter. There is more gold in the
+sun and more silver in the moon of that land. There is more scent in the
+flowers, more savour in the fruit. There is more comeliness in the men
+and more tenderness in the women. Everything in Faery is better by this
+one wonderful degree, and it is by this betterness you will know that
+you are there if you should ever happen to get there.
+
+Mongan and his companions stepped from the world of storm into sunshine
+and a scented world. The instant they stepped they stood, bewildered,
+looking at each other silently, questioningly, and then with one accord
+they turned to look back whence they had come.
+
+There was no storm behind them. The sunlight drowsed there as it did in
+front, a peaceful flooding of living gold. They saw the shapes of
+the country to which their eyes were accustomed, and recognised the
+well-known landmarks, but it seemed that the distant hills were a trifle
+higher, and the grass which clothed them and stretched between was
+greener, was more velvety: that the trees were better clothed and had
+more of peace as they hung over the quiet ground.
+
+But Mongan knew what had happened, and he smiled with glee as he watched
+his astonished companions, and he sniffed that balmy air as one whose
+nostrils remembered it.
+
+“You had better come with me,” he said.
+
+“Where are we?” his wife asked. “Why, we are here,” cried Mongan; “where
+else should we be?”
+
+He set off then, and the others followed, staring about them cautiously,
+and each man keeping a hand on the hilt of his sword.
+
+“Are we in Faery?” the Flame Lady asked.
+
+“We are,” said Mongan.
+
+When they had gone a little distance they came to a grove of ancient
+trees. Mightily tail and well grown these trees were, and the trunk of
+each could not have been spanned by ten broad men. As they went among
+these quiet giants into the dappled obscurity and silence, their
+thoughts became grave, and all the motions of their minds elevated
+as though they must equal in greatness and dignity those ancient and
+glorious trees. When they passed through the grove they saw a lovely
+house before them, built of mellow wood and with a roof of bronze--it
+was like the dwelling of a king, and over the windows of the Sunny Room
+there was a balcony. There were ladies on this balcony, and when they
+saw the travellers approaching they sent messengers to welcome them.
+
+Mongan and his companions were then brought into the house, and all was
+done for them that could be done for honoured guests. Everything within
+the house was as excellent as all without, and it was inhabited by seven
+men and seven women, and it was evident that Mongan and these people
+were well acquainted.
+
+In the evening a feast was prepared, and when they had eaten well there
+was a banquet. There were seven vats of wine, and as Mongan loved wine
+he was very happy, and he drank more on that occasion than any one had
+ever noticed him to drink before.
+
+It was while he was in this condition of glee and expansion that the
+Flame Lady put her arms about his neck and begged he would tell her the
+story of Duv Laca, and, being boisterous then and full of good spirits,
+he agreed to her request, and he prepared to tell the tale.
+
+The seven men and seven women of the Fairy Palace then took their
+places about him in a half-circle; his own seven guards sat behind
+them; his wife, the Flame Lady, sat by his side; and at the back of
+all Cairid, his story-teller sat, listening with all his ears, and
+remembering every word that was uttered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Said Mongan:
+
+In the days of long ago and the times that have disappeared for ever,
+there was one Fiachna Finn the son of Baltan, the son of Murchertach,
+the son of Muredach, the son of Eogan, the son of Neill. He went from
+his own country when he was young, for he wished to see the land of
+Lochlann, and he knew that he would be welcomed by the king of that
+country, for Fiachna’s father and Eolgarg’s father had done deeds in
+common and were obliged to each other.
+
+He was welcomed, and he stayed at the Court of Lochlann in great ease
+and in the midst of pleasures.
+
+It then happened that Eolgarg Mor fell sick and the doctors could not
+cure him. They sent for other doctors, but they could not cure him, nor
+could any one say what he was suffering from, beyond that he was wasting
+visibly before their eyes, and would certainly become a shadow and
+disappear in air unless he was healed and fattened and made visible.
+
+They sent for more distant doctors, and then for others more distant
+still, and at last they found a man who claimed that he could make a
+cure if the king were supplied with the medicine which he would order.
+
+“What medicine is that?” said they all.
+
+“This is the medicine,” said the doctor. “Find a perfectly white cow
+with red ears, and boil it down in the lump, and if the king drinks that
+rendering he will recover.”
+
+Before he had well said it messengers were going from the palace in all
+directions looking for such a cow. They found lots of cows which were
+nearly like what they wanted, but it was only by chance they came on
+the cow which would do the work, and that beast belonged to the most
+notorious and malicious and cantankerous female in Lochlann, the Black
+Hag. Now the Black Hag was not only those things that have been said;
+she was also whiskered and warty and one-eyed and obstreperous, and she
+was notorious and ill-favoured in many other ways also.
+
+They offered her a cow in the place of her own cow, but she refused to
+give it. Then they offered a cow for each leg of her cow, but she would
+not accept that offer unless Fiachna went bail for the payment. He
+agreed to do so, and they drove the beast away.
+
+On the return journey he was met by messengers who brought news from
+Ireland. They said that the King of Ulster was dead, and that he,
+Fiachna Finn, had been elected king in the dead king’s place. He at once
+took ship for Ireland, and found that all he had been told was true, and
+he took up the government of Ulster.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A year passed, and one day as he was sitting at judgement there came
+a great noise from without, and this noise was so persistent that the
+people and suitors were scandalised, and Fiachna at last ordered that
+the noisy person should be brought before him to be judged.
+
+It was done, and to his surprise the person turned out to be the Black
+Hag.
+
+She blamed him in the court before his people, and complained that he
+had taken away her cow, and that she had not been paid the four cows he
+had gone bail for, and she demanded judgement from him and justice.
+
+“If you will consider it to be justice, I will give you twenty cows
+myself,” said Fiachna.
+
+“I would not take all the cows in Ulster,” she screamed.
+
+“Pronounce judgement yourself,” said the king, “and if I can do what you
+demand I will do it.” For he did not like to be in the wrong, and he did
+not wish that any person should have an unsatisfied claim upon him.
+
+The Black Hag then pronounced judgement, and the king had to fulfil it.
+
+“I have come,” said she, “from the east to the west; you must come from
+the west to the east and make war for me, and revenge me on the King of
+Lochlann.”
+
+Fiachna had to do as she demanded, and, although it was with a heavy
+heart, he set out in three days’ time for Lochlann, and he brought with
+him ten battalions.
+
+He sent messengers before him to Big Eolgarg warning him of his coming,
+of his intention, and of the number of troops he was bringing; and when
+he landed Eolgarg met him with an equal force, and they fought together.
+
+In the first battle three hundred of the men of Lochlann were killed,
+but in the next battle Eolgarg Mor did not fight fair, for he let some
+venomous sheep out of a tent, and these attacked the men of Ulster and
+killed nine hundred of them.
+
+So vast was the slaughter made by these sheep and so great the terror
+they caused, that no one could stand before them, but by great good luck
+there was a wood at hand, and the men of Ulster, warriors and princes
+and charioteers, were forced to climb up the trees, and they roosted
+among the branches like great birds, while the venomous sheep ranged
+below bleating terribly and tearing up the ground.
+
+Fiachna Fim was also sitting in a tree, very high up, and he was
+disconsolate.
+
+“We are disgraced,” said he.
+
+“It is very lucky,” said the man in the branch below, “that a sheep
+cannot climb a tree.”
+
+“We are disgraced for ever,” said the King of Ulster.
+
+“If those sheep learn how to climb, we are undone surely,” said the man
+below.
+
+“I will go down and fight the sheep,” said Fiachna. But the others would
+not let the king go.
+
+“It is not right,” they said, “that you should fight sheep.”
+
+“Some one must fight them,” said Fiachna Finn, “but no more of my men
+shall die until I fight myself; for if I am fated to die, I will die and
+I cannot escape it, and if it is the sheep’s fate to die, then die they
+will; for there is no man can avoid destiny, and there is no sheep can
+dodge it either.”
+
+“Praise be to god!” said the warrior that was higher up.
+
+“Amen!” said the man who was higher than he, and the rest of the
+warriors wished good luck to the king.
+
+He started then to climb down the tree with a heavy heart, but while
+he hung from the last branch and was about to let go, he noticed a tall
+warrior walking towards him. The king pulled himself up on the branch
+again and sat dangle-legged on it to see what the warrior would do.
+
+The stranger was a very tall man, dressed in a green cloak with a silver
+brooch at the shoulder. He had a golden band about his hair and golden
+sandals on his feet, and he was laughing heartily at the plight of the
+men of Ireland.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+“It is not nice of you to laugh at us,” said Fiachna Finn.
+
+“Who could help laughing at a king hunkering on a branch and his army
+roosting around him like hens?” said the stranger.
+
+“Nevertheless,” the king replied, “it would be courteous of you not to
+laugh at misfortune.”
+
+“We laugh when we can,” commented the stranger, “and are thankful for
+the chance.”
+
+“You may come up into the tree,” said Fiachna, “for I perceive that you
+are a mannerly person, and I see that some of the venomous sheep are
+charging in this direction. I would rather protect you,” he continued,
+“than see you killed; for,” said he lamentably, “I am getting down now
+to fight the sheep.”
+
+“They will not hurt me,” said the stranger. “Who are you?” the king
+asked.
+
+“I am Mananna’n, the son of Lir.”
+
+Fiachna knew then that the stranger could not be hurt.
+
+“What will you give me if I deliver you from the sheep?” asked
+Mananna’n.
+
+“I will give you anything you ask, if I have that thing.”
+
+“I ask the rights of your crown and of your household for one day.”
+
+Fiachna’s breath was taken away by that request, and he took a little
+time to compose himself, then he said mildly:
+
+“I will not have one man of Ireland killed if I can save him. All that
+I have they give me, all that I have I give to them, and if I must give
+this also, then I will give this, although it would be easier for me to
+give my life.” “That is agreed,” said Mannana’n.
+
+He had something wrapped in a fold of his cloak, and he unwrapped and
+produced this thing.
+
+It was a dog.
+
+Now if the sheep were venomous, this dog was more venomous still, for it
+was fearful to look at. In body it was not large, but its head was of a
+great size, and the mouth that was shaped in that head was able to open
+like the lid of a pot. It was not teeth which were in that head, but
+hooks and fangs and prongs. Dreadful was that mouth to look at, terrible
+to look into, woeful to think about; and from it, or from the broad,
+loose nose that waggled above it, there came a sound which no word of
+man could describe, for it was not a snarl, nor was it a howl, although
+it was both of these. It was neither a growl nor a grunt, although it
+was both of these; it was not a yowl nor a groan, although it was both
+of these: for it was one sound made up of these sounds, and there was in
+it, too, a whine and a yelp, and a long-drawn snoring noise, and a deep
+purring noise, and a noise that was like the squeal of a rusty hinge,
+and there were other noises in it also.
+
+“The gods be praised!” said the man who was in the branch above the
+king.
+
+“What for this time?” said the king.
+
+“Because that dog cannot climb a tree,” said the man.
+
+And the man on a branch yet above him groaned out “Amen!”
+
+“There is nothing to frighten sheep like a dog,” said Mananna’n, “and
+there is nothing to frighten these sheep like this dog.”
+
+He put the dog on the ground then.
+
+“Little dogeen, little treasure,” said he, “go and kill the sheep.”
+
+And when he said that the dog put an addition and an addendum on to the
+noise he had been making before, so that the men of Ireland stuck their
+fingers into their ears and turned the whites of their eyes upwards, and
+nearly fell off their branches with the fear and the fright which that
+sound put into them.
+
+It did not take the dog long to do what he had been ordered. He went
+forward, at first, with a slow waddle, and as the venomous sheep came to
+meet him in bounces, he then went to meet them in wriggles; so that in a
+while he went so fast that you could see nothing of him but a head and
+a wriggle. He dealt with the sheep in this way, a jump and a chop for
+each, and he never missed his jump and he never missed his chop. When he
+got his grip he swung round on it as if it was a hinge. The swing began
+with the chop, and it ended with the bit loose and the sheep giving its
+last kick. At the end of ten minutes all the sheep were lying on the
+ground, and the same bit was out of every sheep, and every sheep was
+dead.
+
+“You can come down now,” said Mananna’n.
+
+“That dog can’t climb a tree,” said the man in the branch above the king
+warningly.
+
+“Praise be to the gods!” said the man who was above him.
+
+“Amen!” said the warrior who was higher up than that. And the man in the
+next tree said:
+
+“Don’t move a hand or a foot until the dog chokes himself to death on
+the dead meat.”
+
+The dog, however, did not eat a bit of the meat. He trotted to his
+master, and Mananna’n took him up and wrapped him in his cloak.
+
+“Now you can come down,” said he.
+
+“I wish that dog was dead!” said the king.
+
+But he swung himself out of the tree all the same, for he did not wish
+to seem frightened before Mananna’n. “You can go now and beat the men
+of Lochlann,” said Mananna’n. “You will be King of Lochlann before
+nightfall.”
+
+“I wouldn’t mind that,” said the king. “It’s no threat,” said Mananna’n.
+
+The son of Lir turned then and went away in the direction of Ireland to
+take up his one-day rights, and Fiachna continued his battle with the
+Lochlannachs.
+
+He beat them before nightfall, and by that victory he became King of
+Lochlann and King of the Saxons and the Britons.
+
+He gave the Black Hag seven castles with their territories, and he gave
+her one hundred of every sort of cattle that he had captured. She was
+satisfied.
+
+Then he went back to Ireland, and after he had been there for some time
+his wife gave birth to a son.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+“You have not told me one word about Duv Laca,” said the Flame Lady
+reproachfully.
+
+“I am coming to that,” replied Mongan.
+
+He motioned towards one of the great vats, and wine was brought to him,
+of which he drank so joyously and so deeply that all people wondered at
+his thirst, his capacity, and his jovial spirits.
+
+“Now, I will begin again.”
+
+
+Said Mongan: There was an attendant in Fiachna Finn’s palace who was
+called An Da’v, and the same night that Fiachna’s wife bore a son, the
+wife of An Da’v gave birth to a son also. This latter child was called
+mac an Da’v, but the son of Fiachna’s wife was named Mongan.
+
+“Ah!” murmured the Flame Lady.
+
+The queen was angry. She said it was unjust and presumptuous that the
+servant should get a child at the same time that she got one herself,
+but there was no help for it, because the child was there and could not
+be obliterated.
+
+Now this also must be told.
+
+There was a neighbouring prince called Fiachna Duv, and he was the ruler
+of the Dal Fiatach. For a long time he had been at enmity and spiteful
+warfare with Fiachna Finn; and to this Fiachna Duv there was born in
+the same night a daughter, and this girl was named Duv Laca of the White
+Hand.
+
+“Ah!” cried the Flame Lady.
+
+“You see!” said Mongan, and he drank anew and joyously of the fairy
+wine.
+
+In order to end the trouble between Fiachna Finn and Fiachna Duv the
+babies were affianced to each other in the cradle on the day after they
+were born, and the men of Ireland rejoiced at that deed and at that
+news. But soon there came dismay and sorrow in the land, for when the
+little Mongan was three days old his real father, Mananna’n the son
+of Lir, appeared in the middle of the palace. He wrapped Mongan in his
+green cloak and took him away to rear and train in the Land of Promise,
+which is beyond the sea that is at the other side of the grave.
+
+When Fiachna Duv heard that Mongan, who was affianced to his daughter
+Duv Laca, had disappeared, he considered that his compact of peace was
+at an end, and one day he came by surprise and attacked the palace.
+He killed Fiachna Finn in that battle, and be crowned himself King of
+Ulster.
+
+The men of Ulster disliked him, and they petitioned Mananna’n to bring
+Mongan back, but Mananna’n would not do this until the boy was sixteen
+years of age and well reared in the wisdom of the Land of Promise. Then
+he did bring Mongan back, and by his means peace was made between Mongan
+and Fiachna Duv, and Mongan was married to his cradle-bride, the young
+Duv Laca.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+One day Mongan and Duv Laca were playing chess in their palace. Mongan
+had just made a move of skill, and he looked up from the board to see
+if Duv Laca seemed as discontented as she had a right to be. He saw
+then over Duv Laca’s shoulder a little black-faced, tufty-headed cleric
+leaning against the door-post inside the room.
+
+“What are you doing there?” said Mongan.
+
+“What are you doing there yourself?” said the little black-faced cleric.
+
+“Indeed, I have a right to be in my own house,” said Mongan.
+
+“Indeed I do not agree with you,” said the cleric.
+
+“Where ought I be, then?” said Mongan.
+
+“You ought to be at Dun Fiathac avenging the murder of your father,”
+ replied the cleric, “and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for not
+having done it long ago. You can play chess with your wife when you have
+won the right to leisure.”
+
+“But how can I kill my wife’s father?” Mongan exclaimed. “By starting
+about it at once,” said the cleric. “Here is a way of talking!” said
+Mongan.
+
+“I know,” the cleric continued, “that Duv Laca will not agree with a
+word I say on this subject, and that she will try to prevent you from
+doing what you have a right to do, for that is a wife’s business, but a
+man’s business is to do what I have just told you; so come with me now
+and do not wait to think about it, and do not wait to play any more
+chess. Fiachna Duv has only a small force with him at this moment,
+and we can burn his palace as he burned your father’s palace, and
+kill himself as he killed your father, and crown you King of Ulster
+rightfully the way he crowned himself wrongfully as a king.”
+
+“I begin to think that you own a lucky tongue, my black-faced friend,”
+ said Mongan, “and I will go with you.”
+
+He collected his forces then, and he burned Fiachna Duv’s fortress, and
+he killed Fiachna Duv, and he was crowned King of Ulster.
+
+Then for the first time he felt secure and at liberty to play chess.
+But he did not know until afterwards that the black-faced, tufty-headed
+person was his father Mananna’n, although that was the fact.
+
+There are some who say, however, that Fiachna the Black was killed in
+the year 624 by the lord of the Scot’s Dal Riada, Condad Cerr, at the
+battle of Ard Carainn; but the people who say this do not know what they
+are talking about, and they do not care greatly what it is they say.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+“There is nothing to marvel about in this Duv Laca,” said the Flame Lady
+scornfully. “She has got married, and she has been beaten at chess. It
+has happened before.”
+
+“Let us keep to the story,” said Mongan, and, having taken some few
+dozen deep draughts of the wine, he became even more jovial than before.
+Then he recommenced his tale:
+
+It happened on a day that Mongan had need of treasure. He had many
+presents to make, and he had not as much gold and silver and cattle as
+was proper for a king. He called his nobles together and discussed what
+was the best thing to be done, and it was arranged that he should visit
+the provincial kings and ask boons from them.
+
+He set out at once on his round of visits, and the first province he
+went to was Leinster.
+
+The King of Leinster at that time was Branduv, the son of Echach. He
+welcomed Mongan and treated him well, and that night Mongan slept in his
+palace.
+
+When he awoke in the morning he looked out of a lofty window, and he
+saw on the sunny lawn before the palace a herd of cows. There were fifty
+cows in all, for he counted them, and each cow had a calf beside her,
+and each cow and calf was pure white in colour, and each of them had red
+ears.
+
+When Mongan saw these cows, he fell in love with them as he had never
+fallen in love with anything before.
+
+He came down from the window and walked on the sunny lawn among the
+cows, looking at each of them and speaking words of affection and
+endearment to them all; and while he was thus walking and talking and
+looking and loving, he noticed that some one was moving beside him. He
+looked from the cows then, and saw that the King of Leinster was at his
+side.
+
+“Are you in love with the cows?” Branduv asked him.
+
+“I am,” said Mongan.
+
+“Everybody is,” said the King of Leinster.
+
+“I never saw anything like them,” said Mongan.
+
+“Nobody has,” said the King of Leinster.
+
+“I never saw anything I would rather have than these cows,” said Mongan.
+
+“These,” said the King of Leinster, “are the most beautiful cows
+in Ireland, and,” he continued thoughtfully, “Duv Laca is the most
+beautiful woman in Ireland.”
+
+“There is no lie in what you say,” said Mongan.
+
+“Is it not a queer thing,” said the King of Leinster, “that I should
+have what you want with all your soul, and you should have what I want
+with all my heart?”
+
+“Queer indeed,” said Mongan, “but what is it that you do want?”
+
+“Duv Laca, of course,” said the King of Leinster.
+
+“Do you mean,” said Mongan, “that you would exchange this herd of fifty
+pure white cows having red ears--”
+
+“And their fifty calves,” said the King of Leinster--
+
+“For Duv Laca, or for any woman in the world?”
+
+“I would,” cried the King of Leinster, and he thumped his knee as he
+said it.
+
+“Done,” roared Mongan, and the two kings shook hands on the bargain.
+
+Mongan then called some of his own people, and before any more words
+could be said and before any alteration could be made, he set his men
+behind the cows and marched home with them to Ulster.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Duv Laca wanted to know where the cows came from, and Mongan told her
+that the King of Leinster had given them to him. She fell in love with
+them as Mongan had done, but there was nobody in the world could have
+avoided loving those cows: such cows they were! such wonders! Mongan
+and Duv Laca used to play chess together, and then they would go out
+together to look at the cows, and then they would go in together and
+would talk to each other about the cows. Everything they did they did
+together, for they loved to be with each other.
+
+However, a change came.
+
+One morning a great noise of voices and trampling of horses and rattle
+of armour came about the palace. Mongan looked from the window.
+
+“Who is coming?” asked Duv Laca.
+
+But he did not answer her.
+
+“The noise must announce the visit of a king,” Duv Laca continued.
+
+But Mongan did not say a word. Duv Laca then went to the window.
+
+“Who is that king?” she asked.
+
+And her husband replied to her then.
+
+“That is the King of Leinster,” said he mournfully.
+
+“Well,” said Duv Laca surprised, “is he not welcome?”
+
+“He is welcome indeed,” said Mongan lamentably.
+
+“Let us go out and welcome him properly,” Duv Laca suggested.
+
+“Let us not go near him at all,” said Mongan, “for he is coming to
+complete his bargain.”
+
+“What bargain are you talking about?” Duv Laca asked. But Mongan would
+not answer that.
+
+“Let us go out,” said he, “for we must go out.”
+
+Mongan and Duv Laca went out then and welcomed the King of Leinster.
+They brought him and his chief men into the palace, and water was
+brought for their baths, and rooms were appointed for them, and
+everything was done that should be done for guests.
+
+That night there was a feast, and after the feast there was a banquet,
+and all through the feast and the banquet the King of Leinster stared
+at Duv Laca with joy, and sometimes his breast was delivered of great
+sighs, and at times he moved as though in perturbation of spirit and
+mental agony.
+
+“There is something wrong with the King of Leinster,” Duv Laca
+whispered.
+
+“I don’t care if there is,” said Mongan.
+
+“You must ask what he wants.”
+
+“But I don’t want to know it,” said Mongan. “Nevertheless, you musk ask
+him,” she insisted.
+
+So Mongan did ask him, and it was in a melancholy voice that he asked
+it.
+
+“Do you want anything?” said he to the King of Leinster.
+
+“I do indeed,” said Branduv.
+
+“If it is in Ulster I will get it for you,” said Mongan mournfully.
+
+“It is in Ulster,” said Branduv.
+
+Mongan did not want to say anything more then, but the King of Leinster
+was so intent and everybody else was listening and Duv Laca was nudging
+his arm, so he said: “What is it that you do want?” “I want Duv Laca.”
+
+“I want her too,” said Mongan.
+
+“You made your bargain,” said the King of Leinster, “my cows and their
+calves for your Duv Laca, and the man that makes a bargain keeps a
+bargain.”
+
+“I never before heard,” said Mongan, “of a man giving away his own
+wife.”
+
+“Even if you never heard of it before, you must do it now,” said Duv
+Laca, “for honour is longer than life.”
+
+Mongan became angry when Duv Laca said that. His face went red as a
+sunset, and the veins swelled in his neck and his forehead.
+
+“Do you say that?” he cried to Duv Laca.
+
+“I do,” said Duv Laca.
+
+“Let the King of Leinster take her,” said Mongan.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Duv Laca and the King of Leinster went apart then to speak together, and
+the eye of the king seemed to be as big as a plate, so fevered was
+it and so enlarged and inflamed by the look of Duv Laca. He was so
+confounded with joy also that his words got mixed up with his teeth, and
+Duv Laca did not know exactly what it was he was trying to say, and
+he did not seem to know himself. But at last he did say something
+intelligible, and this is what he said.
+
+“I am a very happy man,” said he.
+
+“And I,” said Duv Laca, “am the happiest woman in the world.”
+
+“Why should you be happy?” the astonished king demanded.
+
+“Listen to me,” she said. “If you tried to take me away from this place
+against my own wish, one half of the men of Ulster would be dead before
+you got me and the other half would be badly wounded in my defence.”
+
+“A bargain is a bargain,” the King of Leinster began.
+
+“But,” she continued, “they will not prevent my going away, for they all
+know that I have been in love with you for ages.”
+
+“What have you been in with me for ages?” said the amazed king.
+
+“In love with you,” replied Duv Laca.
+
+“This is news,” said the king, “and it is good news.”
+
+“But, by my word,” said Duv Laca, “I will not go with you unless you
+grant me a boon.”
+
+“All that I have,” cried Branduv, “and all that every-body has.”
+
+“And you must pass your word and pledge your word that you will do what
+I ask.”
+
+“I pass it and pledge it,” cried the joyful king.
+
+“Then,” said Duv Laca, “this is what I bind on you.”
+
+“Light the yolk!” he cried.
+
+“Until one year is up and out you are not to pass the night in any house
+that I am in.”
+
+“By my head and hand!” Branduv stammered.
+
+“And if you come into a house where I am during the time and term of
+that year, you are not to sit down in the chair that I am sitting in.”
+
+“Heavy is my doom!” he groaned.
+
+“But,” said Duv Laca, “if I am sitting in a chair or a seat you are
+to sit in a chair that is over against me and opposite to me and at a
+distance from me.”
+
+“Alas!” said the king, and he smote his hands together, and then he beat
+them on his head, and then he looked at them and at everything about,
+and he could not tell what anything was or where anything was, for his
+mind was clouded and his wits had gone astray.
+
+“Why do you bind these woes on me?” he pleaded.
+
+
+“I wish to find out if you truly love me.”
+
+“But I do,” said the king. “I love you madly and dearly, and with all my
+faculties and members.”
+
+“That is the way! love you,” said Duv Laca. “We shall have a notable
+year of courtship and joy. And let us go now,” she continued, “for I am
+impatient to be with you.”
+
+“Alas!” said Branduv, as he followed her. “Alas, alas!” said the King of
+Leinster.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+“I think,” said the Flame Lady, “that whoever lost that woman had no
+reason to be sad.”
+
+Mongan took her chin in his hand and kissed her lips.
+
+“All that you say is lovely, for you are lovely,” said he, “and you are
+my delight and the joy of the world.”
+
+Then the attendants brought him wine, and he drank so joyously of that
+and so deeply, that those who observed him thought he would surely burst
+and drown them. But he laughed loudly and with enormous delight, until
+the vessels of gold and silver and bronze chimed mellowly to his peal
+and the rafters of the house went creaking.
+
+Said he:
+
+Mongan loved Duv Laca of the White Hand better than he loved his life,
+better than he loved his honour. The kingdoms of the world did not weigh
+with him beside the string of her shoe. He would not look at a sunset
+if he could see her. He would not listen to a harp if he could hear her
+speak, for she was the delight of ages, the gem of time, and the wonder
+of the world till Doom.
+
+She went to Leinster with the king of that country, and when she had
+gone Mongan fell grievously sick, so that it did not seem he could ever
+recover again; and he began to waste and wither, and he began to look
+like a skeleton, and a bony structure, and a misery.
+
+Now this also must be known.
+
+Duv Laca had a young attendant, who was her foster-sister as well as her
+servant, and on the day that she got married to Mongan, her attendant
+was married to mac an Da’v, who was servant and foster-brother to
+Mongan. When Duv Laca went away with the King of Leinster, her servant,
+mac an Da’v’s wife, went with her, so there were two wifeless men
+in Ulster at that time, namely, Mongan the king and mac an Da’v his
+servant.
+
+One day as Mongan sat in the sun, brooding lamentably on his fate, mac
+an Da’v came to him.
+
+“How are things with you, master?” asked Mac an Da’v.
+
+“Bad,” said Mongan.
+
+“It was a poor day brought you off with Mananna’n to the Land of
+Promise,” said his servant.
+
+“Why should you think that?” inquired Mongan.
+
+“Because,” said mac an Da’v, “you learned nothing in the Land of Promise
+except how to eat a lot of food and how to do nothing in a deal of
+time.”
+
+“What business is it of yours?” said Mongan angrily.
+
+“It is my business surely,” said mac an Da’v, “for my wife has gone off
+to Leinster with your wife, and she wouldn’t have gone if you hadn’t
+made a bet and a bargain with that accursed king.”
+
+Mac an Da’v began to weep then.
+
+“I didn’t make a bargain with any king,” said he, “and yet my wife has
+gone away with one, and it’s all because of you.”
+
+“There is no one sorrier for you than I am,” said Mongan.
+
+“There is indeed,” said mac an Da’v, “for I am sorrier myself.”
+
+Mongan roused himself then.
+
+“You have a claim on me truly,” said he, “and I will not have any one
+with a claim on me that is not satisfied. Go,” he said to mac an Da’v,
+“to that fairy place we both know of. You remember the baskets I left
+there with the sod from Ireland in one and the sod from Scotland in the
+other; bring me the baskets and sods.”
+
+“Tell me the why of this?” said his servant.
+
+“The King of Leinster will ask his wizards what I am doing, and this is
+what I will be doing. I will get on your back with a foot in each of the
+baskets, and when Branduv asks the wizards where I am they will tell him
+that I have one leg in Ireland and one leg in Scotland, and as long as
+they tell him that he will think he need not bother himself about me,
+and we will go into Leinster that way.”
+
+“No bad way either,” said mac an Da’v.
+
+They set out then.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+It was a long, uneasy journey, for although mac an Da’v was of stout
+heart and goodwill, yet no man can carry another on his back from Ulster
+to Leinster and go quick. Still, if you keep on driving a pig or a story
+they will get at last to where you wish them to go, and the man who
+continues putting one foot in front of the other will leave his home
+behind, and will come at last to the edge of the sea and the end of the
+world.
+
+When they reached Leinster the feast of Moy Life’ was being held, and
+they pushed on by forced marches and long stages so as to be in time,
+and thus they came to the Moy of Cell Camain, and they mixed with the
+crowd that were going to the feast.
+
+A great and joyous concourse of people streamed about them. There were
+young men and young girls, and when these were not holding each other’s
+hands it was because their arms were round each other’s necks. There
+were old, lusty women going by, and when these were not talking together
+it was because their mouths were mutually filled with apples and
+meat-pies. There were young warriors with mantles of green and purple
+and red flying behind them on the breeze, and when these were not
+looking disdainfully on older soldiers it was because the older soldiers
+happened at the moment to be looking at them. There were old warriors
+with yard-long beards flying behind their shoulders llke wisps of hay,
+and when these were not nursing a broken arm or a cracked skull, it was
+because they were nursing wounds in their stomachs or their legs. There
+were troops of young women who giggled as long as their breaths lasted
+and beamed when it gave out. Bands of boys who whispered mysteriously
+together and pointed with their fingers in every direction at once, and
+would suddenly begin to run like a herd of stampeded horses. There were
+men with carts full of roasted meats. Women with little vats full of
+mead, and others carrying milk and beer. Folk of both sorts with towers
+swaying on their heads, and they dripping with honey. Children having
+baskets piled with red apples, and old women who peddled shell-fish and
+boiled lobsters. There were people who sold twenty kinds of bread, with
+butter thrown in. Sellers of onions and cheese, and others who supplied
+spare bits of armour, odd scabbards, spear handles, breastplate-laces.
+People who cut your hair or told your fortune or gave you a hot bath in
+a pot. Others who put a shoe on your horse or a piece of embroidery on
+your mantle; and others, again, who took stains off your sword or dyed
+your finger-nails or sold you a hound.
+
+It was a great and joyous gathering that was going to the feast.
+
+Mongan and his servant sat against a grassy hedge by the roadside and
+watched the multitude streaming past.
+
+Just then Mongan glanced to the right whence the people were coming.
+Then he pulled the hood of his cloak over his ears and over his brow.
+
+“Alas!” said he in a deep and anguished voice.
+
+Mac an Da’v turned to him.
+
+“Is it a pain in your stomach, master?”
+
+“It is not,” said Mongan. “Well, what made you make that brutal and
+belching noise?”
+
+“It was a sigh I gave,” said Mongan.
+
+“Whatever it was,” said mac an Da’v, “what was it?”
+
+“Look down the road on this side and tell me who is coming,” said his
+master.
+
+“It is a lord with his troop.”
+
+“It is the King of Leinster,” said Mongan. “The man,” said mac an Da’v
+in a tone of great pity, “the man that took away your wife! And,” he
+roared in a voice of extraordinary savagery, “the man that took away my
+wife into the bargain, and she not in the bargain.”
+
+“Hush,” said Mongan, for a man who heard his shout stopped to tie a
+sandie, or to listen.
+
+“Master,” said mac an Da’v as the troop drew abreast and moved past.
+
+“What is it, my good friend?”
+
+“Let me throw a little small piece of a rock at the King of Leinster.”
+
+“I will not.”
+
+“A little bit only, a small bit about twice the size of my head.”
+
+“I will not let you,” said Mongan.
+
+When the king had gone by mac an Da’v groaned a deep and dejected groan.
+
+“Oco’n!” said he. “Oco’n-i’o-go-deo’!” said he.
+
+The man who had tied his sandal said then: “Are you in pain, honest
+man?”
+
+“I am not in pain,” said mac an Da’v.
+
+“Well, what was it that knocked a howl out of you like the yelp of a
+sick dog, honest man?”
+
+“Go away,” said mac an Da’v, “go away, you flat-faced, nosey person.”
+ “There is no politeness left in this country,” said the stranger, and he
+went away to a certain distance, and from thence he threw a stone at mac
+an Da’v’s nose, and hit it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The road was now not so crowded as it had been. Minutes would pass and
+only a few travellers would come, and minutes more would go when nobody
+was in sight at all.
+
+Then two men came down the road: they were clerics.
+
+“I never saw that kind of uniform before,” said mac an Da’v.
+
+“Even if you didn’t,” said Mongan, “there are plenty of them about. They
+are men that don’t believe in our gods,” said he.
+
+“Do they not, indeed?” said mac an Da’v. “The rascals!” said he. “What,
+what would Mananna’n say to that?”
+
+“The one in front carrying the big book is Tibraide’. He is the priest
+of Cell Camain, and he is the chief of those two.”
+
+“Indeed, and indeed!” said mac an Da’v. “The one behind must be his
+servant, for he has a load on his back.”
+
+The priests were reading their offices, and mac an Da’v marvelled at
+that.
+
+
+“What is it they are doing?” said he.
+
+“They are reading.”
+
+“Indeed, and indeed they are,” said mac an Da’v. “I can’t make out a
+word of the language except that the man behind says amen, amen, every
+time the man in front puts a grunt out of him. And they don’t like our
+gods at all!” said mac an Da’v.
+
+“They do not,” said Mongan.
+
+“Play a trick on them, master,” said mac an Da’v. Mongan agreed to play
+a trick on the priests.
+
+He looked at them hard for a minute, and then he waved his hand at them.
+
+The two priests stopped, and they stared straight in front of them, and
+then they looked at each other, and then they looked at the sky. The
+clerk began to bless himself, and then Tibraide’ began to bless himself,
+and after that they didn’t know what to do. For where there had been a
+road with hedges on each side and fields stretching beyond them, there
+was now no road, no hedge, no field; but there was a great broad river
+sweeping across their path; a mighty tumble of yellowy-brown waters,
+very swift, very savage; churning and billowing and jockeying among
+rough boulders and islands of stone. It was a water of villainous depth
+and of detestable wetness; of ugly hurrying and of desolate cavernous
+sound. At a little to their right there was a thin uncomely bridge that
+waggled across the torrent.
+
+Tibraide’ rubbed his eyes, and then he looked again. “Do you see what I
+see?” said he to the clerk.
+
+“I don’t know what you see,” said the clerk, “but what I see I never did
+see before, and I wish I did not see it now.”
+
+“I was born in this place,” said Tibraide’, “my father was born here
+before me, and my grandfather was born here before him, but until this
+day and this minute I never saw a river here before, and I never heard
+of one.”
+
+“What will we do at all?” said the clerk. “What will we do at all?”
+
+“We will be sensible,” said Tibraide’ sternly, “and we will go about our
+business,” said he. “If rivers fall out of the sky what has that to do
+with you, and if there is a river here, which there is, why, thank God,
+there is a bridge over it too.”
+
+“Would you put a toe on that bridge?” said the clerk. “What is the
+bridge for?” said Tibraide’ Mongan and mac an Da’v followed them.
+
+When they got to the middle of the bridge it broke under them, and they
+were precipitated into that boiling yellow flood.
+
+Mongan snatched at the book as it fell from Tibraide’s hand.
+
+“Won’t you let them drown, master?” asked mac an Da’v.
+
+“No,” said Mongan, “I’ll send them a mile down the stream, and then they
+can come to land.”
+
+Mongan then took on himself the form of Tibraide’ and he turned mac an
+Da’v into the shape of the clerk.
+
+“My head has gone bald,” said the servant in a whisper.
+
+“That is part of it,” replied Mongan. “So long as we know,” said mac an
+Da’v.
+
+They went on then to meet the King of Leinster.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+They met him near the place where the games were played.
+
+“Good my soul, Tibraide’!” cried the King of Leinster, and he gave
+Mongan a kiss. Mongan kissed him back again.
+
+“Amen, amen,” said mac an Da’v.
+
+“What for?” said the King of Leinster.
+
+And then mac an Da’v began to sneeze, for he didn’t know what for.
+
+“It is a long time since I saw you, Tibraide’,” said the king, “but at
+this minute I am in great haste and hurry. Go you on before me to the
+fortress, and you can talk to the queen that you’ll find there, she that
+used to be the King of Ulster’s wife. Kevin Cochlach, my charioteer,
+will go with you, and I will follow you myself in a while.”
+
+The King of Leinster went off then, and Mongan and his servant went with
+the charioteer and the people.
+
+Mongan read away out of the book, for he found it interesting, and he
+did not want to talk to the charioteer, and mac an Da’v cried amen,
+amen, every time that Mongan took his breath. The people who were going
+with them said to one another that mac an Da’v was a queer kind of
+clerk, and that they had never seen any one who had such a mouthful of
+amens.
+
+But in a while they came to the fortress, and they got into it without
+any trouble, for Kevin Cochlach, the king’s charioteer, brought them in.
+Then they were led to the room where Duv Laca was, and as he went into
+that room Mongan shut his eyes, for he did not want to look at Duv Laca
+while other people might be looking at him.
+
+“Let everybody leave this room, while I am talking to the queen,” said
+he; and all the attendants left the room, except one, and she wouldn’t
+go, for she wouldn’t leave her mistress.
+
+Then Mongan opened his eyes and he saw Duv Laca, and he made a great
+bound to her and took her in his arms, and mac an Da’v made a savage and
+vicious and terrible jump at the attendant, and took her in his arms,
+and bit her ear and kissed her neck and wept down into her back.
+
+“Go away,” said the girl, “unhand me, villain,” said she.
+
+“I will not,” said mac an Da’v, “for I’m your own husband, I’m your own
+mac, your little mac, your macky-wac-wac.” Then the attendant gave a
+little squeal, and she bit him on each ear and kissed his neck and wept
+down into his back, and said that it wasn’t true and that it was.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+But they were not alone, although they thought they were. The hag that
+guarded the jewels was in the room. She sat hunched up against the wail,
+and as she looked like a bundle of rags they did not notice her. She
+began to speak then.
+
+“Terrible are the things I see,” said she. “Terrible are the things I
+see.”
+
+Mongan and his servant gave a jump of surprise, and their two wives
+jumped and squealed. Then Mongan puffed out his cheeks till his face
+looked like a bladder, and he blew a magic breath at the hag, so that
+she seemed to be surrounded by a fog, and when she looked through that
+breath everything seemed to be different to what she had thought. Then
+she began to beg everybody’s pardon.
+
+“I had an evil vision,” said she, “I saw crossways. How sad it is that I
+should begin to see the sort of things I thought I saw.”
+
+“Sit in this chair, mother,” said Mongan, “and tell me what you thought
+you saw,” and he slipped a spike under her, and mac an Da’v pushed her
+into the seat, and she died on the spike.
+
+Just then there came a knocking at the door. Mac an Da’v opened it, and
+there was Tibraide, standing outside, and twenty-nine of his men were
+with him, and they were all laughing.
+
+“A mile was not half enough,” said mac an Da’v reproachfully.
+
+The Chamberlain of the fortress pushed into the room and he stared from
+one Tibraide’ to the other.
+
+“This is a fine growing year,” said he. “There never was a year
+when Tibraide’s were as plentiful as they are this year. There is a
+Tibraide’ outside and a Tibraide’ inside, and who knows but there are
+some more of them under the bed. The place is crawling with them,” said
+he.
+
+Mongan pointed at Tibraide’.
+
+“Don’t you know who that is?” he cried.
+
+“I know who he says he is,” said the Chamberlain.
+
+“Well, he is Mongan,” said Mongan, “and these twenty-nine men are
+twenty-nine of his nobles from Ulster.”
+
+At that news the men of the household picked up clubs and cudgels and
+every kind of thing that was near, and made a violent and woeful attack
+on Tibraide’s men The King of Leinster came in then, and when he was
+told Tibraide’ was Mongan he attacked them as well, and it was with
+difficulty that Tibraide’ got away to Cell Camain with nine of his men
+and they all wounded.
+
+The King of Leinster came back then. He went to Duv Laca’s room.
+
+“Where is Tibraide’?” said he.
+
+“It wasn’t Tibraide was here,” said the hag who was still sitting on
+the spike, and was not half dead, “it was Mongan.”
+
+“Why did you let him near you?” said the king to Duv Laca.
+
+“There is no one has a better right to be near me than Mongan has,” said
+Duv Laca, “he is my own husband,” said she.
+
+And then the king cried out in dismay: “I have beaten Tibraide’s
+people.” He rushed from the room.
+
+“Send for Tibraide’ till I apologise,” he cried. “Tell him it was all a
+mistake. Tell him it was Mongan.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Mongan and his servant went home, and (for what pleasure is greater than
+that of memory exercised in conversation?) for a time the feeling of an
+adventure well accomplished kept him in some contentment. But at the
+end of a time that pleasure was worn out, and Mongan grew at first
+dispirited and then sullen, and after that as ill as he had been on the
+previous occasion. For he could not forget Duv Laca of the White Hand,
+and he could not remember her without longing and despair.
+
+It was in the illness which comes from longing and despair that he sat
+one day looking on a world that was black although the sun shone, and
+that was lean and unwholesome although autumn fruits were heavy on the
+earth and the joys of harvest were about him.
+
+“Winter is in my heart,” quoth he, “and I am cold already.”
+
+He thought too that some day he would die, and the thought was not
+unpleasant, for one half of his life was away in the territories of the
+King of Leinster, and the half that he kept in himself had no spice in
+it.
+
+He was thinking in this way when mac an Da’v came towards him over the
+lawn, and he noticed that mac an Da’v was walking like an old man.
+
+He took little slow steps, and he did not loosen his knees when he
+walked, so he went stiffly. One of his feet turned pitifully outwards,
+and the other turned lamentably in. His chest was pulled inwards, and
+his head was stuck outwards and hung down in the place where his chest
+should have been, and his arms were crooked in front of him with the
+hands turned wrongly, so that one palm was shown to the east of the
+world and the other one was turned to the west.
+
+“How goes it, mac an Da’v?” said the king.
+
+“Bad,” said mac an Da’v.
+
+“Is that the sun I see shining, my friend?” the king asked.
+
+“It may be the sun,” replied mac an Da’v, peering curiously at the
+golden radiance that dozed about them, “but maybe it’s a yellow fog.”
+
+“What is life at all?” said the king.
+
+“It is a weariness and a tiredness,” said mac an Da’v. “It is a long
+yawn without sleepiness. It is a bee, lost at midnight and buzzing on
+a pane. It is the noise made by a tied-up dog. It is nothing worth
+dreaming about. It is nothing at all.”
+
+“How well you explain my feelings about Duv Laca,” said the king.
+
+“I was thinking about my own lamb,” said mac an Da’v. “I was thinking
+about my own treasure, my cup of cheeriness, and the pulse of my heart.”
+ And with that he burst into tears.
+
+“Alas!” said the king.
+
+“But,” sobbed mac an Da’v, “what right have I to complain? I am only
+the servant, and although I didn’t make any bargain with the King of
+Leinster or with any king of them all, yet my wife is gone away as if
+she was the consort of a potentate the same as Duv Laca is.”
+
+Mongan was sorry then for his servant, and he roused himself.
+
+“I am going to send you to Duv Laca.”
+
+“Where the one is the other will be,” cried mac an Da’v joyously.
+
+“Go,” said Mongan, “to Rath Descirt of Bregia; you know that place?”
+
+“As well as my tongue knows my teeth.”
+
+“Duv Laca is there; see her, and ask her what she wants me to do.”
+
+Mac an Da’v went there and returned.
+
+“Duv Laca says that you are to come at once, for the King of Leinster is
+journeying around his territory, and Kevin Cochlach, the charioteer, is
+making bitter love to her and wants her to run away with him.”
+
+Mongan set out, and in no great time, for they travelled day and night,
+they came to Bregla, and gained admittance to the fortress, but just
+as he got in he had to go out again, for the King of Leinster had been
+warned of Mongan’s journey, and came back to his fortress in the nick of
+time.
+
+When the men of Ulster saw the condition into which Mongan fell they
+were in great distress, and they all got sick through compassion for
+their king. The nobles suggested to him that they should march against
+Leinster and kill that king and bring back Duv Laca, but Mongan would
+not consent to this plan.
+
+“For,” said he, “the thing I lost through my own folly I shall get back
+through my own craft.”
+
+And when he said that his spirits revived, and he called for mac an
+Da’v.
+
+“You know, my friend,” said Mongan, “that I can’t get Duv Laca back
+unless the King of Leinster asks me to take her back, for a bargain is a
+bargain.”
+
+“That will happen when pigs fly,” said mac an Da’v, “and,” said he, “I
+did not make any bargain with any king that is in the world.”
+
+“I heard you say that before,” said Mongan.
+
+“I will say it till Doom,” cried his servant, “for my wife has gone
+away with that pestilent king, and he has got the double of your bad
+bargain.”
+
+Mongan and his servant then set out for Leinster.
+
+When they neared that country they found a great crowd going on the road
+with them, and they learned that the king was giving a feast in honour
+of his marriage to Duv Laca, for the year of waiting was nearly out, and
+the king had sworn he would delay no longer.
+
+They went on, therefore, but in low spirits, and at last they saw the
+walls of the king’s castle towering before them, and a noble company
+going to and fro on the lawn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THEY sat in a place where they could watch the castle and compose
+themselves after their journey.
+
+“How are we going to get into the castle?” asked mac an Da’v.
+
+For there were hatchetmen on guard in the big gateway, and there were
+spearmen at short intervals around the walls, and men to throw hot
+porridge off the roof were standing in the right places.
+
+“If we cannot get in by hook, we will get in by crook,” said Mongan.
+
+“They are both good ways,” said Mac an Da’v, “and whichever of them you
+decide on I’ll stick by.”
+
+Just then they saw the Hag of the Mill coming out of the mill which was
+down the road a little.
+
+Now the Hag of the Mill was a bony, thin pole of a hag with odd feet.
+That is, she had one foot that was too big for her, so that when she
+lifted it up it pulled her over; and she had one foot that was too small
+for her, so that when she lifted it up she didn’t know what to do with
+it. She was so long that you thought you would never see the end of her,
+and she was so thin that you thought you didn’t see her at all. One of
+her eyes was set where her nose should be and there was an ear in its
+place, and her nose itself was hanging out of her chin, and she had
+whiskers round it. She was dressed in a red rag that was really a hole
+with a fringe on it, and she was singing “Oh, hush thee, my one love” to
+a cat that was yelping on her shoulder.
+
+She had a tall skinny dog behind her called Brotar. It hadn’t a tooth in
+its head except one, and it had the toothache in that tooth. Every few
+steps it used to sit down on its hunkers and point its nose straight
+upwards, and make a long, sad complaint about its tooth; and after that
+it used to reach its hind leg round and try to scratch out its tooth;
+and then it used to be pulled on again by the straw rope that was round
+its neck, and which was tied at the other end to the hag’s heaviest
+foot.
+
+There was an old, knock-kneed, raw-boned, one-eyed, little-winded,
+heavy-headed mare with her also. Every time it put a front leg forward
+it shivered all over the rest of its legs backwards, and when it put a
+hind leg forward it shivered all over the rest of its legs frontwards,
+and it used to give a great whistle through its nose when it was out of
+breath, and a big, thin hen was sitting on its croup. Mongan looked on
+the Hag of the Mill with delight and affection.
+
+“This time,” said he to mac an Da’v, “I’ll get back my wife.”
+
+“You will indeed,” said mac an Da’v heartily, “and you’ll get mine back
+too.”
+
+“Go over yonder,” said Mongan, “and tell the Hag of the Mill that I want
+to talk to her.”
+
+Mac an Da’v brought her over to him.
+
+“Is it true what the servant man said?” she asked.
+
+“What did he say?” said Mongan.
+
+“He said you wanted to talk to me.”
+
+“It is true,” said Mongan.
+
+“This is a wonderful hour and a glorious minute,” said the hag, “for
+this is the first time in sixty years that any one wanted to talk to me.
+Talk on now,” said she, “and I’ll listen to you if I can remember how to
+do it. Talk gently,” said she, “the way you won’t disturb the animals,
+for they are all sick.”
+
+“They are sick indeed,” said mac an Da’v pityingly.
+
+“The cat has a sore tail,” said she, “by reason of sitting too close to
+a part of the hob that was hot. The dog has a toothache, the horse has a
+pain in her stomach, and the hen has the pip.”
+
+“Ah, it’s a sad world,” said mac an Da’v.
+
+“There you are!” said the hag.
+
+“Tell me,” Mongan commenced, “if you got a wish, what it is you would
+wish for?”
+
+The hag took the cat off her shoulder and gave it to mac an Da’v.
+
+“Hold that for me while I think,” said she.
+
+“Would you like to be a lovely young girl?” asked Mongan.
+
+“I’d sooner be that than a skinned eel,” said she.
+
+“And would you like to marry me or the King of Leinster?” “I’d like to
+marry either of you, or both of you, or whichever of you came first.”
+
+“Very well,” said Mongan, “you shall have your wish.”
+
+He touched her with his finger, and the instant he touched her all
+dilapidation and wryness and age went from her, and she became so
+beautiful that one dared scarcely look on her, and so young that she
+seemed but sixteen years of age.
+
+“You are not the Hag of the Mill any longer,” said Mongan, “you are
+Ivell of the Shining Cheeks, daughter of the King of Munster.”
+
+He touched the dog too, and it became a little silky lapdog that could
+nestle in your palm. Then he changed the old mare into a brisk, piebald
+palfrey. Then he changed himself so that he became the living image of
+Ae, the son of the King of Connaught, who had just been married to Ivell
+of the Shining Cheeks, and then he changed mac an Da’v into the likeness
+of Ae’s attendant, and then they all set off towards the fortress,
+singing the song that begins: My wife is nicer than any one’s wife, Any
+one’s wife, any one’s wife, My wife is nicer than any one’s wife, Which
+nobody can deny.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+The doorkeeper brought word to the King of Leinster that the son of the
+King of Connaught, Ae the Beautiful, and his wife, Ivell of the Shining
+Cheeks, were at the door, that they had been banished from Connaught
+by Ae’s father, and they were seeking the protection of the King of
+Leinster.
+
+Branduv came to the door himself to welcome them, and the minute he
+looked on Ivell of the Shining Cheeks it was plain that he liked looking
+at her.
+
+It was now drawing towards evening, and a feast was prepared for the
+guests with a banquet to follow it. At the feast Duv Laca sat beside the
+King of Leinster, but Mongan sat opposite him with Ivell, and Mongan put
+more and more magic into the hag, so that her cheeks shone and her eyes
+gleamed, and she was utterly bewitching to the eye; and when Branduv
+looked at her she seemed to grow more and more lovely and more and more
+desirable, and at last there was not a bone in his body as big as an
+inch that was not filled with love and longing for the girl.
+
+Every few minutes he gave a great sigh as if he had eaten too much, and
+when Duv Laca asked him if he had eaten too much he said he had but
+that he had not drunk enough, and by that he meant that he had not drunk
+enough from the eyes of the girl before him.
+
+At the banquet which was then held he looked at her again, and every
+time he took a drink he toasted Ivell across the brim of his goblet, and
+in a little while she began to toast him back across the rim of her
+cup, for he was drinking ale, but she was drinking mead. Then he sent a
+messenger to her to say that it was a far better thing to be the wife
+of the King of Leinster than to be the wife of the son of the King of
+Connaught, for a king is better than a prince, and Ivell thought that
+this was as wise a thing as anybody had ever said. And then he sent a
+message to say that he loved her so much that he would certainly burst
+of love if it did not stop.
+
+Mongan heard the whispering, and he told the hag that if she did what he
+advised she would certainly get either himself or the King of Leinster
+for a husband.
+
+“Either of you will be welcome,” said the hag.
+
+“When the king says he loves you, ask him to prove it by gifts; ask for
+his drinking-horn first.”
+
+She asked for that, and he sent it to her filled with good liquor; then
+she asked for his girdle, and he sent her that.
+
+His people argued with him and said it was not right that he should give
+away the treasures of Leinster to the wife of the King of Connaught’s
+son; but he said that it did not matter, for when he got the girl he
+would get his treasures with her. But every time he sent anything to the
+hag, mac an Da’v snatched it out of her lap and put it in his pocket.
+
+“Now,” said Mongan to the hag, “tell the servant to say that you would
+not leave your own husband for all the wealth of the world.”
+
+She told the servant that, and the servant told it to the king. When
+Branduv heard it he nearly went mad with love and longing and jealousy,
+and with rage also, because of the treasure he had given her and might
+not get back. He called Mongan over to him, and spoke to him very
+threateningly and ragingly.
+
+“I am not one who takes a thing without giving a thing,” said he.
+
+“Nobody could say you were,” agreed Mongan.
+
+“Do you see this woman sitting beside me?” he continued, pointing to Duv
+Laca.
+
+“I do indeed,” said Mongan.
+
+“Well,” said Branduv, “this woman is Duv Laca of the White Hand that I
+took away from Mongan; she is just going to marry me, but if you will
+make an exchange, you can marry this Duv Laca here, and I will marry
+that Ivell of the Shining Cheeks yonder.”
+
+Mongan pretended to be very angry then.
+
+“If I had come here with horses and treasure you would be in your right
+to take these from me, but you have no right to ask for what you are now
+asking.”
+
+“I do ask for it,” said Branduv menacingly, “and you must not refuse a
+lord.”
+
+“Very well,” said Mongan reluctantly, and as if in great fear; “if you
+will make the exchange I will make it, although it breaks my heart.”
+
+He brought Ivell over to the king then and gave her three kisses.
+
+“The king would suspect something if I did not kiss you,” said he, and
+then he gave the hag over to the king. After that they all got drunk and
+merry, and soon there was a great snoring and snorting, and very soon
+all the servants fell asleep also, so that Mongan could not get anything
+to drink. Mac an Da’v said it was a great shame, and he kicked some of
+the servants, but they did not budge, and then he slipped out to the
+stables and saddled two mares. He got on one with his wife behind him
+and Mongan got on the other with Duv Laca behind him, and they rode away
+towards Ulster like the wind, singing this song: The King of Leinster
+was married to-day, Married to-day, married to-day, The King of Leinster
+was married to-day, And every one wishes him joy.
+
+In the morning the servants came to waken the King of Leinster, and when
+they saw the face of the hag lying on the pillow beside the king, and
+her nose all covered with whiskers, and her big foot and little foot
+sticking away out at the end of the bed, they began to laugh, and poke
+one another in the stomachs and thump one another on the shoulders, so
+that the noise awakened the king, and he asked what was the matter with
+them at all. It was then he saw the hag lying beside him, and he gave a
+great screech and jumped out of the bed.
+
+“Aren’t you the Hag of the Mill?” said he.
+
+“I am indeed,” she replied, “and I love you dearly.”
+
+“I wish I didn’t see you,” said Branduv.
+
+That was the end of the story, and when he had told it Mongan began to
+laugh uproariously and called for more wine. He drank this deeply, as
+though he was full of thirst and despair and a wild jollity, but when
+the Flame Lady began to weep he took her in his arms and caressed her,
+and said that she was the love of his heart and the one treasure of the
+world.
+
+After that they feasted in great contentment, and at the end of the
+feasting they went away from Faery and returned to the world of men.
+
+They came to Mongan’s palace at Moy Linney, and it was not until they
+reached the palace that they found they had been away one whole year,
+for they had thought they were only away one night. They lived
+then peacefully and lovingly together, and that ends the story, but
+Bro’tiarna did not know that Mongan was Fionn.
+
+
+The abbot leaned forward.
+
+“Was Mongan Fionn?” he asked in a whisper.
+
+“He was,” replied Cairide’.
+
+“Indeed, indeed!” said the abbot.
+
+After a while he continued: “There is only one part of your story that I
+do not like.”
+
+“What part is that?” asked Cairide’.
+
+“It is the part where the holy man Tibraide’ was ill treated by that
+rap--by that--by Mongan.”
+
+Cairide’ agreed that it was ill done, but to himself he said gleefully
+that whenever he was asked to tell the story of how he told the story of
+Mongan he would remember what the abbot said.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Irish Fairy Tales, by James Stephens
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diff --git a/2892-0.zip b/2892-0.zip
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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+<!DOCTYPE html
+PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+<head>
+<title>
+Irish Fairy Tales, by James Stephens
+</title>
+<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" />
+<style type="text/css">
+    <!--
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
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+    span.dropcap         { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 1 }
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+<body>
+
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Irish Fairy Tales, by James Stephens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Irish Fairy Tales
+
+Author: James Stephens
+
+Release Date: December 31, 2008 [EBook #2892]
+Last Updated: November 19, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRISH FAIRY TALES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by A. Elizabeth Warren, and David Widger
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/001m.jpg" alt="001m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/001.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/010m.jpg" alt="010m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/010.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/013m.jpg" alt="013m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/013.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<h1>
+IRISH FAIRY TALES
+</h1>
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+<h2>
+By James Stephens
+</h2>
+<p>
+<br /> <br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<br /> <br />
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p class="toc">
+<big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+</p>
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0001"> <b>THE STORY OF TUAN MAC CAIRILL</b> </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI </a>
+</p>
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0013"> <b>THE BOYHOOD OF FIONN</b> </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0012"> CHAPTER I </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0013"> CHAPTER II </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0014"> CHAPTER III </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0015"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0016"> CHAPTER V </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0017"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0018"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0019"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0020"> CHAPTER IX </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0021"> CHAPTER X </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XI </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XII </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XIII </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XIV </a>
+</p>
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0029"> <b>THE BIRTH OF BRAN</b> </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0026"> CHAPTER I </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0027"> CHAPTER II </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0028"> CHAPTER III </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0029"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0030"> CHAPTER V </a>
+</p>
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0035"> <b>OISIN&rsquo;S MOTHER</b> </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0031"> CHAPTER I </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0032"> CHAPTER II </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0033"> CHAPTER III </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0034"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0035"> CHAPTER V </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0036"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0037"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+</p>
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0043"> <b>THE WOOING OF BECFOLA</b> </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0038"> CHAPTER I </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0039"> CHAPTER II </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0040"> CHAPTER III </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0041"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0042"> CHAPTER V </a>
+</p>
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0049"> <b>THE LITTLE BRAWL AT ALLEN</b> </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0043"> CHAPTER I </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0044"> CHAPTER II </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0045"> CHAPTER III </a>
+</p>
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0053"> <b>THE CARL OF THE DRAB COAT</b> </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0046"> CHAPTER I </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0047"> CHAPTER II </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0048"> CHAPTER III </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0049"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0050"> CHAPTER V </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0051"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0052"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0053"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
+</p>
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0062"> <b>THE ENCHANTED CAVE OF CESH CORRAN</b> </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0054"> CHAPTER I </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0055"> CHAPTER II </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0056"> CHAPTER III </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0057"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0058"> CHAPTER V </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0059"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+</p>
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0069"> <b>BECUMA OF THE WHITE SKIN</b> </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0060"> CHAPTER I </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0061"> CHAPTER II </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0062"> CHAPTER III </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0063"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0064"> CHAPTER V </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0065"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0066"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0067"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0068"> CHAPTER IX </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0069"> CHAPTER X </a>
+</p>
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0080"> <b>MONGAN&rsquo;S FRENZY</b> </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0070"> CHAPTER I </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0071"> CHAPTER II </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0072"> CHAPTER III </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0073"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0074"> CHAPTER V </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0075"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0076"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0077"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0078"> CHAPTER IX </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0079"> CHAPTER X </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0080"> CHAPTER XI </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0081"> CHAPTER XII </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0082"> CHAPTER XIII </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0083"> CHAPTER XIV </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0084"> CHAPTER XV </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0085"> CHAPTER XVI </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0086"> CHAPTER XVII </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0087"> CHAPTER XVIII </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0088"> CHAPTER XIX </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2HCH0089"> CHAPTER XX </a>
+</p>
+<p>
+<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+<br /> <br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<br /> <br /> <a name="linklink2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<h2>
+THE STORY OF TUAN MAC CAIRILL
+</h2>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/023m.jpg" alt="023m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/023.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER I
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>innian, the Abbott of Moville, went southwards and eastwards in great
+haste. News had come to him in Donegal that there were yet people in his
+own province who believed in gods that he did not approve of, and the gods
+that we do not approve of are treated scurvily, even by saintly men.
+</p>
+<p>
+He was told of a powerful gentleman who observed neither Saint&rsquo;s day nor
+Sunday.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A powerful person!&rdquo; said Finnian.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;All that,&rdquo; was the reply.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall try this person&rsquo;s power,&rdquo; said Finnian.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is reputed to be a wise and hardy man,&rdquo; said his informant.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall test his wisdom and his hardihood.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is,&rdquo; that gossip whispered&mdash;&ldquo;he is a magician.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will magician him,&rdquo; cried Finnian angrily. &ldquo;Where does that man live?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He was informed, and he proceeded to that direction without delay.
+</p>
+<p>
+In no great time he came to the stronghold of the gentleman who followed
+ancient ways, and he demanded admittance in order that he might preach and
+prove the new God, and exorcise and terrify and banish even the memory of
+the old one; for to a god grown old Time is as ruthless as to a beggarman
+grown old.
+</p>
+<p>
+But the Ulster gentleman refused Finnian admittance. He barricaded his
+house, he shuttered his windows, and in a gloom of indignation and protest
+he continued the practices of ten thousand years, and would not hearken to
+Finnian calling at the window or to Time knocking at his door.
+</p>
+<p>
+But of those adversaries it was the first he redoubted.
+</p>
+<p>
+Finnian loomed on him as a portent and a terror; but he had no fear of
+Time. Indeed he was the foster-brother of Time, and so disdainful of the
+bitter god that he did not even disdain him; he leaped over the scythe, he
+dodged under it, and the sole occasions on which Time laughs is when he
+chances on Tuan, the son of Cairill, the son of Muredac Red-neck.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER II
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>ow Finnian could not abide that any person should resist both the Gospel
+and himself, and he proceeded to force the stronghold by peaceful but
+powerful methods. He fasted on the gentleman, and he did so to such
+purpose that he was admitted to the house; for to an hospitable heart the
+idea that a stranger may expire on your doorstep from sheer famine cannot
+be tolerated. The gentleman, however, did not give in without a struggle:
+he thought that when Finnian had grown sufficiently hungry he would lift
+the siege and take himself off to some place where he might get food. But
+he did not know Finnian. The great abbot sat down on a spot just beyond
+the door, and composed himself to all that might follow from his action.
+He bent his gaze on the ground between his feet, and entered into a
+meditation from which he would Only be released by admission or death.
+</p>
+<p>
+The first day passed quietly.
+</p>
+<p>
+Often the gentleman would send a servitor to spy if that deserter of the
+gods was still before his door, and each time the servant replied that he
+was still there.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He will be gone in the morning,&rdquo; said the hopeful master.
+</p>
+<p>
+On the morrow the state of siege continued, and through that day the
+servants were sent many times to observe through spy-holes.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go,&rdquo; he would say, &ldquo;and find out if the worshipper of new gods has taken
+himself away.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+But the servants returned each time with the same information.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The new druid is still there,&rdquo; they said.
+</p>
+<p>
+All through that day no one could leave the stronghold. And the enforced
+seclusion wrought on the minds of the servants, while the cessation of all
+work banded them together in small groups that whispered and discussed and
+disputed. Then these groups would disperse to peep through the spy-hole at
+the patient, immobile figure seated before the door, wrapped in a
+meditation that was timeless and unconcerned. They took fright at the
+spectacle, and once or twice a woman screamed hysterically, and was
+bundled away with a companion&rsquo;s hand clapped on her mouth, so that the ear
+of their master should not be affronted.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has his own troubles,&rdquo; they said. &ldquo;It is a combat of the gods that is
+taking place.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+So much for the women; but the men also were uneasy. They prowled up and
+down, tramping from the spy-hole to the kitchen, and from the kitchen to
+the turreted roof. And from the roof they would look down on the
+motionless figure below, and speculate on many things, including the
+staunchness of man, the qualities of their master, and even the
+possibility that the new gods might be as powerful as the old. From these
+peepings and discussions they would return languid and discouraged.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If,&rdquo; said one irritable guard, &ldquo;if we buzzed a spear at the persistent
+stranger, or if one slung at him with a jagged pebble!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What!&rdquo; his master demanded wrathfully, &ldquo;is a spear to be thrown at an
+unarmed stranger? And from this house!&rdquo; And he soundly cuffed that
+indelicate servant.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be at peace all of you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for hunger has a whip, and he will
+drive the stranger away in the night.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The household retired to wretched beds; but for the master of the house
+there was no sleep. He marched his halls all night, going often to the
+spy-hole to see if that shadow was still sitting in the shade, and pacing
+thence, tormented, preoccupied, refusing even the nose of his favourite
+dog as it pressed lovingly into his closed palm.
+</p>
+<p>
+On the morrow he gave in.
+</p>
+<p>
+The great door was swung wide, and two of his servants carried Finnian
+into the house, for the saint could no longer walk or stand upright by
+reason of the hunger and exposure to which he had submitted. But his frame
+was tough as the unconquerable spirit that dwelt within it, and in no long
+time he was ready for whatever might come of dispute or anathema.
+</p>
+<p>
+Being quite re-established he undertook the conversion of the master of
+the house, and the siege he laid against that notable intelligence was
+long spoken of among those who are interested in such things.
+</p>
+<p>
+He had beaten the disease of Mugain; he had beaten his own pupil the great
+Colm Cille; he beat Tuan also, and just as the latter&rsquo;s door had opened to
+the persistent stranger, so his heart opened, and Finnian marched there to
+do the will of God, and his own will.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER III
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>ne day they were talking together about the majesty of God and His love,
+for although Tuan had now received much instruction on this subject he yet
+needed more, and he laid as close a siege on Finnian as Finnian had before
+that laid on him. But man works outwardly and inwardly. After rest he has
+energy, after energy he needs repose; so, when we have given instruction
+for a time, we need instruction, and must receive it or the spirit faints
+and wisdom herself grows bitter.
+</p>
+<p>
+Therefore Finnian said: &ldquo;Tell me now about yourself, dear heart.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+But Tuan was avid of information about the True God. &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;the past has nothing more of interest for me, and I do not wish anything
+to come between my soul and its instruction; continue to teach me, dear
+friend and saintly father.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will do that,&rdquo; Finnian replied, &ldquo;but I must first meditate deeply on
+you, and must know you well. Tell me your past, my beloved, for a man is
+his past, and is to be known by it.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+But Tuan pleaded: &ldquo;Let the past be content with itself, for man needs
+forgetfulness as well as memory.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;My son,&rdquo; said Finnian, &ldquo;all that has ever been done has been done for the
+glory of God, and to confess our good and evil deeds is part of
+instruction; for the soul must recall its acts and abide by them, or
+renounce them by confession and penitence. Tell me your genealogy first,
+and by what descent you occupy these lands and stronghold, and then I will
+examine your acts and your conscience.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Tuan replied obediently: &ldquo;I am known as Tuan, son of Cairill, son of
+Muredac Red-neck, and these are the hereditary lands of my father.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The saint nodded.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not as well acquainted with Ulster genealogies as I should be, yet I
+know something of them. I am by blood a Leinsterman,&rdquo; he continued.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mine is a long pedigree,&rdquo; Tuan murmured.
+</p>
+<p>
+Finnian received that information with respect and interest.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I also,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;have an honourable record.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+His host continued: &ldquo;I am indeed Tuan, the son of Starn, the son of Sera,
+who was brother to Partholon.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Finnian in bewilderment, &ldquo;there is an error here, for you have
+recited two different genealogies.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Different genealogies, indeed,&rdquo; replied Tuan thoughtfully, &ldquo;but they are
+my genealogies.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not understand this,&rdquo; Finnian declared roundly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am now known as Tuan mac Cairill,&rdquo; the other replied, &ldquo;but in the days
+of old I was known as Tuan mac Starn, mac Sera.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The brother of Partholon,&rdquo; the saint gasped.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is my pedigree,&rdquo; Tuan said.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; Finnian objected in bewilderment, &ldquo;Partholon came to Ireland not
+long after the Flood.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I came with him,&rdquo; said Tuan mildly.
+</p>
+<p>
+The saint pushed his chair back hastily, and sat staring at his host, and
+as he stared the blood grew chill in his veins, and his hair crept along
+his scalp and stood on end.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER IV
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>ut Finnian was not one who remained long in bewilderment. He thought on
+the might of God and he became that might, and was tranquil.
+</p>
+<p>
+He was one who loved God and Ireland, and to the person who could instruct
+him in these great themes he gave all the interest of his mind and the
+sympathy of his heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a wonder you tell me, my beloved,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And now you must tell
+me more.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What must I tell?&rdquo; asked Tuan resignedly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me of the beginning of time in Ireland, and of the bearing of
+Partholon, the son of Noah&rsquo;s son.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have almost forgotten him,&rdquo; said Tuan. &ldquo;A greatly bearded, greatly
+shouldered man he was. A man of sweet deeds and sweet ways.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Continue, my love,&rdquo; said Finnian.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He came to Ireland in a ship. Twenty-four men and twenty-four women came
+with him. But before that time no man had come to Ireland, and in the
+western parts of the world no human being lived or moved. As we drew on
+Ireland from the sea the country seemed like an unending forest. Far as
+the eye could reach, and in whatever direction, there were trees; and from
+these there came the unceasing singing of birds. Over all that land the
+sun shone warm and beautiful, so that to our sea-weary eyes, our
+wind-tormented ears, it seemed as if we were driving on Paradise.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We landed and we heard the rumble of water going gloomily through the
+darkness of the forest. Following the water we came to a glade where the
+sun shone and where the earth was warmed, and there Partholon rested with
+his twenty-four couples, and made a city and a livelihood.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There were fish in the rivers of Eire&rsquo;, there were animals in her
+coverts. Wild and shy and monstrous creatures ranged in her plains and
+forests. Creatures that one could see through and walk through. Long we
+lived in ease, and we saw new animals grow,&mdash;the bear, the wolf, the
+badger, the deer, and the boar.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Partholon&rsquo;s people increased until from twenty-four couples there came
+five thousand people, who lived in amity and contentment although they had
+no wits.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They had no wits!&rdquo; Finnian commented.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They had no need of wits,&rdquo; Tuan said.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have heard that the first-born were mindless,&rdquo; said Finnian. &ldquo;Continue
+your story, my beloved.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then, sudden as a rising wind, between one night and a morning, there
+came a sickness that bloated the stomach and purpled the skin, and on the
+seventh day all of the race of Partholon were dead, save one man only.&rdquo;
+ &ldquo;There always escapes one man,&rdquo; said Finnian thoughtfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I am that man,&rdquo; his companion affirmed.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/035m.jpg" alt="035m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/035.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Tuan shaded his brow with his hand, and he remembered backwards through
+incredible ages to the beginning of the world and the first days of Eire&rsquo;.
+And Finnian, with his blood again running chill and his scalp crawling
+uneasily, stared backwards with him.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/038m.jpg" alt="038m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/038.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER V
+</h2>
+
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>ell on, my love,&rdquo; Finnian murmured
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was alone,&rdquo; said Tuan. &ldquo;I was so alone that my own shadow frightened
+me. I was so alone that the sound of a bird in flight, or the creaking of
+a dew-drenched bough, whipped me to cover as a rabbit is scared to his
+burrow.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The creatures of the forest scented me and knew I was alone. They stole
+with silken pad behind my back and snarled when I faced them; the long,
+grey wolves with hanging tongues and staring eyes chased me to my cleft
+rock; there was no creature so weak but it might hunt me, there was no
+creature so timid but it might outface me. And so I lived for two tens of
+years and two years, until I knew all that a beast surmises and had
+forgotten all that a man had known.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I could pad as gently as any; I could run as tirelessly. I could be
+invisible and patient as a wild cat crouching among leaves; I could smell
+danger in my sleep and leap at it with wakeful claws; I could bark and
+growl and clash with my teeth and tear with them.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell on, my beloved,&rdquo; said Finnian, &ldquo;you shall rest in God, dear heart.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;At the end of that time,&rdquo; said Tuan, &ldquo;Nemed the son of Agnoman came to
+Ireland with a fleet of thirty-four barques, and in each barque there were
+thirty couples of people.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have heard it,&rdquo; said Finnian.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;My heart leaped for joy when I saw the great fleet rounding the land, and
+I followed them along scarped cliffs, leaping from rock to rock like a
+wild goat, while the ships tacked and swung seeking a harbour. There I
+stooped to drink at a pool, and I saw myself in the chill water.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I saw that I was hairy and tufty and bristled as a savage boar; that I
+was lean as a stripped bush; that I was greyer than a badger; withered and
+wrinkled like an empty sack; naked as a fish; wretched as a starving crow
+in winter; and on my fingers and toes there were great curving claws, so
+that I looked like nothing that was known, like nothing that was animal or
+divine. And I sat by the pool weeping my loneliness and wildness and my
+stern old age; and I could do no more than cry and lament between the
+earth and the sky, while the beasts that tracked me listened from behind
+the trees, or crouched among bushes to stare at me from their drowsy
+covert.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A storm arose, and when I looked again from my tall cliff I saw that
+great fleet rolling as in a giant&rsquo;s hand. At times they were pitched
+against the sky and staggered aloft, spinning gustily there like
+wind-blown leaves. Then they were hurled from these dizzy tops to the
+flat, moaning gulf, to the glassy, inky horror that swirled and whirled
+between ten waves. At times a wave leaped howling under a ship, and with a
+buffet dashed it into air, and chased it upwards with thunder stroke on
+stroke, and followed again, close as a chasing wolf, trying with hammering
+on hammering to beat in the wide-wombed bottom and suck out the frightened
+lives through one black gape. A wave fell on a ship and sunk it down with
+a thrust, stern as though a whole sky had tumbled at it, and the barque
+did not cease to go down until it crashed and sank in the sand at the
+bottom of the sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The night came, and with it a thousand darknesses fell from the
+screeching sky. Not a round-eyed creature of the night might pierce an
+inch of that multiplied gloom. Not a creature dared creep or stand. For a
+great wind strode the world lashing its league-long whips in cracks of
+thunder, and singing to itself, now in a world-wide yell, now in an
+ear-dizzying hum and buzz; or with a long snarl and whine it hovered over
+the world searching for life to destroy.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And at times, from the moaning and yelping blackness of the sea, there
+came a sound&mdash;thin-drawn as from millions of miles away, distinct as
+though uttered in the ear like a whisper of confidence&mdash;and I knew
+that a drowning man was calling on his God as he thrashed and was battered
+into silence, and that a blue-lipped woman was calling on her man as her
+hair whipped round her brows and she whirled about like a top.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Around me the trees were dragged from earth with dying groans; they
+leaped into the air and flew like birds. Great waves whizzed from the sea:
+spinning across the cliffs and hurtling to the earth in monstrous clots of
+foam; the very rocks came trundling and sidling and grinding among the
+trees; and in that rage, and in that horror of blackness I fell asleep, or
+I was beaten into slumber.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VI
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HERE I dreamed, and I saw myself changing into a stag in dream, and I
+felt in dream the beating of a new heart within me, and in dream I arched
+my neck and braced my powerful limbs.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I awoke from the dream, and I was that which I had dreamed.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I stood a while stamping upon a rock, with my bristling head swung high,
+breathing through wide nostrils all the savour of the world. For I had
+come marvellously from decrepitude to strength. I had writhed from the
+bonds of age and was young again. I smelled the turf and knew for the
+first time how sweet that smelled. And like lightning my moving nose
+sniffed all things to my heart and separated them into knowledge.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Long I stood there, ringing my iron hoof on stone, and learning all
+things through my nose. Each breeze that came from the right hand or the
+left brought me a tale. A wind carried me the tang of wolf, and against
+that smell I stared and stamped. And on a wind there came the scent of my
+own kind, and at that I belled. Oh, loud and clear and sweet was the voice
+of the great stag. With what ease my lovely note went lilting. With what
+joy I heard the answering call. With what delight I bounded, bounded,
+bounded; light as a bird&rsquo;s plume, powerful as a storm, untiring as the
+sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here now was ease in ten-yard springings, with a swinging head, with the
+rise and fall of a swallow, with the curve and flow and urge of an otter
+of the sea. What a tingle dwelt about my heart! What a thrill spun to the
+lofty points of my antlers! How the world was new! How the sun was new!
+How the wind caressed me!
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;With unswerving forehead and steady eye I met all that came. The old,
+lone wolf leaped sideways, snarling, and slunk away. The lumbering bear
+swung his head of hesitations and thought again; he trotted his small red
+eye away with him to a near-by brake. The stags of my race fled from my
+rocky forehead, or were pushed back and back until their legs broke under
+them and I trampled them to death. I was the beloved, the well known, the
+leader of the herds of Ireland.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And at times I came back from my boundings about Eire&rsquo;, for the strings
+of my heart were drawn to Ulster; and, standing away, my wide nose took
+the air, while I knew with joy, with terror, that men were blown on the
+wind. A proud head hung to the turf then, and the tears of memory rolled
+from a large, bright eye.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;At times I drew near, delicately, standing among thick leaves or crouched
+in long grown grasses, and I stared and mourned as I looked on men. For
+Nemed and four couples had been saved from that fierce storm, and I saw
+them increase and multiply until four thousand couples lived and laughed
+and were riotous in the sun, for the people of Nemed had small minds but
+great activity. They were savage fighters and hunters.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But one time I came, drawn by that intolerable anguish of memory, and all
+of these people were gone: the place that knew them was silent: in the
+land where they had moved there was nothing of them but their bones that
+glinted in the sun.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old age came on me there. Among these bones weariness crept into my
+limbs. My head grew heavy, my eyes dim, my knees jerked and trembled, and
+there the wolves dared chase me.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I went again to the cave that had been my home when I was an old man.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;One day I stole from the cave to snatch a mouthful of grass, for I was
+closely besieged by wolves. They made their rush, and I barely escaped
+from them. They sat beyond the cave staring at me.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I knew their tongue. I knew all that they said to each other, and all
+that they said to me. But there was yet a thud left in my forehead, a
+deadly trample in my hoof. They did not dare come into the cave.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;To-morrow,&rsquo; they said, &lsquo;we will tear out your throat, and gnaw on your
+living haunch&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VII
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hen my soul rose to the height of Doom, and I intended all that might
+happen to me, and agreed to it.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;To-morrow,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;I will go out among ye, and I will die,&rsquo; and at
+that the wolves howled joyfully, hungrily, impatiently.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I slept, and I saw myself changing into a boar in dream, and I felt in
+dream the beating of a new heart within me, and in dream I stretched my
+powerful neck and braced my eager limbs. I awoke from my dream, and I was
+that which I had dreamed.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The night wore away, the darkness lifted, the day came; and from without
+the cave the wolves called to me: &ldquo;&lsquo;Come out, O Skinny Stag. Come out and
+die.&rsquo; 
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I, with joyful heart, thrust a black bristle through the hole of the
+cave, and when they saw that wriggling snout, those curving tusks, that
+red fierce eye, the wolves fled yelping, tumbling over each other, frantic
+with terror; and I behind them, a wild cat for leaping, a giant for
+strength, a devil for ferocity; a madness and gladness of lusty, unsparing
+life; a killer, a champion, a boar who could not be defied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I took the lordship of the boars of Ireland.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wherever I looked among my tribes I saw love and obedience: whenever I
+appeared among the strangers they fled away. And the wolves feared me
+then, and the great, grim bear went bounding on heavy paws. I charged him
+at the head of my troop and rolled him over and over; but it is not easy
+to kill the bear, so deeply is his life packed under that stinking pelt.
+He picked himself up and ran, and was knocked down, and ran again blindly,
+butting into trees and stones. Not a claw did the big bear flash, not a
+tooth did he show, as he ran whimpering like a baby, or as he stood with
+my nose rammed against his mouth, snarling up into his nostrils.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I challenged all that moved. All creatures but one. For men had again
+come to Ireland. Semion, the son of Stariath, with his people, from whom
+the men of Domnann and the Fir Bolg and the Galiuin are descended. These I
+did not chase, and when they chased me I fled.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Often I would go, drawn by my memoried heart, to look at them as they
+moved among their fields; and I spoke to my mind in bitterness: &lsquo;When the
+people of Partholon were gathered in counsel my voice was heard; it was
+sweet to all who heard it, and the words I spoke were wise. The eyes of
+women brightened and softened when they looked at me. They loved to hear
+him when he sang who now wanders in the forest with a tusky herd.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VIII
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>LD age again overtook me. Weariness stole into my limbs, and anguish
+dozed into my mind. I went to my Ulster cave and dreamed my dream, and I
+changed into a hawk.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I left the ground. The sweet air was my kingdom, and my bright eye stared
+on a hundred miles. I soared, I swooped; I hung, motionless as a living
+stone, over the abyss; I lived in joy and slept in peace, and had my fill
+of the sweetness of life.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;During that time Beothach, the son of Iarbonel the Prophet, came to
+Ireland with his people, and there was a great battle between his men and
+the children of Semion. Long I hung over that combat, seeing every spear
+that hurtled, every stone that whizzed from a sling, every sword that
+flashed up and down, and the endless glittering of the shields. And at the
+end I saw that the victory was with Iarbonel. And from his people the
+Tuatha De&rsquo; and the Ande&rsquo; came, although their origin is forgotten, and
+learned people, because of their excellent wisdom and intelligence, say
+that they came from heaven.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;These are the people of Faery. All these are the gods.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;For long, long years I was a hawk. I knew every hill and stream; every
+field and glen of Ireland. I knew the shape of cliffs and coasts, and how
+all places looked under the sun or moon. And I was still a hawk when the
+sons of Mil drove the Tuatha De&rsquo; Danann under the ground, and held Ireland
+against arms or wizardry; and this was the coming of men and the beginning
+of genealogies.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I grew old, and in my Ulster cave close to the sea I dreamed my
+dream, and in it I became a salmon. The green tides of ocean rose over me
+and my dream, so that I drowned in the sea and did not die, for I awoke in
+deep waters, and I was that which I dreamed. I had been a man, a stag, a
+boar, a bird, and now I was a fish. In all my changes I had joy and
+fulness of life. But in the water joy lay deeper, life pulsed deeper. For
+on land or air there is always something excessive and hindering; as arms
+that swing at the sides of a man, and which the mind must remember. The
+stag has legs to be tucked away for sleep, and untucked for movement; and
+the bird has wings that must be folded and pecked and cared for. But the
+fish has but one piece from his nose to his tail. He is complete, single
+and unencumbered. He turns in one turn, and goes up and down and round in
+one sole movement.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;How I flew through the soft element: how I joyed in the country where
+there is no harshness: in the element which upholds and gives way; which
+caresses and lets go, and will not let you fall. For man may stumble in a
+furrow; the stag tumble from a cliff; the hawk, wing-weary and beaten,
+with darkness around him and the storm behind, may dash his brains against
+a tree. But the home of the salmon is his delight, and the sea guards all
+her creatures.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER IX
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> became the king of the salmon, and, with my multitudes, I ranged on the
+tides of the world. Green and purple distances were under me: green and
+gold the sunlit regions above. In these latitudes I moved through a world
+of amber, myself amber and gold; in those others, in a sparkle of lucent
+blue, I curved, lit like a living jewel: and in these again, through dusks
+of ebony all mazed with silver, I shot and shone, the wonder of the sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I saw the monsters of the uttermost ocean go heaving by; and the long
+lithe brutes that are toothed to their tails: and below, where gloom
+dipped down on gloom, vast, livid tangles that coiled and uncoiled, and
+lapsed down steeps and hells of the sea where even the salmon could not
+go.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I knew the sea. I knew the secret caves where ocean roars to ocean; the
+floods that are icy cold, from which the nose of a salmon leaps back as at
+a sting; and the warm streams in which we rocked and dozed and were
+carried forward without motion. I swam on the outermost rim of the great
+world, where nothing was but the sea and the sky and the salmon; where
+even the wind was silent, and the water was clear as clean grey rock.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then, far away in the sea, I remembered Ulster, and there came on me
+an instant, uncontrollable anguish to be there. I turned, and through days
+and nights I swam tirelessly, jubilantly; with terror wakening in me, too,
+and a whisper through my being that I must reach Ireland or die.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fought my way to Ulster from the sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, how that end of the journey was hard! A sickness was racking in every
+one of my bones, a languor and weariness creeping through my every fibre
+and muscle. The waves held me back and held me back; the soft waters
+seemed to have grown hard; and it was as though I were urging through a
+rock as I strained towards Ulster from the sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;So tired I was! I could have loosened my frame and been swept away; I
+could have slept and been drifted and wafted away; swinging on grey-green
+billows that had turned from the land and were heaving and mounting and
+surging to the far blue water.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only the unconquerable heart of the salmon could brave that end of toil.
+The sound of the rivers of Ireland racing down to the sea came to me in
+the last numb effort: the love of Ireland bore me up: the gods of the
+rivers trod to me in the white-curled breakers, so that I left the sea at
+long, long last; and I lay in sweet water in the curve of a crannied rock,
+exhausted, three parts dead, triumphant.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER X
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">D</span>elight and strength came to me again, and now I explored all the inland
+ways, the great lakes of Ireland, and her swift brown rivers.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What a joy to lie under an inch of water basking in the sun, or beneath a
+shady ledge to watch the small creatures that speed like lightning on the
+rippling top. I saw the dragon-flies flash and dart and turn, with a
+poise, with a speed that no other winged thing knows: I saw the hawk hover
+and stare and swoop: he fell like a falling stone, but he could not catch
+the king of the salmon: I saw the cold-eyed cat stretching along a bough
+level with the water, eager to hook and lift the creatures of the river.
+And I saw men.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They saw me also. They came to know me and look for me. They lay in wait
+at the waterfalls up which I leaped like a silver flash. They held out
+nets for me; they hid traps under leaves; they made cords of the colour of
+water, of the colour of weeds&mdash;but this salmon had a nose that knew
+how a weed felt and how a string&mdash;they drifted meat on a sightless
+string, but I knew of the hook; they thrust spears at me, and threw lances
+which they drew back again with a cord. Many a wound I got from men, many
+a sorrowful scar.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/053m.jpg" alt="053m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/053.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Every beast pursued me in the waters and along the banks; the barking,
+black-skinned otter came after me in lust and gust and swirl; the wild cat
+fished for me; the hawk and the steep-winged, spear-beaked birds dived
+down on me, and men crept on me with nets the width of a river, so that I
+got no rest. My life became a ceaseless scurry and wound and escape, a
+burden and anguish of watchfulness&mdash;and then I was caught.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/055m.jpg" alt="055m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/055.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XI
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE fisherman of Cairill, the King of Ulster, took me in his net. Ah,
+that was a happy man when he saw me! He shouted for joy when he saw the
+great salmon in his net.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was still in the water as he hauled delicately. I was still in the
+water as he pulled me to the bank. My nose touched air and spun from it as
+from fire, and I dived with all my might against the bottom of the net,
+holding yet to the water, loving it, mad with terror that I must quit that
+loveliness. But the net held and I came up.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Be quiet, King of the River,&rsquo; said the fisherman, &lsquo;give in to Doom,&rsquo; 
+said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was in air, and it was as though I were in fire. The air pressed on me
+like a fiery mountain. It beat on my scales and scorched them. It rushed
+down my throat and scalded me. It weighed on me and squeezed me, so that
+my eyes felt as though they must burst from my head, my head as though it
+would leap from my body, and my body as though it would swell and expand
+and fly in a thousand pieces.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The light blinded me, the heat tormented me, the dry air made me shrivel
+and gasp; and, as he lay on the grass, the great salmon whirled his
+desperate nose once more to the river, and leaped, leaped, leaped, even
+under the mountain of air. He could leap upwards, but not forwards, and
+yet he leaped, for in each rise he could see the twinkling waves, the
+rippling and curling waters.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Be at ease, O King,&rsquo; said the fisherman. &lsquo;Be at rest, my beloved. Let go
+the stream. Let the oozy marge be forgotten, and the sandy bed where the
+shades dance all in green and gloom, and the brown flood sings along.&rsquo; 
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And as he carried me to the palace he sang a song of the river, and a
+song of Doom, and a song in praise of the King of the Waters.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;When the king&rsquo;s wife saw me she desired me. I was put over a fire and
+roasted, and she ate me. And when time passed she gave birth to me, and I
+was her son and the son of Cairill the king. I remember warmth and
+darkness and movement and unseen sounds. All that happened I remember,
+from the time I was on the gridiron until the time I was born. I forget
+nothing of these things.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said Finnian, &ldquo;you will be born again, for I shall baptize you
+into the family of the Living God.&rdquo; &mdash;&mdash; So far the story of
+Tuan, the son of Cairill.
+</p>
+<p>
+No man knows if he died in those distant ages when Finnian was Abbot of
+Moville, or if he still keeps his fort in Ulster, watching all things, and
+remembering them for the glory of God and the honour of Ireland.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+THE BOYHOOD OF FIONN
+</h2>
+<p>
+He was a king, a seer and a poet. He was a lord with a manifold and great
+train. He was our magician, our knowledgable one, our soothsayer. All that
+he did was sweet with him. And, however ye deem my testimony of Fionn
+excessive, and, although ye hold my praising overstrained, nevertheless,
+and by the King that is above me, he was three times better than all I
+say.&mdash;Saint PATRICK.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/063m.jpg" alt="063m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/063.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER I
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>ionn [pronounce Fewn to rhyme with &ldquo;tune&rdquo;] got his first training among
+women. There is no wonder in that, for it is the pup&rsquo;s mother teaches it
+to fight, and women know that fighting is a necessary art although men
+pretend there are others that are better. These were the women druids,
+Bovmall and Lia Luachra. It will be wondered why his own mother did not
+train him in the first natural savageries of existence, but she could not
+do it. She could not keep him with her for dread of the clann-Morna. The
+sons of Morna had been fighting and intriguing for a long time to oust her
+husband, Uail, from the captaincy of the Fianna of Ireland, and they had
+ousted him at last by killing him. It was the only way they could get rid
+of such a man; but it was not an easy way, for what Fionn&rsquo;s father did not
+know in arms could not be taught to him even by Morna. Still, the hound
+that can wait will catch a hare at last, and even Manana&rsquo;nn sleeps.
+Fionn&rsquo;s mother was beautiful, long-haired Muirne: so she is always
+referred to. She was the daughter of Teigue, the son of Nuada from Faery,
+and her mother was Ethlinn. That is, her brother was Lugh of the Long Hand
+himself, and with a god, and such a god, for brother we may marvel that
+she could have been in dread of Morna or his sons, or of any one. But
+women have strange loves, strange fears, and these are so bound up with
+one another that the thing which is presented to us is not often the thing
+that is to be seen.
+</p>
+<p>
+However it may be, when Uall died Muirne got married again to the King of
+Kerry. She gave the child to Bovmall and Lia Luachra to rear, and we may
+be sure that she gave injunctions with him, and many of them. The
+youngster was brought to the woods of Slieve Bloom and was nursed there in
+secret.
+</p>
+<p>
+It is likely the women were fond of him, for other than Fionn there was no
+life about them. He would be their life; and their eyes may have seemed as
+twin benedictions resting on the small fair head. He was fair-haired, and
+it was for his fairness that he was afterwards called Fionn; but at this
+period he was known as Deimne. They saw the food they put into his little
+frame reproduce itself length-ways and sideways in tough inches, and in
+springs and energies that crawled at first, and then toddled, and then
+ran. He had birds for playmates, but all the creatures that live in a wood
+must have been his comrades. There would have been for little Fionn long
+hours of lonely sunshine, when the world seemed just sunshine and a sky.
+There would have been hours as long, when existence passed like a shade
+among shadows, in the multitudinous tappings of rain that dripped from
+leaf to leaf in the wood, and slipped so to the ground. He would have
+known little snaky paths, narrow enough to be filled by his own small
+feet, or a goat&rsquo;s; and he would have wondered where they went, and have
+marvelled again to find that, wherever they went, they came at last,
+through loops and twists of the branchy wood, to his own door. He may have
+thought of his own door as the beginning and end of the world, whence all
+things went, and whither all things came.
+</p>
+<p>
+Perhaps he did not see the lark for a long time, but he would have heard
+him, far out of sight in the endless sky, thrilling and thrilling until
+the world seemed to have no other sound but that clear sweetness; and what
+a world it was to make that sound! Whistles and chirps, coos and caws and
+croaks, would have grown familiar to him. And he could at last have told
+which brother of the great brotherhood was making the noise he heard at
+any moment. The wind too: he would have listened to its thousand voices as
+it moved in all seasons and in all moods. Perhaps a horse would stray into
+the thick screen about his home, and would look as solemnly on Fionn as
+Fionn did on it. Or, coming suddenly on him, the horse might stare, all
+a-cock with eyes and ears and nose, one long-drawn facial extension, ere
+he turned and bounded away with manes all over him and hoofs all under him
+and tails all round him. A solemn-nosed, stern-eyed cow would amble and
+stamp in his wood to find a flyless shadow; or a strayed sheep would poke
+its gentle muzzle through leaves.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A boy,&rdquo; he might think, as he stared on a staring horse, &ldquo;a boy cannot
+wag his tail to keep the flies off,&rdquo; and that lack may have saddened him.
+He may have thought that a cow can snort and be dignified at the one
+moment, and that timidity is comely in a sheep. He would have scolded the
+jackdaw, and tried to out-whistle the throstle, and wondered why his pipe
+got tired when the blackbird&rsquo;s didn&rsquo;t. There would be flies to be watched,
+slender atoms in yellow gauze that flew, and filmy specks that flittered,
+and sturdy, thick-ribbed brutes that pounced like cats and bit like dogs
+and flew like lightning. He may have mourned for the spider in bad luck
+who caught that fly. There would be much to see and remember and compare,
+and there would be, always, his two guardians. The flies change from
+second to second; one cannot tell if this bird is a visitor or an
+inhabitant, and a sheep is just sister to a sheep; but the women were as
+rooted as the house itself.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/069m.jpg" alt="069m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/069.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER II
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ere his nurses comely or harsh-looking? Fionn would not know. This was
+the one who picked him up when he fell, and that was the one who patted
+the bruise. This one said: &ldquo;Mind you do not tumble in the well!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And that one: &ldquo;Mind the little knees among the nettles.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+But he did tumble and record that the only notable thing about a well is
+that it is wet. And as for nettles, if they hit him he hit back. He
+slashed into them with a stick and brought them low. There was nothing in
+wells or nettles, only women dreaded them. One patronised women and
+instructed them and comforted them, for they were afraid about one.
+</p>
+<p>
+They thought that one should not climb a tree!
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Next week,&rdquo; they said at last, &ldquo;you may climb this one,&rdquo; and &ldquo;next week&rdquo;
+ lived at the end of the world!
+</p>
+<p>
+But the tree that was climbed was not worth while when it had been climbed
+twice. There was a bigger one near by. There were trees that no one could
+climb, with vast shadow on one side and vaster sunshine on the other. It
+took a long time to walk round them, and you could not see their tops.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was pleasant to stand on a branch that swayed and sprung, and it was
+good to stare at an impenetrable roof of leaves and then climb into it.
+How wonderful the loneliness was up there! When he looked down there was
+an undulating floor of leaves, green and green and greener to a very
+blackness of greeniness; and when he looked up there were leaves again,
+green and less green and not green at all, up to a very snow and blindness
+of greeniness; and above and below and around there was sway and motion,
+the whisper of leaf on leaf, and the eternal silence to which one listened
+and at which one tried to look.
+</p>
+<p>
+When he was six years of age his mother, beautiful, long-haired Muirne,
+came to see him. She came secretly, for she feared the sons of Morna, and
+she had paced through lonely places in many counties before she reached
+the hut in the wood, and the cot where he lay with his fists shut and
+sleep gripped in them.
+</p>
+<p>
+He awakened to be sure. He would have one ear that would catch an unusual
+voice, one eye that would open, however sleepy the other one was. She took
+him in her arms and kissed him, and she sang a sleepy song until the small
+boy slept again.
+</p>
+<p>
+We may be sure that the eye that could stay open stayed open that night as
+long as it could, and that the one ear listened to the sleepy song until
+the song got too low to be heard, until it was too tender to be felt
+vibrating along those soft arms, until Fionn was asleep again, with a new
+picture in his little head and a new notion to ponder on.
+</p>
+<p>
+The mother of himself! His own mother!
+</p>
+<p>
+But when he awakened she was gone.
+</p>
+<p>
+She was going back secretly, in dread of the sons of Morna, slipping
+through gloomy woods, keeping away from habitations, getting by desolate
+and lonely ways to her lord in Kerry.
+</p>
+<p>
+Perhaps it was he that was afraid of the sons of Morna, and perhaps she
+loved him.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER III
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE women Druids, his guardians, belonged to his father&rsquo;s people. Bovmall
+was Uail&rsquo;s sister, and, consequently, Fionn&rsquo;s aunt. Only such a blood-tie
+could have bound them to the clann-Baiscne, for it is not easy, having
+moved in the world of court and camp, to go hide with a baby in a wood;
+and to live, as they must have lived, in terror.
+</p>
+<p>
+What stories they would have told the child of the sons of Morna. Of Morna
+himself, the huge-shouldered, stern-eyed, violent Connachtman; and of his
+sons&mdash;young Goll Mor mac Morna in particular, as huge-shouldered as
+his father, as fierce in the onset, but merry-eyed when the other was
+grim, and bubbling with a laughter that made men forgive even his
+butcheries. Of Cona&rsquo;n Mael mac Morna his brother, gruff as a badger,
+bearded like a boar, bald as a crow, and with a tongue that could manage
+an insult where another man would not find even a stammer. His boast was
+that when he saw an open door he went into it, and when he saw a closed
+door he went into it. When he saw a peaceful man he insulted him, and when
+he met a man who was not peaceful he insulted him. There was Garra Duv mac
+Morna, and savage Art Og, who cared as little for their own skins as they
+did for the next man&rsquo;s, and Garra must have been rough indeed to have
+earned in that clan the name of the Rough mac Morna. There were others:
+wild Connachtmen all, as untameable, as unaccountable as their own
+wonderful countryside.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn would have heard much of them, and it is likely that he practised on
+a nettle at taking the head off Goll, and that he hunted a sheep from
+cover in the implacable manner he intended later on for Cona&rsquo;n the
+Swearer.
+</p>
+<p>
+But it is of Uail mac Baiscne he would have heard most. With what a
+dilation of spirit the ladies would have told tales of him, Fionn&rsquo;s
+father. How their voices would have become a chant as feat was added to
+feat, glory piled on glory. The most famous of men and the most beautiful;
+the hardest fighter; the easiest giver; the kingly champion; the chief of
+the Fianna na h-Eirinn. Tales of how he had been way-laid and got free; of
+how he had been generous and got free; of how he had been angry and went
+marching with the speed of an eagle and the direct onfall of a storm;
+while in front and at the sides, angled from the prow of his terrific
+advance, were fleeing multitudes who did not dare to wait and scarce had
+time to run. And of how at last, when the time came to quell him, nothing
+less than the whole might of Ireland was sufficient for that great
+downfall.
+</p>
+<p>
+We may be sure that on these adventures Fionn was with his father, going
+step for step with the long-striding hero, and heartening him mightily.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER IV
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>e was given good training by the women in running and leaping and
+swimming.
+</p>
+<p>
+One of them would take a thorn switch in her hand, and Fionn would take a
+thorn switch in his hand, and each would try to strike the other running
+round a tree.
+</p>
+<p>
+You had to go fast to keep away from the switch behind, and a small boy
+feels a switch. Fionn would run his best to get away from that prickly
+stinger, but how he would run when it was his turn to deal the strokes!
+</p>
+<p>
+With reason too, for his nurses had suddenly grown implacable. They
+pursued him with a savagery which he could not distinguish from hatred,
+and they swished him well whenever they got the chance.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn learned to run. After a while he could buzz around a tree like a
+maddened fly, and oh, the joy, when he felt himself drawing from the
+switch and gaining from behind on its bearer! How he strained and panted
+to catch on that pursuing person and pursue her and get his own switch
+into action.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/079m.jpg" alt="079m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/079.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+He learned to jump by chasing hares in a bumpy field. Up went the hare and
+up went Fionn, and away with the two of them, hopping and popping across
+the field. If the hare turned while Fionn was after her it was switch for
+Fionn; so that in a while it did not matter to Fionn which way the hare
+jumped for he could jump that way too. Long-ways, sideways or baw-ways,
+Fionn hopped where the hare hopped, and at last he was the owner of a hop
+that any hare would give an ear for.
+</p>
+<p>
+He was taught to swim, and it may be that his heart sank when he fronted
+the lesson. The water was cold. It was deep. One could see the bottom,
+leagues below, millions of miles below. A small boy might shiver as he
+stared into that wink and blink and twink of brown pebbles and murder. And
+these implacable women threw him in!
+</p>
+<p>
+Perhaps he would not go in at first. He may have smiled at them, and
+coaxed, and hung back. It was a leg and an arm gripped then; a swing for
+Fionn, and out and away with him; plop and flop for him; down into chill
+deep death for him, and up with a splutter; with a sob; with a grasp at
+everything that caught nothing; with a wild flurry; with a raging despair;
+with a bubble and snort as he was hauled again down, and down, and down,
+and found as suddenly that he had been hauled out.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn learned to swim until he could pop into the water like an otter and
+slide through it like an eel.
+</p>
+<p>
+He used to try to chase a fish the way he chased hares in the bumpy field&mdash;but
+there are terrible spurts in a fish. It may be that a fish cannot hop, but
+he gets there in a flash, and he isn&rsquo;t there in another. Up or down,
+sideways or endways, it is all one to a fish. He goes and is gone. He
+twists this way and disappears the other way. He is over you when he ought
+to be under you, and he is biting your toe when you thought you were
+biting his tail.
+</p>
+<p>
+You cannot catch a fish by swimming, but you can try, and Fionn tried. He
+got a grudging commendation from the terrible women when he was able to
+slip noiselessly in the tide, swim under water to where a wild duck was
+floating and grip it by the leg.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Qu&mdash;,&rdquo; said the duck, and he disappeared before he had time to get
+the &ldquo;-ack&rdquo; out of him.
+</p>
+<p>
+So the time went, and Fionn grew long and straight and tough like a
+sapling; limber as a willow, and with the flirt and spring of a young
+bird. One of the ladies may have said, &ldquo;He is shaping very well, my dear,&rdquo;
+ and the other replied, as is the morose privilege of an aunt, &ldquo;He will
+never be as good as his father,&rdquo; but their hearts must have overflowed in
+the night, in the silence, in the darkness, when they thought of the
+living swiftness they had fashioned, and that dear fair head.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER V
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>NE day his guardians were agitated: they held confabulations at which
+Fionn was not permitted to assist. A man who passed by in the morning had
+spoken to them. They fed the man, and during his feeding Fionn had been
+shooed from the door as if he were a chicken. When the stranger took his
+road the women went with him a short distance. As they passed the man
+lifted a hand and bent a knee to Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;My soul to you, young master,&rdquo; he said, and as he said it, Fionn knew
+that he could have the man&rsquo;s soul, or his boots, or his feet, or anything
+that belonged to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+When the women returned they were mysterious and whispery. They chased
+Fionn into the house, and when they got him in they chased him out again.
+They chased each other around the house for another whisper. They
+calculated things by the shape of clouds, by lengths of shadows, by the
+flight of birds, by two flies racing on a flat stone, by throwing bones
+over their left shoulders, and by every kind of trick and game and chance
+that you could put a mind to.
+</p>
+<p>
+They told Fionn he must sleep in a tree that night, and they put him under
+bonds not to sing or whistle or cough or sneeze until the morning.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn did sneeze. He never sneezed so much in his life. He sat up in his
+tree and nearly sneezed himself out of it. Flies got up his nose, two at a
+time, one up each nose, and his head nearly fell off the way he sneezed.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are doing that on purpose,&rdquo; said a savage whisper from the foot of
+the tree.
+</p>
+<p>
+But Fionn was not doing it on purpose. He tucked himself into a fork the
+way he had been taught, and he passed the crawliest, tickliest night he
+had ever known. After a while he did not want to sneeze, he wanted to
+scream: and in particular he wanted to come down from the tree. But he did
+not scream, nor did he leave the tree. His word was passed, and he stayed
+in his tree as silent as a mouse and as watchful, until he fell out of it.
+</p>
+<p>
+In the morning a band of travelling poets were passing, and the women
+handed Fionn over to them. This time they could not prevent him
+overhearing.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The sons of Morna!&rdquo; they said.
+</p>
+<p>
+And Fionn&rsquo;s heart might have swelled with rage, but that it was already
+swollen with adventure. And also the expected was happening. Behind every
+hour of their day and every moment of their lives lay the sons of Morna.
+Fionn had run after them as deer: he jumped after them as hares: he dived
+after them as fish. They lived in the house with him: they sat at the
+table and ate his meat. One dreamed of them, and they were expected in the
+morning as the sun is. They knew only too well that the son of Uail was
+living, and they knew that their own sons would know no ease while that
+son lived; for they believed in those days that like breeds like, and that
+the son of Uail would be Uail with additions.
+</p>
+<p>
+His guardians knew that their hiding-place must at last be discovered, and
+that, when it was found, the sons of Morna would come. They had no doubt
+of that, and every action of their lives was based on that certainty. For
+no secret can remain secret. Some broken soldier tramping home to his
+people will find it out; a herd seeking his strayed cattle or a band of
+travelling musicians will get the wind of it. How many people will move
+through even the remotest wood in a year! The crows will tell a secret if
+no one else does; and under a bush, behind a clump of bracken, what eyes
+may there not be! But if your secret is legged like a young goat! If it is
+tongued like a wolf! One can hide a baby, but you cannot hide a boy. He
+will rove unless you tie him to a post, and he will whistle then.
+</p>
+<p>
+The sons of Morna came, but there were only two grim women living in a
+lonely hut to greet them. We may be sure they were well greeted. One can
+imagine Goll&rsquo;s merry stare taking in all that could be seen; Cona&rsquo;n&rsquo;s grim
+eye raking the women&rsquo;s faces while his tongue raked them again; the Rough
+mac Morna shouldering here and there in the house and about it, with maybe
+a hatchet in his hand, and Art Og coursing further afield and vowing that
+if the cub was there he would find him.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VI
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>ut Fionn was gone. He was away, bound with his band of poets for the
+Galtees.
+</p>
+<p>
+It is likely they were junior poets come to the end of a year&rsquo;s training,
+and returning to their own province to see again the people at home, and
+to be wondered at and exclaimed at as they exhibited bits of the knowledge
+which they had brought from the great schools. They would know tags of
+rhyme and tricks about learning which Fionn would hear of; and now and
+again, as they rested in a glade or by the brink of a river, they might
+try their lessons over. They might even refer to the ogham wands on which
+the first words of their tasks and the opening lines of poems were cut;
+and it is likely that, being new to these things, they would talk of them
+to a youngster, and, thinking that his wits could be no better than their
+own, they might have explained to him how ogham was written. But it is far
+more likely that his women guardians had already started him at those
+lessons.
+</p>
+<p>
+Still this band of young bards would have been of infinite interest to
+Fionn, not on account of what they had learned, but because of what they
+knew. All the things that he should have known as by nature: the look, the
+movement, the feeling of crowds; the shouldering and intercourse of man
+with man; the clustering of houses and how people bore themselves in and
+about them; the movement of armed men, and the homecoming look of wounds;
+tales of births, and marriages and deaths; the chase with its multitudes
+of men and dogs; all the noise, the dust, the excitement of mere living.
+These, to Fionn, new come from leaves and shadows and the dipple and
+dapple of a wood, would have seemed wonderful; and the tales they would
+have told of their masters, their looks, fads, severities, sillinesses,
+would have been wonderful also.
+</p>
+<p>
+That band should have chattered like a rookery.
+</p>
+<p>
+They must have been young, for one time a Leinsterman came on them, a
+great robber named Fiacuil mac Cona, and he killed the poets. He chopped
+them up and chopped them down. He did not leave one poeteen of them all.
+He put them out of the world and out of life, so that they stopped being,
+and no one could tell where they went or what had really happened to them;
+and it is a wonder indeed that one can do that to anything let alone a
+band. If they were not youngsters, the bold Fiacuil could not have managed
+them all. Or, perhaps, he too had a band, although the record does not say
+so; but kill them he did, and they died that way.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn saw that deed, and his blood may have been cold enough as he watched
+the great robber coursing the poets as a wild dog rages in a flock. And
+when his turn came, when they were all dead, and the grim, red-handed man
+trod at him, Fionn may have shivered, but he would have shown his teeth
+and laid roundly on the monster with his hands. Perhaps he did that, and
+perhaps for that he was spared.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; roared the staring black-mouth with the red tongue
+squirming in it like a frisky fish.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The son of Uail, son of Baiscne,&rdquo; quoth hardy Fionn. And at that the
+robber ceased to be a robber, the murderer disappeared, the black-rimmed
+chasm packed with red fish and precipices changed to something else, and
+the round eyes that had been popping out of their sockets and trying to
+bite, changed also. There remained a laughing and crying and loving
+servant who wanted to tie himself into knots if that would please the son
+of his great captain. Fionn went home on the robber&rsquo;s shoulder, and the
+robber gave great snorts and made great jumps and behaved like a
+first-rate horse. For this same Fiacuil was the husband of Bovmall,
+Fionn&rsquo;s aunt. He had taken to the wilds when clann-Baiscne was broken, and
+he was at war with a world that had dared to kill his Chief.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VII
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> new life for Fionn in the robber&rsquo;s den that was hidden in a vast cold
+marsh.
+</p>
+<p>
+A tricky place that would be, with sudden exits and even suddener
+entrances, and with damp, winding, spidery places to hoard treasure in, or
+to hide oneself in.
+</p>
+<p>
+If the robber was a solitary he would, for lack of someone else, have
+talked greatly to Fionn. He would have shown his weapons and demonstrated
+how he used them, and with what slash he chipped his victim, and with what
+slice he chopped him. He would have told why a slash was enough for this
+man and why that man should be sliced. All men are masters when one is
+young, and Fionn would have found knowledge here also. He would have seen
+Fiacuil&rsquo;s great spear that had thirty rivets of Arabian gold in its
+socket, and that had to be kept wrapped up and tied down so that it would
+not kill people out of mere spitefulness. It had come from Faery, out of
+the Shi&rsquo; of Aillen mac Midna, and it would be brought back again later on
+between the same man&rsquo;s shoulder-blades.
+</p>
+<p>
+What tales that man could tell a boy, and what questions a boy could ask
+him. He would have known a thousand tricks, and because our instinct is to
+teach, and because no man can keep a trick from a boy, he would show them
+to Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+There was the marsh too; a whole new life to be learned; a complicated,
+mysterious, dank, slippery, reedy, treacherous life, but with its own
+beauty and an allurement that could grow on one, so that you could forget
+the solid world and love only that which quaked and gurgled.
+</p>
+<p>
+In this place you may swim. By this sign and this you will know if it is
+safe to do so, said Fiacuil mac Cona; but in this place, with this sign on
+it and that, you must not venture a toe.
+</p>
+<p>
+But where Fionn would venture his toes his ears would follow.
+</p>
+<p>
+There are coiling weeds down there, the robber counselled him; there are
+thin, tough, snaky binders that will trip you and grip you, that will pull
+you and will not let you go again until you are drowned; until you are
+swaying and swinging away below, with outstretched arms, with outstretched
+legs, with a face all stares and smiles and jockeyings, gripped in those
+leathery arms, until there is no more to be gripped of you even by them.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Watch these and this and that,&rdquo; Fionn would have been told, &ldquo;and always
+swim with a knife in your teeth.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He lived there until his guardians found out where he was and came after
+him. Fiacuil gave him up to them, and he was brought home again to the
+woods of Slieve Bloom, but he had gathered great knowledge and new
+supplenesses.
+</p>
+<p>
+The sons of Morna left him alone for a long time. Having made their essay
+they grew careless.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let him be,&rdquo; they said. &ldquo;He will come to us when the time comes.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+But it is likely too that they had had their own means of getting
+information about him. How he shaped? what muscles he had? and did he
+spring clean from the mark or had he to get off with a push? Fionn stayed
+with his guardians and hunted for them. He could run a deer down and haul
+it home by the reluctant skull. &ldquo;Come on, Goll,&rdquo; he would say to his stag,
+or, lifting it over a tussock with a tough grip on the snout, &ldquo;Are you
+coming, bald Cona&rsquo;n, or shall I kick you in the neck?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The time must have been nigh when he would think of taking the world
+itself by the nose, to haul it over tussocks and drag it into his pen; for
+he was of the breed in whom mastery is born, and who are good masters.
+</p>
+<p>
+But reports of his prowess were getting abroad. Clann-Morna began to
+stretch itself uneasily, and, one day, his guardians sent him on his
+travels.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is best for you to leave us now,&rdquo; they said to the tall stripling,
+&ldquo;for the sons of Morna are watching again to kill you.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The woods at that may have seemed haunted. A stone might sling at one from
+a tree-top; but from which tree of a thousand trees did it come? An arrow
+buzzing by one&rsquo;s ear would slide into the ground and quiver there
+silently, menacingly, hinting of the brothers it had left in the quiver
+behind; to the right? to the left? how many brothers? in how many
+quivers...? Fionn was a woodsman, but he had only two eyes to look with,
+one set of feet to carry him in one sole direction. But when he was
+looking to the front what, or how many whats, could be staring at him from
+the back? He might face in this direction, away from, or towards a smile
+on a hidden face and a finger on a string. A lance might slide at him from
+this bush or from the one yonder.. In the night he might have fought them;
+his ears against theirs; his noiseless feet against their lurking ones;
+his knowledge of the wood against their legion: but during the day he had
+no chance.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn went to seek his fortune, to match himself against all that might
+happen, and to carve a name for himself that will live while Time has an
+ear and knows an Irishman.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VIII
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>ionn went away, and now he was alone. But he was as fitted for loneliness
+as the crane is that haunts the solitudes and bleak wastes of the sea; for
+the man with a thought has a comrade, and Fionn&rsquo;s mind worked as featly as
+his body did. To be alone was no trouble to him who, however surrounded,
+was to be lonely his life long; for this will be said of Fionn when all is
+said, that all that came to him went from him, and that happiness was
+never his companion for more than a moment.
+</p>
+<p>
+But he was not now looking for loneliness. He was seeking the instruction
+of a crowd, and therefore when he met a crowd he went into it. His eyes
+were skilled to observe in the moving dusk and dapple of green woods. They
+were trained to pick out of shadows birds that were themselves
+dun-coloured shades, and to see among trees the animals that are coloured
+like the bark of trees. The hare crouching in the fronds was visible to
+him, and the fish that swayed in-visibly in the sway and flicker of a
+green bank. He would see all that was to be seen, and he would see all
+that is passed by the eye that is half blind from use and wont.
+</p>
+<p>
+At Moy Life&rsquo; he came on lads swimming in a pool; and, as he looked on them
+sporting in the flush tide, he thought that the tricks they performed were
+not hard for him, and that he could have shown them new ones.
+</p>
+<p>
+Boys must know what another boy can do, and they will match themselves
+against everything. They did their best under these observing eyes, and it
+was not long until he was invited to compete with them and show his
+mettle. Such an invitation is a challenge; it is almost, among boys, a
+declaration of war. But Fionn was so far beyond them in swimming that even
+the word master did not apply to that superiority.
+</p>
+<p>
+While he was swimming one remarked: &ldquo;He is fair and well shaped,&rdquo; and
+thereafter he was called &ldquo;Fionn&rdquo; or the Fair One. His name came from boys,
+and will, perhaps, be preserved by them.
+</p>
+<p>
+He stayed with these lads for some time, and it may be that they idolised
+him at first, for it is the way with boys to be astounded and enraptured
+by feats; but in the end, and that was inevitable, they grew jealous of
+the stranger. Those who had been the champions before he came would
+marshal each other, and, by social pressure, would muster all the others
+against him; so that in the end not a friendly eye was turned on Fionn in
+that assembly. For not only did he beat them at swimming, he beat their
+best at running and jumping, and when the sport degenerated into violence,
+as it was bound to, the roughness of Fionn would be ten times as rough as
+the roughness of the roughest rough they could put forward. Bravery is
+pride when one is young, and Fionn was proud.
+</p>
+<p>
+There must have been anger in his mind as he went away leaving that lake
+behind him, and those snarling and scowling boys, but there would have
+been disappointment also, for his desire at this time should have been
+towards friendliness.
+</p>
+<p>
+He went thence to Lock Le&rsquo;in and took service with the King of Finntraigh.
+That kingdom may have been thus called from Fionn himself and would have
+been known by another name when he arrived there.
+</p>
+<p>
+He hunted for the King of Finntraigh, and it soon grew evident that there
+was no hunter in his service to equal Fionn. More, there was no hunter of
+them all who even distantly approached him in excellence. The others ran
+after deer, using the speed of their legs, the noses of their dogs and a
+thousand well-worn tricks to bring them within reach, and, often enough,
+the animal escaped them. But the deer that Fionn got the track of did not
+get away, and it seemed even that the animals sought him so many did he
+catch.
+</p>
+<p>
+The king marvelled at the stories that were told of this new hunter, but
+as kings are greater than other people so they are more curious; and,
+being on the plane of excellence, they must see all that is excellently
+told of.
+</p>
+<p>
+The king wished to see him, and Fionn must have wondered what the king
+thought as that gracious lord looked on him. Whatever was thought, what
+the king said was as direct in utterance as it was in observation.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If Uail the son of Baiscne has a son,&rdquo; said the king, &ldquo;you would surely
+be that son.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+We are not told if the King of Finntraigh said anything more, but we know
+that Fionn left his service soon afterwards.
+</p>
+<p>
+He went southwards and was next in the employment of the King of Kerry,
+the same lord who had married his own mother. In that service he came to
+such consideration that we hear of him as playing a match of chess with
+the king, and by this game we know that he was still a boy in his mind
+however mightily his limbs were spreading. Able as he was in sports and
+huntings, he was yet too young to be politic, but he remained impolitic to
+the end of his days, for whatever he was able to do he would do, no matter
+who was offended thereat; and whatever he was not able to do he would do
+also. That was Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+Once, as they rested on a chase, a debate arose among the Fianna-Finn as
+to what was the finest music in the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell us that,&rdquo; said Fionn turning to Oisi&rsquo;n [pronounced Usheen]
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The cuckoo calling from the tree that is highest in the hedge,&rdquo; cried his
+merry son.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A good sound,&rdquo; said Fionn. &ldquo;And you, Oscar,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;what is to your
+mind the finest of music?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The top of music is the ring of a spear on a shield,&rdquo; cried the stout
+lad.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a good sound,&rdquo; said Fionn. And the other champions told their
+delight; the belling of a stag across water, the baying of a tuneful pack
+heard in the distance, the song of a lark, the laugh of a gleeful girl, or
+the whisper of a moved one.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are good sounds all,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell us, chief,&rdquo; one ventured, &ldquo;what you think?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The music of what happens,&rdquo; said great Fionn, &ldquo;that is the finest music
+in the world.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He loved &ldquo;what happened,&rdquo; and would not evade it by the swerve of a hair;
+so on this occasion what was occurring he would have occur, although a
+king was his rival and his master. It may be that his mother was watching
+the match and that he could not but exhibit his skill before her. He
+committed the enormity of winning seven games in succession from the king
+himself!!!
+</p>
+<p>
+It is seldom indeed that a subject can beat a king at chess, and this
+monarch was properly amazed.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who are you at all?&rdquo; he cried, starting back from the chessboard and
+staring on Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am the son of a countryman of the Luigne of Tara,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+He may have blushed as he said it, for the king, possibly for the first
+time, was really looking at him, and was looking back through twenty years
+of time as he did so. The observation of a king is faultless&mdash;it is
+proved a thousand times over in the tales, and this king&rsquo;s equipment was
+as royal as the next.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are no such son,&rdquo; said the indignant monarch, &ldquo;but you are the son
+that Muirne my wife bore to Uall mac Balscne.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And at that Fionn had no more to say; but his eyes may have flown to his
+mother and stayed there.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You cannot remain here,&rdquo; his step-father continued. &ldquo;I do not want you
+killed under my protection,&rdquo; he explained, or complained.
+</p>
+<p>
+Perhaps it was on Fionn&rsquo;s account he dreaded the sons of Morna, but no one
+knows what Fionn thought of him for he never thereafter spoke of his
+step-father. As for Muirne she must have loved her lord; or she may have
+been terrified in truth of the sons of Morna and for Fionn; but it is so
+also, that if a woman loves her second husband she can dislike all that
+reminds her of the first one. Fionn went on his travels again.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER IX
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>ll desires save one are fleeting, but that one lasts for ever. Fionn,
+with all desires, had the lasting one, for he would go anywhere and
+forsake anything for wisdom; and it was in search of this that he went to
+the place where Finegas lived on a bank of the Boyne Water. But for dread
+of the clann-Morna he did not go as Fionn. He called himself Deimne on
+that journey.
+</p>
+<p>
+We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered we get
+wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as a snail
+carries its shell. Fionn asked every question he could think of, and his
+master, who was a poet, and so an honourable man, answered them all, not
+to the limit of his patience, for it was limitless, but to the limit of
+his ability.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why do you live on the bank of a river?&rdquo; was one of these questions.
+&ldquo;Because a poem is a revelation, and it is by the brink of running water
+that poetry is revealed to the mind.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;How long have you been here?&rdquo; was the next query. &ldquo;Seven years,&rdquo; the poet
+answered.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a long time,&rdquo; said wondering Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would wait twice as long for a poem,&rdquo; said the inveterate bard.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you caught good poems?&rdquo; Fionn asked him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The poems I am fit for,&rdquo; said the mild master. &ldquo;No person can get more
+than that, for a man&rsquo;s readiness is his limit.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you have got as good poems by the Shannon or the Suir or by sweet
+Ana Life&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are good rivers,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;They all belong to good gods.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But why did you choose this river out of all the rivers?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Finegas beamed on his pupil.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would tell you anything,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and I will tell you that.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Fionn sat at the kindly man&rsquo;s feet, his hands absent among tall grasses,
+and listening with all his ears. &ldquo;A prophecy was made to me,&rdquo; Finegas
+began. &ldquo;A man of knowledge foretold that I should catch the Salmon of
+Knowledge in the Boyne Water.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then?&rdquo; said Fionn eagerly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I would have All Knowledge.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And after that?&rdquo; the boy insisted.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What should there be after that?&rdquo; the poet retorted.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean, what would you do with All Knowledge?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A weighty question,&rdquo; said Finegas smilingly. &ldquo;I could answer it if I had
+All Knowledge, but not until then. What would you do, my dear?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would make a poem,&rdquo; Fionn cried.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think too,&rdquo; said the poet, &ldquo;that that is what would be done.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+In return for instruction Fionn had taken over the service of his master&rsquo;s
+hut, and as he went about the household duties, drawing the water,
+lighting the fire, and carrying rushes for the floor and the beds, he
+thought over all the poet had taught him, and his mind dwelt on the rules
+of metre, the cunningness of words, and the need for a clean, brave mind.
+But in his thousand thoughts he yet remembered the Salmon of Knowledge as
+eagerly as his master did. He already venerated Finegas for his great
+learning, his poetic skill, for an hundred reasons; but, looking on him as
+the ordained eater of the Salmon of Knowledge, he venerated him to the
+edge of measure. Indeed, he loved as well as venerated this master because
+of his unfailing kindness, his patience, his readiness to teach, and his
+skill in teaching.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have learned much from you, dear master,&rdquo; said Fionn gratefully.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;All that I have is yours if you can take it,&rdquo; the poet answered, &ldquo;for you
+are entitled to all that you can take, but to no more than that. Take, so,
+with both hands.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may catch the salmon while I am with you,&rdquo; the hopeful boy mused.
+&ldquo;Would not that be a great happening!&rdquo; and he stared in ecstasy across the
+grass at those visions which a boy&rsquo;s mind knows.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us pray for that,&rdquo; said Finegas fervently.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here is a question,&rdquo; Fionn continued. &ldquo;How does this salmon get wisdom
+into his flesh?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is a hazel bush overhanging a secret pool in a secret place. The
+Nuts of Knowledge drop from the Sacred Bush into the pool, and as they
+float, a salmon takes them in his mouth and eats them.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would be almost as easy,&rdquo; the boy submitted, &ldquo;if one were to set on
+the track of the Sacred Hazel and eat the nuts straight from the bush.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That would not be very easy,&rdquo; said the poet, &ldquo;and yet it is not as easy
+as that, for the bush can only be found by its own knowledge, and that
+knowledge can only be got by eating the nuts, and the nuts can only be got
+by eating the salmon.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must wait for the salmon,&rdquo; said Fionn in a rage of resignation.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER X
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ife continued for him in a round of timeless time, wherein days and
+nights were uneventful and were yet filled with interest. As the day
+packed its load of strength into his frame, so it added its store of
+knowledge to his mind, and each night sealed the twain, for it is in the
+night that we make secure what we have gathered in the day.
+</p>
+<p>
+If he had told of these days he would have told of a succession of meals
+and sleeps, and of an endless conversation, from which his mind would now
+and again slip away to a solitude of its own, where, in large hazy
+atmospheres, it swung and drifted and reposed. Then he would be back
+again, and it was a pleasure for him to catch up on the thought that was
+forward and re-create for it all the matter he had missed. But he could
+not often make these sleepy sallies; his master was too experienced a
+teacher to allow any such bright-faced, eager-eyed abstractions, and as
+the druid women had switched his legs around a tree, so Finegas chased his
+mind, demanding sense in his questions and understanding in his replies.
+</p>
+<p>
+To ask questions can become the laziest and wobbliest occupation of a
+mind, but when you must yourself answer the problem that you have posed,
+you will meditate your question with care and frame it with precision.
+Fionn&rsquo;s mind learned to jump in a bumpier field than that in which he had
+chased rabbits. And when he had asked his question, and given his own
+answer to it, Finegas would take the matter up and make clear to him where
+the query was badly formed or at what point the answer had begun to go
+astray, so that Fionn came to understand by what successions a good
+question grows at last to a good answer.
+</p>
+<p>
+One day, not long after the conversation told of, Finegas came to the
+place where Fionn was. The poet had a shallow osier basket on his arm, and
+on his face there was a look that was at once triumphant and gloomy. He
+was excited certainly, but he was sad also, and as he stood gazing on
+Fionn his eyes were so kind that the boy was touched, and they were yet so
+melancholy that it almost made Fionn weep. &ldquo;What is it, my master?&rdquo; said
+the alarmed boy.
+</p>
+<p>
+The poet placed his osier basket on the grass.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look in the basket, dear son,&rdquo; he said. Fionn looked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is a salmon in the basket.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is The Salmon,&rdquo; said Finegas with a great sigh. Fionn leaped for
+delight.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am glad for you, master,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Indeed I am glad for you.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I am glad, my dear soul,&rdquo; the master rejoined.
+</p>
+<p>
+But, having said it, he bent his brow to his hand and for a long time he
+was silent and gathered into himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What should be done now?&rdquo; Fionn demanded, as he stared on the beautiful
+fish.
+</p>
+<p>
+Finegas rose from where he sat by the osier basket.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will be back in a short time,&rdquo; he said heavily. &ldquo;While I am away you
+may roast the salmon, so that it will be ready against my return.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will roast it indeed,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+The poet gazed long and earnestly on him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will not eat any of my salmon while I am away?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will not eat the littlest piece,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sure you will not,&rdquo; the other murmured, as he turned and walked
+slowly across the grass and behind the sheltering bushes on the ridge.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn cooked the salmon. It was beautiful and tempting and savoury as it
+smoked on a wooden platter among cool green leaves; and it looked all
+these to Finegas when he came from behind the fringing bushes and sat in
+the grass outside his door. He gazed on the fish with more than his eyes.
+He looked on it with his heart, with his soul in his eyes, and when he
+turned to look on Fionn the boy did not know whether the love that was in
+his eyes was for the fish or for himself. Yet he did know that a great
+moment had arrived for the poet.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;So,&rdquo; said Finegas, &ldquo;you did not eat it on me after all?&rdquo; &ldquo;Did I not
+promise?&rdquo; Fionn replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; his master continued, &ldquo;I went away so that you might eat the
+fish if you felt you had to.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why should I want another man&rsquo;s fish?&rdquo; said proud Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because young people have strong desires. I thought you might have tasted
+it, and then you would have eaten it on me.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did taste it by chance,&rdquo; Fionn laughed, &ldquo;for while the fish was
+roasting a great blister rose on its skin. I did not like the look of that
+blister, and I pressed it down with my thumb. That burned my thumb, so I
+popped it in my mouth to heal the smart. If your salmon tastes as nice as
+my thumb did,&rdquo; he laughed, &ldquo;it will taste very nice.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did you say your name was, dear heart?&rdquo; the poet asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I said my name was Deimne.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your name is not Deimne,&rdquo; said the mild man, &ldquo;your name is Fionn.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is true,&rdquo; the boy answered, &ldquo;but I do not know how you know it.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Even if I have not eaten the Salmon of Knowledge I have some small
+science of my own.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is very clever to know things as you know them,&rdquo; Fionn replied
+wonderingly. &ldquo;What more do you know of me, dear master?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know that I did not tell you the truth,&rdquo; said the heavy-hearted man.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did you tell me instead of it?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told you a lie.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is not a good thing to do,&rdquo; Fionn admitted. &ldquo;What sort of a lie was
+the lie, master?&rdquo; &ldquo;I told you that the Salmon of Knowledge was to be
+caught by me, according to the prophecy.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was true indeed, and I have caught the fish. But I did not tell you
+that the salmon was not to be eaten by me, although that also was in the
+prophecy, and that omission was the lie.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is not a great lie,&rdquo; said Fionn soothingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It must not become a greater one,&rdquo; the poet replied sternly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who was the fish given to?&rdquo; his companion wondered.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was given to you,&rdquo; Finegas answered. &ldquo;It was given to Fionn, the son
+of Uail, the son of Baiscne, and it will be given to him.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You shall have a half of the fish,&rdquo; cried Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will not eat a piece of its skin that is as small as the point of its
+smallest bone,&rdquo; said the resolute and trembling bard. &ldquo;Let you now eat up
+the fish, and I shall watch you and give praise to the gods of the
+Underworld and of the Elements.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Fionn then ate the Salmon of Knowledge, and when it had disappeared a
+great jollity and tranquillity and exuberance returned to the poet.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I had a great combat with that fish.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did it fight for its life?&rdquo; Fionn inquired.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It did, but that was not the fight I meant.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You shall eat a Salmon of Knowledge too,&rdquo; Fionn assured him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have eaten one,&rdquo; cried the blithe poet, &ldquo;and if you make such a
+promise it will be because you know.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I promise it and know it,&rdquo; said Fionn, &ldquo;you shall eat a Salmon of
+Knowledge yet.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XI
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>e had received all that he could get from Finegas. His education was
+finished and the time had come to test it, and to try all else that he had
+of mind and body. He bade farewell to the gentle poet, and set out for
+Tara of the Kings.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was Samhain-tide, and the feast of Tara was being held, at which all
+that was wise or skilful or well-born in Ireland were gathered together.
+</p>
+<p>
+This is how Tara was when Tara was. There was the High King&rsquo;s palace with
+its fortification; without it was another fortification enclosing the four
+minor palaces, each of which was maintained by one of the four provincial
+kings; without that again was the great banqueting hall, and around it and
+enclosing all of the sacred hill in its gigantic bound ran the main outer
+ramparts of Tara. From it, the centre of Ireland, four great roads went,
+north, south, east, and west, and along these roads, from the top and the
+bottom and the two sides of Ireland, there moved for weeks before Samhain
+an endless stream of passengers.
+</p>
+<p>
+Here a gay band went carrying rich treasure to decorate the pavilion of a
+Munster lord. On another road a vat of seasoned yew, monstrous as a house
+on wheels and drawn by an hundred laborious oxen, came bumping and
+joggling the ale that thirsty Connaught princes would drink. On a road
+again the learned men of Leinster, each with an idea in his head that
+would discomfit a northern ollav and make a southern one gape and fidget,
+would be marching solemnly, each by a horse that was piled high on the
+back and widely at the sides with clean-peeled willow or oaken wands, that
+were carved from the top to the bottom with the ogham signs; the first
+lines of poems (for it was an offence against wisdom to commit more than
+initial lines to writing), the names and dates of kings, the procession of
+laws of Tara and of the sub-kingdoms, the names of places and their
+meanings. On the brown stallion ambling peacefully yonder there might go
+the warring of the gods for two or ten thousand years; this mare with the
+dainty pace and the vicious eye might be sidling under a load of oaken
+odes in honour of her owner&rsquo;s family, with a few bundles of tales of
+wonder added in case they might be useful; and perhaps the restive piebald
+was backing the history of Ireland into a ditch.
+</p>
+<p>
+On such a journey all people spoke together, for all were friends, and no
+person regarded the weapon in another man&rsquo;s hand other than as an
+implement to poke a reluctant cow with, or to pacify with loud wallops
+some hoof-proud colt.
+</p>
+<p>
+Into this teem and profusion of jolly humanity Fionn slipped, and if his
+mood had been as bellicose as a wounded boar he would yet have found no
+man to quarrel with, and if his eye had been as sharp as a jealous
+husband&rsquo;s he would have found no eye to meet it with calculation or menace
+or fear; for the Peace of Ireland was in being, and for six weeks man was
+neighbour to man, and the nation was the guest of the High King. Fionn
+went in with the notables.
+</p>
+<p>
+His arrival had been timed for the opening day and the great feast of
+welcome. He may have marvelled, looking on the bright city, with its
+pillars of gleaming bronze and the roofs that were painted in many
+colours, so that each house seemed to be covered by the spreading wings of
+some gigantic and gorgeous bird. And the palaces themselves, mellow with
+red oak, polished within and without by the wear and the care of a
+thousand years, and carved with the patient skill of unending generations
+of the most famous artists of the most artistic country of the western
+world, would have given him much to marvel at also. It must have seemed
+like a city of dream, a city to catch the heart, when, coming over the
+great plain, Fionn saw Tara of the Kings held on its hill as in a hand to
+gather all the gold of the falling sun, and to restore a brightness as
+mellow and tender as that universal largess.
+</p>
+<p>
+In the great banqueting hall everything was in order for the feast. The
+nobles of Ireland with their winsome consorts, the learned and artistic
+professions represented by the pick of their time were in place. The
+Ard-Ri, Corm of the Hundred Battles, had taken his place on the raised
+dais which commanded the whole of that vast hall. At his Right hand his
+son Art, to be afterwards as famous as his famous father, took his seat,
+and on his left Goll mor mac Morna, chief of the Fianna of Ireland, had
+the seat of honour. As the High King took his place he could see every
+person who was noted in the land for any reason. He would know every one
+who was present, for the fame of all men is sealed at Tara, and behind his
+chair a herald stood to tell anything the king might not know or had
+forgotten.
+</p>
+<p>
+Conn gave the signal and his guests seated themselves.
+</p>
+<p>
+The time had come for the squires to take their stations behind their
+masters and mistresses. But, for the moment, the great room was seated,
+and the doors were held to allow a moment of respect to pass before the
+servers and squires came in.
+</p>
+<p>
+Looking over his guests, Conn observed that a young man was yet standing.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is a gentleman,&rdquo; he murmured, &ldquo;for whom no seat has been found.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+We may be sure that the Master of the Banquet blushed at that.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And,&rdquo; the king continued, &ldquo;I do not seem to know the young man.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Nor did his herald, nor did the unfortunate Master, nor did anybody; for
+the eyes of all were now turned where the king&rsquo;s went.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give me my horn,&rdquo; said the gracious monarch.
+</p>
+<p>
+The horn of state was put to his hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Young gentleman,&rdquo; he called to the stranger, &ldquo;I wish to drink to your
+health and to welcome you to Tara.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The young man came forward then, greater-shouldered than any mighty man of
+that gathering, longer and cleaner limbed, with his fair curls dancing
+about his beardless face. The king put the great horn into his hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me your name,&rdquo; he commanded gently.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am Fionn, the son of Uail, the son of Baiscne,&rdquo; said the youth.
+</p>
+<p>
+And at that saying a touch as of lightning went through the gathering so
+that each person quivered, and the son of the great, murdered captain
+looked by the king&rsquo;s shoulder into the twinkling eye of Goll. But no word
+was uttered, no movement made except the movement and the utterance of the
+Ard-Ri&rsquo;.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are the son of a friend,&rdquo; said the great-hearted monarch. &ldquo;You shall
+have the seat of a friend.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He placed Fionn at the right hand of his own son Art.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XII
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is to be known that on the night of the Feast of Samhain the doors
+separating this world and the next one are opened, and the inhabitants of
+either world can leave their respective spheres and appear in the world of
+the other beings.
+</p>
+<p>
+Now there was a grandson to the Dagda Mor, the Lord of the Underworld, and
+he was named Aillen mac Midna, out of Shi&rsquo; Finnachy, and this Aillen bore
+an implacable enmity to Tara and the Ard-Ri&rsquo;.
+</p>
+<p>
+As well as being monarch of Ireland her High King was chief of the people
+learned in magic, and it is possible that at some time Conn had adventured
+into Tir na n-Og, the Land of the Young, and had done some deed or misdeed
+in Aillen&rsquo;s lordship or in his family. It must have been an ill deed in
+truth, for it was in a very rage of revenge that Aillen came yearly at the
+permitted time to ravage Tara.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nine times he had come on this mission of revenge, but it is not to be
+supposed that he could actually destroy the holy city: the Ard-Ri&rsquo; and
+magicians could prevent that, but he could yet do a damage so considerable
+that it was worth Conn&rsquo;s while to take special extra precautions against
+him, including the precaution of chance.
+</p>
+<p>
+Therefore, when the feast was over and the banquet had commenced, the
+Hundred Fighter stood from his throne and looked over his assembled
+people.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Chain of Silence was shaken by the attendant whose duty and honour was
+the Silver Chain, and at that delicate chime the halt went silent, and a
+general wonder ensued as to what matter the High King would submit to his
+people.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Friends and heroes,&rdquo; said Conn, &ldquo;Aillen, the son of Midna, will come
+to-night from Slieve Fuaid with occult, terrible fire against our city. Is
+there among you one who loves Tara and the king, and who will undertake
+our defence against that being?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He spoke in silence, and when he had finished he listened to the same
+silence, but it was now deep, ominous, agonized. Each man glanced uneasily
+on his neighbour and then stared at his wine-cup or his fingers. The
+hearts of young men went hot for a gallant moment and were chilled in the
+succeeding one, for they had all heard of Aillen out of Shl Finnachy in
+the north. The lesser gentlemen looked under their brows at the greater
+champions, and these peered furtively at the greatest of all. Art og mac
+Morna of the Hard Strokes fell to biting his fingers, Cona&rsquo;n the Swearer
+and Garra mac Morna grumbled irritably to each other and at their
+neighbours, even Caelte, the son of Rona&rsquo;n, looked down into his own lap,
+and Goll Mor sipped at his wine without any twinkle in his eye. A horrid
+embarrassment came into the great hall, and as the High King stood in that
+palpitating silence his noble face changed from kindly to grave and from
+that to a terrible sternness. In another moment, to the undying shame of
+every person present, he would have been compelled to lift his own
+challenge and declare himself the champion of Tara for that night, but the
+shame that was on the faces of his people would remain in the heart of
+their king. Goll&rsquo;s merry mind would help him to forget, but even his heart
+would be wrung by a memory that he would not dare to face. It was at that
+terrible moment that Fionn stood up.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;will be given to the man who undertakes this defence?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;All that can be rightly asked will be royally bestowed,&rdquo; was the king&rsquo;s
+answer.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who are the sureties?&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The kings of Ireland, and Red Cith with his magicians.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will undertake the defence,&rdquo; said Fionn. And on that, the kings and
+magicians who were present bound themselves to the fulfilment of the
+bargain.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn marched from the banqueting hall, and as he went, all who were
+present of nobles and retainers and servants acclaimed him and wished him
+luck. But in their hearts they were bidding him good-bye, for all were
+assured that the lad was marching to a death so unescapeable that he might
+already be counted as a dead man.
+</p>
+<p>
+It is likely that Fionn looked for help to the people of the Shi&rsquo; 
+themselves, for, through his mother, he belonged to the tribes of Dana,
+although, on the father&rsquo;s side, his blood was well compounded with mortal
+clay. It may be, too, that he knew how events would turn, for he had eaten
+the Salmon of Knowledge. Yet it is not recorded that on this occasion he
+invoked any magical art as he did on other adventures.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn&rsquo;s way of discovering whatever was happening and hidden was always
+the same and is many times referred to. A shallow, oblong dish of pure,
+pale gold was brought to him. This dish was filled with clear water. Then
+Fionn would bend his head and stare into the water, and as he stared he
+would place his thumb in his mouth under his &ldquo;Tooth of Knowledge,&rdquo; his
+&ldquo;wisdom tooth.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Knowledge, may it be said, is higher than magic and is more to be sought.
+It is quite possible to see what is happening and yet not know what is
+forward, for while seeing is believing it does not follow that either
+seeing or believing is knowing. Many a person can see a thing and believe
+a thing and know just as little about it as the person who does neither.
+But Fionn would see and know, or he would under-stand a decent ratio of
+his visions. That he was versed in magic is true, for he was ever known as
+the Knowledgeable man, and later he had two magicians in his household
+named Dirim and mac-Reith to do the rough work of knowledge for their busy
+master.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was not from the Shi&rsquo;, however, that assistance came to Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XIII
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>e marched through the successive fortifications until he came to the
+outer, great wall, the boundary of the city, and when he had passed this
+he was on the wide plain of Tara.
+</p>
+<p>
+Other than himself no person was abroad, for on the night of the Feast of
+Samhain none but a madman would quit the shelter of a house even if it
+were on fire; for whatever disasters might be within a house would be as
+nothing to the calamities without it.
+</p>
+<p>
+The noise of the banquet was not now audible to Fionn&mdash;it is
+possible, however, that there was a shamefaced silence in the great hall&mdash;and
+the lights of the city were hidden by the successive great ramparts. The
+sky was over him; the earth under him; and than these there was nothing,
+or there was but the darkness and the wind.
+</p>
+<p>
+But darkness was not a thing to terrify him, bred in the nightness of a
+wood and the very fosterling of gloom; nor could the wind afflict his ear
+or his heart. There was no note in its orchestra that he had not brooded
+on and become, which becoming is magic. The long-drawn moan of it; the
+thrilling whisper and hush; the shrill, sweet whistle, so thin it can
+scarcely be heard, and is taken more by the nerves than by the ear; the
+screech, sudden as a devil&rsquo;s yell and loud as ten thunders; the cry as of
+one who flies with backward look to the shelter of leaves and darkness;
+and the sob as of one stricken with an age-long misery, only at times
+remembered, but remembered then with what a pang! His ear knew by what
+successions they arrived, and by what stages they grew and diminished.
+Listening in the dark to the bundle of noises which make a noise he could
+disentangle them and assign a place and a reason to each gradation of
+sound that formed the chorus: there was the patter of a rabbit, and there
+the scurrying of a hare; a bush rustled yonder, but that brief rustle was
+a bird; that pressure was a wolf, and this hesitation a fox; the scraping
+yonder was but a rough leaf against bark, and the scratching beyond it was
+a ferret&rsquo;s claw.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fear cannot be where knowledge is, and Fionn was not fearful.
+</p>
+<p>
+His mind, quietly busy on all sides, picked up one sound and dwelt on it.
+&ldquo;A man,&rdquo; said Fionn, and he listened in that direction, back towards the
+city.
+</p>
+<p>
+A man it was, almost as skilled in darkness as Fionn himself &ldquo;This is no
+enemy,&rdquo; Fionn thought; &ldquo;his walking is open.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who comes?&rdquo; he called.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A friend,&rdquo; said the newcomer.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give a friend&rsquo;s name,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fiacuil mac Cona,&rdquo; was the answer.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, my pulse and heart!&rdquo; cried Fionn, and he strode a few paces to meet
+the great robber who had fostered him among the marshes.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you are not afraid,&rdquo; he said joyfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid in good truth,&rdquo; Fiacuil whispered, &ldquo;and the minute my
+business with you is finished I will trot back as quick as legs will carry
+me. May the gods protect my going as they protected my coming,&rdquo; said the
+robber piously.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Amen,&rdquo; said Fionn, &ldquo;and now, tell me what you have come for?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you any plan against this lord of the Shl?&rdquo; Fiacuil whispered.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will attack him,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is not a plan,&rdquo; the other groaned, &ldquo;we do not plan to deliver an
+attack but to win a victory.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is this a very terrible person?&rdquo; Fionn asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Terrible indeed. No one can get near him or away from him. He comes out
+of the Shi&rsquo; playing sweet, low music on a timpan and a pipe, and all who
+hear this music fall asleep.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will not fall asleep,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will indeed, for everybody does.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What happens then?&rdquo; Fionn asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;When all are asleep Aillen mac Midna blows a dart of fire out of his
+mouth, and everything that is touched by that fire is destroyed, and he
+can blow his fire to an incredible distance and to any direction.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are very brave to come to help me,&rdquo; Fionn murmured, &ldquo;especially when
+you are not able to help me at all.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can help,&rdquo; Fiacuil replied, &ldquo;but I must be paid.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What payment?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A third of all you earn and a seat at your council.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I grant that,&rdquo; said Fionn, &ldquo;and now, tell me your plan?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You remember my spear with the thirty rivets of Arabian gold in its
+socket?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The one,&rdquo; Fionn queried, &ldquo;that had its head wrapped in a blanket and was
+stuck in a bucket of water and was chained to a wall as well&mdash;the
+venomous Birgha?&rdquo; &ldquo;That one,&rdquo; Fiacuil replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is Aillen mac Midna&rsquo;s own spear,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;and it was taken out
+of his Shi&rsquo; by your father.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said Fionn, wondering nevertheless where Fiacuil got the spear,
+but too generous to ask.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;When you hear the great man of the Shi&rsquo; coming, take the wrappings off
+the head of the spear and bend your face over it; the heat of the spear,
+the stench of it, all its pernicious and acrid qualities will prevent you
+from going to sleep.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you sure of that?&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t go to sleep close to that stench; nobody could,&rdquo; Fiacuil
+replied decidedly.
+</p>
+<p>
+He continued: &ldquo;Aillen mac Midna will be off his guard when he stops
+playing and begins to blow his fire; he will think everybody is asleep;
+then you can deliver the attack you were speaking of, and all good luck go
+with it.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will give him back his spear,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here it is,&rdquo; said Fiacuil, taking the Birgha from under his cloak. &ldquo;But
+be as careful of it, my pulse, be as frightened of it as you are of the
+man of Dana.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will be frightened of nothing,&rdquo; said Fionn, &ldquo;and the only person I will
+be sorry for is that Aillen mac Midna, who is going to get his own spear
+back.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will go away now,&rdquo; his companion whispered, &ldquo;for it is growing darker
+where you would have thought there was no more room for darkness, and
+there is an eerie feeling abroad which I do not like. That man from the
+Shi&rsquo; may come any minute, and if I catch one sound of his music I am done
+for.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The robber went away and again Fionn was alone.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XIV
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>e listened to the retreating footsteps until they could be heard no more,
+and the one sound that came to his tense ears was the beating of his own
+heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+Even the wind had ceased, and there seemed to be nothing in the world but
+the darkness and himself. In that gigantic blackness, in that unseen
+quietude and vacancy, the mind could cease to be personal to itself. It
+could be overwhelmed and merged in space, so that consciousness would be
+transferred or dissipated, and one might sleep standing; for the mind
+fears loneliness more than all else, and will escape to the moon rather
+than be driven inwards on its own being.
+</p>
+<p>
+But Fionn was not lonely, and he was not afraid when the son of Midna
+came.
+</p>
+<p>
+A long stretch of the silent night had gone by, minute following minute in
+a slow sequence, wherein as there was no change there was no time; wherein
+there was no past and no future, but a stupefying, endless present which
+is almost the annihilation of consciousness. A change came then, for the
+clouds had also been moving and the moon at last was sensed behind them&mdash;not
+as a radiance, but as a percolation of light, a gleam that was strained
+through matter after matter and was less than the very wraith or
+remembrance of itself; a thing seen so narrowly, so sparsely, that the eye
+could doubt if it was or was not seeing, and might conceive that its own
+memory was re-creating that which was still absent.
+</p>
+<p>
+But Fionn&rsquo;s eye was the eye of a wild creature that spies on darkness and
+moves there wittingly. He saw, then, not a thing but a movement; something
+that was darker than the darkness it loomed on; not a being but a
+presence, and, as it were, impending pressure. And in a little he heard
+the deliberate pace of that great being.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn bent to his spear and unloosed its coverings.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then from the darkness there came another sound; a low, sweet sound;
+thrillingly joyous, thrillingly low; so low the ear could scarcely note
+it, so sweet the ear wished to catch nothing else and would strive to hear
+it rather than all sounds that may be heard by man: the music of another
+world! the unearthly, dear melody of the Shi&rsquo;! So sweet it was that the
+sense strained to it, and having reached must follow drowsily in its wake,
+and would merge in it, and could not return again to its own place until
+that strange harmony was finished and the ear restored to freedom.
+</p>
+<p>
+But Fionn had taken the covering from his spear, and with his brow pressed
+close to it he kept his mind and all his senses engaged on that sizzling,
+murderous point.
+</p>
+<p>
+The music ceased and Aillen hissed a fierce blue flame from his mouth, and
+it was as though he hissed lightning.
+</p>
+<p>
+Here it would seem that Fionn used magic, for spreading out his fringed
+mantle he caught the flame. Rather he stopped it, for it slid from the
+mantle and sped down into the earth to the depth of twenty-six spans; from
+which that slope is still called the Glen of the Mantle, and the rise on
+which Aillen stood is known as the Ard of Fire.
+</p>
+<p>
+One can imagine the surprise of Aillen mac Midna, seeing his fire caught
+and quenched by an invisible hand. And one can imagine that at this check
+he might be frightened, for who would be more terrified than a magician
+who sees his magic fail, and who, knowing of power, will guess at powers
+of which he has no conception and may well dread.
+</p>
+<p>
+Everything had been done by him as it should be done. His pipe had been
+played and his timpan, all who heard that music should be asleep, and yet
+his fire was caught in full course and was quenched.
+</p>
+<p>
+Aillen, with all the terrific strength of which he was master, blew again,
+and the great jet of blue flame came roaring and whistling from him and
+was caught and disappeared.
+</p>
+<p>
+Panic swirled into the man from Faery; he turned from that terrible spot
+and fled, not knowing what might be behind, but dreading it as he had
+never before dreaded anything, and the unknown pursued him; that terrible
+defence became offence and hung to his heel as a wolf pads by the flank of
+a bull.
+</p>
+<p>
+And Aillen was not in his own world! He was in the world of men, where
+movement is not easy and the very air a burden. In his own sphere, in his
+own element, he might have outrun Fionn, but this was Fionn&rsquo;s world,
+Fionn&rsquo;s element, and the flying god was not gross enough to outstrip him.
+Yet what a race he gave, for it was but at the entrance to his own Shi&rsquo; 
+that the pursuer got close enough. Fionn put a finger into the thong of
+the great spear, and at that cast night fell on Aillen mac Midna. His eyes
+went black, his mind whirled and ceased, there came nothingness where he
+had been, and as the Birgha whistled into his shoulder-blades he withered
+away, he tumbled emptily and was dead. Fionn took his lovely head from its
+shoulders and went back through the night to Tara.
+</p>
+<p>
+Triumphant Fionn, who had dealt death to a god, and to whom death would be
+dealt, and who is now dead!
+</p>
+<p>
+He reached the palace at sunrise.
+</p>
+<p>
+On that morning all were astir early. They wished to see what destruction
+had been wrought by the great being, but it was young Fionn they saw and
+that redoubtable head swinging by its hair. &ldquo;What is your demand?&rdquo; said
+the Ard-Ri&rsquo;. &ldquo;The thing that it is right I should ask,&rdquo; said Fionn: &ldquo;the
+command of the Fianna of Ireland.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Make your choice,&rdquo; said Conn to Goll Mor; &ldquo;you will leave Ireland, or you
+will place your hand in the hand of this champion and be his man.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Goll could do a thing that would be hard for another person, and he could
+do it so beautifully that he was not diminished by any action.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here is my hand,&rdquo; said Goll.
+</p>
+<p>
+And he twinkled at the stern, young eyes that gazed on him as he made his
+submission.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+THE BIRTH OF BRAN
+</h2>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/127m.jpg" alt="127m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/127.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER I
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>here are people who do not like dogs a bit&mdash;they are usually women&mdash;but
+in this story there is a man who did not like dogs. In fact, he hated
+them. When he saw one he used to go black in the face, and he threw rocks
+at it until it got out of sight. But the Power that protects all creatures
+had put a squint into this man&rsquo;s eye, so that he always threw crooked.
+</p>
+<p>
+This gentleman&rsquo;s name was Fergus Fionnliath, and his stronghold was near
+the harbour of Galway. Whenever a dog barked he would leap out of his
+seat, and he would throw everything that he owned out of the window in the
+direction of the bark. He gave prizes to servants who disliked dogs, and
+when he heard that a man had drowned a litter of pups he used to visit
+that person and try to marry his daughter.
+</p>
+<p>
+Now Fionn, the son of Uail, was the reverse of Fergus Fionnliath in this
+matter, for he delighted in dogs, and he knew everything about them from
+the setting of the first little white tooth to the rocking of the last
+long yellow one. He knew the affections and antipathies which are proper
+in a dog; the degree of obedience to which dogs may be trained without
+losing their honourable qualities or becoming servile and suspicious; he
+knew the hopes that animate them, the apprehensions which tingle in their
+blood, and all that is to be demanded from, or forgiven in, a paw, an ear,
+a nose, an eye, or a tooth; and he understood these things because he
+loved dogs, for it is by love alone that we understand anything.
+</p>
+<p>
+Among the three hundred dogs which Fionn owned there were two to whom he
+gave an especial tenderness, and who were his daily and nightly
+companions. These two were Bran and Sceo&rsquo;lan, but if a person were to
+guess for twenty years he would not find out why Fionn loved these two
+dogs and why he would never be separated from them.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn&rsquo;s mother, Muirne, went to wide Allen of Leinster to visit her son,
+and she brought her young sister Tuiren with her. The mother and aunt of
+the great captain were well treated among the Fianna, first, because they
+were parents to Fionn, and second, because they were beautiful and noble
+women.
+</p>
+<p>
+No words can describe how delightful Muirne was&mdash;she took the branch;
+and as to Tuiren, a man could not look at her without becoming angry or
+dejected. Her face was fresh as a spring morning; her voice more cheerful
+than the cuckoo calling from the branch that is highest in the hedge; and
+her form swayed like a reed and flowed like a river, so that each person
+thought she would surely flow to him.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/131m.jpg" alt="131m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/131.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Men who had wives of their own grew moody and downcast because they could
+not hope to marry her, while the bachelors of the Fianna stared at each
+other with truculent, bloodshot eyes, and then they gazed on Tuiren so
+gently that she may have imagined she was being beamed on by the mild eyes
+of the dawn.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was to an Ulster gentleman, Iollan Eachtach, that she gave her love,
+and this chief stated his rights and qualities and asked for her in
+marriage.
+</p>
+<p>
+Now Fionn did not dislike the man of Ulster, but either he did not know
+them well or else he knew them too well, for he made a curious stipulation
+before consenting to the marriage. He bound Iollan to return the lady if
+there should be occasion to think her unhappy, and Iollan agreed to do so.
+The sureties to this bargain were Caelte mac Ronan, Goll mac Morna, and
+Lugaidh. Lugaidh himself gave the bride away, but it was not a pleasant
+ceremony for him, because he also was in love with the lady, and he would
+have preferred keeping her to giving her away. When she had gone he made a
+poem about her, beginning:
+</p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;There is no more light in the sky&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+<p>
+And hundreds of sad people learned the poem by heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER II
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen Iollan and Tuiren were married they went to Ulster, and they lived
+together very happily. But the law of life is change; nothing continues in
+the same way for any length of time; happiness must become unhappiness,
+and will be succeeded again by the joy it had displaced. The past also
+must be reckoned with; it is seldom as far behind us as we could wish: it
+is more often in front, blocking the way, and the future trips over it
+just when we think that the road is clear and joy our own.
+</p>
+<p>
+Iollan had a past. He was not ashamed of it; he merely thought it was
+finished, although in truth it was only beginning, for it is that
+perpetual beginning of the past that we call the future.
+</p>
+<p>
+Before he joined the Fianna he had been in love with a lady of the Shi&rsquo;,
+named Uct Dealv (Fair Breast), and they had been sweethearts for years.
+How often he had visited his sweetheart in Faery! With what eagerness and
+anticipation he had gone there; the lover&rsquo;s whistle that he used to give
+was known to every person in that Shi&rsquo;, and he had been discussed by more
+than one of the delicate sweet ladies of Faery. &ldquo;That is your whistle,
+Fair Breast,&rdquo; her sister of the Shi&rsquo; would say.
+</p>
+<p>
+And Uct Dealv would reply: &ldquo;Yes, that is my mortal, my lover, my pulse,
+and my one treasure.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/137m.jpg" alt="137m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/137.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+She laid her spinning aside, or her embroidery if she was at that, or if
+she were baking a cake of fine wheaten bread mixed with honey she would
+leave the cake to bake itself and fly to Iollan. Then they went hand in
+hand in the country that smells of apple-blossom and honey, looking on
+heavy-boughed trees and on dancing and beaming clouds. Or they stood
+dreaming together, locked in a clasping of arms and eyes, gazing up and
+down on each other, Iollan staring down into sweet grey wells that peeped
+and flickered under thin brows, and Uct Dealv looking up into great black
+ones that went dreamy and went hot in endless alternation.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then Iollan would go back to the world of men, and Uct Dealv would return
+to her occupations in the Land of the Ever Young.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did he say?&rdquo; her sister of the Shi&rsquo; would ask.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said I was the Berry of the Mountain, the Star of Knowledge, and the
+Blossom of the Raspberry.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They always say the same thing,&rdquo; her sister pouted.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But they look other things,&rdquo; Uct Dealv insisted. &ldquo;They feel other
+things,&rdquo; she murmured; and an endless conversation recommenced.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then for some time Iollan did not come to Faery, and Uct Dealv marvelled
+at that, while her sister made an hundred surmises, each one worse than
+the last.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is not dead or he would be here,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He has forgotten you, my
+darling.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+News was brought to Tlr na n-Og of the marriage of Iollan and Tuiren, and
+when Uct Dealv heard that news her heart ceased to beat for a moment, and
+she closed her eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now!&rdquo; said her sister of the Shi&rsquo;. &ldquo;That is how long the love of a mortal
+lasts,&rdquo; she added, in the voice of sad triumph which is proper to sisters.
+</p>
+<p>
+But on Uct Dealv there came a rage of jealousy and despair such as no
+person in the Shi&rsquo; had ever heard of, and from that moment she became
+capable of every ill deed; for there are two things not easily controlled,
+and they are hunger and jealousy. She determined that the woman who had
+supplanted her in Iollan&rsquo;s affections should rue the day she did it. She
+pondered and brooded revenge in her heart, sitting in thoughtful solitude
+and bitter collectedness until at last she had a plan.
+</p>
+<p>
+She understood the arts of magic and shape-changing, so she changed her
+shape into that of Fionn&rsquo;s female runner, the best-known woman in Ireland;
+then she set out from Faery and appeared in the world. She travelled in
+the direction of Iollan&rsquo;s stronghold.
+</p>
+<p>
+Iollan knew the appearance of Fionn&rsquo;s messenger, but he was surprised to
+see her.
+</p>
+<p>
+She saluted him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Health and long life, my master.&rdquo;.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Health and good days,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;What brings you here, dear heart?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I come from Fionn.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And your message?&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The royal captain intends to visit you.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He will be welcome,&rdquo; said Iollan. &ldquo;We shall give him an Ulster feast.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The world knows what that is,&rdquo; said the messenger courteously. &ldquo;And now,&rdquo;
+ she continued, &ldquo;I have messages for your queen.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Tuiren then walked from the house with the messenger, but when they had
+gone a short distance Uct Dealv drew a hazel rod from beneath her cloak
+and struck it on the queen&rsquo;s shoulder, and on the instant Tuiren&rsquo;s figure
+trembled and quivered, and it began to whirl inwards and downwards, and
+she changed into the appearance of a hound.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was sad to see the beautiful, slender dog standing shivering and
+astonished, and sad to see the lovely eyes that looked out pitifully in
+terror and amazement. But Uct Dealv did not feel sad. She clasped a chain
+about the hound&rsquo;s neck, and they set off westward towards the house of
+Fergus Fionnliath, who was reputed to be the unfriendliest man in the
+world to a dog. It was because of his reputation that Uct Dealv was
+bringing the hound to him. She did not want a good home for this dog: she
+wanted the worst home that could be found in the world, and she thought
+that Fergus would revenge for her the rage and jealousy which she felt
+towards Tuiren.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER III
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>s they paced along Uct Dealv railed bitterly against the hound, and shook
+and jerked her chain. Many a sharp cry the hound gave in that journey,
+many a mild lament.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, supplanter! Ah, taker of another girl&rsquo;s sweetheart!&rdquo; said Uct Dealv
+fiercely. &ldquo;How would your lover take it if he could see you now? How would
+he look if he saw your pointy ears, your long thin snout, your shivering,
+skinny legs, and your long grey tail. He would not love you now, bad
+girl!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you heard of Fergus Fionnliath,&rdquo; she said again, &ldquo;the man who does
+not like dogs?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Tuiren had indeed heard of him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is to Fergus I shall bring you,&rdquo; cried Uct Dealv. &ldquo;He will throw
+stones at you. You have never had a stone thrown at you. Ah, bad girl! You
+do not know how a stone sounds as it nips the ear with a whirling buzz,
+nor how jagged and heavy it feels as it thumps against a skinny leg.
+Robber! Mortal! Bad girl! You have never been whipped, but you will be
+whipped now. You shall hear the song of a lash as it curls forward and
+bites inward and drags backward. You shall dig up old bones stealthily at
+night, and chew them against famine. You shall whine and squeal at the
+moon, and shiver in the cold, and you will never take another girl&rsquo;s
+sweetheart again.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And it was in those terms and in that tone that she spoke to Tuiren as
+they journeyed forward, so that the hound trembled and shrank, and whined
+pitifully and in despair.
+</p>
+<p>
+They came to Fergus Fionnliath&rsquo;s stronghold, and Uct Dealv demanded
+admittance.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leave that dog outside,&rdquo; said the servant.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will not do so,&rdquo; said the pretended messenger.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can come in without the dog, or you can stay out with the dog,&rdquo; said
+the surly guardian.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my hand,&rdquo; cried Uct Dealv, &ldquo;I will come in with this dog, or your
+master shall answer for it to Fionn.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+At the name of Fionn the servant almost fell out of his standing. He flew
+to acquaint his master, and Fergus himself came to the great door of the
+stronghold.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my faith,&rdquo; he cried in amazement, &ldquo;it is a dog.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A dog it is,&rdquo; growled the glum servant.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go you away,&rdquo; said Fergus to Uct Dealv, &ldquo;and when you have killed the dog
+come back to me and I will give you a present.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Life and health, my good master, from Fionn, the son of Uail, the son of
+Baiscne,&rdquo; said she to Fergus.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Life and health back to Fionn,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;Come into the house and give
+your message, but leave the dog outside, for I don&rsquo;t like dogs.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The dog comes in,&rdquo; the messenger replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;How is that?&rdquo; cried Fergus angrily.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fionn sends you this hound to take care of until he comes for her,&rdquo; said
+the messenger.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder at that,&rdquo; Fergus growled, &ldquo;for Fionn knows well that there is
+not a man in the world has less of a liking for dogs than I have.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;However that may be, master, I have given Fionn&rsquo;s message, and here at my
+heel is the dog. Do you take her or refuse her?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I could refuse anything to Fionn it would be a dog,&rdquo; said Fergus, &ldquo;but
+I could not refuse anything to Fionn, so give me the hound.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Uct Dealv put the chain in his hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, bad dog!&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+<p>
+And then she went away well satisfied with her revenge, and returned to
+her own people in the Shi.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER IV
+</h2>
+
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>n the following day Fergus called his servant.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has that dog stopped shivering yet?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It has not, sir,&rdquo; said the servant.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bring the beast here,&rdquo; said his master, &ldquo;for whoever else is dissatisfied
+Fionn must be satisfied.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The dog was brought, and he examined it with a jaundiced and bitter eye.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It has the shivers indeed,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The shivers it has,&rdquo; said the servant.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you cure the shivers?&rdquo; his master demanded, for he thought that if
+the animal&rsquo;s legs dropped off Fionn would not be satisfied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is a way,&rdquo; said the servant doubtfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If there is a way, tell it to me,&rdquo; cried his master angrily.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you were to take the beast up in your arms and hug it and kiss it, the
+shivers would stop,&rdquo; said the man.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean&mdash;?&rdquo; his master thundered, and he stretched his hand for
+a club.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I heard that,&rdquo; said the servant humbly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take that dog up,&rdquo; Fergus commanded, &ldquo;and hug it and kiss it, and if I
+find a single shiver left in the beast I&rsquo;ll break your head.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The man bent to the hound, but it snapped a piece out of his hand, and
+nearly bit his nose off as well.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That dog doesn&rsquo;t like me,&rdquo; said the man.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor do I,&rdquo; roared Fergus; &ldquo;get out of my sight.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The man went away and Fergus was left alone with the hound, but the poor
+creature was so terrified that it began to tremble ten times worse than
+before.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Its legs will drop off,&rdquo; said Fergus. &ldquo;Fionn will blame me,&rdquo; he cried in
+despair.
+</p>
+<p>
+He walked to the hound.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you snap at my nose, or if you put as much as the start of a tooth
+into the beginning of a finger!&rdquo; he growled.
+</p>
+<p>
+He picked up the dog, but it did not snap, it only trembled. He held it
+gingerly for a few moments.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it has to be hugged,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll hug it. I&rsquo;d do more than that for
+Fionn.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He tucked and tightened the animal into his breast, and marched moodily up
+and down the room. The dog&rsquo;s nose lay along his breast under his chin, and
+as he gave it dutiful hugs, one hug to every five paces, the dog put out
+its tongue and licked him timidly under the chin.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stop,&rdquo; roared Fergus, &ldquo;stop that forever,&rdquo; and he grew very red in the
+face, and stared truculently down along his nose. A soft brown eye looked
+up at him and the shy tongue touched again on his chin.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it has to be kissed,&rdquo; said Fergus gloomily, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll kiss it; I&rsquo;d do more
+than that for Fionn,&rdquo; he groaned.
+</p>
+<p>
+He bent his head, shut his eyes, and brought the dog&rsquo;s jaw against his
+lips. And at that the dog gave little wriggles in his arms, and little
+barks, and little licks, so that he could scarcely hold her. He put the
+hound down at last.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is not a single shiver left in her,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+And that was true.
+</p>
+<p>
+Everywhere he walked the dog followed him, giving little prances and
+little pats against him, and keeping her eyes fixed on his with such
+eagerness and intelligence that he marvelled.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That dog likes me,&rdquo; he murmured in amazement.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my hand,&rdquo; he cried next day, &ldquo;I like that dog.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The day after that he was calling her &ldquo;My One Treasure, My Little Branch.&rdquo;
+ And within a week he could not bear her to be out of his sight for an
+instant.
+</p>
+<p>
+He was tormented by the idea that some evil person might throw a stone at
+the hound, so he assembled his servants and retainers and addressed them.
+</p>
+<p>
+He told them that the hound was the Queen of Creatures, the Pulse of his
+Heart, and the Apple of his Eye, and he warned them that the person who as
+much as looked sideways on her, or knocked one shiver out of her, would
+answer for the deed with pains and indignities. He recited a list of
+calamities which would befall such a miscreant, and these woes began with
+flaying and ended with dismemberment, and had inside bits of such
+complicated and ingenious torment that the blood of the men who heard it
+ran chill in their veins, and the women of the household fainted where
+they stood.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER V
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n course of time the news came to Fionn that his mother&rsquo;s sister was not
+living with Iollan. He at once sent a messenger calling for fulfilment of
+the pledge that had been given to the Fianna, and demanding the instant
+return of Tuiren. Iollan was in a sad condition when this demand was made.
+He guessed that Uct Dealv had a hand in the disappearance of his queen,
+and he begged that time should be given him in which to find the lost
+girl. He promised if he could not discover her within a certain period
+that he would deliver his body into Fionn&rsquo;s hands, and would abide by
+whatever judgement Fionn might pronounce. The great captain agreed to
+that.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell the wife-loser that I will have the girl or I will have his head,&rdquo;
+ said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+Iollan set out then for Faery. He knew the way, and in no great time he
+came to the hill where Uct Dealv was.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was hard to get Uct Dealv to meet him, but at last she consented, and
+they met under the apple boughs of Faery.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well!&rdquo; said Uct Dealv. &ldquo;Ah! Breaker of Vows and Traitor to Love,&rdquo; said
+she.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hail and a blessing,&rdquo; said Iollan humbly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my hand,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;I will give you no blessing, for it was no
+blessing you left with me when we parted.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am in danger,&rdquo; said Iollan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is that to me?&rdquo; she replied fiercely.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fionn may claim my head,&rdquo; he murmured.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let him claim what he can take,&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Iollan proudly, &ldquo;he will claim what I can give.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me your tale,&rdquo; said she coldly.
+</p>
+<p>
+Iollan told his story then, and, he concluded, &ldquo;I am certain that you have
+hidden the girl.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I save your head from Fionn,&rdquo; the woman of the Shi&rsquo; replied, &ldquo;then
+your head will belong to me.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is true,&rdquo; said Iollan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if your head is mine, the body that goes under it is mine. Do you
+agree to that?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do,&rdquo; said Iollan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give me your pledge,&rdquo; said Uct Dealv, &ldquo;that if I save you from this
+danger you will keep me as your sweetheart until the end of life and
+time.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I give that pledge,&rdquo; said Iollan.
+</p>
+<p>
+Uct Dealv went then to the house of Fergus Fionnliath, and she broke the
+enchantment that was on the hound, so that Tuiren&rsquo;s own shape came back to
+her; but in the matter of two small whelps, to which the hound had given
+birth, the enchantment could not be broken, so they had to remain as they
+were. These two whelps were Bran and Sceo&rsquo;lan. They were sent to Fionn,
+and he loved them for ever after, for they were loyal and affectionate, as
+only dogs can be, and they were as intelligent as human beings. Besides
+that, they were Fionn&rsquo;s own cousins.
+</p>
+<p>
+Tuiren was then asked in marriage by Lugaidh who had loved her so long. He
+had to prove to her that he was not any other woman&rsquo;s sweetheart, and when
+he proved that they were married, and they lived happily ever after, which
+is the proper way to live. He wrote a poem beginning:
+</p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Lovely the day. Dear is the eye of the dawn&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+<p>
+And a thousand merry people learned it after him.
+</p>
+<p>
+But as to Fergus Fionnliath, he took to his bed, and he stayed there for a
+year and a day suffering from blighted affection, and he would have died
+in the bed only that Fionn sent him a special pup, and in a week that
+young hound became the Star of Fortune and the very Pulse of his Heart, so
+that he got well again, and he also lived happily ever after.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0035" id="link2H_4_0035">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+OISIN&rsquo;S MOTHER
+</h2>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/153m.jpg" alt="153m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/153.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER I
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>VENING was drawing nigh, and the Fianna-Finn had decided to hunt no more
+that day. The hounds were whistled to heel, and a sober, homeward march
+began. For men will walk soberly in the evening, however they go in the
+day, and dogs will take the mood from their masters. They were pacing so,
+through the golden-shafted, tender-coloured eve, when a fawn leaped
+suddenly from covert, and, with that leap, all quietness vanished: the men
+shouted, the dogs gave tongue, and a furious chase commenced.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn loved a chase at any hour, and, with Bran and Sceo&rsquo;lan, he
+outstripped the men and dogs of his troop, until nothing remained in the
+limpid world but Fionn, the two hounds, and the nimble, beautiful fawn.
+These, and the occasional boulders, round which they raced, or over which
+they scrambled; the solitary tree which dozed aloof and beautiful in the
+path, the occasional clump of trees that hived sweet shadow as a hive
+hoards honey, and the rustling grass that stretched to infinity, and that
+moved and crept and swung under the breeze in endless, rhythmic
+billowings.
+</p>
+<p>
+In his wildest moment Fionn was thoughtful, and now, although running
+hard, he was thoughtful. There was no movement of his beloved hounds that
+he did not know; not a twitch or fling of the head, not a cock of the ears
+or tail that was not significant to him. But on this chase whatever signs
+the dogs gave were not understood by their master.
+</p>
+<p>
+He had never seen them in such eager flight. They were almost utterly
+absorbed in it, but they did not whine with eagerness, nor did they cast
+any glance towards him for the encouraging word which he never failed to
+give when they sought it.
+</p>
+<p>
+They did look at him, but it was a look which he could not comprehend.
+There was a question and a statement in those deep eyes, and he could not
+understand what that question might be, nor what it was they sought to
+convey. Now and again one of the dogs turned a head in full flight, and
+stared, not at Fionn, but distantly backwards, over the spreading and
+swelling plain where their companions of the hunt had disappeared. &ldquo;They
+are looking for the other hounds,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And yet they do not give tongue! Tongue it, a Vran!&rdquo; he shouted, &ldquo;Bell it
+out, a Heo&rsquo;lan!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+It was then they looked at him, the look which he could not understand and
+had never seen on a chase. They did not tongue it, nor bell it, but they
+added silence to silence and speed to speed, until the lean grey bodies
+were one pucker and lashing of movement.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn marvelled. &ldquo;They do not want the other dogs to hear or to come on
+this chase,&rdquo; he murmured, and he wondered what might be passing within
+those slender heads.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The fawn runs well,&rdquo; his thought continued. &ldquo;What is it, a Vran, my
+heart? After her, a Heo&rsquo;lan! Hist and away, my loves!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is going and to spare in that beast yet,&rdquo; his mind went on. &ldquo;She is
+not stretched to the full, nor half stretched. She may outrun even Bran,&rdquo;
+ he thought ragingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+They were racing through a smooth valley in a steady, beautiful, speedy
+flight when, suddenly, the fawn stopped and lay on the grass, and it lay
+with the calm of an animal that has no fear, and the leisure of one that
+is not pressed.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here is a change,&rdquo; said Fionn, staring in astonishment.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is not winded,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What is she lying down for?&rdquo; But Bran and
+Sceo&rsquo;lan did not stop; they added another inch to their long-stretched
+easy bodies, and came up on the fawn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is an easy kill,&rdquo; said Fionn regretfully. &ldquo;They have her,&rdquo; he cried.
+</p>
+<p>
+But he was again astonished, for the dogs did not kill. They leaped and
+played about the fawn, licking its face, and rubbing delighted noses
+against its neck.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn came up then. His long spear was lowered in his fist at the thrust,
+and his sharp knife was in its sheath, but he did not use them, for the
+fawn and the two hounds began to play round him, and the fawn was as
+affectionate towards him as the hounds were; so that when a velvet nose
+was thrust in his palm, it was as often a fawn&rsquo;s muzzle as a hound&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+<p>
+In that joyous company he came to wide Allen of Leinster, where the people
+were surprised to see the hounds and the fawn and the Chief and none other
+of the hunters that had set out with them.
+</p>
+<p>
+When the others reached home, the Chief told of his chase, and it was
+agreed that such a fawn must not be killed, but that it should be kept and
+well treated, and that it should be the pet fawn of the Fianna. But some
+of those who remembered Brah&rsquo;s parentage thought that as Bran herself had
+come from the Shi so this fawn might have come out of the Shi also.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER II
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ate that night, when he was preparing for rest, the door of Fionn&rsquo;s
+chamber opened gently and a young woman came into the room. The captain
+stared at her, as he well might, for he had never seen or imagined to see
+a woman so beautiful as this was. Indeed, she was not a woman, but a young
+girl, and her bearing was so gently noble, her look so modestly high, that
+the champion dared scarcely look at her, although he could not by any
+means have looked away.
+</p>
+<p>
+As she stood within the doorway, smiling, and shy as a flower, beautifully
+timid as a fawn, the Chief communed with his heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is the Sky-woman of the Dawn,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;She is the light on the
+foam. She is white and odorous as an apple-blossom. She smells of spice
+and honey. She is my beloved beyond the women of the world. She shall
+never be taken from me.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And that thought was delight and anguish to him: delight because of such
+sweet prospect, anguish because it was not yet realised, and might not be.
+</p>
+<p>
+As the dogs had looked at him on the chase with a look that he did not
+understand, so she looked at him, and in her regard there was a question
+that baffled him and a statement which he could not follow.
+</p>
+<p>
+He spoke to her then, mastering his heart to do it.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not seem to know you,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You do not know me indeed,&rdquo; she replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the more wonderful,&rdquo; he continued gently, &ldquo;for I should know every
+person that is here. What do you require from me?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your protection, royal captain.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I give that to all,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Against whom do you desire
+protection?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am in terror of the Fear Doirche.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Dark Man of the Shi?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is my enemy,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is mine now,&rdquo; said Fionn. &ldquo;Tell me your story.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;My name is Saeve, and I am a woman of Faery,&rdquo; she commenced. &ldquo;In the Shi&rsquo; 
+many men gave me their love, but I gave my love to no man of my country.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was not reasonable,&rdquo; the other chided with a blithe heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was contented,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;and what we do not want we do not lack.
+But if my love went anywhere it went to a mortal, a man of the men of
+Ireland.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my hand,&rdquo; said Fionn in mortal distress, &ldquo;I marvel who that man can
+be!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is known to you,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;I lived thus in the peace of Faery,
+hearing often of my mortal champion, for the rumour of his great deeds had
+gone through the Shi&rsquo;, until a day came when the Black Magician of the Men
+of God put his eye on me, and, after that day, in whatever direction I
+looked I saw his eye.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/161m.jpg" alt="161m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/161.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+She stopped at that, and the terror that was in her heart was on her face.
+&ldquo;He is everywhere,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;He is in the bushes, and on the hill.
+He looked up at me from the water, and he stared down on me from the sky.
+His voice commands out of the spaces, and it demands secretly in the
+heart. He is not here or there, he is in all places at all times. I cannot
+escape from him,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and I am afraid,&rdquo; and at that she wept
+noiselessly and stared on Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is my enemy,&rdquo; Fionn growled. &ldquo;I name him as my enemy.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will protect me,&rdquo; she implored.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where I am let him not come,&rdquo; said Fionn. &ldquo;I also have knowledge. I am
+Fionn, the son of Uail, the son of Baiscne, a man among men and a god
+where the gods are.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He asked me in marriage,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;but my mind was full of my own
+dear hero, and I refused the Dark Man.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was your right, and I swear by my hand that if the man you desire is
+alive and unmarried he shall marry you or he will answer to me for the
+refusal.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is not married,&rdquo; said Saeve, &ldquo;and you have small control over him.&rdquo;
+ The Chief frowned thoughtfully. &ldquo;Except the High King and the kings I have
+authority in this land.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What man has authority over himself?&rdquo; said Saeve.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean that I am the man you seek?&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is to yourself I gave my love,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;This is good news,&rdquo;
+ Fionn cried joyfully, &ldquo;for the moment you came through the door I loved
+and desired you, and the thought that you wished for another man went into
+my heart like a sword.&rdquo; Indeed, Fionn loved Saeve as he had not loved a
+woman before and would never love one again. He loved her as he had never
+loved anything before. He could not bear to be away from her. When he saw
+her he did not see the world, and when he saw the world without her it was
+as though he saw nothing, or as if he looked on a prospect that was bleak
+and depressing. The belling of a stag had been music to Fionn, but when
+Saeve spoke that was sound enough for him. He had loved to hear the cuckoo
+calling in the spring from the tree that is highest in the hedge, or the
+blackbird&rsquo;s jolly whistle in an autumn bush, or the thin, sweet
+enchantment that comes to the mind when a lark thrills out of sight in the
+air and the hushed fields listen to the song. But his wife&rsquo;s voice was
+sweeter to Fionn than the singing of a lark. She filled him with wonder
+and surmise. There was magic in the tips of her fingers. Her thin palm
+ravished him. Her slender foot set his heart beating; and whatever way her
+head moved there came a new shape of beauty to her face.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is always new,&rdquo; said Fionn. &ldquo;She is always better than any other
+woman; she is always better than herself.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He attended no more to the Fianna. He ceased to hunt. He did not listen to
+the songs of poets or the curious sayings of magicians, for all of these
+were in his wife, and something that was beyond these was in her also.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is this world and the next one; she is completion,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER III
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t happened that the men of Lochlann came on an expedition against
+Ireland. A monstrous fleet rounded the bluffs of Ben Edair, and the Danes
+landed there, to prepare an attack which would render them masters of the
+country. Fionn and the Fianna-Finn marched against them. He did not like
+the men of Lochlann at any time, but this time he moved against them in
+wrath, for not only were they attacking Ireland, but they had come between
+him and the deepest joy his life had known.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was a hard fight, but a short one. The Lochlannachs were driven back to
+their ships, and within a week the only Danes remaining in Ireland were
+those that had been buried there.
+</p>
+<p>
+That finished, he left the victorious Fianna and returned swiftly to the
+plain of Allen, for he could not bear to be one unnecessary day parted
+from Saeve.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not leaving us!&rdquo; exclaimed Goll mac Morna.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must go,&rdquo; Fionn replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will not desert the victory feast,&rdquo; Conan reproached him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stay with us, Chief,&rdquo; Caelte begged.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is a feast without Fionn?&rdquo; they complained.
+</p>
+<p>
+But he would not stay.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my hand,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;I must go. She will be looking for me from the
+window.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That will happen indeed,&rdquo; Goll admitted.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That will happen,&rdquo; cried Fionn. &ldquo;And when she sees me far out on the
+plain, she will run through the great gate to meet me.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would be the queer wife would neglect that run,&rdquo; Cona&rsquo;n growled.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall hold her hand again,&rdquo; Fionn entrusted to Caelte&rsquo;s ear.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will do that, surely.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall look into her face,&rdquo; his lord insisted. But he saw that not even
+beloved Caelte understood the meaning of that, and he knew sadly and yet
+proudly that what he meant could not be explained by any one and could not
+be comprehended by any one.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are in love, dear heart,&rdquo; said Caelte.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;In love he is,&rdquo; Cona&rsquo;n grumbled. &ldquo;A cordial for women, a disease for men,
+a state of wretchedness.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wretched in truth,&rdquo; the Chief murmured. &ldquo;Love makes us poor We have not
+eyes enough to see all that is to be seen, nor hands enough to seize the
+tenth of all we want. When I look in her eyes I am tormented because I am
+not looking at her lips, and when I see her lips my soul cries out, &lsquo;Look
+at her eyes, look at her eyes.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is how it happens,&rdquo; said Goll rememberingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That way and no other,&rdquo; Caelte agreed.
+</p>
+<p>
+And the champions looked backwards in time on these lips and those, and
+knew their Chief would go.
+</p>
+<p>
+When Fionn came in sight of the great keep his blood and his feet
+quickened, and now and again he waved a spear in the air.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;She does not see me yet,&rdquo; he thought mournfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;She cannot see me yet,&rdquo; he amended, reproaching himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+But his mind was troubled, for he thought also, or he felt without
+thinking, that had the positions been changed he would have seen her at
+twice the distance.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;She thinks I have been unable to get away from the battle, or that I was
+forced to remain for the feast.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And, without thinking it, he thought that had the positions been changed
+he would have known that nothing could retain the one that was absent.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Women,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;are shamefaced, they do not like to appear eager when
+others are observing them.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+But he knew that he would not have known if others were observing him, and
+that he would not have cared about it if he had known. And he knew that
+his Saeve would not have seen, and would not have cared for any eyes than
+his.
+</p>
+<p>
+He gripped his spear on that reflection, and ran as he had not run in his
+life, so that it was a panting, dishevelled man that raced heavily through
+the gates of the great Dun.
+</p>
+<p>
+Within the Dun there was disorder. Servants were shouting to one another,
+and women were running to and fro aimlessly, wringing their hands and
+screaming; and, when they saw the Champion, those nearest to him ran away,
+and there was a general effort on the part of every person to get behind
+every other person. But Fionn caught the eye of his butler, Gariv Crona&rsquo;n,
+the Rough Buzzer, and held it.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come you here,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+And the Rough Buzzer came to him without a single buzz in his body.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is the Flower of Allen?&rdquo; his master demanded.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not know, master,&rdquo; the terrified servant replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You do not know!&rdquo; said Fionn. &ldquo;Tell what you do know.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And the man told him this story.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER IV
+</h2>
+<p>
+&ldquo;When you had been away for a day the guards were surprised. They were
+looking from the heights of the Dun, and the Flower of Allen was with
+them. She, for she had a quest&rsquo;s eye, called out that the master of the
+Fianna was coming over the ridges to the Dun, and she ran from the keep to
+meet you.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was not I,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It bore your shape,&rdquo; replied Gariv Cronan. &ldquo;It had your armour and your
+face, and the dogs, Bran and Sceo&rsquo;lan, were with it.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They were with me,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They seemed to be with it,&rdquo; said the servant humbly
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell us this tale,&rdquo; cried Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We were distrustful,&rdquo; the servant continued. &ldquo;We had never known Fionn to
+return from a combat before it had been fought, and we knew you could not
+have reached Ben Edar or encountered the Lochlannachs. So we urged our
+lady to let us go out to meet you, but to remain herself in the Dun.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was good urging,&rdquo; Fionn assented.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;She would not be advised,&rdquo; the servant wailed. &ldquo;She cried to us, &lsquo;Let me
+go to meet my love&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;She cried on us, &lsquo;Let me go to meet my husband, the father of the child
+that is not born.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; groaned deep-wounded Fionn. &ldquo;She ran towards your appearance that
+had your arms stretched out to her.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+At that wise Fionn put his hand before his eyes, seeing all that happened.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell on your tale,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;She ran to those arms, and when she reached them the figure lifted its
+hand. It touched her with a hazel rod, and, while we looked, she
+disappeared, and where she had been there was a fawn standing and
+shivering. The fawn turned and bounded towards the gate of the Dun, but
+the hounds that were by flew after her.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Fionn stared on him like a lost man.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They took her by the throat&mdash;&rdquo; the shivering servant whispered.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried Fionn in a terrible voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And they dragged her back to the figure that seemed to be Fionn. Three
+times she broke away and came bounding to us, and three times the dogs
+took her by the throat and dragged her back.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You stood to look!&rdquo; the Chief snarled.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, master, we ran, but she vanished as we got to her; the great hounds
+vanished away, and that being that seemed to be Fionn disappeared with
+them. We were left in the rough grass, staring about us and at each other,
+and listening to the moan of the wind and the terror of our hearts.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Forgive us, dear master,&rdquo; the servant cried. But the great captain made
+him no answer. He stood as though he were dumb and blind, and now and
+again he beat terribly on his breast with his closed fist, as though he
+would kill that within him which should be dead and could not die. He went
+so, beating on his breast, to his inner room in the Dun, and he was not
+seen again for the rest of that day, nor until the sun rose over Moy Life&rsquo; 
+in the morning.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER V
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>or many years after that time, when he was not fighting against the
+enemies of Ireland, Fionn was searching and hunting through the length and
+breadth of the country in the hope that he might again chance on his
+lovely lady from the Shi&rsquo;. Through all that time he slept in misery each
+night and he rose each day to grief. Whenever he hunted he brought only
+the hounds that he trusted, Bran and Sceo&rsquo;lan, Lomaire, Brod, and Lomlu;
+for if a fawn was chased each of these five great dogs would know if that
+was a fawn to be killed or one to be protected, and so there was small
+danger to Saeve and a small hope of finding her.
+</p>
+<p>
+Once, when seven years had passed in fruitless search, Fionn and the chief
+nobles of the Fianna were hunting Ben Gulbain. All the hounds of the
+Fianna were out, for Fionn had now given up hope of encountering the
+Flower of Allen. As the hunt swept along the sides of the hill there arose
+a great outcry of hounds from a narrow place high on the slope and, over
+all that uproar there came the savage baying of Fionn&rsquo;s own dogs.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is this for?&rdquo; said Fionn, and with his companions he pressed to the
+spot whence the noise came.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are fighting all the hounds of the Fianna,&rdquo; cried a champion.
+</p>
+<p>
+And they were. The five wise hounds were in a circle and were giving
+battle to an hundred dogs at once. They were bristling and terrible, and
+each bite from those great, keen jaws was woe to the beast that received
+it. Nor did they fight in silence as was their custom and training, but
+between each onslaught the great heads were uplifted, and they pealed
+loudly, mournfully, urgently, for their master.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are calling on me,&rdquo; he roared.
+</p>
+<p>
+And with that he ran, as he had only once before run, and the men who were
+nigh to him went racing as they would not have run for their lives. They
+came to the narrow place on the slope of the mountain, and they saw the
+five great hounds in a circle keeping off the other dogs, and in the
+middle of the ring a little boy was standing. He had long, beautiful hair,
+and he was naked. He was not daunted by the terrible combat and clamour of
+the hounds. He did not look at the hounds, but he stared like a young
+prince at Fionn and the champions as they rushed towards him scattering
+the pack with the butts of their spears. When the fight was over, Bran and
+Sceo&rsquo;lan ran whining to the little boy and licked his hands.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They do that to no one,&rdquo; said a bystander. &ldquo;What new master is this they
+have found?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Fionn bent to the boy. &ldquo;Tell me, my little prince and pulse, what your
+name is, and how you have come into the middle of a hunting-pack, and why
+you are naked?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+But the boy did not understand the language of the men of Ireland. He put
+his hand into Fionn&rsquo;s, and the Chief felt as if that little hand had been
+put into his heart. He lifted the lad to his great shoulder.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have caught something on this hunt,&rdquo; said he to Caelte mac Rongn. &ldquo;We
+must bring this treasure home. You shall be one of the Fianna-Finn, my
+darling,&rdquo; he called upwards.
+</p>
+<p>
+The boy looked down on him, and in the noble trust and fearlessness of
+that regard Fionn&rsquo;s heart melted away.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;My little fawn!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+And he remembered that other fawn. He set the boy between his knees and
+stared at him earnestly and long.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is surely the same look,&rdquo; he said to his wakening heart; &ldquo;that is
+the very eye of Saeve.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The grief flooded out of his heart as at a stroke, and joy foamed into it
+in one great tide. He marched back singing to the encampment, and men saw
+once more the merry Chief they had almost forgotten.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VI
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">J</span>ust as at one time he could not be parted from Saeve, so now he could not
+be separated from this boy. He had a thousand names for him, each one more
+tender than the last: &ldquo;My Fawn, My Pulse, My Secret Little Treasure,&rdquo; or
+he would call him &ldquo;My Music, My Blossoming Branch, My Store in the Heart,
+My Soul.&rdquo; And the dogs were as wild for the boy as Fionn was. He could sit
+in safety among a pack that would have torn any man to pieces, and the
+reason was that Bran and Sceo&rsquo;lan, with their three whelps, followed him
+about like shadows. When he was with the pack these five were with him,
+and woeful indeed was the eye they turned on their comrades when these
+pushed too closely or were not properly humble. They thrashed the pack
+severally and collectively until every hound in Fionn&rsquo;s kennels knew that
+the little lad was their master, and that there was nothing in the world
+so sacred as he was.
+</p>
+<p>
+In no long time the five wise hounds could have given over their
+guardianship, so complete was the recognition of their young lord. But
+they did not so give over, for it was not love they gave the lad but
+adoration.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn even may have been embarrassed by their too close attendance. If he
+had been able to do so he might have spoken harshly to his dogs, but he
+could not; it was unthinkable that he should; and the boy might have
+spoken harshly to him if he had dared to do it. For this was the order of
+Fionn&rsquo;s affection: first there was the boy; next, Bran and Sceo&rsquo;lan with
+their three whelps; then Caelte mac Rona&rsquo;n, and from him down through the
+champions. He loved them all, but it was along that precedence his
+affections ran. The thorn that went into Bran&rsquo;s foot ran into Fionn&rsquo;s
+also. The world knew it, and there was not a champion but admitted
+sorrowfully that there was reason for his love.
+</p>
+<p>
+Little by little the boy came to understand their speech and to speak it
+himself, and at last he was able to tell his story to Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+There were many blanks in the tale, for a young child does not remember
+very well. Deeds grow old in a day and are buried in a night. New memories
+come crowding on old ones, and one must learn to forget as well as to
+remember. A whole new life had come on this boy, a life that was instant
+and memorable, so that his present memories blended into and obscured the
+past, and he could not be quite sure if that which he told of had happened
+in this world or in the world he had left.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0037" id="link2HCH0037">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VII
+</h2>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I used to live,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;in a wide, beautiful place. There were hills
+and valleys there, and woods and streams, but in whatever direction I went
+I came always to a cliff, so tall it seemed to lean against the sky, and
+so straight that even a goat would not have imagined to climb it.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not know of any such place,&rdquo; Fionn mused.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is no such place in Ireland,&rdquo; said Caelte, &ldquo;but in the Shi&rsquo; there
+is such a place.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is in truth,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I used to eat fruits and roots in the summer,&rdquo; the boy continued, &ldquo;but in
+the winter food was left for me in a cave.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was there no one with you?&rdquo; Fionn asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;No one but a deer that loved me, and that I loved.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah me!&rdquo; cried Fionn in anguish, &ldquo;tell me your tale, my son.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A dark stern man came often after us, and he used to speak with the deer.
+Sometimes he talked gently and softly and coaxingly, but at times again he
+would shout loudly and in a harsh, angry voice. But whatever way he talked
+the deer would draw away from him in dread, and he always left her at last
+furiously.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the Dark Magician of the Men of God,&rdquo; cried Fionn despairingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is indeed, my soul,&rdquo; said Caelte.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The last time I saw the deer,&rdquo; the child continued, &ldquo;the dark man was
+speaking to her. He spoke for a long time. He spoke gently and angrily,
+and gently and angrily, so that I thought he would never stop talking, but
+in the end he struck her with a hazel rod, so that she was forced to
+follow him when he went away. She was looking back at me all the time and
+she was crying so bitterly that any one would pity her. I tried to follow
+her also, but I could not move, and I cried after her too, with rage and
+grief, until I could see her no more and hear her no more. Then I fell on
+the grass, my senses went away from me, and when I awoke I was on the hill
+in the middle of the hounds where you found me.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+That was the boy whom the Fianna called Oisi&rsquo;n, or the Little Fawn. He
+grew to be a great fighter afterwards, and he was the chief maker of poems
+in the world. But he was not yet finished with the Shi. He was to go back
+into Faery when the time came, and to come thence again to tell these
+tales, for it was by him these tales were told.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0043" id="link2H_4_0043">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+THE WOOING OF BECFOLA
+</h2>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0038" id="link2HCH0038">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/181m.jpg" alt="181m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/181.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER I
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e do not know where Becfola came from. Nor do we know for certain where
+she went to. We do not even know her real name, for the name Becfola,
+&ldquo;Dowerless&rdquo; or &ldquo;Small-dowered,&rdquo; was given to her as a nickname. This only
+is certain, that she disappeared from the world we know of, and that she
+went to a realm where even conjecture may not follow her.
+</p>
+<p>
+It happened in the days when Dermod, son of the famous Ae of Slane, was
+monarch of all Ireland. He was unmarried, but he had many foster-sons,
+princes from the Four Provinces, who were sent by their fathers as tokens
+of loyalty and affection to the Ard-Ri, and his duties as a foster-father
+were righteously acquitted. Among the young princes of his household there
+was one, Crimthann, son of Ae, King of Leinster, whom the High King
+preferred to the others over whom he held fatherly sway. Nor was this
+wonderful, for the lad loved him also, and was as eager and intelligent
+and modest as becomes a prince.
+</p>
+<p>
+The High King and Crimthann would often set out from Tara to hunt and
+hawk, sometimes unaccompanied even by a servant; and on these excursions
+the king imparted to his foster-son his own wide knowledge of forest
+craft, and advised him generally as to the bearing and duties of a prince,
+the conduct of a court, and the care of a people.
+</p>
+<p>
+Dermod mac Ae delighted in these solitary adventures, and when he could
+steal a day from policy and affairs he would send word privily to
+Crimthann. The boy, having donned his hunting gear, would join the king at
+a place arranged between them, and then they ranged abroad as chance might
+direct.
+</p>
+<p>
+On one of these adventures, as they searched a flooded river to find the
+ford, they saw a solitary woman in a chariot driving from the west.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder what that means?&rdquo; the king exclaimed thoughtfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why should you wonder at a woman in a chariot?&rdquo; his companion inquired,
+for Crimthann loved and would have knowledge.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good, my Treasure,&rdquo; Dermod answered, &ldquo;our minds are astonished when we
+see a woman able to drive a cow to pasture, for it has always seemed to us
+that they do not drive well.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Crimthann absorbed instruction like a sponge and digested it as rapidly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think that is justly said,&rdquo; he agreed.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; Dermod continued, &ldquo;when we see a woman driving a chariot of two
+horses, then we are amazed indeed.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+When the machinery of anything is explained to us we grow interested, and
+Crimthann became, by instruction, as astonished as the king was.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;In good truth,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the woman is driving two horses.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Had you not observed it before?&rdquo; his master asked with kindly malice.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had observed but not noticed,&rdquo; the young man admitted.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Further,&rdquo; said the king, &ldquo;surmise is aroused in us when we discover a
+woman far from a house; for you will have both observed and noticed that
+women are home-dwellers, and that a house without a woman or a woman
+without a house are imperfect objects, and although they be but half
+observed, they are noticed on the double.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is no doubting it,&rdquo; the prince answered from a knitted and
+thought-tormented brow.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall ask this woman for information about herself,&rdquo; said the king
+decidedly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us do so,&rdquo; his ward agreed
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The king&rsquo;s majesty uses the words &lsquo;we&rsquo; and &lsquo;us&rsquo; when referring to the
+king&rsquo;s majesty,&rdquo; said Dermod, &ldquo;but princes who do not yet rule territories
+must use another form of speech when referring to themselves.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am very thoughtless,&rdquo; said Crimthann humbly.
+</p>
+<p>
+The king kissed him on both cheeks.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed, my dear heart and my son, we are not scolding you, but you must
+try not to look so terribly thoughtful when you think. It is part of the
+art of a ruler.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall never master that hard art,&rdquo; lamented his fosterling.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must all master it,&rdquo; Dermod replied. &ldquo;We may think with our minds and
+with our tongues, but we should never think with our noses and with our
+eyebrows.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The woman in the chariot had drawn nigh to the ford by which they were
+standing, and, without pause, she swung her steeds into the shallows and
+came across the river in a tumult of foam and spray.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does she not drive well?&rdquo; cried Crimthann admiringly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;When you are older,&rdquo; the king counselled him, &ldquo;you will admire that which
+is truly admirable, for although the driving is good the lady is better.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He continued with enthusiasm.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is in truth a wonder of the world and an endless delight to the eye.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+She was all that and more, and, as she took the horses through the river
+and lifted them up the bank, her flying hair and parted lips and all the
+young strength and grace of her body went into the king&rsquo;s eye and could
+not easily come out again.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nevertheless, it was upon his ward that the lady&rsquo;s gaze rested, and if the
+king could scarcely look away from her, she could, but only with an equal
+effort, look away from Crimthann.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halt there!&rdquo; cried the king.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who should I halt for?&rdquo; the lady demanded, halting all the same, as is
+the manner of women, who rebel against command and yet receive it.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halt for Dermod!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are Dermods and Dermods in this world,&rdquo; she quoted.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is yet but one Ard-Ri&rsquo;,&rdquo; the monarch answered.
+</p>
+<p>
+She then descended from the chariot and made her reverence.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish to know your name?&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+But at this demand the lady frowned and answered decidedly:
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not wish to tell it.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish to know also where you come from and to what place you are going?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not wish to tell any of these things.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not to the king!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not wish to tell them to any one.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Crimthann was scandalised.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lady,&rdquo; he pleaded, &ldquo;you will surely not withhold information from the
+Ard-Ri&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+But the lady stared as royally on the High King as the High King did on
+her, and, whatever it was he saw in those lovely eyes, the king did not
+insist.
+</p>
+<p>
+He drew Crimthann apart, for he withheld no instruction from that lad.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;My heart,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;we must always try to act wisely, and we should only
+insist on receiving answers to questions in which we are personally
+concerned.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Crimthann imbibed all the justice of that remark.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thus I do not really require to know this lady&rsquo;s name, nor do I care from
+what direction she comes.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You do not?&rdquo; Crimthann asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, but what I do wish to know is, Will she marry me?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my hand that is a notable question,&rdquo; his companion stammered.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a question that must be answered,&rdquo; the king cried triumphantly.
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;to learn what woman she is, or where she comes from,
+might bring us torment as well as information. Who knows in what
+adventures the past has engaged her!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And he stared for a profound moment on disturbing, sinister horizons, and
+Crimthann meditated there with him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The past is hers,&rdquo; he concluded, &ldquo;but the future is ours, and we shall
+only demand that which is pertinent to the future.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He returned to the lady.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We wish you to be our wife,&rdquo; he said. And he gazed on her benevolently
+and firmly and carefully when he said that, so that her regard could not
+stray otherwhere. Yet, even as he looked, a tear did well into those
+lovely eyes, and behind her brow a thought moved of the beautiful boy who
+was looking at her from the king&rsquo;s side.
+</p>
+<p>
+But when the High King of Ireland asks us to marry him we do not refuse,
+for it is not a thing that we shall be asked to do every day in the week,
+and there is no woman in the world but would love to rule it in Tara.
+</p>
+<p>
+No second tear crept on the lady&rsquo;s lashes, and, with her hand in the
+king&rsquo;s hand, they paced together towards the palace, while behind them, in
+melancholy mood, Crimthann mac Ae led the horses and the chariot.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0039" id="link2HCH0039">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/187m.jpg" alt="187m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/187.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER II
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hey were married in a haste which equalled the king&rsquo;s desire; and as he
+did not again ask her name, and as she did not volunteer to give it, and
+as she brought no dowry to her husband and received none from him, she was
+called Becfola, the Dowerless.
+</p>
+<p>
+Time passed, and the king&rsquo;s happiness was as great as his expectation of
+it had promised. But on the part of Becfola no similar tidings can be
+given.
+</p>
+<p>
+There are those whose happiness lies in ambition and station, and to such
+a one the fact of being queen to the High King of Ireland is a
+satisfaction at which desire is sated. But the mind of Becfola was not of
+this temperate quality, and, lacking Crimthann, it seemed to her that she
+possessed nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+For to her mind he was the sunlight in the sun, the brightness in the
+moonbeam; he was the savour in fruit and the taste in honey; and when she
+looked from Crimthann to the king she could not but consider that the
+right man was in the wrong place. She thought that crowned only with his
+curls Crlmthann mac Ae was more nobly diademed than are the masters of the
+world, and she told him so.
+</p>
+<p>
+His terror on hearing this unexpected news was so great that he meditated
+immediate flight from Tara; but when a thing has been uttered once it is
+easier said the second time and on the third repetition it is patiently
+listened to.
+</p>
+<p>
+After no great delay Crimthann mac Ae agreed and arranged that he and
+Becfola should fly from Tara, and it was part of their understanding that
+they should live happily ever after.
+</p>
+<p>
+One morning, when not even a bird was astir, the king felt that his dear
+companion was rising. He looked with one eye at the light that stole
+greyly through the window, and recognised that it could not in justice be
+called light.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is not even a bird up,&rdquo; he murmured.
+</p>
+<p>
+And then to Becfola.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the early rising for, dear heart?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;An engagement I have,&rdquo; she replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is not a time for engagements,&rdquo; said the calm monarch.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let it be so,&rdquo; she replied, and she dressed rapidly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what is the engagement?&rdquo; he pursued.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Raiment that I left at a certain place and must have. Eight silken smocks
+embroidered with gold, eight precious brooches of beaten gold, three
+diadems of pure gold.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;At this hour,&rdquo; said the patient king, &ldquo;the bed is better than the road.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let it be so,&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And moreover,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;a Sunday journey brings bad luck.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let the luck come that will come,&rdquo; she answered.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;To keep a cat from cream or a woman from her gear is not work for a
+king,&rdquo; said the monarch severely.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Ard-Ri&rsquo; could look on all things with composure, and regard all beings
+with a tranquil eye; but it should be known that there was one deed
+entirely hateful to him, and he would punish its commission with the very
+last rigour&mdash;this was, a transgression of the Sunday. During six days
+of the week all that could happen might happen, so far as Dermod was
+concerned, but on the seventh day nothing should happen at all if the High
+King could restrain it. Had it been possible he would have tethered the
+birds to their own green branches on that day, and forbidden the clouds to
+pack the upper world with stir and colour. These the king permitted, with
+a tight lip, perhaps, but all else that came under his hand felt his
+control.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was his custom when he arose on the morn of Sunday to climb to the most
+elevated point of Tara, and gaze thence on every side, so that he might
+see if any fairies or people of the Shi&rsquo; were disporting themselves in his
+lordship; for he absolutely prohibited the usage of the earth to these
+beings on the Sunday, and woe&rsquo;s worth was it for the sweet being he
+discovered breaking his law.
+</p>
+<p>
+We do not know what ill he could do to the fairies, but during Dermod&rsquo;s
+reign the world said its prayers on Sunday and the Shi&rsquo; folk stayed in
+their hills.
+</p>
+<p>
+It may be imagined, therefore, with what wrath he saw his wife&rsquo;s
+preparations for her journey, but, although a king can do everything, what
+can a husband do...? He rearranged himself for slumber.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am no party to this untimely journey,&rdquo; he said angrily.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let it be so,&rdquo; said Becfola.
+</p>
+<p>
+She left the palace with one maid, and as she crossed the doorway
+something happened to her, but by what means it happened would be hard to
+tell; for in the one pace she passed out of the palace and out of the
+world, and the second step she trod was in Faery, but she did not know
+this.
+</p>
+<p>
+Her intention was to go to Cluain da chaillech to meet Crimthann, but when
+she left the palace she did not remember Crimthann any more.
+</p>
+<p>
+To her eye and to the eye of her maid the world was as it always had been,
+and the landmarks they knew were about them. But the object for which they
+were travelling was different, although unknown, and the people they
+passed on the roads were unknown, and were yet people that they knew.
+</p>
+<p>
+They set out southwards from Tara into the Duffry of Leinster, and after
+some time they came into wild country and went astray. At last Becfola
+halted, saying:
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not know where we are.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The maid replied that she also did not know.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet,&rdquo; said Becfola, &ldquo;if we continue to walk straight on we shall arrive
+somewhere.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+They went on, and the maid watered the road with her tears.
+</p>
+<p>
+Night drew on them; a grey chill, a grey silence, and they were enveloped
+in that chill and silence; and they began to go in expectation and terror,
+for they both knew and did not know that which they were bound for.
+</p>
+<p>
+As they toiled desolately up the rustling and whispering side of a low
+hill the maid chanced to look back, and when she looked back she screamed
+and pointed, and clung to Becfola&rsquo;s arm. Becfola followed the pointing
+finger, and saw below a large black mass that moved jerkily forward.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/193m.jpg" alt="193m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/193.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wolves!&rdquo; cried the maid. &ldquo;Run to the trees yonder,&rdquo; her mistress ordered.
+&ldquo;We will climb them and sit among the branches.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+They ran then, the maid moaning and lamenting all the while.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I cannot climb a tree,&rdquo; she sobbed, &ldquo;I shall be eaten by the wolves.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And that was true.
+</p>
+<p>
+But her mistress climbed a tree, and drew by a hand&rsquo;s breadth from the rap
+and snap and slaver of those steel jaws. Then, sitting on a branch, she
+looked with angry woe at the straining and snarling horde below, seeing
+many a white fang in those grinning jowls, and the smouldering, red blink
+of those leaping and prowling eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0040" id="link2HCH0040">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER III
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>ut after some time the moon arose and the wolves went away, for their
+leader, a sagacious and crafty chief, declared that as long as they
+remained where they were, the lady would remain where she was; and so,
+with a hearty curse on trees, the troop departed. Becfola had pains in her
+legs from the way she had wrapped them about the branch, but there was no
+part of her that did not ache, for a lady does not sit with any ease upon
+a tree.
+</p>
+<p>
+For some time she did not care to come down from the branch. &ldquo;Those wolves
+may return,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;for their chief is crafty and sagacious, and it is
+certain, from the look I caught in his eye as he departed, that he would
+rather taste of me than cat any woman he has met.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+She looked carefully in every direction to see if one might discover them
+in hiding; she looked closely and lingeringly at the shadows under distant
+trees to see if these shadows moved; and she listened on every wind to try
+if she could distinguish a yap or a yawn or a sneeze. But she saw or heard
+nothing; and little by little tranquillity crept into her mind, and she
+began to consider that a danger which is past is a danger that may be
+neglected.
+</p>
+<p>
+Yet ere she descended she looked again on the world of jet and silver that
+dozed about her, and she spied a red glimmer among distant trees.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is no danger where there is light,&rdquo; she said, and she thereupon
+came from the tree and ran in the direction that she had noted.
+</p>
+<p>
+In a spot between three great oaks she came upon a man who was roasting a
+wild boar over a fire. She saluted this youth and sat beside him. But
+after the first glance and greeting he did not look at her again, nor did
+he speak.
+</p>
+<p>
+When the boar was cooked he ate of it and she had her share. Then he arose
+from the fire and walked away among the trees. Becfola followed, feeling
+ruefully that something new to her experience had arrived; &ldquo;for,&rdquo; she
+thought, &ldquo;it is usual that young men should not speak to me now that I am
+the mate of a king, but it is very unusual that young men should not look
+at me.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+But if the young man did not look at her she looked well at him, and what
+she saw pleased her so much that she had no time for further cogitation.
+For if Crimthann had been beautiful, this youth was ten times more
+beautiful. The curls on Crimthann&rsquo;s head had been indeed as a benediction
+to the queen&rsquo;s eye, so that she had eaten the better and slept the sounder
+for seeing him. But the sight of this youth left her without the desire to
+eat, and, as for sleep, she dreaded it, for if she closed an eye she would
+be robbed of the one delight in time, which was to look at this young man,
+and not to cease looking at him while her eye could peer or her head could
+remain upright.
+</p>
+<p>
+They came to an inlet of the sea all sweet and calm under the round,
+silver-flooding moon, and the young man, with Becfola treading on his
+heel, stepped into a boat and rowed to a high-jutting, pleasant island.
+There they went inland towards a vast palace, in which there was no person
+but themselves alone, and there the young man went to sleep, while Becfola
+sat staring at him until the unavoidable peace pressed down her eyelids
+and she too slumbered.
+</p>
+<p>
+She was awakened in the morning by a great shout.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come out, Flann, come out, my heart!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The young man leaped from his couch, girded on his harness, and strode
+out. Three young men met him, each in battle harness, and these four
+advanced to meet four other men who awaited them at a little distance on
+the lawn. Then these two sets of four fought togethor with every warlike
+courtesy but with every warlike severity, and at the end of that combat
+there was but one man standing, and the other seven lay tossed in death.
+</p>
+<p>
+Becfola spoke to the youth.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your combat has indeed been gallant,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;if it has been a gallant deed it has not been a good
+one, for my three brothers are dead and my four nephews are dead.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah me!&rdquo; cried Becfola, &ldquo;why did you fight that fight?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;For the lordship of this island, the Isle of Fedach, son of Dali.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+But, although Becfola was moved and horrified by this battle, it was in
+another direction that her interest lay; therefore she soon asked the
+question which lay next her heart:
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why would you not speak to me or look at me?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Until I have won the kingship of this land from all claimants, I am no
+match for the mate of the High King of Ireland,&rdquo; he replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+And that reply was llke balm to the heart of Becfola.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What shall I do?&rdquo; she inquired radiantly. &ldquo;Return to your home,&rdquo; he
+counselled. &ldquo;I will escort you there with your maid, for she is not really
+dead, and when I have won my lordship I will go seek you in Tara.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will surely come,&rdquo; she insisted.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my hand,&rdquo; quoth he, &ldquo;I will come.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+These three returned then, and at the end of a day and night they saw far
+off the mighty roofs of Tara massed in the morning haze. The young man
+left them, and with many a backward look and with dragging, reluctant
+feet, Becfola crossed the threshold of the palace, wondering what she
+should say to Dermod and how she could account for an absence of three
+days&rsquo; duration.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0041" id="link2HCH0041">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER IV
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>T was so early that not even a bird was yet awake, and the dull grey
+light that came from the atmosphere enlarged and made indistinct all that
+one looked at, and swathed all things in a cold and livid gloom.
+</p>
+<p>
+As she trod cautiously through dim corridors Becfola was glad that, saving
+the guards, no creature was astir, and that for some time yet she need
+account to no person for her movements. She was glad also of a respite
+which would enable her to settle into her home and draw about her the
+composure which women feel when they are surrounded by the walls of their
+houses, and can see about them the possessions which, by the fact of
+ownership, have become almost a part of their personality. Sundered from
+her belongings, no woman is tranquil, her heart is not truly at ease,
+however her mind may function, so that under the broad sky or in the house
+of another she is not the competent, precise individual which she becomes
+when she sees again her household in order and her domestic requirements
+at her hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+Becfola pushed the door of the king&rsquo;s sleeping chamber and entered
+noiselessly. Then she sat quietly in a seat gazing on the recumbent
+monarch, and prepared to consider how she should advance to him when he
+awakened, and with what information she might stay his inquiries or
+reproaches.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will reproach him,&rdquo; she thought. &ldquo;I will call him a bad husband and
+astonish him, and he will forget everything but his own alarm and
+indignation.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+But at that moment the king lifted his head from the pillow and looked
+kindly at her. Her heart gave a great throb, and she prepared to speak at
+once and in great volume before he could formulate any question. But the
+king spoke first, and what he said so astonished her that the explanation
+and reproach with which her tongue was thrilling fled from it at a stroke,
+and she could only sit staring and bewildered and tongue-tied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, my dear heart,&rdquo; said the king, &ldquo;have you decided not to keep that
+engagement?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;!&rdquo; Becfola stammered.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is truly not an hour for engagements,&rdquo; Dermod insisted, &ldquo;for not a
+bird of the birds has left his tree; and,&rdquo; he continued maliciously, &ldquo;the
+light is such that you could not see an engagement even if you met one.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I,&rdquo; Becfola gasped. &ldquo;I&mdash;-!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A Sunday journey,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;is a notorious bad journey. No good can
+come from it. You can get your smocks and diadems to-morrow. But at this
+hour a wise person leaves engagements to the bats and the staring owls and
+the round-eyed creatures that prowl and sniff in the dark. Come back to
+the warm bed, sweet woman, and set on your journey in the morning.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Such a load of apprehension was lifted from Becfola&rsquo;s heart that she
+instantly did as she had been commanded, and such a bewilderment had yet
+possession of her faculties that she could not think or utter a word on
+any subject.
+</p>
+<p>
+Yet the thought did come into her head as she stretched in the warm gloom
+that Crimthann the son of Ae must be now attending her at Cluain da
+chaillech, and she thought of that young man as of something wonderful and
+very ridiculous, and the fact that he was waiting for her troubled her no
+more than if a sheep had been waiting for her or a roadside bush.
+</p>
+<p>
+She fell asleep.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0042" id="link2HCH0042">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER V
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n the morning as they sat at breakfast four clerics were announced, and
+when they entered the king looked on them with stern disapproval.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the meaning of this journey on Sunday?&rdquo; he demanded.
+</p>
+<p>
+A lank-jawed, thin-browed brother, with uneasy, intertwining fingers, and
+a deep-set, venomous eye, was the spokesman of those four.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed,&rdquo; he said, and the fingers of his right hand strangled and did to
+death the fingers of his left hand, &ldquo;indeed, we have transgressed by
+order.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Explain that.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have been sent to you hurriedly by our master, Molasius of Devenish.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A pious, a saintly man,&rdquo; the king interrupted, &ldquo;and one who does not
+countenance transgressions of the Sunday.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We were ordered to tell you as follows,&rdquo; said the grim cleric, and he
+buried the fingers of his right hand in his left fist, so that one could
+not hope to see them resurrected again. &ldquo;It was the duty of one of the
+Brothers of Devenish,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;to turn out the cattle this morning
+before the dawn of day, and that Brother, while in his duty, saw eight
+comely young men who fought together.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;On the morning of Sunday,&rdquo; Dermod exploded.
+</p>
+<p>
+The cleric nodded with savage emphasis.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;On the morning of this self-same and instant sacred day.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell on,&rdquo; said the king wrathfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+But terror gripped with sudden fingers at Becfola&rsquo;s heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do not tell horrid stories on the Sunday,&rdquo; she pleaded. &ldquo;No good can come
+to any one from such a tale.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay, this must be told, sweet lady,&rdquo; said the king. But the cleric stared
+at her glumly, forbiddingly, and resumed his story at a gesture.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of these eight men, seven were killed.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are in hell,&rdquo; the king said gloomily.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;In hell they are,&rdquo; the cleric replied with enthusiasm.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the one that was not killed?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is alive,&rdquo; that cleric responded.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He would be,&rdquo; the monarch assented. &ldquo;Tell your tale.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Molasius had those seven miscreants buried, and he took from their
+unhallowed necks and from their lewd arms and from their unblessed weapons
+the load of two men in gold and silver treasure.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Two men&rsquo;s load!&rdquo; said Dermod thoughtfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That much,&rdquo; said the lean cleric. &ldquo;No more, no less. And he has sent us
+to find out what part of that hellish treasure belongs to the Brothers of
+Devenish and how much is the property of the king.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Becfola again broke in, speaking graciously, regally, hastily: &ldquo;Let those
+Brothers have the entire of the treasure, for it is Sunday treasure, and
+as such it will bring no luck to any one.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The cleric again looked at her coldly, with a harsh-lidded, small-set,
+grey-eyed glare, and waited for the king&rsquo;s reply.
+</p>
+<p>
+Dermod pondered, shaking his head as to an argument on his left side, and
+then nodding it again as to an argument on his right.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It shall be done as this sweet queen advises. Let a reliquary be formed
+with cunning workmanship of that gold and silver, dated with my date and
+signed with my name, to be in memory of my grandmother who gave birth to a
+lamb, to a salmon, and then to my father, the Ard-Ri&rsquo;. And, as to the
+treasure that remains over, a pastoral staff may be beaten from it in
+honour of Molasius, the pious man.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The story is not ended,&rdquo; said that glum, spike-chinned cleric.
+</p>
+<p>
+The king moved with jovial impatience.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you continue it,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it will surely come to an end some time. A
+stone on a stone makes a house, dear heart, and a word on a word tells a
+tale.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The cleric wrapped himself into himself, and became lean and menacing. He
+whispered: &ldquo;Besides the young man, named Flann, who was not slain, there
+was another person present at the scene and the combat and the
+transgression of Sunday.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who was that person?&rdquo; said the alarmed monarch.
+</p>
+<p>
+The cleric spiked forward his chin, and then butted forward his brow.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was the wife of the king,&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;It was the woman called
+Becfola. It was that woman,&rdquo; he roared, and he extended a lean,
+inflexible, unending first finger at the queen.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dog!&rdquo; the king stammered, starting up.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If that be in truth a woman,&rdquo; the cleric screamed.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; the king demanded in wrath and terror.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Either she is a woman of this world to be punished, or she is a woman of
+the Shi&rsquo; to be banished, but this holy morning she was in the Shi&rsquo;, and
+her arms were about the neck of Flann.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The king sank back in his chair stupefied, gazing from one to the other,
+and then turned an unseeing, fear-dimmed eye towards Becfola.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is this true, my pulse?&rdquo; he murmured.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; Becfola replied, and she became suddenly to the king&rsquo;s eye a
+whiteness and a stare. He pointed to the door.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go to your engagement,&rdquo; he stammered. &ldquo;Go to that Flann.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is waiting for me,&rdquo; said Becfola with proud shame, &ldquo;and the thought
+that he should wait wrings my heart.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+She went out from the palace then. She went away from Tara: and in all
+Ireland and in the world of living men she was not seen again, and she was
+never heard of again.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0049" id="link2H_4_0049">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+THE LITTLE BRAWL AT ALLEN
+</h2>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0043" id="link2HCH0043">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/209m.jpg" alt="209m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/209.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER I
+</h2>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said Cairell Whiteskin, &ldquo;that although judgement was given
+against Fionn, it was Fionn had the rights of it.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He had eleven hundred killed,&rdquo; said Cona&rsquo;n amiably, &ldquo;and you may call
+that the rights of it if you like.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;All the same&mdash;&rdquo; Cairell began argumentatively.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And it was you that commenced it,&rdquo; Cona&rsquo;n continued.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ho! Ho!&rdquo; Cairell cried. &ldquo;Why, you are as much to blame as I am.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Cona&rsquo;n, &ldquo;for you hit me first.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if we had not been separated&mdash;&rdquo; the other growled.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Separated!&rdquo; said Cona&rsquo;n, with a grin that made his beard poke all around
+his face.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, separated. If they had not come between us I still think&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think out loud, dear heart, for you and I are at peace by law.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is true,&rdquo; said Cairell, &ldquo;and a man must stick by a judgement. Come
+with me, my dear, and let us see how the youngsters are shaping in the
+school. One of them has rather a way with him as a swordsman.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;No youngster is any good with a sword,&rdquo; Conan replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are right there,&rdquo; said Cairell. &ldquo;It takes a good ripe man for that
+weapon.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Boys are good enough with slings,&rdquo; Confro continued, &ldquo;but except for
+eating their fill and running away from a fight, you can&rsquo;t count on boys.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The two bulky men turned towards the school of the Fianna.
+</p>
+<p>
+It happened that Fionn mac Uail had summoned the gentlemen of the Fianna
+and their wives to a banquet. Everybody came, for a banquet given by Fionn
+was not a thing to be missed. There was Goll mor mac Morna and his people;
+Fionn&rsquo;s son Oisi&rsquo;n and his grandson Oscar. There was Dermod of the Gay
+Face, Caelte mac Ronan&mdash;but indeed there were too many to be told of,
+for all the pillars of war and battle-torches of the Gael were there.
+</p>
+<p>
+The banquet began.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn sat in the Chief Captain&rsquo;s seat in the middle of the fort; and
+facing him, in the place of honour, he placed the mirthful Goll mac Morna;
+and from these, ranging on either side, the nobles of the Fianna took each
+the place that fitted his degree and patrimony.
+</p>
+<p>
+After good eating, good conversation; and after good conversation, sleep&mdash;that
+is the order of a banquet: so when each person had been served with food
+to the limit of desire the butlers carried in shining, and jewelled
+drinking-horns, each having its tide of smooth, heady liquor. Then the
+young heroes grew merry and audacious, the ladies became gentle and kind,
+and the poets became wonders of knowledge and prophecy. Every eye beamed
+in that assembly, and on Fionn every eye was turned continually in the
+hope of a glance from the great, mild hero.
+</p>
+<p>
+Goll spoke to him across the table enthusiastically.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is nothing wanting to this banquet, O Chief,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+And Fionn smiled back into that eye which seemed a well of tenderness and
+friendship.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing is wanting,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;but a well-shaped poem.&rdquo; A crier stood
+up then, holding in one hand a length of coarse iron links and in the
+other a chain of delicate, antique silver. He shook the iron chain so that
+the servants and followers of the household should be silent, and he shook
+the silver one so that the nobles and poets should hearken also.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fergus, called True-Lips, the poet of the Fianna-Finn, then sang of Fionn
+and his ancestors and their deeds. When he had finished Fionn and Oisi&rsquo;n
+and Oscar and mac Lugac of the Terrible Hand gave him rare and costly
+presents, so that every person wondered at their munificence, and even the
+poet, accustomed to the liberality of kings and princes, was astonished at
+his gifts.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fergus then turned to the side of Goll mac Morna, and he sang of the
+Forts, the Destructions, the Raids, and the Wooings of clann-Morna; and as
+the poems succeeded each other, Goll grew more and more jovial and
+contented. When the songs were finished Goll turned in his seat.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is my runner?&rdquo; he cried.
+</p>
+<p>
+He had a woman runner, a marvel for swiftness and trust. She stepped
+forward.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am here, royal captain.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you collected my tribute from Denmark?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is here.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And, with help, she laid beside him the load of three men of doubly
+refined gold. Out of this treasure, and from the treasure of rings and
+bracelets and torques that were with him, Goll mac Morna paid Fergus for
+his songs, and, much as Fionn had given, Goll gave twice as much.
+</p>
+<p>
+But, as the banquet proceeded, Goll gave, whether it was to harpers or
+prophets or jugglers, more than any one else gave, so that Fionn became
+displeased, and as the banquet proceeded he grew stern and silent.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0044" id="link2HCH0044">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER II
+</h2>
+<p>
+[This version of the death of Uail is not correct. Also Cnocha is not in
+Lochlann but in Ireland.]
+</p>
+<p>
+The wonderful gift-giving of Goll continued, and an uneasiness and
+embarrassment began to creep through the great banqueting hall.
+</p>
+<p>
+Gentlemen looked at each other questioningly, and then spoke again on
+indifferent matters, but only with half of their minds. The singers, the
+harpers, and jugglers submitted to that constraint, so that every person
+felt awkward and no one knew what should be done or what would happen, and
+from that doubt dulness came, with silence following on its heels.
+</p>
+<p>
+There is nothing more terrible than silence. Shame grows in that blank, or
+anger gathers there, and we must choose which of these is to be our
+master.
+</p>
+<p>
+That choice lay before Fionn, who never knew shame.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Goll,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;how long have you been taking tribute from the people of
+Lochlann?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A long time now,&rdquo; said Goll.
+</p>
+<p>
+And he looked into an eye that was stern and unfriendly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought that my rent was the only one those people had to pay,&rdquo; Fionn
+continued.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your memory is at fault,&rdquo; said Goll.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let it be so,&rdquo; said Fionn. &ldquo;How did your tribute arise?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Long ago, Fionn, in the days when your father forced war on me.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;When he raised the High King against me and banished me from Ireland.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Continue,&rdquo; said Fionn, and he held Goll&rsquo;s eye under the great beetle of
+his brow.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I went into Britain,&rdquo; said Goll, &ldquo;and your father followed me there. I
+went into White Lochlann (Norway) and took it. Your father banished me
+thence also.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I went into the land of the Saxons and your father chased me out of that
+land. And then, in Lochlann, at the battle of Cnocha your father and I met
+at last, foot to foot, eye to eye, and there, Fionn!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And there, Goll?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And there I killed your father.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Fionn sat rigid and unmoving, his face stony and terrible as the face of a
+monument carved on the side of a cliff.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell all your tale,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;At that battle I beat the Lochlannachs. I penetrated to the hold of the
+Danish king, and I took out of his dungeon the men who had lain there for
+a year and were awaiting their deaths. I liberated fifteen prisoners, and
+one of them was Fionn.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+Goll&rsquo;s anger fled at the word.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do not be jealous of me, dear heart, for if I had twice the tribute I
+would give it to you and to Ireland.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+But at the word jealous the Chief&rsquo;s anger revived.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is an impertinence,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;to boast at this table that you killed
+my father.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my hand,&rdquo; Goll replied, &ldquo;if Fionn were to treat me as his father did I
+would treat Fionn the way I treated Fionn&rsquo;s father.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Fionn closed his eyes and beat away the anger that was rising within him.
+He smiled grimly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I were so minded, I would not let that last word go with you, Goll,
+for I have here an hundred men for every man of yours.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Goll laughed aloud.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;So had your father,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn&rsquo;s brother, Cairell Whiteskin, broke into the conversation with a
+harsh laugh.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;How many of Fionn&rsquo;s household has the wonderful Goll put down?&rdquo; he cried.
+</p>
+<p>
+But Goll&rsquo;s brother, bald Cona&rsquo;n the Swearer, turned a savage eye on
+Cairell.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my weapons,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;there were never less than an hundred-and-one
+men with Goll, and the least of them could have put you down easily
+enough.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah?&rdquo; cried Cairell. &ldquo;And are you one of the hundred-and-one, old
+scaldhead?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;One indeed, my thick-witted, thin-livered Cairell, and I undertake to
+prove on your hide that what my brother said was true and that what your
+brother said was false.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You undertake that,&rdquo; growled Cairell, and on the word he loosed a furious
+buffet at Con&rsquo;an, which Cona&rsquo;n returned with a fist so big that every part
+of Cairell&rsquo;s face was hit with the one blow. The two then fell into grips,
+and went lurching and punching about the great hall. Two of Oscar&rsquo;s sons
+could not bear to see their uncle being worsted, and they leaped at
+Cona&rsquo;n, and two of Goll&rsquo;s sons rushed at them. Then Oscar himself leaped
+up, and with a hammer in either hand he went battering into the melee.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thank the gods,&rdquo; said Cona&rsquo;n, &ldquo;for the chance of killing yourself,
+Oscar.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+These two encountered then, and Oscar knocked a groan of distress out of
+Cona&rsquo;n. He looked appealingly at his brother Art og mac Morna, and that
+powerful champion flew to his aid and wounded Oscar. Oisi&rsquo;n, Oscar&rsquo;s
+father, could not abide that; he dashed in and quelled Art Og. Then Rough
+Hair mac Morna wounded Oisin and was himself tumbled by mac Lugac, who was
+again wounded by Gara mac Morna.
+</p>
+<p>
+The banqueting hall was in tumult. In every part of it men were giving and
+taking blows. Here two champions with their arms round each other&rsquo;s necks
+were stamping round and round in a slow, sad dance. Here were two
+crouching against each other, looking for a soft place to hit. Yonder a
+big-shouldered person lifted another man in his arms and threw him at a
+small group that charged him. In a retired corner a gentleman stood in a
+thoughtful attitude while he tried to pull out a tooth that had been
+knocked loose.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t fight,&rdquo; he mumbled, &ldquo;with a loose shoe or a loose tooth.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hurry up with that tooth,&rdquo; the man in front of him grum-bled, &ldquo;for I want
+to knock out another one.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Pressed against the wall was a bevy of ladies, some of whom were screaming
+and some laughing and all of whom were calling on the men to go back to
+their seats.
+</p>
+<p>
+Only two people remained seated in the hall.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/219m.jpg" alt="219m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/219.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Goll sat twisted round watching the progress of the brawl critically, and
+Fionn, sitting opposite, watched Goll.
+</p>
+<p>
+Just then Faelan, another of Fionn&rsquo;s sons, stormed the hall with three
+hundred of the Fianna, and by this force all Goll&rsquo;s people were put out of
+doors, where the fight continued.
+</p>
+<p>
+Goll looked then calmly on Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your people are using their weapons,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are they?&rdquo; Fionn inquired as calmly, and as though addressing the air.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the matter of weapons&mdash;!&rdquo; said Goll.
+</p>
+<p>
+And the hard-fighting pillar of battle turned to where his arms hung on
+the wall behind him. He took his solid, well-balanced sword in his fist,
+over his left arm his ample, bossy shield, and, with another side-look at
+Fionn, he left the hall and charged irresistibly into the fray.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn then arose. He took his accoutrements from the wall also and strode
+out. Then he raised the triumphant Fenian shout and went into the combat.
+</p>
+<p>
+That was no place for a sick person to be. It was not the corner which a
+slender-fingered woman would choose to do up her hair; nor was it the spot
+an ancient man would select to think quietly in, for the tumult of sword
+on sword, of axe on shield, the roar of the contending parties, the crying
+of wounded men, and the screaming of frightened women destroyed peace, and
+over all was the rallying cry of Goll mac Morna and the great shout of
+Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then Fergus True-Lips gathered about him all the poets of the Fianna, and
+they surrounded the combatants. They began to chant and intone long, heavy
+rhymes and incantations, until the rhythmic beating of their voices
+covered even the noise of war, so that the men stopped hacking and hewing,
+and let their weapons drop from their hands. These were picked up by the
+poets and a reconciliation was effected between the two parties.
+</p>
+<p>
+But Fionn affirmed that he would make no peace with clann-Morna until the
+matter had been judged by the king, Cormac mac Art, and by his daughter
+Ailve, and by his son Cairbre of Ana Life&rsquo; and by Fintan the chief poet.
+Goll agreed that the affair should be submitted to that court, and a day
+was appointed, a fortnight from that date, to meet at Tara of the Kings
+for judgement. Then the hall was cleansed and the banquet recommenced.
+</p>
+<p>
+Of Fionn&rsquo;s people eleven hundred of men and women were dead, while of
+Goll&rsquo;s people eleven men and fifty women were dead. But it was through
+fright the women died, for not one of them had a wound or a bruise or a
+mark.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0045" id="link2HCH0045">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER III
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>T the end of a fortnight Fionn and Goll and the chief men of the Fianna
+attended at Tara. The king, his son and daughter, with Flahri, Feehal, and
+Fintan mac Bocna sat in the place of judgement, and Cormac called on the
+witnesses for evidence.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn stood up, but the moment he did so Goll mac Morna arose also.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I object to Fionn giving evidence,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why so?&rdquo; the king asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because in any matter that concerned me Fionn would turn a lie into truth
+and the truth into a lie.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not think that is so,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see, he has already commenced it,&rdquo; cried Goll.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you object to the testimony of the chief person present, in what way
+are we to obtain evidence?&rdquo; the king demanded.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I,&rdquo; said Goll, &ldquo;will trust to the evidence of Fergus True-Lips. He is
+Fionn&rsquo;s poet, and will tell no lie against his master; he is a poet, and
+will tell no lie against any one.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I agree to that,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I require, nevertheless,&rdquo; Goll continued, &ldquo;that Fergus should swear
+before the Court, by his gods, that he will do justice between us.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Fergus was accordingly sworn, and gave his evidence. He stated that
+Fionn&rsquo;s brother Cairell struck Cona&rsquo;n mac Morna, that Goll&rsquo;s two sons came
+to help Cona&rsquo;n, that Oscar went to help Cairell, and with that Fionn&rsquo;s
+people and the clann-Morna rose at each other, and what had started as a
+brawl ended as a battle with eleven hundred of Fionn&rsquo;s people and
+sixty-one of Goll&rsquo;s people dead.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I marvel,&rdquo; said the king in a discontented voice, &ldquo;that, considering the
+numbers against them, the losses of clann-Morna should be so small.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Fionn blushed when he heard that.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fergus replied:
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Goll mac Morna covered his people with his shield. All that slaughter was
+done by him.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The press was too great,&rdquo; Fionn grumbled. &ldquo;I could not get at him in time
+or&mdash;-&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Or what?&rdquo; said Goll with a great laugh.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn shook his head sternly and said no more.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is your judgement?&rdquo; Cormac demanded of his fellow-judges.
+</p>
+<p>
+Flahri pronounced first.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I give damages to clann-Morna.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; said Cormac.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because they were attacked first.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Cormac looked at him stubbornly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not agree with your judgement,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is there faulty in it?&rdquo; Flahri asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have not considered,&rdquo; the king replied, &ldquo;that a soldier owes
+obedience to his captain, and that, given the time and the place, Fionn
+was the captain and Goll was only a simple soldier.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Flahri considered the king&rsquo;s suggestion.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;would hold good for the white-striking or blows of
+fists, but not for the red-striking or sword-strokes.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is your judgement?&rdquo; the king asked Feehal. Feehal then pronounced:
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hold that clann-Morna were attacked first, and that they are to be free
+from payment of damages.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And as regards Fionn?&rdquo; said Cormac.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hold that on account of his great losses Fionn is to be exempt from
+payment of damages, and that his losses are to be considered as damages.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I agree in that judgement,&rdquo; said Fintan.
+</p>
+<p>
+The king and his son also agreed, and the decision was imparted to the
+Fianna.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;One must abide by a judgement,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you abide by it?&rdquo; Goll demanded.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+Goll and Fionn then kissed each other, and thus peace was made. For,
+notwithstanding the endless bicker of these two heroes, they loved each
+other well.
+</p>
+<p>
+Yet, now that the years have gone by, I think the fault lay with Goll and
+not with Fionn, and that the judgement given did not consider everything.
+For at that table Goll should not have given greater gifts than his master
+and host did. And it was not right of Goll to take by force the position
+of greatest gift-giver of the Fianna, for there was never in the world one
+greater at giving gifts, or giving battle, or making poems than Fionn was.
+</p>
+<p>
+That side of the affair was not brought before the Court. But perhaps it
+was suppressed out of delicacy for Fionn, for if Goll could be accused of
+ostentation, Fionn was open to the uglier charge of jealousy. It was,
+nevertheless, Goll&rsquo;s forward and impish temper which commenced the brawl,
+and the verdict of time must be to exonerate Fionn and to let the blame go
+where it is merited.
+</p>
+<p>
+There is, however, this to be added and remembered, that whenever Fionn
+was in a tight corner it was Goll that plucked him out of it; and, later
+on, when time did his worst on them all and the Fianna were sent to hell
+as unbelievers, it was Goll mac Morna who assaulted hell, with a chain in
+his great fist and three iron balls swinging from it, and it was he who
+attacked the hosts of great devils and brought Fionn and the Fianna-Finn
+out with him.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0053" id="link2H_4_0053">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+THE CARL OF THE DRAB COAT
+</h2>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0046" id="link2HCH0046">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/229m.jpg" alt="229m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/229.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER I
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>ne day something happened to Fionn, the son of Uail; that is, he departed
+from the world of men, and was set wandering in great distress of mind
+through Faery. He had days and nights there and adventures there, and was
+able to bring back the memory of these.
+</p>
+<p>
+That, by itself, is wonderful, for there are few people who remember that
+they have been to Faery or aught of all that happened to them in that
+state.
+</p>
+<p>
+In truth we do not go to Faery, we become Faery, and in the beating of a
+pulse we may live for a year or a thousand years. But when we return the
+memory is quickly clouded, and we seem to have had a dream or seen a
+vision, although we have verily been in Faery.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was wonderful, then, that Fionn should have remembered all that
+happened to him in that wide-spun moment, but in this tale there is yet
+more to marvel at; for not only did Fionn go to Faery, but the great army
+which he had marshalled to Ben Edair [The Hill of Howth] were translated
+also, and neither he nor they were aware that they had departed from the
+world until they came back to it.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fourteen battles, seven of the reserve and seven of the regular Fianna,
+had been taken by the Chief on a great march and manoeuvre. When they
+reached Ben Edair it was decided to pitch camp so that the troops might
+rest in view of the warlike plan which Fionn had imagined for the morrow.
+The camp was chosen, and each squadron and company of the host were lodged
+into an appropriate place, so there was no overcrowding and no halt or
+interruption of the march; for where a company halted that was its place
+of rest, and in that place it hindered no other company, and was at its
+own ease.
+</p>
+<p>
+When this was accomplished the leaders of battalions gathered on a level,
+grassy plateau overlooking the sea, where a consultation began as to the
+next day&rsquo;s manoeuvres, and during this discussion they looked often on the
+wide water that lay wrinkling and twinkling below them.
+</p>
+<p>
+A roomy ship under great press of sall was bearing on Ben Edair from the
+east.
+</p>
+<p>
+Now and again, in a lull of the discussion, a champion would look and
+remark on the hurrying vessel; and it may have been during one of these
+moments that the adventure happened to Fionn and the Fianna.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder where that ship comes from?&rdquo; said Cona&rsquo;n idly.
+</p>
+<p>
+But no person could surmise anything about it beyond that it was a vessel
+well equipped for war.
+</p>
+<p>
+As the ship drew by the shore the watchers observed a tall man swing from
+the side by means of his spear shafts, and in a little while this
+gentleman was announced to Fionn, and was brought into his presence.
+</p>
+<p>
+A sturdy, bellicose, forthright personage he was indeed. He was equipped
+in a wonderful solidity of armour, with a hard, carven helmet on his head,
+a splendid red-bossed shield swinging on his shoulder, a wide-grooved,
+straight sword clashing along his thigh. On his shoulders under the shield
+he carried a splendid scarlet mantle; over his breast was a great brooch
+of burnt gold, and in his fist he gripped a pair of thick-shafted,
+unburnished spears.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn and the champions looked on this gentleman, and they admired
+exceedingly his bearing and equipment.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of what blood are you, young gentleman?&rdquo; Fionn demanded, &ldquo;and from which
+of the four corners of the world do you come?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;My name is Cael of the Iron,&rdquo; the stranger answered, &ldquo;and I am son to the
+King of Thessaly.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What errand has brought you here?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not go on errands,&rdquo; the man replied sternly, &ldquo;but on the affairs
+that please me.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be it so. What is the pleasing affair which brings you to this land?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Since I left my own country I have not gone from a land or an island
+until it paid tribute to me and acknowledged my lordship.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you have come to this realm,&rdquo; cried Fionn, doubting his ears.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;For tribute and sovereignty,&rdquo; growled that other, and he struck the haft
+of his spear violently on the ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my hand,&rdquo; said Cona&rsquo;n, &ldquo;we have never heard of a warrior, however
+great, but his peer was found in Ireland, and the funeral songs of all
+such have been chanted by the women of this land.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my hand and word,&rdquo; said the harsh stranger, &ldquo;your talk makes me think
+of a small boy or of an idiot.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take heed, sir,&rdquo; said Fionn, &ldquo;for the champions and great dragons of the
+Gael are standing by you, and around us there are fourteen battles of the
+Fianna of Ireland.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If all the Fianna who have died in the last seven years were added to all
+that are now here,&rdquo; the stranger asserted, &ldquo;I would treat all of these and
+those grievously, and would curtail their limbs and their lives.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is no small boast,&rdquo; Cona&rsquo;n murmured, staring at him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is no boast at all,&rdquo; said Cael, &ldquo;and, to show my quality and standing,
+I will propose a deed to you.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give out your deed,&rdquo; Fionn commanded.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thus,&rdquo; said Cael with cold savagery. &ldquo;If you can find a man among your
+fourteen battalions who can outrun or outwrestle or outfight me, I will
+take myself off to my own country, and will trouble you no more.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And so harshly did he speak, and with such a belligerent eye did he stare,
+that dismay began to seize on the champions, and even Fionn felt that his
+breath had halted.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is spoken like a hero,&rdquo; he admitted after a moment, &ldquo;and if you cannot
+be matched on those terms it will not be from a dearth of applicants.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;In running alone,&rdquo; Fionn continued thoughtfully, &ldquo;we have a notable
+champion, Caelte mac Rona&rsquo;n.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;This son of Rona&rsquo;n will not long be notable,&rdquo; the stranger asserted.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He can outstrip the red deer,&rdquo; said Cona&rsquo;n.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He can outrun the wind,&rdquo; cried Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He will not be asked to outrun the red deer or the wind,&rdquo; the stranger
+sneered. &ldquo;He will be asked to outrun me,&rdquo; he thundered. &ldquo;Produce this
+runner, and we shall discover if he keeps as great heart in his feet as he
+has made you think.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is not with us,&rdquo; Cona&rsquo;n lamented.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;These notable warriors are never with us when the call is made,&rdquo; said the
+grim stranger.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my hand,&rdquo; cried Fionn, &ldquo;he shall be here in no great time, for I will
+fetch him myself.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be it so,&rdquo; said Cael. &ldquo;And during my absence,&rdquo; Fionn continued, &ldquo;I leave
+this as a compact, that you make friends with the Fianna here present, and
+that you observe all the conditions and ceremonies of friendship.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Cael agreed to that.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will not hurt any of these people until you return,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn then set out towards Tara of the Kings, for he thought Caelte mac
+Romin would surely be there; &ldquo;and if he is not there,&rdquo; said the champion
+to himself, &ldquo;then I shall find him at Cesh Corran of the Fianna.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0047" id="link2HCH0047">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER II
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>e had not gone a great distance from Ben Edair when he came to an
+intricate, gloomy wood, where the trees grew so thickly and the
+undergrowth was such a sprout and tangle that one could scarcely pass
+through it. He remembered that a path had once been hacked through the
+wood, and he sought for this. It was a deeply scooped, hollow way, and it
+ran or wriggled through the entire length of the wood.
+</p>
+<p>
+Into this gloomy drain Fionn descended and made progress, but when he had
+penetrated deeply in the dank forest he heard a sound of thumping and
+squelching footsteps, and he saw coming towards him a horrible,
+evil-visaged being; a wild, monstrous, yellow-skinned, big-boned giant,
+dressed in nothing but an ill-made, mud-plastered, drab-coloured coat,
+which swaggled and clapped against the calves of his big bare legs. On his
+stamping feet there were great brogues of boots that were shaped like, but
+were bigger than, a boat, and each time he put a foot down it squashed and
+squirted a barrelful of mud from the sunk road.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn had never seen the like of this vast person, and he stood gazing on
+him, lost in a stare of astonishment.
+</p>
+<p>
+The great man saluted him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;All alone, Fionn?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;How does it happen that not one Fenian of
+the Fianna is at the side of his captain?&rdquo; At this inquiry Fionn got back
+his wits.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is too long a story and it is too intricate and pressing to be told,
+also I have no time to spare now.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet tell it now,&rdquo; the monstrous man insisted.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn, thus pressed, told of the coming of Cael of the Iron, of the
+challenge the latter had issued, and that he, Fionn, was off to Tara of
+the Kings to find Caelte mac Rona&rsquo;n.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know that foreigner well,&rdquo; the big man commented.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is he the champion he makes himself out to be?&rdquo; Fionn inquired.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He can do twice as much as he said he would do,&rdquo; the monster replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t outrun Caelte mac Rona&rsquo;n,&rdquo; Fionn asserted. The big man jeered.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Say that he won&rsquo;t outrun a hedgehog, dear heart. This Cael will end the
+course by the time your Caelte begins to think of starting.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Fionn, &ldquo;I no longer know where to turn, or how to protect the
+honour of Ireland.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know how to do these things,&rdquo; the other man commented with a slow nod
+of the head.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you do,&rdquo; Fionn pleaded, &ldquo;tell it to me upon your honour.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will do that,&rdquo; the man replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do not look any further for the rusty-kneed, slow-trotting son of
+Rona&rsquo;n,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;but ask me to run your race, and, by this hand, I
+will be first at the post.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+At this the Chief began to laugh.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;My good friend, you have work enough to carry the two tons of mud that
+are plastered on each of your coat-tails, to say nothing of your weighty
+boots.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my hand,&rdquo; the man cried, &ldquo;there is no person in Ireland but myself can
+win that race. I claim a chance.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Fionn agreed then. &ldquo;Be it so,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;And now, tell me your name?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am known as the Carl of the Drab Coat.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;All names are names,&rdquo; Fionn responded, &ldquo;and that also is a name.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+They returned then to Ben Edair.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0048" id="link2HCH0048">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER III
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen they came among the host the men of Ireland gathered about the vast
+stranger; and there were some who hid their faces in their mantles so that
+they should not be seen to laugh, and there were some who rolled along the
+ground in merriment, and there were others who could only hold their
+mouths open and crook their knees and hang their arms and stare
+dumbfoundedly upon the stranger, as though they were utterly dazed.
+</p>
+<p>
+Cael of the Iron came also on the scene, and he examined the stranger with
+close and particular attention.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What in the name of the devil is this thing?&rdquo; he asked of Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear heart,&rdquo; said Fionn, &ldquo;this is the champion I am putting against you
+in the race.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Cael of the Iron grew purple in the face, and he almost swallowed his
+tongue through wrath.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Until the end of eternity,&rdquo; he roared, &ldquo;and until the very last moment of
+doom I will not move one foot in a race with this greasy, big-hoofed,
+ill-assembled resemblance of a beggarman.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+But at this the Carl burst into a roar of laughter, so that the eardrums
+of the warriors present almost burst inside of their heads.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be reassured, my darling, I am no beggarman, and my quality is not more
+gross than is the blood of the most delicate prince in this assembly. You
+will not evade your challenge in that way, my love, and you shall run with
+me or you shall run to your ship with me behind you. What length of course
+do you propose, dear heart?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never run less than sixty miles,&rdquo; Cael replied sullenly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a small run,&rdquo; said the Carl, &ldquo;but it will do. From this place to
+the Hill of the Rushes, Slieve Luachra of Munster, is exactly sixty miles.
+Will that suit you?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care how it is done,&rdquo; Cael answered.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said the Carl, &ldquo;we may go off to Slieve Luachra now, and in the
+morning we can start our race there to here.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let it be done that way,&rdquo; said Cael.
+</p>
+<p>
+These two set out then for Munster, and as the sun was setting they
+reached Slieve Luachra and prepared to spend the night there.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0049" id="link2HCH0049">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/239m.jpg" alt="239m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/239.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER IV
+</h2>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cael, my pulse,&rdquo; said the Carl, &ldquo;we had better build a house or a hut to
+pass the night in.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;Il build nothing,&rdquo; Cael replied, looking on the Carl with great
+disfavour.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t build house or hut for the sake of passing one night here, for I
+hope never to see this place again.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;Il build a house myself,&rdquo; said the Carl, &ldquo;and the man who does not help
+in the building can stay outside of the house.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The Carl stumped to a near-by wood, and he never rested until he had
+felled and tied together twenty-four couples of big timber. He thrust
+these under one arm and under the other he tucked a bundle of rushes for
+his bed, and with that one load he rushed up a house, well thatched and
+snug, and with the timber that remained over he made a bonfire on the
+floor of the house.
+</p>
+<p>
+His companion sat at a distance regarding the work with rage and aversion.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now Cael, my darling,&rdquo; said the Carl, &ldquo;if you are a man help me to look
+for something to eat, for there is game here.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Help yourself,&rdquo; roared Cael, &ldquo;for all that I want is not to be near you.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The tooth that does not help gets no helping,&rdquo; the other replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+In a short time the Carl returned with a wild boar which he had run down.
+He cooked the beast over his bonfire and ate one half of it, leaving the
+other half for his breakfast. Then he lay down on the rushes, and in two
+turns he fell asleep.
+</p>
+<p>
+But Cael lay out on the side of the hill, and if he went to sleep that
+night he slept fasting. It was he, however, who awakened the Carl in the
+morning.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get up, beggarman, if you are going to run against me.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The Carl rubbed his eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never get up until I have had my fill of sleep, and there is another
+hour of it due to me. But if you are in a hurry, my delight, you can start
+running now with a blessing. I will trot on your track when I waken up.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Cael began to race then, and he was glad of the start, for his antagonist
+made so little account of him that he did not know what to expect when the
+Carl would begin to run.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet,&rdquo; said Cael to himself, &ldquo;with an hour&rsquo;s start the beggarman will have
+to move his bones if he wants to catch on me,&rdquo; and he settled down to a
+good, pelting race.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0050" id="link2HCH0050">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/242m.jpg" alt="242m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/242.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER V
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t the end of an hour the Carl awoke. He ate the second half of the boar,
+and he tied the unpicked bones in the tail of his coat. Then with a great
+rattling of the boar&rsquo;s bones he started.
+</p>
+<p>
+It is hard to tell how he ran or at what speed he ran, but he went forward
+in great two-legged jumps, and at times he moved in immense one-legged,
+mud-spattering hops, and at times again, with wide-stretched, far-flung,
+terrible-tramping, space-destroying legs he ran.
+</p>
+<p>
+He left the swallows behind as if they were asleep. He caught up on a red
+deer, jumped over it, and left it standing. The wind was always behind
+him, for he outran it every time; and he caught up in jumps and bounces on
+Cael of the Iron, although Cael was running well, with his fists up and
+his head back and his two legs flying in and out so vigorously that you
+could not see them because of that speedy movement.
+</p>
+<p>
+Trotting by the side of Cael, the Carl thrust a hand into the tail of his
+coat and pulled out a fistfull of red bones.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here, my heart, is a meaty bone,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;for you fasted all night,
+poor friend, and if you pick a bit off the bone your stomach will get a
+rest.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Keep your filth, beggarman,&rdquo; the other replied, &ldquo;for I would rather be
+hanged than gnaw on a bone that you have browsed.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you run, my pulse?&rdquo; said the Carl earnestly; &ldquo;why don&rsquo;t you try
+to win the race?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Cael then began to move his limbs as if they were the wings of a fly, or
+the fins of a little fish, or as if they were the six legs of a terrified
+spider.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am running,&rdquo; he gasped.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But try and run like this,&rdquo; the Carl admonished, and he gave a wriggling
+bound and a sudden outstretching and scurrying of shanks, and he
+disappeared from Cael&rsquo;s sight in one wild spatter of big boots.
+</p>
+<p>
+Despair fell on Cael of the Iron, but he had a great heart. &ldquo;I will run
+until I burst,&rdquo; he shrieked, &ldquo;and when I burst, may I burst to a great
+distance, and may I trip that beggar-man up with my burstings and make him
+break his leg.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He settled then to a determined, savage, implacable trot. He caught up on
+the Carl at last, for the latter had stopped to eat blackberries from the
+bushes on the road, and when he drew nigh, Cael began to jeer and sneer
+angrily at the Carl.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who lost the tails of his coat?&rdquo; he roared.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t ask riddles of a man that&rsquo;s eating blackberries,&rdquo; the Carl rebuked
+him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The dog without a tall and the coat without a tail,&rdquo; cried Cael.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I give it up,&rdquo; the Carl mumbled.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s yourself, beggarman,&rdquo; jeered Cael.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am myself,&rdquo; the Carl gurgled through a mouthful of blackberries, &ldquo;and
+as I am myself, how can it be myself? That is a silly riddle,&rdquo; he burbled.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look at your coat, tub of grease?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The Carl did so.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;My faith,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;where are the two tails of my coat?&rdquo; &ldquo;I could smell
+one of them and it wrapped around a little tree thirty miles back,&rdquo; said
+Cael, &ldquo;and the other one was dishonouring a bush ten miles behind that.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is bad luck to be separated from the tails of your own coat,&rdquo; the Carl
+grumbled. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have to go back for them. Wait here, beloved, and eat
+blackberries until I come back, and we&rsquo;ll both start fair.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not half a second will I wait,&rdquo; Cael replied, and he began to run towards
+Ben Edair as a lover runs to his maiden or as a bee flies to his hive.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t had half my share of blackberries either,&rdquo; the Carl lamented as
+he started to run backwards for his coat-tails.
+</p>
+<p>
+He ran determinedly on that backward journey, and as the path he had
+travelled was beaten out as if it had been trampled by an hundred bulls
+yoked neck to neck, he was able to find the two bushes and the two
+coat-tails. He sewed them on his coat.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then he sprang up, and he took to a fit and a vortex and an exasperation
+of running for which no description may be found. The thumping of his big
+boots grew as con-tinuous as the pattering of hailstones on a roof, and
+the wind of his passage blew trees down. The beasts that were ranging
+beside his path dropped dead from concussion, and the steam that snored
+from his nose blew birds into bits and made great lumps of cloud fall out
+of the sky.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/247m.jpg" alt="247m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/247.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+He again caught up on Cael, who was running with his head down and his
+toes up.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you won&rsquo;t try to run, my treasure,&rdquo; said the Carl, &ldquo;you will never get
+your tribute.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And with that he incensed and exploded himself into an eye-blinding,
+continuous, waggle and complexity of boots that left Cael behind him in a
+flash.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will run until I burst,&rdquo; sobbed Cael, and he screwed agitation and
+despair into his legs until he hummed and buzzed like a blue-bottle on a
+window.
+</p>
+<p>
+Five miles from Ben Edair the Carl stopped, for he had again come among
+blackberries.
+</p>
+<p>
+He ate of these until he was no more than a sack of juice, and when he
+heard the humming and buzzing of Cael of the Iron he mourned and lamented
+that he could not wait to eat his fill He took off his coat, stuffed it
+full of blackberries, swung it on his shoulders, and went bounding stoutly
+and nimbly for Ben Edair.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0051" id="link2HCH0051">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VI
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t would be hard to tell of the terror that was in Fionn&rsquo;s breast and in
+the hearts of the Fianna while they attended the conclusion of that race.
+</p>
+<p>
+They discussed it unendingly, and at some moment of the day a man
+upbraided Fionn because he had not found Caelte the son of Rona&rsquo;n as had
+been agreed on.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is no one can run like Caelte,&rdquo; one man averred.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He covers the ground,&rdquo; said another.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is light as a feather.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Swift as a stag.&rdquo; &ldquo;Lunged like a bull.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Legged like a wolf.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He runs!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+These things were said to Fionn, and Fionn said these things to himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+With every passing minute a drop of lead thumped down into every heart,
+and a pang of despair stabbed up to every brain.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go,&rdquo; said Fionn to a hawk-eyed man, &ldquo;go to the top of this hill and watch
+for the coming of the racers.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And he sent lithe men with him so that they might run back in endless
+succession with the news.
+</p>
+<p>
+The messengers began to run through his tent at minute intervals calling
+&ldquo;nothing,&rdquo; &ldquo;nothing,&rdquo; &ldquo;nothing,&rdquo; as they paused and darted away.
+</p>
+<p>
+And the words, &ldquo;nothing, nothing, nothing,&rdquo; began to drowse into the
+brains of every person present.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What can we hope from that Carl?&rdquo; a champion demanded savagely.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; cried a messenger who stood and sped.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A clump!&rdquo; cried a champion.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A hog!&rdquo; said another.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A flat-footed.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Little-wlnded.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Big-bellied.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lazy-boned.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pork!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you think, Fionn, that a whale could swim on land, or what did you
+imagine that lump could do?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; cried a messenger, and was sped as he spoke.
+</p>
+<p>
+Rage began to gnaw in Fionn&rsquo;s soul, and a red haze danced and flickered
+before his eyes. His hands began to twitch and a desire crept over him to
+seize on champions by the neck, and to shake and worry and rage among them
+like a wild dog raging among sheep.
+</p>
+<p>
+He looked on one, and yet he seemed to look on all at once.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be silent,&rdquo; he growled. &ldquo;Let each man be silent as a dead man.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And he sat forward, seeing all, seeing none, with his mouth drooping open,
+and such a wildness and bristle lowering from that great glum brow that
+the champions shivered as though already in the chill of death, and were
+silent.
+</p>
+<p>
+He rose and stalked to the tent-door.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where to, O Fionn?&rdquo; said a champion humbly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;To the hill-top,&rdquo; said Fionn, and he stalked on.
+</p>
+<p>
+They followed him, whispering among themselves, keeping their eyes on the
+ground as they climbed.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0052" id="link2HCH0052">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VII
+</h2>
+
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hat do you see?&rdquo; Fionn demanded of the watcher.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; that man replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look again,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+The eagle-eyed man lifted a face, thin and sharp as though it had been
+carven on the wind, and he stared forward with an immobile intentness.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you see?&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; the man replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will look myself,&rdquo; said Fionn, and his great brow bent forward and
+gloomed afar.
+</p>
+<p>
+The watcher stood beside, staring with his tense face and unwinking,
+lidless eye.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What can you see, O Fionn?&rdquo; said the watcher.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can see nothing,&rdquo; said Fionn, and he projected again his grim, gaunt
+forehead. For it seemed as if the watcher stared with his whole face, aye,
+and with his hands; but Fionn brooded weightedly on distance with his
+puckered and crannied brow.
+</p>
+<p>
+They looked again.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What can you see?&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see nothing,&rdquo; said the watcher.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not know if I see or if I surmise, but something moves,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+&ldquo;There is a trample,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+The watcher became then an eye, a rigidity, an intense out-thrusting and
+ransacking of thin-spun distance. At last he spoke.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is a dust,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+And at that the champions gazed also, straining hungrily afar, until their
+eyes became filled with a blue darkness and they could no longer see even
+the things that were close to them.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I,&rdquo; cried Cona&rsquo;n triumphantly, &ldquo;I see a dust.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I,&rdquo; cried another.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see a man,&rdquo; said the eagle-eyed watcher.
+</p>
+<p>
+And again they stared, until their straining eyes grew dim with tears and
+winks, and they saw trees that stood up and sat down, and fields that
+wobbled and spun round and round in a giddily swirling world.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is a man,&rdquo; Cona&rsquo;n roared.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A man there is,&rdquo; cried another.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And he is carrying a man on his back,&rdquo; said the watcher.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is Cael of the Iron carrying the Carl on his back,&rdquo; he groaned.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The great pork!&rdquo; a man gritted.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The no-good!&rdquo; sobbed another.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The lean-hearted.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thick-thighed.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ramshackle.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Muddle-headed.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hog!&rdquo; screamed a champion.
+</p>
+<p>
+And he beat his fists angrily against a tree.
+</p>
+<p>
+But the eagle-eyed watcher watched until his eyes narrowed and became
+pin-points, and he ceased to be a man and became an optic.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; he breathed, &ldquo;wait until I screw into one other inch of sight.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And they waited, looking no longer on that scarcely perceptible speck in
+the distance, but straining upon the eye of the watcher as though they
+would penetrate it and look through it.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the Carl,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;carrying something on his back, and behind him
+again there is a dust.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you sure?&rdquo; said Fionn in a voice that rumbled and vibrated like
+thunder.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the Carl,&rdquo; said the watcher, &ldquo;and the dust behind him is Cael of
+the Iron trying to catch him up.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Then the Fianna gave a roar of exultation, and each man seized his
+neighbour and kissed him on both cheeks; and they gripped hands about
+Fionn, and they danced round and round in a great circle, roaring with
+laughter and relief, in the ecstasy which only comes where grisly fear has
+been and whence that bony jowl has taken itself away.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0053" id="link2HCH0053">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VIII
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he Carl of the Drab Coat came bumping and stumping and clumping into the
+camp, and was surrounded by a multitude that adored him and hailed him
+with tears.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Meal!&rdquo; he bawled, &ldquo;meal for the love of the stars!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And he bawled, &ldquo;Meal, meal!&rdquo; until he bawled everybody into silence.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn addressed him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What for the meal, dear heart?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;For the inside of my mouth,&rdquo; said the Carl, &ldquo;for the recesses and
+crannies and deep-down profundities of my stomach. Meal, meal!&rdquo; he
+lamented.
+</p>
+<p>
+Meal was brought.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Carl put his coat on the ground, opened it carefully, and revealed a
+store of blackberries, squashed, crushed, mangled, democratic,
+ill-looking.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The meal!&rdquo; he groaned, &ldquo;the meal!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+It was given to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What of the race, my pulse?&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wait, wait,&rdquo; cried the Carl. &ldquo;I die, I die for meal and blackberries.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Into the centre of the mess of blackberries he discharged a barrel of
+meal, and be mixed the two up and through, and round and down, until the
+pile of white-black, red-brown slibber-slobber reached up to his
+shoulders. Then he commenced to paw and impel and project and cram the
+mixture into his mouth, and between each mouthful he sighed a contented
+sigh, and during every mouthful he gurgled an oozy gurgle.
+</p>
+<p>
+But while Fionn and the Fianna stared like lost minds upon the Carl, there
+came a sound of buzzing, as if a hornet or a queen of the wasps or a
+savage, steep-winged griffin was hovering about them, and looking away
+they saw Cael of the Iron charging on them with a monstrous extension and
+scurry of his legs. He had a sword in his hand, and there was nothing in
+his face but redness and ferocity.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fear fell llke night around the Fianna, and they stood with slack knees
+and hanging hands waiting for death. But the Carl lifted a pawful of his
+oozy slop and discharged this at Cael with such a smash that the man&rsquo;s
+head spun off his shoulders and hopped along the ground. The Carl then
+picked up the head and threw it at the body with such aim and force that
+the neck part of the head jammed into the neck part of the body and stuck
+there, as good a head as ever, you would have said, but that it bad got
+twisted the wrong way round. The Carl then lashed his opponent hand and
+foot.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, dear heart, do you still claim tribute and lordship of Ireland?&rdquo;
+ said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me go home,&rdquo; groaned Cael, &ldquo;I want to go home.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Swear by the sun and moon, if I let you go home, that you will send to
+Fionn, yearly and every year, the rent of the land of Thessaly.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I swear that,&rdquo; said Cael, &ldquo;and I would swear anything to get home.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The Carl lifted him then and put him sitting into his ship. Then he raised
+his big boot and gave the boat a kick that drove it seven leagues out into
+the sea, and that was how the adventure of Cael of the Iron finished.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who are you, sir?&rdquo; said Fionn to the Carl.
+</p>
+<p>
+But before answering the Carl&rsquo;s shape changed into one of splendour and
+delight.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am ruler of the Shi&rsquo; of Rath Cruachan,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then Fionn mac Uail made a feast and a banquet for the jovial god, and
+with that the tale is ended of the King of Thessaly&rsquo;s son and the Carl of
+the Drab Coat.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0062" id="link2H_4_0062">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+THE ENCHANTED CAVE OF CESH CORRAN
+</h2>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0054" id="link2HCH0054">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/261m.jpg" alt="261m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/261.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER I
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>ionn mac Uail was the most prudent chief of an army in the world, but he
+was not always prudent on his own account. Discipline sometimes irked him,
+and he would then take any opportunity that presented for an adventure;
+for he was not only a soldier, he was a poet also, that is, a man of
+science, and whatever was strange or unusual had an irresistible
+at-traction for him. Such a soldier was he that, single-handed, he could
+take the Fianna out of any hole they got into, but such an inveterate poet
+was he that all the Fianna together could scarcely retrieve him from the
+abysses into which he tumbled. It took him to keep the Fianna safe, but it
+took all the Fianna to keep their captain out of danger. They did not
+complain of this, for they loved every hair of Fionn&rsquo;s head more than they
+loved their wives and children, and that was reasonable for there was
+never in the world a person more worthy of love than Fionn was.
+</p>
+<p>
+Goll mac Morna did not admit so much in words, but he admitted it in all
+his actions, for although he never lost an opportunity of killing a member
+of Fionn&rsquo;s family (there was deadly feud between clann-Baiscne and
+clann-Morna), yet a call from Fionn brought Goll raging to his assistance
+like a lion that rages tenderly by his mate. Not even a call was
+necessary, for Goll felt in his heart when Fionn was threatened, and he
+would leave Fionn&rsquo;s own brother only half-killed to fly where his arm was
+wanted. He was never thanked, of course, for although Fionn loved Goll he
+did not like him, and that was how Goll felt towards Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn, with Cona&rsquo;n the Swearer and the dogs Bran and Sceo&rsquo;lan, was sitting
+on the hunting-mound at the top of Cesh Corran. Below and around on every
+side the Fianna were beating the coverts in Legney and Brefny, ranging the
+fastnesses of Glen Dallan, creeping in the nut and beech forests of
+Carbury, spying among the woods of Kyle Conor, and ranging the wide plain
+of Moy Conal.
+</p>
+<p>
+The great captain was happy: his eyes were resting on the sights he liked
+best&mdash;the sunlight of a clear day, the waving trees, the pure sky,
+and the lovely movement of the earth; and his ears were filled with
+delectable sounds&mdash;the baying of eager dogs, the clear calling of
+young men, the shrill whistling that came from every side, and each sound
+of which told a definite thing about the hunt. There was also the plunge
+and scurry of the deer, the yapping of badgers, and the whirr of birds
+driven into reluctant flight.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0055" id="link2HCH0055">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER II
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>ow the king of the Shi&rsquo; of Cesh Corran, Conaran, son of Imidel, was also
+watching the hunt, but Fionn did not see him, for we cannot see the people
+of Faery until we enter their realm, and Fionn was not thinking of Faery
+at that moment. Conaran did not like Fionn, and, seeing that the great
+champion was alone, save for Cona&rsquo;n and the two hounds Bran and Sceo&rsquo;lan,
+he thought the time had come to get Fionn into his power. We do not know
+what Fionn had done to Conaran, but it must have been bad enough, for the
+king of the Shi&rsquo; of Cesh Cotran was filled with joy at the sight of Fionn
+thus close to him, thus unprotected, thus unsuspicious.
+</p>
+<p>
+This Conaran had four daughters. He was fond of them and proud of them,
+but if one were to search the Shi&rsquo;s of Ireland or the land of Ireland, the
+equal of these four would not be found for ugliness and bad humour and
+twisted temperaments.
+</p>
+<p>
+Their hair was black as ink and tough as wire: it stuck up and poked out
+and hung down about their heads in bushes and spikes and tangles. Their
+eyes were bleary and red. Their mouths were black and twisted, and in each
+of these mouths there was a hedge of curved yellow fangs. They had long
+scraggy necks that could turn all the way round like the neck of a hen.
+Their arms were long and skinny and muscular, and at the end of each
+finger they had a spiked nail that was as hard as horn and as sharp as a
+briar. Their bodies were covered with a bristle of hair and fur and fluff,
+so that they looked like dogs in some parts and like cats in others, and
+in other parts again they looked like chickens. They had moustaches poking
+under their noses and woolly wads growing out of their ears, so that when
+you looked at them the first time you never wanted to look at them again,
+and if you had to look at them a second time you were likely to die of the
+sight.
+</p>
+<p>
+They were called Caevo&rsquo;g, Cuillen, and Iaran. The fourth daughter,
+Iarnach, was not present at that moment, so nothing need be said of her
+yet.
+</p>
+<p>
+Conaran called these three to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fionn is alone,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Fionn is alone, my treasures.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Caevo&rsquo;g, and her jaw crunched upwards and stuck outwards, as
+was usual with her when she was satisfied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;When the chance comes take it,&rdquo; Conaran continued, and he smiled a black,
+beetle-browed, unbenevolent smile.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a good word,&rdquo; quoth Cuillen, and she swung her jaw loose and made it
+waggle up and down, for that was the way she smiled.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And here is the chance,&rdquo; her father added.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The chance is here,&rdquo; Iaran echoed, with a smile that was very like her
+sister&rsquo;s, only that it was worse, and the wen that grew on her nose
+joggled to and fro and did not get its balance again for a long time.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then they smiled a smile that was agreeable to their own eyes, but which
+would have been a deadly thing for anybody else to see.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But Fionn cannot see us,&rdquo; Caevo&rsquo;g objected, and her brow set downwards
+and her chin set upwards and her mouth squeezed sidewards, so that her
+face looked like a badly disappointed nut.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And we are worth seeing,&rdquo; Cuillen continued, and the disappointment that
+was set in her sister&rsquo;s face got carved and twisted into hers, but it was
+worse in her case.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is the truth,&rdquo; said Iaran in a voice of lamentation, and her face
+took on a gnarl and a writhe and a solidity of ugly woe that beat the
+other two and made even her father marvel.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He cannot see us now,&rdquo; Conaran replied, &ldquo;but he will see us in a minute.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t Fionn be glad when he sees us!&rdquo; said the three sisters.
+</p>
+<p>
+And then they joined hands and danced joyfully around their father, and
+they sang a song, the first line of which is:
+</p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Fionn thinks he is safe. But who knows when the sky will
+fall?&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+<p>
+Lots of the people in the Shi&rsquo; learned that song by heart, and they
+applied it to every kind of circumstance.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0056" id="link2HCH0056">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER III
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>Y his arts Conaran changed the sight of Fionn&rsquo;s eyes, and he did the same
+for Cona&rsquo;n.
+</p>
+<p>
+In a few minutes Fionn stood up from his place on the mound. Everything
+was about him as before, and he did not know that he had gone into Faery.
+He walked for a minute up and down the hillock. Then, as by chance, he
+stepped down the sloping end of the mound and stood with his mouth open,
+staring. He cried out:
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come down here, Cona&rsquo;n, my darling.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Cona&rsquo;n stepped down to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Am I dreaming?&rdquo; Fionn demanded, and he stretched out his finger before
+him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you are dreaming,&rdquo; said Congn, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m dreaming too. They weren&rsquo;t here a
+minute ago,&rdquo; he stammered.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn looked up at the sky and found that it was still there. He stared to
+one side and saw the trees of Kyle Conor waving in the distance. He bent
+his ear to the wind and heard the shouting of hunters, the yapping of
+dogs, and the clear whistles, which told how the hunt was going.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well!&rdquo; said Fionn to himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my hand!&rdquo; quoth Cona&rsquo;n to his own soul.
+</p>
+<p>
+And the two men stared into the hillside as though what they were looking
+at was too wonderful to be looked away from.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who are they?&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are they?&rdquo; Cona&rsquo;n gasped. And they stared again.
+</p>
+<p>
+For there was a great hole like a doorway in the side of the mound, and in
+that doorway the daughters of Conaran sat spinning. They had three crooked
+sticks of holly set up before the cave, and they were reeling yarn off
+these. But it was enchantment they were weaving.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;One could not call them handsome,&rdquo; said Cona&rsquo;n.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;One could,&rdquo; Fionn replied, &ldquo;but it would not be true.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I cannot see them properly,&rdquo; Fionn complained. &ldquo;They are hiding behind
+the holly.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would be contented if I could not see them at all,&rdquo; his companion
+grumbled.
+</p>
+<p>
+But the Chief insisted.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want to make sure that it is whiskers they are wearing.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let them wear whiskers or not wear them,&rdquo; Cona&rsquo;n counselled. &ldquo;But let us
+have nothing to do with them.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;One must not be frightened of anything,&rdquo; Fionn stated.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not frightened,&rdquo; Cona&rsquo;n explained. &ldquo;I only want to keep my good
+opinion of women, and if the three yonder are women, then I feel sure I
+shall begin to dislike females from this minute out.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come on, my love,&rdquo; said Fionn, &ldquo;for I must find out if these whiskers are
+true.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He strode resolutely into the cave. He pushed the branches of holly aside
+and marched up to Conaran&rsquo;s daughters, with Cona&rsquo;n behind him.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0057" id="link2HCH0057">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER IV
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he instant they passed the holly a strange weakness came over the heroes.
+Their fists seemed to grow heavy as lead, and went dingle-dangle at the
+ends of their arms; their legs became as light as straws and began to bend
+in and out; their necks became too delicate to hold anything up, so that
+their heads wibbled and wobbled from side to side.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s wrong at all?&rdquo; said Cona&rsquo;n, as he tumbled to the ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everything is,&rdquo; Fionn replied, and he tumbled beside him.
+</p>
+<p>
+The three sisters then tied the heroes with every kind of loop and twist
+and knot that could be thought of.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Those are whiskers!&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; said Conan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What a place you must hunt whiskers in?&rdquo; he mumbled savagely. &ldquo;Who wants
+whiskers?&rdquo; he groaned.
+</p>
+<p>
+But Fionn was thinking of other things.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If there was any way of warning the Fianna not to come here,&rdquo; Fionn
+murmured.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is no way, my darling,&rdquo; said Caevo&rsquo;g, and she smiled a smile that
+would have killed Fionn, only that he shut his eyes in time.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/271m.jpg" alt="271m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/271.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+After a moment he murmured again:
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Conan, my dear love, give the warning whistle so that the Fianna will
+keep out of this place.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+A little whoof, like the sound that would be made by a baby and it asleep,
+came from Cona&rsquo;n.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fionn,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;there isn&rsquo;t a whistle in me. We are done for,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are done for, indeed,&rdquo; said Cuillen, and she smiled a hairy and
+twisty and fangy smile that almost finished Cona&rsquo;n.
+</p>
+<p>
+By that time some of the Fianna had returned to the mound to see why Bran
+and Sceo&rsquo;lan were barking so outrageously. They saw the cave and went into
+it, but no sooner had they passed the holly branches than their strength
+went from them, and they were seized and bound by the vicious hags. Little
+by little all the members of the Fianna returned to the hill, and each of
+them was drawn into the cave, and each was bound by the sisters.
+</p>
+<p>
+Oisi&rsquo;n and Oscar and mac Lugac came, with the nobles of clann-Baiscne, and
+with those of clann-Corcoran and clann-Smo&rsquo;l; they all came, and they were
+all bound.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was a wonderful sight and a great deed this binding of the Fianna, and
+the three sisters laughed with a joy that was terrible to hear and was
+almost death to see. As the men were captured they were carried by the
+hags into dark mysterious holes and black perplexing labyrinths.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here is another one,&rdquo; cried Caevo&rsquo;g as she bundled a trussed champion
+along.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;This one is fat,&rdquo; said Cuillen, and she rolled a bulky Fenian along like
+a wheel.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here,&rdquo; said Iaran, &ldquo;is a love of a man. One could eat this kind of man,&rdquo;
+ she murmured, and she licked a lip that had whiskers growing inside as
+well as out.
+</p>
+<p>
+And the corded champion whimpered in her arms, for he did not know but
+eating might indeed be his fate, and he would have preferred to be
+coffined anywhere in the world rather than to be coffined inside of that
+face. So far for them.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0058" id="link2HCH0058">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER V
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ithin the cave there was silence except for the voices of the hags and
+the scarcely audible moaning of the Fianna-Finn, but without there was a
+dreadful uproar, for as each man returned from the chase his dogs came
+with him, and although the men went into the cave the dogs did not.
+</p>
+<p>
+They were too wise.
+</p>
+<p>
+They stood outside, filled with savagery and terror, for they could scent
+their masters and their masters&rsquo; danger, and perhaps they could get from
+the cave smells till then unknown and full of alarm.
+</p>
+<p>
+From the troop of dogs there arose a baying and barking, a snarling and
+howling and growling, a yelping and squealing and bawling for which no
+words can be found. Now and again a dog nosed among a thousand smells and
+scented his master; the ruff of his neck stood up like a hog&rsquo;s bristles
+and a netty ridge prickled along his spine. Then with red eyes, with bared
+fangs, with a hoarse, deep snort and growl he rushed at the cave, and then
+he halted and sneaked back again with all his ruffles smoothed, his tail
+between his legs, his eyes screwed sideways in miserable apology and
+alarm, and a long thin whine of woe dribbling out of his nose.
+</p>
+<p>
+The three sisters took their wide-channelled, hard-tempered swords in
+their hands, and prepared to slay the Fianna, but before doing so they
+gave one more look from the door of the cave to see if there might be a
+straggler of the Fianna who was escaping death by straggling, and they saw
+one coming towards them with Bran and Sceo&rsquo;lan leaping beside him, while
+all the other dogs began to burst their throats with barks and split their
+noses with snorts and wag their tails off at sight of the tall, valiant,
+white-toothed champion, Goll mor mac Morna. &ldquo;We will kill that one first,&rdquo;
+ said Caevo&rsquo;g.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is only one of him,&rdquo; said Cuillen.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And each of us three is the match for an hundred,&rdquo; said Iaran.
+</p>
+<p>
+The uncanny, misbehaved, and outrageous harridans advanced then to meet
+the son of Morna, and when he saw these three Goll whipped the sword from
+his thigh, swung his buckler round, and got to them in ten great leaps.
+</p>
+<p>
+Silence fell on the world during that conflict. The wind went down; the
+clouds stood still; the old hill itself held its breath; the warriors
+within ceased to be men and became each an ear; and the dogs sat in a vast
+circle round the combatants, with their heads all to one side, their noses
+poked forward, their mouths half open, and their tails forgotten. Now and
+again a dog whined in a whisper and snapped a little snap on the air, but
+except for that there was neither sound nor movement.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/279m.jpg" alt="279m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/279.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+It was a long fight. It was a hard and a tricky fight, and Goll won it by
+bravery and strategy and great good luck; for with one shrewd slice of his
+blade he carved two of these mighty termagants into equal halves, so that
+there were noses and whiskers to his right hand and knees and toes to his
+left: and that stroke was known afterwards as one of the three great
+sword-strokes of Ireland. The third hag, however, had managed to get
+behind Goll, and she leaped on to his back with the bound of a panther,
+and hung here with the skilful, many-legged, tight-twisted clutching of a
+spider. But the great champion gave a twist of his hips and a swing of his
+shoulders that whirled her around him like a sack. He got her on the
+ground and tied her hands with the straps of a shield, and he was going to
+give her the last blow when she appealed to his honour and bravery.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I put my life under your protection,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;And if you let me go
+free I will lift the enchantment from the Fianna-Finn and will give them
+all back to you again.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I agree to that,&rdquo; said Goll, and he untied her straps. The harridan did
+as she had promised, and in a short time Fionn and Oisi&rsquo;n and Oscar and
+Cona&rsquo;n were released, and after that all the Fianna were released.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0059" id="link2HCH0059">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VI
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>s each man came out of the cave he gave a jump and a shout; the courage
+of the world went into him and he felt that he could fight twenty. But
+while they were talking over the adventure and explaining how it had
+happened, a vast figure strode over the side of the hill and descended
+among them. It was Conaran&rsquo;s fourth daughter.
+</p>
+<p>
+If the other three had been terrible to look on, this one was more
+terrible than the three together. She was clad in iron plate, and she had
+a wicked sword by her side and a knobby club in her hand She halted by the
+bodies of her sisters, and bitter tears streamed down into her beard.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas, my sweet ones,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;I am too late.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And then she stared fiercely at Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I demand a combat,&rdquo; she roared.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is your right,&rdquo; said Fionn. He turned to his son.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oisi&rsquo;n, my heart, kill me this honourable hag.&rdquo; But for the only time in
+his life Oisi&rsquo;n shrank from a combat.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I cannot do it,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I feel too weak.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Fionn was astounded. &ldquo;Oscar,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;will you kill me this great hag?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Oscar stammered miserably. &ldquo;I would not be able to,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+Cona&rsquo;n also refused, and so did Caelte mac Rona&rsquo;n and mac Lugac, for there
+was no man there but was terrified by the sight of that mighty and valiant
+harridan.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fionn rose to his feet. &ldquo;I will take this combat myself,&rdquo; he said sternly.
+</p>
+<p>
+And he swung his buckler forward and stretched his right hand to the
+sword. But at that terrible sight Goll mae Morna blushed deeply and leaped
+from the ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;no, my soul, Fionn, this would not be a proper combat
+for you. I take this fight.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have done your share, Goll,&rdquo; said the captain.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should finish the fight I began,&rdquo; Goll continued, &ldquo;for it was I who
+killed the two sisters of this valiant hag, and it is against me the feud
+lies.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That will do for me,&rdquo; said the horrible daughter of Conaran. &ldquo;I will kill
+Goll mor mac Morna first, and after that I will kill Fionn, and after that
+I will kill every Fenian of the Fianna-Finn.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may begin, Goll,&rdquo; said Fionn, &ldquo;and I give you my blessing.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Goll then strode forward to the fight, and the hag moved against him with
+equal alacrity. In a moment the heavens rang to the clash of swords on
+bucklers. It was hard to with-stand the terrific blows of that mighty
+female, for her sword played with the quickness of lightning and smote
+like the heavy crashing of a storm. But into that din and encirclement
+Goll pressed and ventured, steady as a rock in water, agile as a creature
+of the sea, and when one of the combatants retreated it was the hag that
+gave backwards. As her foot moved a great shout of joy rose from the
+Fianna. A snarl went over the huge face of the monster and she leaped
+forward again, but she met Goll&rsquo;s point in the road; it went through her,
+and in another moment Goll took her head from its shoulders and swung it
+on high before Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+As the Fianna turned homewards Fionn spoke to his great champion and
+enemy.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Goll,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have a daughter.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A lovely girl, a blossom of the dawn,&rdquo; said Goll.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would she please you as a wife?&rdquo; the chief demanded.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;She would please me,&rdquo; said Goll.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is your wife,&rdquo; said Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+But that did not prevent Goll from killing Fionn&rsquo;s brother Cairell later
+on, nor did it prevent Fionn from killing Goll later on again, and the
+last did not prevent Goll from rescuing Fionn out of hell when the
+Fianna-Finn were sent there under the new God. Nor is there any reason to
+complain or to be astonished at these things, for it is a mutual world we
+llve in, a give-and-take world, and there is no great harm in it.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0069" id="link2H_4_0069">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+BECUMA OF THE WHITE SKIN
+</h2>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0060" id="link2HCH0060">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/287m.jpg" alt="287m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/287.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER I
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>here are more worlds than one, and in many ways they are unlike each
+other. But joy and sorrow, or, in other words, good and evil, are not
+absent in their degree from any of the worlds, for wherever there is life
+there is action, and action is but the expression of one or other of these
+qualities.
+</p>
+<p>
+After this Earth there is the world of the Shi&rsquo;. Beyond it again lies the
+Many-Coloured Land. Next comes the Land of Wonder, and after that the Land
+of Promise awaits us. You will cross clay to get into the Shi&rsquo;; you will
+cross water to attain the Many-Coloured Land; fire must be passed ere the
+Land of Wonder is attained, but we do not know what will be crossed for
+the fourth world.
+</p>
+<p>
+This adventure of Conn the Hundred Fighter and his son Art was by the way
+of water, and therefore he was more advanced in magic than Fionn was, all
+of whose adventures were by the path of clay and into Faery only, but Conn
+was the High King and so the arch-magician of Ireland.
+</p>
+<p>
+A council had been called in the Many-Coloured Land to discuss the case of
+a lady named Becuma Cneisgel, that is, Becuma of the White Skin, the
+daughter of Eogan Inver. She had run away from her husband Labraid and had
+taken refuge with Gadiar, one of the sons of Mananna&rsquo;n mac Lir, the god of
+the sea, and the ruler, therefore, of that sphere.
+</p>
+<p>
+It seems, then, that there is marriage in two other spheres. In the Shi&rsquo; 
+matrimony is recorded as being parallel in every respect with
+earth-marriage, and the desire which urges to it seems to be as violent
+and inconstant as it is with us; but in the Many-Coloured Land marriage is
+but a contemplation of beauty, a brooding and meditation wherein all
+grosser desire is unknown and children are born to sinless parents.
+</p>
+<p>
+In the Shi&rsquo; the crime of Becuma would have been lightly considered, and
+would have received none or but a nominal punishment, but in the second
+world a horrid gravity attaches to such a lapse, and the retribution meted
+is implacable and grim. It may be dissolution by fire, and that can note a
+destruction too final for the mind to contemplate; or it may be banishment
+from that sphere to a lower and worse one.
+</p>
+<p>
+This was the fate of Becuma of the White Skin.
+</p>
+<p>
+One may wonder how, having attained to that sphere, she could have carried
+with her so strong a memory of the earth. It is certain that she was not a
+fit person to exist in the Many-Coloured Land, and it is to be feared that
+she was organised too grossly even for life in the Shi&rsquo;.
+</p>
+<p>
+She was an earth-woman, and she was banished to the earth.
+</p>
+<p>
+Word was sent to the Shi&rsquo;s of Ireland that this lady should not be
+permitted to enter any of them; from which it would seem that the
+ordinances of the Shi come from the higher world, and, it might follow,
+that the conduct of earth lies in the Shi&rsquo;.
+</p>
+<p>
+In that way, the gates of her own world and the innumerable doors of Faery
+being closed against her, Becuma was forced to appear in the world of men.
+</p>
+<p>
+It is pleasant, however, notwithstanding her terrible crime and her woeful
+punishment, to think how courageous she was. When she was told her
+sentence, nay, her doom, she made no outcry, nor did she waste any time in
+sorrow. She went home and put on her nicest clothes.
+</p>
+<p>
+She wore a red satin smock, and, over this, a cloak of green silk out of
+which long fringes of gold swung and sparkled, and she had light sandals
+of white bronze on her thin, shapely feet. She had long soft hair that was
+yellow as gold, and soft as the curling foam of the sea. Her eyes were
+wide and clear as water and were grey as a dove&rsquo;s breast. Her teeth were
+white as snow and of an evenness to marvel at. Her lips were thin and
+beautifully curved: red lips in truth, red as winter berries and tempting
+as the fruits of summer. The people who superintended her departure said
+mournfully that when she was gone there would be no more beauty left in
+their world.
+</p>
+<p>
+She stepped into a coracle, it was pushed on the enchanted waters, and it
+went forward, world within world, until land appeared, and her boat swung
+in low tide against a rock at the foot of Ben Edair.
+</p>
+<p>
+So far for her.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0061" id="link2HCH0061">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER II
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>onn the Hundred Fighter, Ard-Ri&rsquo; of Ireland, was in the lowest spirits
+that can be imagined, for his wife was dead. He had been Ard-Ri for nine
+years, and during his term the corn used to be reaped three times in each
+year, and there was full and plenty of everything. There are few kings who
+can boast of more kingly results than he can, but there was sore trouble
+in store for him.
+</p>
+<p>
+He had been married to Eithne, the daughter of Brisland Binn, King of
+Norway, and, next to his subjects, he loved his wife more than all that
+was lovable in the world. But the term of man and woman, of king or queen,
+is set in the stars, and there is no escaping Doom for any one; so, when
+her time came, Eithne died.
+</p>
+<p>
+Now there were three great burying-places in Ireland&mdash;the Brugh of
+the Boyne in Ulster, over which Angus Og is chief and god; the Shi&rsquo; mound
+of Cruachan Ahi, where Ethal Anbual presides over the underworld of
+Connacht, and Tailltin, in Royal Meath. It was in this last, the sacred
+place of his own lordship, that Conn laid his wife to rest.
+</p>
+<p>
+Her funeral games were played during nine days. Her keen was sung by poets
+and harpers, and a cairn ten acres wide was heaved over her clay. Then the
+keening ceased and the games drew to an end; the princes of the Five
+Prov-inces returned by horse or by chariot to their own places; the
+concourse of mourners melted away, and there was nothing left by the great
+cairn but the sun that dozed upon it in the daytime, the heavy clouds that
+brooded on it in the night, and the desolate, memoried king.
+</p>
+<p>
+For the dead queen had been so lovely that Conn could not forget her; she
+had been so kind at every moment that he could not but miss her at every
+moment; but it was in the Council Chamber and the Judgement Hall that he
+most pondered her memory. For she had also been wise, and lack-ing her
+guidance, all grave affairs seemed graver, shadowing each day and going
+with him to the pillow at night.
+</p>
+<p>
+The trouble of the king becomes the trouble of the subject, for how shall
+we live if judgement is withheld, or if faulty decisions are promulgated?
+Therefore, with the sorrow of the king, all Ireland was in grief, and it
+was the wish of every person that he should marry again.
+</p>
+<p>
+Such an idea, however, did not occur to him, for he could not conceive how
+any woman should fill the place his queen had vacated. He grew more and
+more despondent, and less and less fitted to cope with affairs of state,
+and one day he instructed his son Art to take the rule during his absence,
+and he set out for Ben Edair.
+</p>
+<p>
+For a great wish had come upon him to walk beside the sea; to listen to
+the roll and boom of long, grey breakers; to gaze on an unfruitful,
+desolate wilderness of waters; and to forget in those sights all that he
+could forget, and if he could not forget then to remember all that he
+should remember.
+</p>
+<p>
+He was thus gazing and brooding when one day he observed a coracle drawing
+to the shore. A young girl stepped from it and walked to him among black
+boulders and patches of yellow sand.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0062" id="link2HCH0062">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/292m.jpg" alt="292m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/292.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER III
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>eing a king he had authority to ask questions. Conn asked her, therefore,
+all the questions that he could think of, for it is not every day that a
+lady drives from the sea, and she wearing a golden-fringed cloak of green
+silk through which a red satin smock peeped at the openings. She replied
+to his questions, but she did not tell him all the truth; for, indeed, she
+could not afford to.
+</p>
+<p>
+She knew who he was, for she retained some of the powers proper to the
+worlds she had left, and as he looked on her soft yellow hair and on her
+thin red lips, Conn recognised, as all men do, that one who is lovely must
+also be good, and so he did not frame any inquiry on that count; for
+everything is forgotten in the presence of a pretty woman, and a magician
+can be bewitched also.
+</p>
+<p>
+She told Conn that the fame of his son Art had reached even the
+Many-Coloured Land, and that she had fallen in love with the boy. This did
+not seem unreasonable to one who had himself ventured much in Faery, and
+who had known so many of the people of that world leave their own land for
+the love of a mortal.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is your name, my sweet lady?&rdquo; said the king.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am called Delvcaem (Fair Shape) and I am the daughter of Morgan,&rdquo; she
+replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have heard much of Morgan,&rdquo; said the king. &ldquo;He is a very great
+magician.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+During this conversation Conn had been regarding her with the minute
+freedom which is right only in a king. At what precise instant he forgot
+his dead consort we do not know, but it is certain that at this moment his
+mind was no longer burdened with that dear and lovely memory. His voice
+was melancholy when he spoke again.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You love my son!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who could avoid loving him?&rdquo; she murmured.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;When a woman speaks to a man about the love she feels for another man she
+is not liked. And,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;when she speaks to a man who has no
+wife of his own about her love for another man then she is disliked.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would not be disliked by you,&rdquo; Becuma murmured.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nevertheless,&rdquo; said he regally, &ldquo;I will not come between a woman and her
+choice.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did not know you lacked a wife,&rdquo; said Becuma, but indeed she did.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know it now,&rdquo; the king replied sternly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What shall I do?&rdquo; she inquired, &ldquo;am I to wed you or your son?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must choose,&rdquo; Conn answered.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you allow me to choose it means that you do not want me very badly,&rdquo;
+ said she with a smile.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I will not allow you to choose,&rdquo; cried the king, &ldquo;and it is with
+myself you shall marry.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He took her hand in his and kissed it.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lovely is this pale thin hand. Lovely is the slender foot that I see in a
+small bronze shoe,&rdquo; said the king.
+</p>
+<p>
+After a suitable time she continued:
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should not like your son to be at Tara when I am there, or for a year
+afterwards, for I do not wish to meet him until I have forgotten him and
+have come to know you well.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not wish to banish my son,&rdquo; the king protested.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would not really be a banishment,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;A prince&rsquo;s duty could be
+set him, and in such an absence he would improve his knowledge both of
+Ireland and of men. Further,&rdquo; she continued with downcast eyes, &ldquo;when you
+remember the reason that brought me here you will see that his presence
+would be an embarrassment to us both, and my presence would be unpleasant
+to him if he remembers his mother.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nevertheless,&rdquo; said Conn stubbornly, &ldquo;I do not wish to banish my son; it
+is awkward and unnecessary.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;For a year only,&rdquo; she pleaded.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is yet,&rdquo; he continued thoughtfully, &ldquo;a reasonable reason that you give
+and I will do what you ask, but by my hand and word I don&rsquo;t like doing
+it.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+They set out then briskly and joyfully on the homeward journey, and in due
+time they reached Tara of the Kings.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0063" id="link2HCH0063">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER IV
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is part of the education of a prince to be a good chess player, and to
+continually exercise his mind in view of the judgements that he will be
+called upon to give and the knotty, tortuous, and perplexing matters which
+will obscure the issues which he must judge. Art, the son of Conn, was
+sitting at chess with Cromdes, his father&rsquo;s magician.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be very careful about the move you are going to make,&rdquo; said Cromdes.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;CAN I be careful?&rdquo; Art inquired. &ldquo;Is the move that you are thinking of in
+my power?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is not,&rdquo; the other admitted.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I need not be more careful than usual,&rdquo; Art replied, and he made his
+move.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a move of banishment,&rdquo; said Cromdes.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;As I will not banish myself, I suppose my father will do it, but I do not
+know why he should.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your father will not banish you.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who then?&rdquo; &ldquo;Your mother.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;My mother is dead.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have a new one,&rdquo; said the magician.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here is news,&rdquo; said Art. &ldquo;I think I shall not love my new mother.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will yet love her better than she loves you,&rdquo; said Cromdes, meaning
+thereby that they would hate each other.
+</p>
+<p>
+While they spoke the king and Becuma entered the palace.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had better go to greet my father,&rdquo; said the young man.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You had better wait until he sends for you,&rdquo; his companion advised, and
+they returned to their game.
+</p>
+<p>
+In due time a messenger came from the king directing Art to leave Tara
+instantly, and to leave Ireland for one full year.
+</p>
+<p>
+He left Tara that night, and for the space of a year he was not seen again
+in Ireland. But during that period things did not go well with the king
+nor with Ireland. Every year before that time three crops of corn used to
+be lifted off the land, but during Art&rsquo;s absence there was no corn in
+Ireland and there was no milk. The whole land went hungry.
+</p>
+<p>
+Lean people were in every house, lean cattle in every field; the bushes
+did not swing out their timely berries or seasonable nuts; the bees went
+abroad as busily as ever, but each night they returned languidly, with
+empty pouches, and there was no honey in their hives when the honey season
+came. People began to look at each other questioningly, meaningly, and
+dark remarks passed between them, for they knew that a bad harvest means,
+somehow, a bad king, and, although this belief can be combated, it is too
+firmly rooted in wisdom to be dismissed.
+</p>
+<p>
+The poets and magicians met to consider why this disaster should have
+befallen the country and by their arts they discovered the truth about the
+king&rsquo;s wife, and that she was Becuma of the White Skin, and they
+discovered also the cause of her banishment from the Many-Coloured Land
+that is beyond the sea, which is beyond even the grave.
+</p>
+<p>
+They told the truth to the king, but he could not bear to be parted from
+that slender-handed, gold-haired, thin-lipped, blithe enchantress, and he
+required them to discover some means whereby he might retain his wife and
+his crown. There was a way and the magicians told him of it.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If the son of a sinless couple can be found and if his blood be mixed
+with the soll of Tara the blight and ruin will depart from Ireland,&rdquo; said
+the magicians.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If there is such a boy I will find him,&rdquo; cried the Hundred Fighter.
+</p>
+<p>
+At the end of a year Art returned to Tara. His father delivered to him the
+sceptre of Ireland, and he set out on a journey to find the son of a
+sinless couple such as he had been told of.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0064" id="link2HCH0064">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/299m.jpg" alt="299m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/299.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER V
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he High King did not know where exactly he should look for such a
+saviour, but he was well educated and knew how to look for whatever was
+lacking. This knowledge will be useful to those upon whom a similar duty
+should ever devolve.
+</p>
+<p>
+He went to Ben Edair. He stepped into a coracle and pushed out to the
+deep, and he permitted the coracle to go as the winds and the waves
+directed it.
+</p>
+<p>
+In such a way he voyaged among the small islands of the sea until he lost
+all knowledge of his course and was adrift far out in ocean. He was under
+the guidance of the stars and the great luminaries.
+</p>
+<p>
+He saw black seals that stared and barked and dived dancingly, with the
+round turn of a bow and the forward onset of an arrow. Great whales came
+heaving from the green-hued void, blowing a wave of the sea high into the
+air from their noses and smacking their wide flat tails thunder-ously on
+the water. Porpoises went snorting past in bands and clans. Small fish
+came sliding and flickering, and all the outlandish creatures of the deep
+rose by his bobbing craft and swirled and sped away.
+</p>
+<p>
+Wild storms howled by him so that the boat climbed painfully to the sky on
+a mile-high wave, balanced for a tense moment on its level top, and sped
+down the glassy side as a stone goes furiously from a sling.
+</p>
+<p>
+Or, again, caught in the chop of a broken sea, it stayed shuddering and
+backing, while above his head there was only a low sad sky, and around him
+the lap and wash of grey waves that were never the same and were never
+different.
+</p>
+<p>
+After long staring on the hungry nothingness of air and water he would
+stare on the skin-stretched fabric of his boat as on a strangeness, or he
+would examine his hands and the texture of his skin and the stiff black
+hairs that grew behind his knuckles and sprouted around his ring, and he
+found in these things newness and wonder.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then, when days of storm had passed, the low grey clouds shivered and
+cracked in a thousand places, each grim islet went scudding to the horizon
+as though terrified by some great breadth, and when they had passed he
+stared into vast after vast of blue infinity, in the depths of which his
+eyes stayed and could not pierce, and wherefrom they could scarcely be
+withdrawn. A sun beamed thence that filled the air with sparkle and the
+sea with a thousand lights, and looking on these he was reminded of his
+home at Tara: of the columns of white and yellow bronze that blazed out
+sunnily on the sun, and the red and white and yellow painted roofs that
+beamed at and astonished the eye.
+</p>
+<p>
+Sailing thus, lost in a succession of days and nights, of winds and calms,
+he came at last to an island.
+</p>
+<p>
+His back was turned to it, and long before he saw it he smelled it and
+wondered; for he had been sitting as in a daze, musing on a change that
+had seemed to come in his changeless world; and for a long time he could
+not tell what that was which made a difference on the salt-whipped wind or
+why he should be excited. For suddenly he had become excited and his heart
+leaped in violent expectation.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is an October smell,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is apples that I smell.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He turned then and saw the island, fragrant with apple trees, sweet with
+wells of wine; and, hearkening towards the shore, his ears, dulled yet
+with the unending rhythms of the sea, distinguished and were filled with
+song; for the isle was, as it were, a nest of birds, and they sang
+joyously, sweetly, triumphantly.
+</p>
+<p>
+He landed on that lovely island, and went forward under the darting birds,
+under the apple boughs, skirting fragrant lakes about which were woods of
+the sacred hazel and into which the nuts of knowledge fell and swam; and
+he blessed the gods of his people because of the ground that did not
+shiver and because of the deeply rooted trees that could not gad or budge.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0065" id="link2HCH0065">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VI
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>aving gone some distance by these pleasant ways he saw a shapely house
+dozing in the sunlight.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was thatched with the wings of birds, blue wings and yellow and white
+wings, and in the centre of the house there was a door of crystal set in
+posts of bronze.
+</p>
+<p>
+The queen of this island lived there, Rigru (Large-eyed), the daughter of
+Lodan, and wife of Daire Degamra. She was seated on a crystal throne with
+her son Segda by her side, and they welcomed the High King courteously.
+</p>
+<p>
+There were no servants in this palace; nor was there need for them. The
+High King found that his hands had washed themselves, and when later on he
+noticed that food had been placed before him he noticed also that it had
+come without the assistance of servile hands. A cloak was laid gently
+about his shoulders, and he was glad of it, for his own was soiled by
+exposure to sun and wind and water, and was not worthy of a lady&rsquo;s eye.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then he was invited to eat.
+</p>
+<p>
+He noticed, however, that food had been set for no one but himself, and
+this did not please him, for to eat alone was contrary to the hospitable
+usage of a king, and was contrary also to his contract with the gods.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good, my hosts,&rdquo; he remonstrated, &ldquo;it is geasa (taboo) for me to eat
+alone.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But we never eat together,&rdquo; the queen replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I cannot violate my geasa,&rdquo; said the High King.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will eat with you,&rdquo; said Segda (Sweet Speech), &ldquo;and thus, while you are
+our guest you will not do violence to your vows.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed,&rdquo; said Conn, &ldquo;that will be a great satisfaction, for I have
+already all the trouble that I can cope with and have no wish to add to it
+by offending the gods.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is your trouble?&rdquo; the gentle queen asked. &ldquo;During a year,&rdquo; Conn
+replied, &ldquo;there has been neither corn nor milk in Ireland. The land is
+parched, the trees are withered, the birds do not sing in Ireland, and the
+bees do not make honey.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are certainly in trouble,&rdquo; the queen assented.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;for what purpose have you come to our island?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have come to ask for the loan of your son.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A loan of my son!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been informed,&rdquo; Conn explained, &ldquo;that if the son of a sinless
+couple is brought to Tara and is bathed in the waters of Ireland the land
+will be delivered from those ills.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The king of this island, Daire, had not hitherto spoken, but he now did so
+with astonishment and emphasis.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We would not lend our son to any one, not even to gain the kingship of
+the world,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+But Segda, observing that the guest&rsquo;s countenance was discomposed, broke
+in:
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is not kind to refuse a thing that the Ard-Ri&rsquo; of Ireland asks for,
+and I will go with him.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do not go, my pulse,&rdquo; his father advised.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do not go, my one treasure,&rdquo; his mother pleaded.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must go indeed,&rdquo; the boy replied, &ldquo;for it is to do good I am required,
+and no person may shirk such a requirement.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go then,&rdquo; said his father, &ldquo;but I will place you under the protection of
+the High King and of the Four Provincial Kings of Ireland, and under the
+protection of Art, the son of Conn, and of Fionn, the son of Uail, and
+under the protection of the magicians and poets and the men of art in
+Ireland.&rdquo; And he thereupon bound these protections and safeguards on the
+Ard-Ri&rsquo; with an oath.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will answer for these protections,&rdquo; said Conn.
+</p>
+<p>
+He departed then from the island with Segda and in three days they reached
+Ireland, and in due time they arrived at Tara.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0066" id="link2HCH0066">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VII
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>n reaching the palace Conn called his magicians and poets to a council
+and informed them that he had found the boy they sought&mdash;the son of a
+virgin. These learned people consulted together, and they stated that the
+young man must be killed, and that his blood should be mixed with the
+earth of Tara and sprinkled under the withered trees.
+</p>
+<p>
+When Segda heard this he was astonished and defiant; then, seeing that he
+was alone and without prospect of succour, he grew downcast and was in
+great fear for his life. But remembering the safeguards under which he had
+been placed, he enumerated these to the assembly, and called on the High
+King to grant him the protections that were his due.
+</p>
+<p>
+Conn was greatly perturbed, but, as in duty bound, he placed the boy under
+the various protections that were in his oath, and, with the courage of
+one who has no more to gain or lose, he placed Segda, furthermore, under
+the protection of all the men of Ireland.
+</p>
+<p>
+But the men of Ireland refused to accept that bond, saying that although
+the Ard-Ri&rsquo; was acting justly towards the boy he was not acting justly
+towards Ireland.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We do not wish to slay this prince for our pleasure,&rdquo; they argued, &ldquo;but
+for the safety of Ireland he must be killed.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Angry parties were formed. Art, and Fionn the son of Uail, and the princes
+of the land were outraged at the idea that one who had been placed under
+their protection should be hurt by any hand. But the men of Ireland and
+the magicians stated that the king had gone to Faery for a special
+purpose, and that his acts outside or contrary to that purpose were
+illegal, and committed no person to obedience.
+</p>
+<p>
+There were debates in the Council Hall, in the market-place, in the
+streets of Tara, some holding that national honour dissolved and absolved
+all personal honour, and others protesting that no man had aught but his
+personal honour, and that above it not the gods, not even Ireland, could
+be placed&mdash;for it is to be known that Ireland is a god.
+</p>
+<p>
+Such a debate was in course, and Segda, to whom both sides addressed
+gentle and courteous arguments, grew more and more disconsolate.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You shall die for Ireland, dear heart,&rdquo; said one of them, and he gave
+Segda three kisses on each cheek.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed,&rdquo; said Segda, returning those kisses, &ldquo;indeed I had not bargained
+to die for Ireland, but only to bathe in her waters and to remove her
+pestilence.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But dear child and prince,&rdquo; said another, kissing him likewise, &ldquo;if any
+one of us could save Ireland by dying for her how cheerfully we would
+die.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And Segda, returning his three kisses, agreed that the death was noble,
+but that it was not in his undertaking.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then, observing the stricken countenances about him, and the faces of men
+and women hewn thin by hunger, his resolution melted away, and he said:
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I must die for you,&rdquo; and then he said:
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will die for you.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And when he had said that, all the people present touched his cheek with
+their lips, and the love and peace of Ireland entered into his soul, so
+that he was tranquil and proud and happy.
+</p>
+<p>
+The executioner drew his wide, thin blade and all those present covered
+their eyes with their cloaks, when a wailing voice called on the
+executioner to delay yet a moment. The High King uncovered his eyes and
+saw that a woman had approached driving a cow before her.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why are you killing the boy?&rdquo; she demanded.
+</p>
+<p>
+The reason for this slaying was explained to her.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you sure,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;that the poets and magicians really know
+everything?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do they not?&rdquo; the king inquired.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do they?&rdquo; she insisted.
+</p>
+<p>
+And then turning to the magicians:
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let one magician of the magicians tell me what is hidden in the bags that
+are lying across the back of my cow.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+But no magician could tell it, nor did they try to.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Questions are not answered thus,&rdquo; they said. &ldquo;There is formulae, and the
+calling up of spirits, and lengthy complicated preparations in our art.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not badly learned in these arts,&rdquo; said the woman, &ldquo;and I say that if
+you slay this cow the effect will be the same as if you had killed the
+boy.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We would prefer to kill a cow or a thousand cows rather than harm this
+young prince,&rdquo; said Conn, &ldquo;but if we spare the boy will these evils
+return?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They will not be banished until you have banished their cause.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what is their cause?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Becuma is the cause, and she must be banished.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you must tell me what to do,&rdquo; said Conn, &ldquo;tell me at least to do
+something that I can do.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will tell you certainly. You can keep Becuma and your ills as long as
+you want to. It does not matter to me. Come, my son,&rdquo; she said to Segda,
+for it was Segda&rsquo;s mother who had come to save him; and then that sinless
+queen and her son went back to their home of enchantment, leaving the king
+and Fionn and the magicians and nobles of Ireland astonished and ashamed.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0067" id="link2HCH0067">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VIII
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>here are good and evil people in this and in every other world, and the
+person who goes hence will go to the good or the evil that is native to
+him, while those who return come as surely to their due. The trouble which
+had fallen on Becuma did not leave her repentant, and the sweet lady began
+to do wrong as instantly and innocently as a flower begins to grow. It was
+she who was responsible for the ills which had come on Ireland, and we may
+wonder why she brought these plagues and droughts to what was now her own
+country.
+</p>
+<p>
+Under all wrong-doing lies personal vanity or the feeling that we are
+endowed and privileged beyond our fellows. It is probable that, however
+courageously she had accepted fate, Becuma had been sharply stricken in
+her pride; in the sense of personal strength, aloofness, and identity, in
+which the mind likens itself to god and will resist every domination but
+its own. She had been punished, that is, she had submitted to control, and
+her sense of freedom, of privilege, of very being, was outraged. The mind
+flinches even from the control of natural law, and how much more from the
+despotism of its own separated likenesses, for if another can control me
+that other has usurped me, has become me, and how terribly I seem
+diminished by the seeming addition!
+</p>
+<p>
+This sense of separateness is vanity, and is the bed of all wrong-doing.
+For we are not freedom, we are control, and we must submit to our own
+function ere we can exercise it. Even unconsciously we accept the rights
+of others to all that we have, and if we will not share our good with
+them, it is because we cannot, having none; but we will yet give what we
+have, although that be evil. To insist on other people sharing in our
+personal torment is the first step towards insisting that they shall share
+in our joy, as we shall insist when we get it.
+</p>
+<p>
+Becuma considered that if she must suffer all else she met should suffer
+also. She raged, therefore, against Ireland, and in particular she raged
+against young Art, her husband&rsquo;s son, and she left undone nothing that
+could afflict Ireland or the prince. She may have felt that she could not
+make them suffer, and that is a maddening thought to any woman. Or perhaps
+she had really desired the son instead of the father, and her thwarted
+desire had perpetuated itself as hate. But it is true that Art regarded
+his mother&rsquo;s successor with intense dislike, and it is true that she
+actively returned it.
+</p>
+<p>
+One day Becuma came on the lawn before the palace, and seeing that Art was
+at chess with Cromdes she walked to the table on which the match was being
+played and for some time regarded the game. But the young prince did not
+take any notice of her while she stood by the board, for he knew that this
+girl was the enemy of Ireland, and he could not bring himself even to look
+at her.
+</p>
+<p>
+Becuma, looking down on his beautiful head, smiled as much in rage as in
+disdain.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;O son of a king,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;I demand a game with you for stakes.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Art then raised his head and stood up courteously, but he did not look at
+her.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whatever the queen demands I will do,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Am I not your mother also?&rdquo; she replied mockingly, as she took the seat
+which the chief magician leaped from.
+</p>
+<p>
+The game was set then, and her play was so skilful that Art was hard put
+to counter her moves. But at a point of the game Becuma grew thoughtful,
+and, as by a lapse of memory, she made a move which gave the victory to
+her opponent. But she had intended that. She sat then, biting on her lip
+with her white small teeth and staring angrily at Art.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you demand from me?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I bind you to eat no food in Ireland until you find the wand of Curoi,
+son of Dare&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Becuma then put a cloak about her and she went from Tara northward and
+eastward until she came to the dewy, sparkling Brugh of Angus mac an Og in
+Ulster, but she was not admitted there. She went thence to the Shi&rsquo; ruled
+over by Eogabal, and although this lord would not admit her, his daughter
+Aine&rsquo;, who was her foster-sister, let her into Faery.
+</p>
+<p>
+She made inquiries and was informed where the dun of Curoi mac Dare&rsquo; was,
+and when she had received this intelligence she set out for Sliev Mis. By
+what arts she coaxed Curoi to give up his wand it matters not, enough that
+she was able to return in triumph to Tara. When she handed the wand to
+Art, she said:
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I claim my game of revenge.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is due to you,&rdquo; said Art, and they sat on the lawn before the palace
+and played.
+</p>
+<p>
+A hard game that was, and at times each of the combatants sat for an hour
+staring on the board before the next move was made, and at times they
+looked from the board and for hours stared on the sky seeking as though in
+heaven for advice. But Becuma&rsquo;s foster-sister, Aine&rsquo;, came from the Shi&rsquo;,
+and, unseen by any, she interfered with Art&rsquo;s play, so that, suddenly,
+when he looked again on the board, his face went pale, for he saw that the
+game was lost.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t move that piece,&rdquo; said he sternly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor did I,&rdquo; Becuma replied, and she called on the onlookers to confirm
+that statement.
+</p>
+<p>
+She was smiling to herself secretly, for she had seen what the mortal eyes
+around could not see.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think the game is mine,&rdquo; she insisted softly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think that your friends in Faery have cheated,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;but the
+game is yours if you are content to win it that way.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I bind you,&rdquo; said Becuma, &ldquo;to eat no food in Ireland until you have found
+Delvcaem, the daughter of Morgan.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where do I look for her?&rdquo; said Art in despair.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is in one of the islands of the sea,&rdquo; Becuma replied, &ldquo;that is all I
+will tell you,&rdquo; and she looked at him maliciously, joyously, contentedly,
+for she thought he would never return from that journey, and that Morgan
+would see to it.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0068" id="link2HCH0068">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER IX
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>rt, as his father had done before him, set out for the Many-Coloured
+Land, but it was from Inver Colpa he embarked and not from Ben Edair.
+</p>
+<p>
+At a certain time he passed from the rough green ridges of the sea to
+enchanted waters, and he roamed from island to island asking all people
+how he might come to Delvcaem, the daughter of Morgan. But he got no news
+from any one, until he reached an island that was fragrant with wild
+apples, gay with flowers, and joyous with the song of birds and the deep
+mellow drumming of the bees. In this island he was met by a lady, Crede&rsquo;,
+the Truly Beautiful, and when they had exchanged kisses, he told her who
+he was and on what errand he was bent.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have been expecting you,&rdquo; said Crede&rsquo;, &ldquo;but alas, poor soul, it is a
+hard, and a long, bad way that you must go; for there is sea and land,
+danger and difficulty between you and the daughter of Morgan.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet I must go there,&rdquo; he answered.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is a wild dark ocean to be crossed. There is a dense wood where
+every thorn on every tree is sharp as a spear-point and is curved and
+clutching. There is a deep gulf to be gone through,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;a place of
+silence and terror, full of dumb, venomous monsters. There is an immense
+oak forest&mdash;dark, dense, thorny, a place to be strayed in, a place to
+be utterly bewildered and lost in. There is a vast dark wilderness, and
+therein is a dark house, lonely and full of echoes, and in it there are
+seven gloomy hags, who are warned already of your coming and are waiting
+to plunge you in a bath of molten lead.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is not a choice journey,&rdquo; said Art, &ldquo;but I have no choice and must
+go.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Should you pass those hags,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;and no one has yet passed
+them, you must meet Ailill of the Black Teeth, the son of Mongan Tender
+Blossom, and who could pass that gigantic and terrible fighter?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is not easy to find the daughter of Morgan,&rdquo; said Art in a melancholy
+voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is not easy,&rdquo; Crede&rsquo; replied eagerly, &ldquo;and if you will take my advice&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Advise me,&rdquo; he broke in, &ldquo;for in truth there is no man standing in such
+need of counsel as I do.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would advise you,&rdquo; said Crede&rsquo; in a low voice, &ldquo;to seek no more for the
+sweet daughter of Morgan, but to stay in this place where all that is
+lovely is at your service.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, but&mdash;&rdquo; cried Art in astonishment.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Am I not as sweet as the daughter of Morgan?&rdquo; she demanded, and she stood
+before him queenly and pleadingly, and her eyes took his with imperious
+tenderness.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my hand,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;you are sweeter and lovelier than any being
+under the sun, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And with me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you will forget Ireland.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am under bonds,&rdquo; cried Art, &ldquo;I have passed my word, and I would not
+forget Ireland or cut myself from it for all the kingdoms of the
+Many-Coloured Land.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Crede&rsquo; urged no more at that time, but as they were parting she whispered,
+&ldquo;There are two girls, sisters of my own, in Morgan&rsquo;s palace. They will
+come to you with a cup in either hand; one cup will be filled with wine
+and one with poison. Drink from the right-hand cup, O my dear.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Art stepped into his coracle, and then, wringing her hands, she made yet
+an attempt to dissuade him from that drear journey.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do not leave me,&rdquo; she urged. &ldquo;Do not affront these dangers. Around the
+palace of Morgan there is a palisade of copper spikes, and on the top of
+each spike the head of a man grins and shrivels. There is one spike only
+which bears no head, and it is for your head that spike is waiting. Do not
+go there, my love.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must go indeed,&rdquo; said. Art earnestly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is yet a danger,&rdquo; she called. &ldquo;Beware of Delvcaem&rsquo;s mother, Dog
+Head, daughter of the King of the Dog Heads. Beware of her.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed,&rdquo; said Art to himself, &ldquo;there is so much to beware of that I will
+beware of nothing. I will go about my business,&rdquo; he said to the waves,
+&ldquo;and I will let those beings and monsters and the people of the Dog Heads
+go about their business.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0069" id="link2HCH0069">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER X
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>e went forward in his light bark, and at some moment found that he had
+parted from those seas and was adrift on vaster and more turbulent
+billows. From those dark-green surges there gaped at him monstrous and
+cavernous jaws; and round, wicked, red-rimmed, bulging eyes stared fixedly
+at the boat. A ridge of inky water rushed foaming mountainously on his
+board, and behind that ridge came a vast warty head that gurgled and
+groaned. But at these vile creatures he thrust with his lengthy spear or
+stabbed at closer reach with a dagger.
+</p>
+<p>
+He was not spared one of the terrors which had been foretold. Thus, in the
+dark thick oak forest he slew the seven hags and buried them in the molten
+lead which they had heated for him. He climbed an icy mountain, the cold
+breath of which seemed to slip into his body and chip off inside of his
+bones, and there, until he mastered the sort of climbing on ice, for each
+step that he took upwards he slipped back ten steps. Almost his heart gave
+way before he learned to climb that venomous hill. In a forked glen into
+which he slipped at night-fall he was surrounded by giant toads, who spat
+poison, and were icy as the land they lived in, and were cold and foul and
+savage. At Sliav Saev he encountered the long-maned lions who lie in wait
+for the beasts of the world, growling woefully as they squat above their
+prey and crunch those terrified bones. He came on Ailill of the Black
+Teeth sitting on the bridge that spanned a torrent, and the grim giant was
+grinding his teeth on a pillar stone. Art drew nigh unobserved and brought
+him low.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was not for nothing that these difficulties and dangers were in his
+path. These things and creatures were the invention of Dog Head, the wife
+of Morgan, for it had become known to her that she would die on the day
+her daughter was wooed. Therefore none of the dangers encountered by Art
+were real, but were magical chimeras conjured against him by the great
+witch.
+</p>
+<p>
+Affronting all, conquering all, he came in time to Morgan&rsquo;s dun, a place
+so lovely that after the miseries through which he had struggled he almost
+wept to see beauty again.
+</p>
+<p>
+Delvcaem knew that he was coming. She was waiting for him, yearning for
+him. To her mind Art was not only love, he was freedom, for the poor girl
+was a captive in her father&rsquo;s home. A great pillar an hundred feet high
+had been built on the roof of Morgan&rsquo;s palace, and on the top of this
+pillar a tiny room had been constructed, and in this room Delvcaem was a
+prisoner.
+</p>
+<p>
+She was lovelier in shape than any other princess of the Many-Coloured
+Land. She was wiser than all the other women of that land, and she was
+skilful in music, embroidery, and chastity, and in all else that pertained
+to the knowledge of a queen.
+</p>
+<p>
+Although Delvcaem&rsquo;s mother wished nothing but ill to Art, she yet treated
+him with the courtesy proper in a queen on the one hand and fitting
+towards the son of the King of Ireland on the other. Therefore, when Art
+entered the palace he was met and kissed, and he was bathed and clothed
+and fed. Two young girls came to him then, having a cup in each of their
+hands, and presented him with the kingly drink, but, remembering the
+warning which Credl had given him, he drank only from the right-hand cup
+and escaped the poison. Next he was visited by Delvcaem&rsquo;s mother, Dog
+Head, daughter of the King of the Dog Heads, and Morgan&rsquo;s queen. She was
+dressed in full armour, and she challenged Art to fight with her.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was a woeful combat, for there was no craft or sagacity unknown to her,
+and Art would infallibly have perished by her hand but that her days were
+numbered, her star was out, and her time had come. It was her head that
+rolled on the ground when the combat was over, and it was her head that
+grinned and shrivelled on the vacant spike which she had reserved for
+Art&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then Art liberated Delvcaem from her prison at the top of the pillar and
+they were affianced together. But the ceremony had scarcely been completed
+when the tread of a single man caused the palace to quake and seemed to
+jar the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was Morgan returning to the palace.
+</p>
+<p>
+The gloomy king challenged him to combat also, and in his honour Art put
+on the battle harness which he had brought from Ireland. He wore a
+breastplate and helmet of gold, a mantle of blue satin swung from his
+shoulders, his left hand was thrust into the grips of a purple shield,
+deeply bossed with silver, and in the other hand he held the wide-grooved,
+blue hilted sword which had rung so often into fights and combats, and
+joyous feats and exercises.
+</p>
+<p>
+Up to this time the trials through which he had passed had seemed so great
+that they could not easily be added to. But if all those trials had been
+gathered into one vast calamity they would not equal one half of the rage
+and catastrophe of his war with Morgan.
+</p>
+<p>
+For what he could not effect by arms Morgan would endeavour by guile, so
+that while Art drove at him or parried a crafty blow, the shape of Morgan
+changed before his eyes, and the monstrous king was having at him in
+another form, and from a new direction.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was well for the son of the Ard-Ri&rsquo; that he had been beloved by the
+poets and magicians of his land, and that they had taught him all that was
+known of shape-changing and words of power.
+</p>
+<p>
+He had need of all these.
+</p>
+<p>
+At times, for the weapon must change with the enemy, they fought with
+their foreheads as two giant stags, and the crash of their monstrous
+onslaught rolled and lingered on the air long after their skulls had
+parted. Then as two lions, long-clawed, deep-mouthed, snarling, with rigid
+mane, with red-eyed glare, with flashing, sharp-white fangs, they prowled
+lithely about each other seeking for an opening. And then as two
+green-ridged, white-topped, broad-swung, overwhelming, vehement billows of
+the deep, they met and crashed and sunk into and rolled away from each
+other; and the noise of these two waves was as the roar of all ocean when
+the howl of the tempest is drowned in the league-long fury of the surge.
+</p>
+<p>
+But when the wife&rsquo;s time has come the husband is doomed. He is required
+elsewhere by his beloved, and Morgan went to rejoin his queen in the world
+that comes after the Many-Coloured Land, and his victor shore that
+knowledgeable head away from its giant shoulders.
+</p>
+<p>
+He did not tarry in the Many-Coloured Land, for he had nothing further to
+seek there. He gathered the things which pleased him best from among the
+treasures of its grisly king, and with Delvcaem by his side they stepped
+into the coracle.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then, setting their minds on Ireland, they went there as it were in a
+flash.
+</p>
+<p>
+The waves of all the world seemed to whirl past them in one huge, green
+cataract. The sound of all these oceans boomed in their ears for one
+eternal instant. Nothing was for that moment but a vast roar and pour of
+waters. Thence they swung into a silence equally vast, and so sudden that
+it was as thunderous in the comparison as was the elemental rage they
+quitted. For a time they sat panting, staring at each other, holding each
+other, lest not only their lives but their very souls should be swirled
+away in the gusty passage of world within world; and then, looking abroad,
+they saw the small bright waves creaming by the rocks of Ben Edair, and
+they blessed the power that had guided and protected them, and they
+blessed the comely land of Ir.
+</p>
+<p>
+On reaching Tara, Delvcaem, who was more powerful in art and magic than
+Becuma, ordered the latter to go away, and she did so.
+</p>
+<p>
+She left the king&rsquo;s side. She came from the midst of the counsellors and
+magicians. She did not bid farewell to any one. She did not say good-bye
+to the king as she set out for Ben Edair.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/323m.jpg" alt="323m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/323.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Where she could go to no man knew, for she had been banished from the
+Many-Coloured Land and could not return there. She was forbidden entry to
+the Shi&rsquo; by Angus Og, and she could not remain in Ireland. She went to
+Sasana and she became a queen in that country, and it was she who fostered
+the rage against the Holy Land which has not ceased to this day.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0080" id="link2H_4_0080">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+MONGAN&rsquo;S FRENZY
+</h2>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0070" id="link2HCH0070">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER I
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he abbot of the Monastery of Moville sent word to the story-tellers of
+Ireland that when they were in his neighbourhood they should call at the
+monastery, for he wished to collect and write down the stories which were
+in danger of being forgotten.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;These things also must be told,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+In particular he wished to gather tales which told of the deeds that had
+been done before the Gospel came to Ireland.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;For,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;there are very good tales among those ones, and it would
+be a pity if the people who come after us should be ignorant of what
+happened long ago, and of the deeds of their fathers.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+So, whenever a story-teller chanced in that neighbourhood he was directed
+to the monastery, and there he received a welcome and his fill of all that
+is good for man.
+</p>
+<p>
+The abbot&rsquo;s manuscript boxes began to fill up, and he used to regard that
+growing store with pride and joy. In the evenings, when the days grew
+short and the light went early, he would call for some one of these
+manuscripts and have it read to him by candle-light, in order that he
+might satisfy himself that it was as good as he had judged it to be on the
+previous hearing.
+</p>
+<p>
+One day a story-teller came to the monastery, and, like all the others, he
+was heartily welcomed and given a great deal more than his need.
+</p>
+<p>
+He said that his name was Cairide&rsquo;, and that he had a story to tell which
+could not be bettered among the stories of Ireland.
+</p>
+<p>
+The abbot&rsquo;s eyes glistened when he heard that. He rubbed his hands
+together and smiled on his guest.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the name of your story?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is called &lsquo;Mongan&rsquo;s Frenzy.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never heard of it before,&rdquo; cried the abbot joyfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am the only man that knows it,&rdquo; Cairide&rsquo; replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But how does that come about?&rdquo; the abbot inquired.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because it belongs to my family,&rdquo; the story-teller answered. &ldquo;There was a
+Cairide&rsquo; of my nation with Mongan when he went into Faery. This Cairide&rsquo; 
+listened to the story when it was first told. Then he told it to his son,
+and his son told it to his son, and that son&rsquo;s great-great-grandson&rsquo;s son
+told it to his son&rsquo;s son, and he told it to my father, and my father told
+it to me.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you shall tell it to me,&rdquo; cried the abbot triumphantly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will indeed,&rdquo; said Cairide&rsquo;. Vellum was then brought and quills. The
+copyists sat at their tables. Ale was placed beside the story-teller, and
+he told this tale to the abbot.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0071" id="link2HCH0071">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/331m.jpg" alt="331m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/331.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER II
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>aid Cairide&rsquo;:
+</p>
+<p>
+Mongan&rsquo;s wife at that time was Bro&rsquo;tiarna, the Flame Lady. She was
+passionate and fierce, and because the blood would flood suddenly to her
+cheek, so that she who had seemed a lily became, while you looked upon
+her, a rose, she was called Flame Lady. She loved Mongan with ecstasy and
+abandon, and for that also he called her Flame Lady.
+</p>
+<p>
+But there may have been something of calculation even in her wildest
+moment, for if she was delighted in her affection she was tormented in it
+also, as are all those who love the great ones of life and strive to equal
+themselves where equality is not possible.
+</p>
+<p>
+For her husband was at once more than himself and less than himself. He
+was less than himself because he was now Mongan. He was more than himself
+because he was one who had long disappeared from the world of men. His
+lament had been sung and his funeral games played many, many years before,
+and Bro&rsquo;tiarna sensed in him secrets, experiences, knowledges in which she
+could have no part, and for which she was greedily envious.
+</p>
+<p>
+So she was continually asking him little, simple questions a&rsquo; propos of
+every kind of thing.
+</p>
+<p>
+She weighed all that he said on whatever subject, and when he talked in
+his sleep she listened to his dream.
+</p>
+<p>
+The knowledge that she gleaned from those listenings tormented her far
+more than it satisfied her, for the names of other women were continually
+on his lips, sometimes in terms of dear affection, sometimes in accents of
+anger or despair, and in his sleep he spoke familiarly of people whom the
+story-tellers told of, but who had been dead for centuries. Therefore she
+was perplexed, and became filled with a very rage of curiosity.
+</p>
+<p>
+Among the names which her husband mentioned there was one which, because
+of the frequency with which it appeared, and because of the tone of
+anguish and love and longing in which it was uttered, she thought of
+oftener than the others: this name was Duv Laca. Although she questioned
+and cross-questioned Cairide&rsquo;, her story-teller, she could discover
+nothing about a lady who had been known as the Black Duck. But one night
+when Mongan seemed to speak with Duv Laca he mentioned her father as
+Fiachna Duv mac Demain, and the story-teller said that king had been dead
+for a vast number of years.
+</p>
+<p>
+She asked her husband then, boldly, to tell her the story of Duv Laca, and
+under the influence of their mutual love he promised to tell it to her
+some time, but each time she reminded him of his promise he became
+confused, and said that he would tell it some other time.
+</p>
+<p>
+As time went on the poor Flame Lady grew more and more jealous of Duv
+Laca, and more and more certain that, if only she could know what had
+happened, she would get some ease to her tormented heart and some
+assuagement of her perfectly natural curiosity. Therefore she lost no
+opportunity of reminding Mongan of his promise, and on each occasion he
+renewed the promise and put it back to another time.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0072" id="link2HCH0072">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER III
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n the year when Ciaran the son of the Carpenter died, the same year when
+Tuathal Maelgariv was killed and the year when Diarmait the son of Cerrbel
+became king of all Ireland, the year 538 of our era in short, it happened
+that there was a great gathering of the men of Ireland at the Hill of
+Uisneach in Royal Meath.
+</p>
+<p>
+In addition to the Council which was being held, there were games and
+tournaments and brilliant deployments of troops, and universal feastings
+and enjoyments. The gathering lasted for a week, and on the last day of
+the week Mongan was moving through the crowd with seven guards, his
+story-teller Cairide&rsquo;, and his wife.
+</p>
+<p>
+It had been a beautiful day, with brilliant sunshine and great sport, but
+suddenly clouds began to gather in the sky to the west, and others came
+rushing blackly from the east. When these clouds met the world went dark
+for a space, and there fell from the sky a shower of hailstones, so large
+that each man wondered at their size, and so swift and heavy that the
+women and young people of the host screamed from the pain of the blows
+they received.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mongan&rsquo;s men made a roof of their shields, and the hailstones battered on
+the shields so terribly that even under them they were afraid. They began
+to move away from the host looking for shelter, and when they had gone
+apart a little way they turned the edge of a small hill and a knoll of
+trees, and in the twinkling of an eye they were in fair weather.
+</p>
+<p>
+One minute they heard the clashing and bashing of the hailstones, the
+howling of the venomous wind, the screams of women and the uproar of the
+crowd on the Hill of Uisneach, and the next minute they heard nothing more
+of those sounds and saw nothing more of these sights, for they had been
+permitted to go at one step out of the world of men and into the world of
+Faery.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0073" id="link2HCH0073">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER IV
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>here is a difference between this world and the world of Faery, but it is
+not immediately perceptible. Everything that is here is there, but the
+things that are there are better than those that are here. All things that
+are bright are there brighter. There is more gold in the sun and more
+silver in the moon of that land. There is more scent in the flowers, more
+savour in the fruit. There is more comeliness in the men and more
+tenderness in the women. Everything in Faery is better by this one
+wonderful degree, and it is by this betterness you will know that you are
+there if you should ever happen to get there.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mongan and his companions stepped from the world of storm into sunshine
+and a scented world. The instant they stepped they stood, bewildered,
+looking at each other silently, questioningly, and then with one accord
+they turned to look back whence they had come.
+</p>
+<p>
+There was no storm behind them. The sunlight drowsed there as it did in
+front, a peaceful flooding of living gold. They saw the shapes of the
+country to which their eyes were accustomed, and recognised the well-known
+landmarks, but it seemed that the distant hills were a trifle higher, and
+the grass which clothed them and stretched between was greener, was more
+velvety: that the trees were better clothed and had more of peace as they
+hung over the quiet ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+But Mongan knew what had happened, and he smiled with glee as he watched
+his astonished companions, and he sniffed that balmy air as one whose
+nostrils remembered it.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You had better come with me,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where are we?&rdquo; his wife asked. &ldquo;Why, we are here,&rdquo; cried Mongan; &ldquo;where
+else should we be?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He set off then, and the others followed, staring about them cautiously,
+and each man keeping a hand on the hilt of his sword.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are we in Faery?&rdquo; the Flame Lady asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+When they had gone a little distance they came to a grove of ancient
+trees. Mightily tail and well grown these trees were, and the trunk of
+each could not have been spanned by ten broad men. As they went among
+these quiet giants into the dappled obscurity and silence, their thoughts
+became grave, and all the motions of their minds elevated as though they
+must equal in greatness and dignity those ancient and glorious trees. When
+they passed through the grove they saw a lovely house before them, built
+of mellow wood and with a roof of bronze&mdash;it was like the dwelling of
+a king, and over the windows of the Sunny Room there was a balcony. There
+were ladies on this balcony, and when they saw the travellers approaching
+they sent messengers to welcome them.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mongan and his companions were then brought into the house, and all was
+done for them that could be done for honoured guests. Everything within
+the house was as excellent as all without, and it was inhabited by seven
+men and seven women, and it was evident that Mongan and these people were
+well acquainted.
+</p>
+<p>
+In the evening a feast was prepared, and when they had eaten well there
+was a banquet. There were seven vats of wine, and as Mongan loved wine he
+was very happy, and he drank more on that occasion than any one had ever
+noticed him to drink before.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was while he was in this condition of glee and expansion that the Flame
+Lady put her arms about his neck and begged he would tell her the story of
+Duv Laca, and, being boisterous then and full of good spirits, he agreed
+to her request, and he prepared to tell the tale.
+</p>
+<p>
+The seven men and seven women of the Fairy Palace then took their places
+about him in a half-circle; his own seven guards sat behind them; his
+wife, the Flame Lady, sat by his side; and at the back of all Cairid, his
+story-teller sat, listening with all his ears, and remembering every word
+that was uttered.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0074" id="link2HCH0074">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER V
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>aid Mongan:
+</p>
+<p>
+In the days of long ago and the times that have disappeared for ever,
+there was one Fiachna Finn the son of Baltan, the son of Murchertach, the
+son of Muredach, the son of Eogan, the son of Neill. He went from his own
+country when he was young, for he wished to see the land of Lochlann, and
+he knew that he would be welcomed by the king of that country, for
+Fiachna&rsquo;s father and Eolgarg&rsquo;s father had done deeds in common and were
+obliged to each other.
+</p>
+<p>
+He was welcomed, and he stayed at the Court of Lochlann in great ease and
+in the midst of pleasures.
+</p>
+<p>
+It then happened that Eolgarg Mor fell sick and the doctors could not cure
+him. They sent for other doctors, but they could not cure him, nor could
+any one say what he was suffering from, beyond that he was wasting visibly
+before their eyes, and would certainly become a shadow and disappear in
+air unless he was healed and fattened and made visible.
+</p>
+<p>
+They sent for more distant doctors, and then for others more distant
+still, and at last they found a man who claimed that he could make a cure
+if the king were supplied with the medicine which he would order.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What medicine is that?&rdquo; said they all.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is the medicine,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;Find a perfectly white cow with
+red ears, and boil it down in the lump, and if the king drinks that
+rendering he will recover.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Before he had well said it messengers were going from the palace in all
+directions looking for such a cow. They found lots of cows which were
+nearly like what they wanted, but it was only by chance they came on the
+cow which would do the work, and that beast belonged to the most notorious
+and malicious and cantankerous female in Lochlann, the Black Hag. Now the
+Black Hag was not only those things that have been said; she was also
+whiskered and warty and one-eyed and obstreperous, and she was notorious
+and ill-favoured in many other ways also.
+</p>
+<p>
+They offered her a cow in the place of her own cow, but she refused to
+give it. Then they offered a cow for each leg of her cow, but she would
+not accept that offer unless Fiachna went bail for the payment. He agreed
+to do so, and they drove the beast away.
+</p>
+<p>
+On the return journey he was met by messengers who brought news from
+Ireland. They said that the King of Ulster was dead, and that he, Fiachna
+Finn, had been elected king in the dead king&rsquo;s place. He at once took ship
+for Ireland, and found that all he had been told was true, and he took up
+the government of Ulster.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/343m.jpg" alt="343m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/343.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0075" id="link2HCH0075">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VI
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> year passed, and one day as he was sitting at judgement there came a
+great noise from without, and this noise was so persistent that the people
+and suitors were scandalised, and Fiachna at last ordered that the noisy
+person should be brought before him to be judged.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was done, and to his surprise the person turned out to be the Black
+Hag.
+</p>
+<p>
+She blamed him in the court before his people, and complained that he had
+taken away her cow, and that she had not been paid the four cows he had
+gone bail for, and she demanded judgement from him and justice.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you will consider it to be justice, I will give you twenty cows
+myself,&rdquo; said Fiachna.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would not take all the cows in Ulster,&rdquo; she screamed.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pronounce judgement yourself,&rdquo; said the king, &ldquo;and if I can do what you
+demand I will do it.&rdquo; For he did not like to be in the wrong, and he did
+not wish that any person should have an unsatisfied claim upon him.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Black Hag then pronounced judgement, and the king had to fulfil it.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have come,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;from the east to the west; you must come from
+the west to the east and make war for me, and revenge me on the King of
+Lochlann.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Fiachna had to do as she demanded, and, although it was with a heavy
+heart, he set out in three days&rsquo; time for Lochlann, and he brought with
+him ten battalions.
+</p>
+<p>
+He sent messengers before him to Big Eolgarg warning him of his coming, of
+his intention, and of the number of troops he was bringing; and when he
+landed Eolgarg met him with an equal force, and they fought together.
+</p>
+<p>
+In the first battle three hundred of the men of Lochlann were killed, but
+in the next battle Eolgarg Mor did not fight fair, for he let some
+venomous sheep out of a tent, and these attacked the men of Ulster and
+killed nine hundred of them.
+</p>
+<p>
+So vast was the slaughter made by these sheep and so great the terror they
+caused, that no one could stand before them, but by great good luck there
+was a wood at hand, and the men of Ulster, warriors and princes and
+charioteers, were forced to climb up the trees, and they roosted among the
+branches like great birds, while the venomous sheep ranged below bleating
+terribly and tearing up the ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fiachna Fim was also sitting in a tree, very high up, and he was
+disconsolate.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are disgraced,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is very lucky,&rdquo; said the man in the branch below, &ldquo;that a sheep cannot
+climb a tree.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are disgraced for ever,&rdquo; said the King of Ulster.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If those sheep learn how to climb, we are undone surely,&rdquo; said the man
+below.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will go down and fight the sheep,&rdquo; said Fiachna. But the others would
+not let the king go.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is not right,&rdquo; they said, &ldquo;that you should fight sheep.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Some one must fight them,&rdquo; said Fiachna Finn, &ldquo;but no more of my men
+shall die until I fight myself; for if I am fated to die, I will die and I
+cannot escape it, and if it is the sheep&rsquo;s fate to die, then die they
+will; for there is no man can avoid destiny, and there is no sheep can
+dodge it either.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Praise be to god!&rdquo; said the warrior that was higher up.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Amen!&rdquo; said the man who was higher than he, and the rest of the warriors
+wished good luck to the king.
+</p>
+<p>
+He started then to climb down the tree with a heavy heart, but while he
+hung from the last branch and was about to let go, he noticed a tall
+warrior walking towards him. The king pulled himself up on the branch
+again and sat dangle-legged on it to see what the warrior would do.
+</p>
+<p>
+The stranger was a very tall man, dressed in a green cloak with a silver
+brooch at the shoulder. He had a golden band about his hair and golden
+sandals on his feet, and he was laughing heartily at the plight of the men
+of Ireland.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0076" id="link2HCH0076">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/348m.jpg" alt="348m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/348.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VII
+</h2>
+
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is not nice of you to laugh at us,&rdquo; said Fiachna Finn.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who could help laughing at a king hunkering on a branch and his army
+roosting around him like hens?&rdquo; said the stranger.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nevertheless,&rdquo; the king replied, &ldquo;it would be courteous of you not to
+laugh at misfortune.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We laugh when we can,&rdquo; commented the stranger, &ldquo;and are thankful for the
+chance.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may come up into the tree,&rdquo; said Fiachna, &ldquo;for I perceive that you
+are a mannerly person, and I see that some of the venomous sheep are
+charging in this direction. I would rather protect you,&rdquo; he continued,
+&ldquo;than see you killed; for,&rdquo; said he lamentably, &ldquo;I am getting down now to
+fight the sheep.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They will not hurt me,&rdquo; said the stranger. &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; the king asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am Mananna&rsquo;n, the son of Lir.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Fiachna knew then that the stranger could not be hurt.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What will you give me if I deliver you from the sheep?&rdquo; asked Mananna&rsquo;n.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will give you anything you ask, if I have that thing.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I ask the rights of your crown and of your household for one day.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Fiachna&rsquo;s breath was taken away by that request, and he took a little time
+to compose himself, then he said mildly:
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will not have one man of Ireland killed if I can save him. All that I
+have they give me, all that I have I give to them, and if I must give this
+also, then I will give this, although it would be easier for me to give my
+life.&rdquo; &ldquo;That is agreed,&rdquo; said Mannana&rsquo;n.
+</p>
+<p>
+He had something wrapped in a fold of his cloak, and he unwrapped and
+produced this thing.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was a dog.
+</p>
+<p>
+Now if the sheep were venomous, this dog was more venomous still, for it
+was fearful to look at. In body it was not large, but its head was of a
+great size, and the mouth that was shaped in that head was able to open
+like the lid of a pot. It was not teeth which were in that head, but hooks
+and fangs and prongs. Dreadful was that mouth to look at, terrible to look
+into, woeful to think about; and from it, or from the broad, loose nose
+that waggled above it, there came a sound which no word of man could
+describe, for it was not a snarl, nor was it a howl, although it was both
+of these. It was neither a growl nor a grunt, although it was both of
+these; it was not a yowl nor a groan, although it was both of these: for
+it was one sound made up of these sounds, and there was in it, too, a
+whine and a yelp, and a long-drawn snoring noise, and a deep purring
+noise, and a noise that was like the squeal of a rusty hinge, and there
+were other noises in it also.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The gods be praised!&rdquo; said the man who was in the branch above the king.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What for this time?&rdquo; said the king.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because that dog cannot climb a tree,&rdquo; said the man.
+</p>
+<p>
+And the man on a branch yet above him groaned out &ldquo;Amen!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is nothing to frighten sheep like a dog,&rdquo; said Mananna&rsquo;n, &ldquo;and
+there is nothing to frighten these sheep like this dog.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He put the dog on the ground then.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Little dogeen, little treasure,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;go and kill the sheep.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And when he said that the dog put an addition and an addendum on to the
+noise he had been making before, so that the men of Ireland stuck their
+fingers into their ears and turned the whites of their eyes upwards, and
+nearly fell off their branches with the fear and the fright which that
+sound put into them.
+</p>
+<p>
+It did not take the dog long to do what he had been ordered. He went
+forward, at first, with a slow waddle, and as the venomous sheep came to
+meet him in bounces, he then went to meet them in wriggles; so that in a
+while he went so fast that you could see nothing of him but a head and a
+wriggle. He dealt with the sheep in this way, a jump and a chop for each,
+and he never missed his jump and he never missed his chop. When he got his
+grip he swung round on it as if it was a hinge. The swing began with the
+chop, and it ended with the bit loose and the sheep giving its last kick.
+At the end of ten minutes all the sheep were lying on the ground, and the
+same bit was out of every sheep, and every sheep was dead.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can come down now,&rdquo; said Mananna&rsquo;n.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That dog can&rsquo;t climb a tree,&rdquo; said the man in the branch above the king
+warningly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Praise be to the gods!&rdquo; said the man who was above him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Amen!&rdquo; said the warrior who was higher up than that. And the man in the
+next tree said:
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t move a hand or a foot until the dog chokes himself to death on the
+dead meat.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The dog, however, did not eat a bit of the meat. He trotted to his master,
+and Mananna&rsquo;n took him up and wrapped him in his cloak.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now you can come down,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish that dog was dead!&rdquo; said the king.
+</p>
+<p>
+But he swung himself out of the tree all the same, for he did not wish to
+seem frightened before Mananna&rsquo;n. &ldquo;You can go now and beat the men of
+Lochlann,&rdquo; said Mananna&rsquo;n. &ldquo;You will be King of Lochlann before
+nightfall.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t mind that,&rdquo; said the king. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s no threat,&rdquo; said Mananna&rsquo;n.
+</p>
+<p>
+The son of Lir turned then and went away in the direction of Ireland to
+take up his one-day rights, and Fiachna continued his battle with the
+Lochlannachs.
+</p>
+<p>
+He beat them before nightfall, and by that victory he became King of
+Lochlann and King of the Saxons and the Britons.
+</p>
+<p>
+He gave the Black Hag seven castles with their territories, and he gave
+her one hundred of every sort of cattle that he had captured. She was
+satisfied.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then he went back to Ireland, and after he had been there for some time
+his wife gave birth to a son.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0077" id="link2HCH0077">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER VIII
+</h2>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have not told me one word about Duv Laca,&rdquo; said the Flame Lady
+reproachfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am coming to that,&rdquo; replied Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+He motioned towards one of the great vats, and wine was brought to him, of
+which he drank so joyously and so deeply that all people wondered at his
+thirst, his capacity, and his jovial spirits.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, I will begin again.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Said Mongan: There was an attendant in Fiachna Finn&rsquo;s palace who was
+called An Da&rsquo;v, and the same night that Fiachna&rsquo;s wife bore a son, the
+wife of An Da&rsquo;v gave birth to a son also. This latter child was called mac
+an Da&rsquo;v, but the son of Fiachna&rsquo;s wife was named Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; murmured the Flame Lady.
+</p>
+<p>
+The queen was angry. She said it was unjust and presumptuous that the
+servant should get a child at the same time that she got one herself, but
+there was no help for it, because the child was there and could not be
+obliterated.
+</p>
+<p>
+Now this also must be told.
+</p>
+<p>
+There was a neighbouring prince called Fiachna Duv, and he was the ruler
+of the Dal Fiatach. For a long time he had been at enmity and spiteful
+warfare with Fiachna Finn; and to this Fiachna Duv there was born in the
+same night a daughter, and this girl was named Duv Laca of the White Hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried the Flame Lady.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see!&rdquo; said Mongan, and he drank anew and joyously of the fairy wine.
+</p>
+<p>
+In order to end the trouble between Fiachna Finn and Fiachna Duv the
+babies were affianced to each other in the cradle on the day after they
+were born, and the men of Ireland rejoiced at that deed and at that news.
+But soon there came dismay and sorrow in the land, for when the little
+Mongan was three days old his real father, Mananna&rsquo;n the son of Lir,
+appeared in the middle of the palace. He wrapped Mongan in his green cloak
+and took him away to rear and train in the Land of Promise, which is
+beyond the sea that is at the other side of the grave.
+</p>
+<p>
+When Fiachna Duv heard that Mongan, who was affianced to his daughter Duv
+Laca, had disappeared, he considered that his compact of peace was at an
+end, and one day he came by surprise and attacked the palace. He killed
+Fiachna Finn in that battle, and be crowned himself King of Ulster.
+</p>
+<p>
+The men of Ulster disliked him, and they petitioned Mananna&rsquo;n to bring
+Mongan back, but Mananna&rsquo;n would not do this until the boy was sixteen
+years of age and well reared in the wisdom of the Land of Promise. Then he
+did bring Mongan back, and by his means peace was made between Mongan and
+Fiachna Duv, and Mongan was married to his cradle-bride, the young Duv
+Laca.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0078" id="link2HCH0078">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER IX
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>ne day Mongan and Duv Laca were playing chess in their palace. Mongan had
+just made a move of skill, and he looked up from the board to see if Duv
+Laca seemed as discontented as she had a right to be. He saw then over Duv
+Laca&rsquo;s shoulder a little black-faced, tufty-headed cleric leaning against
+the door-post inside the room.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you doing there?&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you doing there yourself?&rdquo; said the little black-faced cleric.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed, I have a right to be in my own house,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed I do not agree with you,&rdquo; said the cleric.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where ought I be, then?&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ought to be at Dun Fiathac avenging the murder of your father,&rdquo;
+ replied the cleric, &ldquo;and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for not
+having done it long ago. You can play chess with your wife when you have
+won the right to leisure.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But how can I kill my wife&rsquo;s father?&rdquo; Mongan exclaimed. &ldquo;By starting
+about it at once,&rdquo; said the cleric. &ldquo;Here is a way of talking!&rdquo; said
+Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; the cleric continued, &ldquo;that Duv Laca will not agree with a word
+I say on this subject, and that she will try to prevent you from doing
+what you have a right to do, for that is a wife&rsquo;s business, but a man&rsquo;s
+business is to do what I have just told you; so come with me now and do
+not wait to think about it, and do not wait to play any more chess.
+Fiachna Duv has only a small force with him at this moment, and we can
+burn his palace as he burned your father&rsquo;s palace, and kill himself as he
+killed your father, and crown you King of Ulster rightfully the way he
+crowned himself wrongfully as a king.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I begin to think that you own a lucky tongue, my black-faced friend,&rdquo;
+ said Mongan, &ldquo;and I will go with you.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He collected his forces then, and he burned Fiachna Duv&rsquo;s fortress, and he
+killed Fiachna Duv, and he was crowned King of Ulster.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then for the first time he felt secure and at liberty to play chess. But
+he did not know until afterwards that the black-faced, tufty-headed person
+was his father Mananna&rsquo;n, although that was the fact.
+</p>
+<p>
+There are some who say, however, that Fiachna the Black was killed in the
+year 624 by the lord of the Scot&rsquo;s Dal Riada, Condad Cerr, at the battle
+of Ard Carainn; but the people who say this do not know what they are
+talking about, and they do not care greatly what it is they say.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0079" id="link2HCH0079">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER X
+</h2>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is nothing to marvel about in this Duv Laca,&rdquo; said the Flame Lady
+scornfully. &ldquo;She has got married, and she has been beaten at chess. It has
+happened before.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us keep to the story,&rdquo; said Mongan, and, having taken some few dozen
+deep draughts of the wine, he became even more jovial than before. Then he
+recommenced his tale:
+</p>
+<p>
+It happened on a day that Mongan had need of treasure. He had many
+presents to make, and he had not as much gold and silver and cattle as was
+proper for a king. He called his nobles together and discussed what was
+the best thing to be done, and it was arranged that he should visit the
+provincial kings and ask boons from them.
+</p>
+<p>
+He set out at once on his round of visits, and the first province he went
+to was Leinster.
+</p>
+<p>
+The King of Leinster at that time was Branduv, the son of Echach. He
+welcomed Mongan and treated him well, and that night Mongan slept in his
+palace.
+</p>
+<p>
+When he awoke in the morning he looked out of a lofty window, and he saw
+on the sunny lawn before the palace a herd of cows. There were fifty cows
+in all, for he counted them, and each cow had a calf beside her, and each
+cow and calf was pure white in colour, and each of them had red ears.
+</p>
+<p>
+When Mongan saw these cows, he fell in love with them as he had never
+fallen in love with anything before.
+</p>
+<p>
+He came down from the window and walked on the sunny lawn among the cows,
+looking at each of them and speaking words of affection and endearment to
+them all; and while he was thus walking and talking and looking and
+loving, he noticed that some one was moving beside him. He looked from the
+cows then, and saw that the King of Leinster was at his side.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you in love with the cows?&rdquo; Branduv asked him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everybody is,&rdquo; said the King of Leinster.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never saw anything like them,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nobody has,&rdquo; said the King of Leinster.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never saw anything I would rather have than these cows,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;These,&rdquo; said the King of Leinster, &ldquo;are the most beautiful cows in
+Ireland, and,&rdquo; he continued thoughtfully, &ldquo;Duv Laca is the most beautiful
+woman in Ireland.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is no lie in what you say,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it not a queer thing,&rdquo; said the King of Leinster, &ldquo;that I should have
+what you want with all your soul, and you should have what I want with all
+my heart?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Queer indeed,&rdquo; said Mongan, &ldquo;but what is it that you do want?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Duv Laca, of course,&rdquo; said the King of Leinster.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean,&rdquo; said Mongan, &ldquo;that you would exchange this herd of fifty
+pure white cows having red ears&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And their fifty calves,&rdquo; said the King of Leinster&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;For Duv Laca, or for any woman in the world?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would,&rdquo; cried the King of Leinster, and he thumped his knee as he said
+it.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Done,&rdquo; roared Mongan, and the two kings shook hands on the bargain.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mongan then called some of his own people, and before any more words could
+be said and before any alteration could be made, he set his men behind the
+cows and marched home with them to Ulster.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0080" id="link2HCH0080">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XI
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">D</span>uv Laca wanted to know where the cows came from, and Mongan told her that
+the King of Leinster had given them to him. She fell in love with them as
+Mongan had done, but there was nobody in the world could have avoided
+loving those cows: such cows they were! such wonders! Mongan and Duv Laca
+used to play chess together, and then they would go out together to look
+at the cows, and then they would go in together and would talk to each
+other about the cows. Everything they did they did together, for they
+loved to be with each other.
+</p>
+<p>
+However, a change came.
+</p>
+<p>
+One morning a great noise of voices and trampling of horses and rattle of
+armour came about the palace. Mongan looked from the window.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is coming?&rdquo; asked Duv Laca.
+</p>
+<p>
+But he did not answer her.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The noise must announce the visit of a king,&rdquo; Duv Laca continued.
+</p>
+<p>
+But Mongan did not say a word. Duv Laca then went to the window.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is that king?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+And her husband replied to her then.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is the King of Leinster,&rdquo; said he mournfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Duv Laca surprised, &ldquo;is he not welcome?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is welcome indeed,&rdquo; said Mongan lamentably.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us go out and welcome him properly,&rdquo; Duv Laca suggested.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us not go near him at all,&rdquo; said Mongan, &ldquo;for he is coming to
+complete his bargain.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What bargain are you talking about?&rdquo; Duv Laca asked. But Mongan would not
+answer that.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us go out,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;for we must go out.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Mongan and Duv Laca went out then and welcomed the King of Leinster. They
+brought him and his chief men into the palace, and water was brought for
+their baths, and rooms were appointed for them, and everything was done
+that should be done for guests.
+</p>
+<p>
+That night there was a feast, and after the feast there was a banquet, and
+all through the feast and the banquet the King of Leinster stared at Duv
+Laca with joy, and sometimes his breast was delivered of great sighs, and
+at times he moved as though in perturbation of spirit and mental agony.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is something wrong with the King of Leinster,&rdquo; Duv Laca whispered.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care if there is,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must ask what he wants.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t want to know it,&rdquo; said Mongan. &ldquo;Nevertheless, you musk ask
+him,&rdquo; she insisted.
+</p>
+<p>
+So Mongan did ask him, and it was in a melancholy voice that he asked it.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you want anything?&rdquo; said he to the King of Leinster.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do indeed,&rdquo; said Branduv.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it is in Ulster I will get it for you,&rdquo; said Mongan mournfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is in Ulster,&rdquo; said Branduv.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mongan did not want to say anything more then, but the King of Leinster
+was so intent and everybody else was listening and Duv Laca was nudging
+his arm, so he said: &ldquo;What is it that you do want?&rdquo; &ldquo;I want Duv Laca.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want her too,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You made your bargain,&rdquo; said the King of Leinster, &ldquo;my cows and their
+calves for your Duv Laca, and the man that makes a bargain keeps a
+bargain.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never before heard,&rdquo; said Mongan, &ldquo;of a man giving away his own wife.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Even if you never heard of it before, you must do it now,&rdquo; said Duv Laca,
+&ldquo;for honour is longer than life.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Mongan became angry when Duv Laca said that. His face went red as a
+sunset, and the veins swelled in his neck and his forehead.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you say that?&rdquo; he cried to Duv Laca.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do,&rdquo; said Duv Laca.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let the King of Leinster take her,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0081" id="link2HCH0081">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XII
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">D</span>uv Laca and the King of Leinster went apart then to speak together, and
+the eye of the king seemed to be as big as a plate, so fevered was it and
+so enlarged and inflamed by the look of Duv Laca. He was so confounded
+with joy also that his words got mixed up with his teeth, and Duv Laca did
+not know exactly what it was he was trying to say, and he did not seem to
+know himself. But at last he did say something intelligible, and this is
+what he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am a very happy man,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I,&rdquo; said Duv Laca, &ldquo;am the happiest woman in the world.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why should you be happy?&rdquo; the astonished king demanded.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Listen to me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If you tried to take me away from this place
+against my own wish, one half of the men of Ulster would be dead before
+you got me and the other half would be badly wounded in my defence.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A bargain is a bargain,&rdquo; the King of Leinster began.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;they will not prevent my going away, for they all
+know that I have been in love with you for ages.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What have you been in with me for ages?&rdquo; said the amazed king.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;In love with you,&rdquo; replied Duv Laca.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is news,&rdquo; said the king, &ldquo;and it is good news.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, by my word,&rdquo; said Duv Laca, &ldquo;I will not go with you unless you grant
+me a boon.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;All that I have,&rdquo; cried Branduv, &ldquo;and all that every-body has.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you must pass your word and pledge your word that you will do what I
+ask.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I pass it and pledge it,&rdquo; cried the joyful king.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Duv Laca, &ldquo;this is what I bind on you.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Light the yolk!&rdquo; he cried.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Until one year is up and out you are not to pass the night in any house
+that I am in.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;By my head and hand!&rdquo; Branduv stammered.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if you come into a house where I am during the time and term of that
+year, you are not to sit down in the chair that I am sitting in.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Heavy is my doom!&rdquo; he groaned.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Duv Laca, &ldquo;if I am sitting in a chair or a seat you are to sit
+in a chair that is over against me and opposite to me and at a distance
+from me.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; said the king, and he smote his hands together, and then he beat
+them on his head, and then he looked at them and at everything about, and
+he could not tell what anything was or where anything was, for his mind
+was clouded and his wits had gone astray.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why do you bind these woes on me?&rdquo; he pleaded.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish to find out if you truly love me.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I do,&rdquo; said the king. &ldquo;I love you madly and dearly, and with all my
+faculties and members.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is the way! love you,&rdquo; said Duv Laca. &ldquo;We shall have a notable year
+of courtship and joy. And let us go now,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;for I am
+impatient to be with you.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; said Branduv, as he followed her. &ldquo;Alas, alas!&rdquo; said the King of
+Leinster.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0082" id="link2HCH0082">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XIII
+</h2>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said the Flame Lady, &ldquo;that whoever lost that woman had no
+reason to be sad.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Mongan took her chin in his hand and kissed her lips.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;All that you say is lovely, for you are lovely,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and you are my
+delight and the joy of the world.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Then the attendants brought him wine, and he drank so joyously of that and
+so deeply, that those who observed him thought he would surely burst and
+drown them. But he laughed loudly and with enormous delight, until the
+vessels of gold and silver and bronze chimed mellowly to his peal and the
+rafters of the house went creaking.
+</p>
+<p>
+Said he:
+</p>
+<p>
+Mongan loved Duv Laca of the White Hand better than he loved his life,
+better than he loved his honour. The kingdoms of the world did not weigh
+with him beside the string of her shoe. He would not look at a sunset if
+he could see her. He would not listen to a harp if he could hear her
+speak, for she was the delight of ages, the gem of time, and the wonder of
+the world till Doom.
+</p>
+<p>
+She went to Leinster with the king of that country, and when she had gone
+Mongan fell grievously sick, so that it did not seem he could ever recover
+again; and he began to waste and wither, and he began to look like a
+skeleton, and a bony structure, and a misery.
+</p>
+<p>
+Now this also must be known.
+</p>
+<p>
+Duv Laca had a young attendant, who was her foster-sister as well as her
+servant, and on the day that she got married to Mongan, her attendant was
+married to mac an Da&rsquo;v, who was servant and foster-brother to Mongan. When
+Duv Laca went away with the King of Leinster, her servant, mac an Da&rsquo;v&rsquo;s
+wife, went with her, so there were two wifeless men in Ulster at that
+time, namely, Mongan the king and mac an Da&rsquo;v his servant.
+</p>
+<p>
+One day as Mongan sat in the sun, brooding lamentably on his fate, mac an
+Da&rsquo;v came to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;How are things with you, master?&rdquo; asked Mac an Da&rsquo;v.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bad,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was a poor day brought you off with Mananna&rsquo;n to the Land of Promise,&rdquo;
+ said his servant.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why should you think that?&rdquo; inquired Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v, &ldquo;you learned nothing in the Land of Promise
+except how to eat a lot of food and how to do nothing in a deal of time.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What business is it of yours?&rdquo; said Mongan angrily.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is my business surely,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v, &ldquo;for my wife has gone off to
+Leinster with your wife, and she wouldn&rsquo;t have gone if you hadn&rsquo;t made a
+bet and a bargain with that accursed king.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Mac an Da&rsquo;v began to weep then.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t make a bargain with any king,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and yet my wife has
+gone away with one, and it&rsquo;s all because of you.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is no one sorrier for you than I am,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is indeed,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v, &ldquo;for I am sorrier myself.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Mongan roused himself then.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have a claim on me truly,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and I will not have any one with
+a claim on me that is not satisfied. Go,&rdquo; he said to mac an Da&rsquo;v, &ldquo;to that
+fairy place we both know of. You remember the baskets I left there with
+the sod from Ireland in one and the sod from Scotland in the other; bring
+me the baskets and sods.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me the why of this?&rdquo; said his servant.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The King of Leinster will ask his wizards what I am doing, and this is
+what I will be doing. I will get on your back with a foot in each of the
+baskets, and when Branduv asks the wizards where I am they will tell him
+that I have one leg in Ireland and one leg in Scotland, and as long as
+they tell him that he will think he need not bother himself about me, and
+we will go into Leinster that way.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;No bad way either,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v.
+</p>
+<p>
+They set out then.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0083" id="link2HCH0083">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XIV
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was a long, uneasy journey, for although mac an Da&rsquo;v was of stout heart
+and goodwill, yet no man can carry another on his back from Ulster to
+Leinster and go quick. Still, if you keep on driving a pig or a story they
+will get at last to where you wish them to go, and the man who continues
+putting one foot in front of the other will leave his home behind, and
+will come at last to the edge of the sea and the end of the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+When they reached Leinster the feast of Moy Life&rsquo; was being held, and they
+pushed on by forced marches and long stages so as to be in time, and thus
+they came to the Moy of Cell Camain, and they mixed with the crowd that
+were going to the feast.
+</p>
+<p>
+A great and joyous concourse of people streamed about them. There were
+young men and young girls, and when these were not holding each other&rsquo;s
+hands it was because their arms were round each other&rsquo;s necks. There were
+old, lusty women going by, and when these were not talking together it was
+because their mouths were mutually filled with apples and meat-pies. There
+were young warriors with mantles of green and purple and red flying behind
+them on the breeze, and when these were not looking disdainfully on older
+soldiers it was because the older soldiers happened at the moment to be
+looking at them. There were old warriors with yard-long beards flying
+behind their shoulders llke wisps of hay, and when these were not nursing
+a broken arm or a cracked skull, it was because they were nursing wounds
+in their stomachs or their legs. There were troops of young women who
+giggled as long as their breaths lasted and beamed when it gave out. Bands
+of boys who whispered mysteriously together and pointed with their fingers
+in every direction at once, and would suddenly begin to run like a herd of
+stampeded horses. There were men with carts full of roasted meats. Women
+with little vats full of mead, and others carrying milk and beer. Folk of
+both sorts with towers swaying on their heads, and they dripping with
+honey. Children having baskets piled with red apples, and old women who
+peddled shell-fish and boiled lobsters. There were people who sold twenty
+kinds of bread, with butter thrown in. Sellers of onions and cheese, and
+others who supplied spare bits of armour, odd scabbards, spear handles,
+breastplate-laces. People who cut your hair or told your fortune or gave
+you a hot bath in a pot. Others who put a shoe on your horse or a piece of
+embroidery on your mantle; and others, again, who took stains off your
+sword or dyed your finger-nails or sold you a hound.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was a great and joyous gathering that was going to the feast.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mongan and his servant sat against a grassy hedge by the roadside and
+watched the multitude streaming past.
+</p>
+<p>
+Just then Mongan glanced to the right whence the people were coming. Then
+he pulled the hood of his cloak over his ears and over his brow.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; said he in a deep and anguished voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mac an Da&rsquo;v turned to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it a pain in your stomach, master?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is not,&rdquo; said Mongan. &ldquo;Well, what made you make that brutal and
+belching noise?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was a sigh I gave,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whatever it was,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v, &ldquo;what was it?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look down the road on this side and tell me who is coming,&rdquo; said his
+master.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a lord with his troop.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the King of Leinster,&rdquo; said Mongan. &ldquo;The man,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v in
+a tone of great pity, &ldquo;the man that took away your wife! And,&rdquo; he roared
+in a voice of extraordinary savagery, &ldquo;the man that took away my wife into
+the bargain, and she not in the bargain.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hush,&rdquo; said Mongan, for a man who heard his shout stopped to tie a
+sandie, or to listen.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Master,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v as the troop drew abreast and moved past.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it, my good friend?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me throw a little small piece of a rock at the King of Leinster.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will not.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A little bit only, a small bit about twice the size of my head.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will not let you,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+When the king had gone by mac an Da&rsquo;v groaned a deep and dejected groan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oco&rsquo;n!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Oco&rsquo;n-i&rsquo;o-go-deo&rsquo;!&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+The man who had tied his sandal said then: &ldquo;Are you in pain, honest man?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not in pain,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, what was it that knocked a howl out of you like the yelp of a sick
+dog, honest man?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go away,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v, &ldquo;go away, you flat-faced, nosey person.&rdquo;
+ &ldquo;There is no politeness left in this country,&rdquo; said the stranger, and he
+went away to a certain distance, and from thence he threw a stone at mac
+an Da&rsquo;v&rsquo;s nose, and hit it.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0084" id="link2HCH0084">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/372m.jpg" alt="372m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/372.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XV
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he road was now not so crowded as it had been. Minutes would pass and
+only a few travellers would come, and minutes more would go when nobody
+was in sight at all.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then two men came down the road: they were clerics.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never saw that kind of uniform before,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Even if you didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said Mongan, &ldquo;there are plenty of them about. They
+are men that don&rsquo;t believe in our gods,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do they not, indeed?&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v. &ldquo;The rascals!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;What,
+what would Mananna&rsquo;n say to that?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The one in front carrying the big book is Tibraide&rsquo;. He is the priest of
+Cell Camain, and he is the chief of those two.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed, and indeed!&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v. &ldquo;The one behind must be his
+servant, for he has a load on his back.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The priests were reading their offices, and mac an Da&rsquo;v marvelled at that.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it they are doing?&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are reading.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed, and indeed they are,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t make out a word
+of the language except that the man behind says amen, amen, every time the
+man in front puts a grunt out of him. And they don&rsquo;t like our gods at
+all!&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They do not,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Play a trick on them, master,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v. Mongan agreed to play a
+trick on the priests.
+</p>
+<p>
+He looked at them hard for a minute, and then he waved his hand at them.
+</p>
+<p>
+The two priests stopped, and they stared straight in front of them, and
+then they looked at each other, and then they looked at the sky. The clerk
+began to bless himself, and then Tibraide&rsquo; began to bless himself, and
+after that they didn&rsquo;t know what to do. For where there had been a road
+with hedges on each side and fields stretching beyond them, there was now
+no road, no hedge, no field; but there was a great broad river sweeping
+across their path; a mighty tumble of yellowy-brown waters, very swift,
+very savage; churning and billowing and jockeying among rough boulders and
+islands of stone. It was a water of villainous depth and of detestable
+wetness; of ugly hurrying and of desolate cavernous sound. At a little to
+their right there was a thin uncomely bridge that waggled across the
+torrent.
+</p>
+<p>
+Tibraide&rsquo; rubbed his eyes, and then he looked again. &ldquo;Do you see what I
+see?&rdquo; said he to the clerk.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you see,&rdquo; said the clerk, &ldquo;but what I see I never did
+see before, and I wish I did not see it now.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was born in this place,&rdquo; said Tibraide&rsquo;, &ldquo;my father was born here
+before me, and my grandfather was born here before him, but until this day
+and this minute I never saw a river here before, and I never heard of
+one.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What will we do at all?&rdquo; said the clerk. &ldquo;What will we do at all?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;We will be sensible,&rdquo; said Tibraide&rsquo; sternly, &ldquo;and we will go about our
+business,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;If rivers fall out of the sky what has that to do
+with you, and if there is a river here, which there is, why, thank God,
+there is a bridge over it too.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you put a toe on that bridge?&rdquo; said the clerk. &ldquo;What is the bridge
+for?&rdquo; said Tibraide&rsquo; Mongan and mac an Da&rsquo;v followed them.
+</p>
+<p>
+When they got to the middle of the bridge it broke under them, and they
+were precipitated into that boiling yellow flood.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mongan snatched at the book as it fell from Tibraide&rsquo;s hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you let them drown, master?&rdquo; asked mac an Da&rsquo;v.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mongan, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll send them a mile down the stream, and then they
+can come to land.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Mongan then took on himself the form of Tibraide&rsquo; and he turned mac an
+Da&rsquo;v into the shape of the clerk.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;My head has gone bald,&rdquo; said the servant in a whisper.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is part of it,&rdquo; replied Mongan. &ldquo;So long as we know,&rdquo; said mac an
+Da&rsquo;v.
+</p>
+<p>
+They went on then to meet the King of Leinster.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0085" id="link2HCH0085">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XVI
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hey met him near the place where the games were played.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good my soul, Tibraide&rsquo;!&rdquo; cried the King of Leinster, and he gave Mongan
+a kiss. Mongan kissed him back again.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Amen, amen,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What for?&rdquo; said the King of Leinster.
+</p>
+<p>
+And then mac an Da&rsquo;v began to sneeze, for he didn&rsquo;t know what for.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a long time since I saw you, Tibraide&rsquo;,&rdquo; said the king, &ldquo;but at
+this minute I am in great haste and hurry. Go you on before me to the
+fortress, and you can talk to the queen that you&rsquo;ll find there, she that
+used to be the King of Ulster&rsquo;s wife. Kevin Cochlach, my charioteer, will
+go with you, and I will follow you myself in a while.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The King of Leinster went off then, and Mongan and his servant went with
+the charioteer and the people.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mongan read away out of the book, for he found it interesting, and he did
+not want to talk to the charioteer, and mac an Da&rsquo;v cried amen, amen,
+every time that Mongan took his breath. The people who were going with
+them said to one another that mac an Da&rsquo;v was a queer kind of clerk, and
+that they had never seen any one who had such a mouthful of amens.
+</p>
+<p>
+But in a while they came to the fortress, and they got into it without any
+trouble, for Kevin Cochlach, the king&rsquo;s charioteer, brought them in. Then
+they were led to the room where Duv Laca was, and as he went into that
+room Mongan shut his eyes, for he did not want to look at Duv Laca while
+other people might be looking at him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let everybody leave this room, while I am talking to the queen,&rdquo; said he;
+and all the attendants left the room, except one, and she wouldn&rsquo;t go, for
+she wouldn&rsquo;t leave her mistress.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then Mongan opened his eyes and he saw Duv Laca, and he made a great bound
+to her and took her in his arms, and mac an Da&rsquo;v made a savage and vicious
+and terrible jump at the attendant, and took her in his arms, and bit her
+ear and kissed her neck and wept down into her back.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go away,&rdquo; said the girl, &ldquo;unhand me, villain,&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will not,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v, &ldquo;for I&rsquo;m your own husband, I&rsquo;m your own
+mac, your little mac, your macky-wac-wac.&rdquo; Then the attendant gave a
+little squeal, and she bit him on each ear and kissed his neck and wept
+down into his back, and said that it wasn&rsquo;t true and that it was.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0086" id="link2HCH0086">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/377m.jpg" alt="377m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/377.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XVII
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>ut they were not alone, although they thought they were. The hag that
+guarded the jewels was in the room. She sat hunched up against the wail,
+and as she looked like a bundle of rags they did not notice her. She began
+to speak then.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Terrible are the things I see,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Terrible are the things I
+see.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Mongan and his servant gave a jump of surprise, and their two wives jumped
+and squealed. Then Mongan puffed out his cheeks till his face looked like
+a bladder, and he blew a magic breath at the hag, so that she seemed to be
+surrounded by a fog, and when she looked through that breath everything
+seemed to be different to what she had thought. Then she began to beg
+everybody&rsquo;s pardon.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had an evil vision,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;I saw crossways. How sad it is that I
+should begin to see the sort of things I thought I saw.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sit in this chair, mother,&rdquo; said Mongan, &ldquo;and tell me what you thought
+you saw,&rdquo; and he slipped a spike under her, and mac an Da&rsquo;v pushed her
+into the seat, and she died on the spike.
+</p>
+<p>
+Just then there came a knocking at the door. Mac an Da&rsquo;v opened it, and
+there was Tibraide, standing outside, and twenty-nine of his men were with
+him, and they were all laughing.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;A mile was not half enough,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v reproachfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Chamberlain of the fortress pushed into the room and he stared from
+one Tibraide&rsquo; to the other.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is a fine growing year,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;There never was a year when
+Tibraide&rsquo;s were as plentiful as they are this year. There is a Tibraide&rsquo; 
+outside and a Tibraide&rsquo; inside, and who knows but there are some more of
+them under the bed. The place is crawling with them,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mongan pointed at Tibraide&rsquo;.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you know who that is?&rdquo; he cried.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know who he says he is,&rdquo; said the Chamberlain.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, he is Mongan,&rdquo; said Mongan, &ldquo;and these twenty-nine men are
+twenty-nine of his nobles from Ulster.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+At that news the men of the household picked up clubs and cudgels and
+every kind of thing that was near, and made a violent and woeful attack on
+Tibraide&rsquo;s men The King of Leinster came in then, and when he was told
+Tibraide&rsquo; was Mongan he attacked them as well, and it was with difficulty
+that Tibraide&rsquo; got away to Cell Camain with nine of his men and they all
+wounded.
+</p>
+<p>
+The King of Leinster came back then. He went to Duv Laca&rsquo;s room.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is Tibraide&rsquo;?&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t Tibraide was here,&rdquo; said the hag who was still sitting on the
+spike, and was not half dead, &ldquo;it was Mongan.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why did you let him near you?&rdquo; said the king to Duv Laca.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is no one has a better right to be near me than Mongan has,&rdquo; said
+Duv Laca, &ldquo;he is my own husband,&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+<p>
+And then the king cried out in dismay: &ldquo;I have beaten Tibraide&rsquo;s people.&rdquo;
+ He rushed from the room.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Send for Tibraide&rsquo; till I apologise,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Tell him it was all a
+mistake. Tell him it was Mongan.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0087" id="link2HCH0087">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XVIII
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>ongan and his servant went home, and (for what pleasure is greater than
+that of memory exercised in conversation?) for a time the feeling of an
+adventure well accomplished kept him in some contentment. But at the end
+of a time that pleasure was worn out, and Mongan grew at first dispirited
+and then sullen, and after that as ill as he had been on the previous
+occasion. For he could not forget Duv Laca of the White Hand, and he could
+not remember her without longing and despair.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was in the illness which comes from longing and despair that he sat one
+day looking on a world that was black although the sun shone, and that was
+lean and unwholesome although autumn fruits were heavy on the earth and
+the joys of harvest were about him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Winter is in my heart,&rdquo; quoth he, &ldquo;and I am cold already.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He thought too that some day he would die, and the thought was not
+unpleasant, for one half of his life was away in the territories of the
+King of Leinster, and the half that he kept in himself had no spice in it.
+</p>
+<p>
+He was thinking in this way when mac an Da&rsquo;v came towards him over the
+lawn, and he noticed that mac an Da&rsquo;v was walking like an old man.
+</p>
+<p>
+He took little slow steps, and he did not loosen his knees when he walked,
+so he went stiffly. One of his feet turned pitifully outwards, and the
+other turned lamentably in. His chest was pulled inwards, and his head was
+stuck outwards and hung down in the place where his chest should have
+been, and his arms were crooked in front of him with the hands turned
+wrongly, so that one palm was shown to the east of the world and the other
+one was turned to the west.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;How goes it, mac an Da&rsquo;v?&rdquo; said the king.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bad,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that the sun I see shining, my friend?&rdquo; the king asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It may be the sun,&rdquo; replied mac an Da&rsquo;v, peering curiously at the golden
+radiance that dozed about them, &ldquo;but maybe it&rsquo;s a yellow fog.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is life at all?&rdquo; said the king.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a weariness and a tiredness,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v. &ldquo;It is a long yawn
+without sleepiness. It is a bee, lost at midnight and buzzing on a pane.
+It is the noise made by a tied-up dog. It is nothing worth dreaming about.
+It is nothing at all.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;How well you explain my feelings about Duv Laca,&rdquo; said the king.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was thinking about my own lamb,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v. &ldquo;I was thinking
+about my own treasure, my cup of cheeriness, and the pulse of my heart.&rdquo;
+ And with that he burst into tears.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; said the king.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; sobbed mac an Da&rsquo;v, &ldquo;what right have I to complain? I am only the
+servant, and although I didn&rsquo;t make any bargain with the King of Leinster
+or with any king of them all, yet my wife is gone away as if she was the
+consort of a potentate the same as Duv Laca is.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Mongan was sorry then for his servant, and he roused himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am going to send you to Duv Laca.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where the one is the other will be,&rdquo; cried mac an Da&rsquo;v joyously.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go,&rdquo; said Mongan, &ldquo;to Rath Descirt of Bregia; you know that place?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;As well as my tongue knows my teeth.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Duv Laca is there; see her, and ask her what she wants me to do.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Mac an Da&rsquo;v went there and returned.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Duv Laca says that you are to come at once, for the King of Leinster is
+journeying around his territory, and Kevin Cochlach, the charioteer, is
+making bitter love to her and wants her to run away with him.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Mongan set out, and in no great time, for they travelled day and night,
+they came to Bregla, and gained admittance to the fortress, but just as he
+got in he had to go out again, for the King of Leinster had been warned of
+Mongan&rsquo;s journey, and came back to his fortress in the nick of time.
+</p>
+<p>
+When the men of Ulster saw the condition into which Mongan fell they were
+in great distress, and they all got sick through compassion for their
+king. The nobles suggested to him that they should march against Leinster
+and kill that king and bring back Duv Laca, but Mongan would not consent
+to this plan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;For,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the thing I lost through my own folly I shall get back
+through my own craft.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+And when he said that his spirits revived, and he called for mac an Da&rsquo;v.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know, my friend,&rdquo; said Mongan, &ldquo;that I can&rsquo;t get Duv Laca back unless
+the King of Leinster asks me to take her back, for a bargain is a
+bargain.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;That will happen when pigs fly,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v, &ldquo;and,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I did
+not make any bargain with any king that is in the world.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I heard you say that before,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will say it till Doom,&rdquo; cried his servant, &ldquo;for my wife has gone away
+with that pestilent king, and he has got the double of your bad bargain.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Mongan and his servant then set out for Leinster.
+</p>
+<p>
+When they neared that country they found a great crowd going on the road
+with them, and they learned that the king was giving a feast in honour of
+his marriage to Duv Laca, for the year of waiting was nearly out, and the
+king had sworn he would delay no longer.
+</p>
+<p>
+They went on, therefore, but in low spirits, and at last they saw the
+walls of the king&rsquo;s castle towering before them, and a noble company going
+to and fro on the lawn.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0088" id="link2HCH0088">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XIX
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HEY sat in a place where they could watch the castle and compose
+themselves after their journey.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;How are we going to get into the castle?&rdquo; asked mac an Da&rsquo;v.
+</p>
+<p>
+For there were hatchetmen on guard in the big gateway, and there were
+spearmen at short intervals around the walls, and men to throw hot
+porridge off the roof were standing in the right places.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If we cannot get in by hook, we will get in by crook,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are both good ways,&rdquo; said Mac an Da&rsquo;v, &ldquo;and whichever of them you
+decide on I&rsquo;ll stick by.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Just then they saw the Hag of the Mill coming out of the mill which was
+down the road a little.
+</p>
+<p>
+Now the Hag of the Mill was a bony, thin pole of a hag with odd feet. That
+is, she had one foot that was too big for her, so that when she lifted it
+up it pulled her over; and she had one foot that was too small for her, so
+that when she lifted it up she didn&rsquo;t know what to do with it. She was so
+long that you thought you would never see the end of her, and she was so
+thin that you thought you didn&rsquo;t see her at all. One of her eyes was set
+where her nose should be and there was an ear in its place, and her nose
+itself was hanging out of her chin, and she had whiskers round it. She was
+dressed in a red rag that was really a hole with a fringe on it, and she
+was singing &ldquo;Oh, hush thee, my one love&rdquo; to a cat that was yelping on her
+shoulder.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/385m.jpg" alt="385m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/385.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+She had a tall skinny dog behind her called Brotar. It hadn&rsquo;t a tooth in
+its head except one, and it had the toothache in that tooth. Every few
+steps it used to sit down on its hunkers and point its nose straight
+upwards, and make a long, sad complaint about its tooth; and after that it
+used to reach its hind leg round and try to scratch out its tooth; and
+then it used to be pulled on again by the straw rope that was round its
+neck, and which was tied at the other end to the hag&rsquo;s heaviest foot.
+</p>
+<p>
+There was an old, knock-kneed, raw-boned, one-eyed, little-winded,
+heavy-headed mare with her also. Every time it put a front leg forward it
+shivered all over the rest of its legs backwards, and when it put a hind
+leg forward it shivered all over the rest of its legs frontwards, and it
+used to give a great whistle through its nose when it was out of breath,
+and a big, thin hen was sitting on its croup. Mongan looked on the Hag of
+the Mill with delight and affection.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;This time,&rdquo; said he to mac an Da&rsquo;v, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll get back my wife.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will indeed,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v heartily, &ldquo;and you&rsquo;ll get mine back
+too.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go over yonder,&rdquo; said Mongan, &ldquo;and tell the Hag of the Mill that I want
+to talk to her.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Mac an Da&rsquo;v brought her over to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it true what the servant man said?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did he say?&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said you wanted to talk to me.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is a wonderful hour and a glorious minute,&rdquo; said the hag, &ldquo;for this
+is the first time in sixty years that any one wanted to talk to me. Talk
+on now,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;ll listen to you if I can remember how to do it.
+Talk gently,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;the way you won&rsquo;t disturb the animals, for they
+are all sick.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are sick indeed,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v pityingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The cat has a sore tail,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;by reason of sitting too close to a
+part of the hob that was hot. The dog has a toothache, the horse has a
+pain in her stomach, and the hen has the pip.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, it&rsquo;s a sad world,&rdquo; said mac an Da&rsquo;v.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;There you are!&rdquo; said the hag.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; Mongan commenced, &ldquo;if you got a wish, what it is you would wish
+for?&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+The hag took the cat off her shoulder and gave it to mac an Da&rsquo;v.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hold that for me while I think,&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you like to be a lovely young girl?&rdquo; asked Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d sooner be that than a skinned eel,&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;And would you like to marry me or the King of Leinster?&rdquo; &ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to
+marry either of you, or both of you, or whichever of you came first.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said Mongan, &ldquo;you shall have your wish.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He touched her with his finger, and the instant he touched her all
+dilapidation and wryness and age went from her, and she became so
+beautiful that one dared scarcely look on her, and so young that she
+seemed but sixteen years of age.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not the Hag of the Mill any longer,&rdquo; said Mongan, &ldquo;you are Ivell
+of the Shining Cheeks, daughter of the King of Munster.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He touched the dog too, and it became a little silky lapdog that could
+nestle in your palm. Then he changed the old mare into a brisk, piebald
+palfrey. Then he changed himself so that he became the living image of Ae,
+the son of the King of Connaught, who had just been married to Ivell of
+the Shining Cheeks, and then he changed mac an Da&rsquo;v into the likeness of
+Ae&rsquo;s attendant, and then they all set off towards the fortress, singing
+the song that begins: My wife is nicer than any one&rsquo;s wife, Any one&rsquo;s
+wife, any one&rsquo;s wife, My wife is nicer than any one&rsquo;s wife, Which nobody
+can deny.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2HCH0089" id="link2HCH0089">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+CHAPTER XX
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he doorkeeper brought word to the King of Leinster that the son of the
+King of Connaught, Ae the Beautiful, and his wife, Ivell of the Shining
+Cheeks, were at the door, that they had been banished from Connaught by
+Ae&rsquo;s father, and they were seeking the protection of the King of Leinster.
+</p>
+<p>
+Branduv came to the door himself to welcome them, and the minute he looked
+on Ivell of the Shining Cheeks it was plain that he liked looking at her.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was now drawing towards evening, and a feast was prepared for the
+guests with a banquet to follow it. At the feast Duv Laca sat beside the
+King of Leinster, but Mongan sat opposite him with Ivell, and Mongan put
+more and more magic into the hag, so that her cheeks shone and her eyes
+gleamed, and she was utterly bewitching to the eye; and when Branduv
+looked at her she seemed to grow more and more lovely and more and more
+desirable, and at last there was not a bone in his body as big as an inch
+that was not filled with love and longing for the girl.
+</p>
+<p>
+Every few minutes he gave a great sigh as if he had eaten too much, and
+when Duv Laca asked him if he had eaten too much he said he had but that
+he had not drunk enough, and by that he meant that he had not drunk enough
+from the eyes of the girl before him.
+</p>
+<p>
+At the banquet which was then held he looked at her again, and every time
+he took a drink he toasted Ivell across the brim of his goblet, and in a
+little while she began to toast him back across the rim of her cup, for he
+was drinking ale, but she was drinking mead. Then he sent a messenger to
+her to say that it was a far better thing to be the wife of the King of
+Leinster than to be the wife of the son of the King of Connaught, for a
+king is better than a prince, and Ivell thought that this was as wise a
+thing as anybody had ever said. And then he sent a message to say that he
+loved her so much that he would certainly burst of love if it did not
+stop.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mongan heard the whispering, and he told the hag that if she did what he
+advised she would certainly get either himself or the King of Leinster for
+a husband.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Either of you will be welcome,&rdquo; said the hag.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;When the king says he loves you, ask him to prove it by gifts; ask for
+his drinking-horn first.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+She asked for that, and he sent it to her filled with good liquor; then
+she asked for his girdle, and he sent her that.
+</p>
+<p>
+His people argued with him and said it was not right that he should give
+away the treasures of Leinster to the wife of the King of Connaught&rsquo;s son;
+but he said that it did not matter, for when he got the girl he would get
+his treasures with her. But every time he sent anything to the hag, mac an
+Da&rsquo;v snatched it out of her lap and put it in his pocket.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said Mongan to the hag, &ldquo;tell the servant to say that you would not
+leave your own husband for all the wealth of the world.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+She told the servant that, and the servant told it to the king. When
+Branduv heard it he nearly went mad with love and longing and jealousy,
+and with rage also, because of the treasure he had given her and might not
+get back. He called Mongan over to him, and spoke to him very
+threateningly and ragingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not one who takes a thing without giving a thing,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nobody could say you were,&rdquo; agreed Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you see this woman sitting beside me?&rdquo; he continued, pointing to Duv
+Laca.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do indeed,&rdquo; said Mongan.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Branduv, &ldquo;this woman is Duv Laca of the White Hand that I
+took away from Mongan; she is just going to marry me, but if you will make
+an exchange, you can marry this Duv Laca here, and I will marry that Ivell
+of the Shining Cheeks yonder.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Mongan pretended to be very angry then.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I had come here with horses and treasure you would be in your right to
+take these from me, but you have no right to ask for what you are now
+asking.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do ask for it,&rdquo; said Branduv menacingly, &ldquo;and you must not refuse a
+lord.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said Mongan reluctantly, and as if in great fear; &ldquo;if you
+will make the exchange I will make it, although it breaks my heart.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+He brought Ivell over to the king then and gave her three kisses.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;The king would suspect something if I did not kiss you,&rdquo; said he, and
+then he gave the hag over to the king. After that they all got drunk and
+merry, and soon there was a great snoring and snorting, and very soon all
+the servants fell asleep also, so that Mongan could not get anything to
+drink. Mac an Da&rsquo;v said it was a great shame, and he kicked some of the
+servants, but they did not budge, and then he slipped out to the stables
+and saddled two mares. He got on one with his wife behind him and Mongan
+got on the other with Duv Laca behind him, and they rode away towards
+Ulster like the wind, singing this song: The King of Leinster was married
+to-day, Married to-day, married to-day, The King of Leinster was married
+to-day, And every one wishes him joy.
+</p>
+<p>
+In the morning the servants came to waken the King of Leinster, and when
+they saw the face of the hag lying on the pillow beside the king, and her
+nose all covered with whiskers, and her big foot and little foot sticking
+away out at the end of the bed, they began to laugh, and poke one another
+in the stomachs and thump one another on the shoulders, so that the noise
+awakened the king, and he asked what was the matter with them at all. It
+was then he saw the hag lying beside him, and he gave a great screech and
+jumped out of the bed.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you the Hag of the Mill?&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am indeed,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;and I love you dearly.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish I didn&rsquo;t see you,&rdquo; said Branduv.
+</p>
+<p>
+That was the end of the story, and when he had told it Mongan began to
+laugh uproariously and called for more wine. He drank this deeply, as
+though he was full of thirst and despair and a wild jollity, but when the
+Flame Lady began to weep he took her in his arms and caressed her, and
+said that she was the love of his heart and the one treasure of the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+After that they feasted in great contentment, and at the end of the
+feasting they went away from Faery and returned to the world of men.
+</p>
+<p>
+They came to Mongan&rsquo;s palace at Moy Linney, and it was not until they
+reached the palace that they found they had been away one whole year, for
+they had thought they were only away one night. They lived then peacefully
+and lovingly together, and that ends the story, but Bro&rsquo;tiarna did not
+know that Mongan was Fionn.
+</p>
+<p>
+The abbot leaned forward.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was Mongan Fionn?&rdquo; he asked in a whisper.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;He was,&rdquo; replied Cairide&rsquo;.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed, indeed!&rdquo; said the abbot.
+</p>
+<p>
+After a while he continued: &ldquo;There is only one part of your story that I
+do not like.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;What part is that?&rdquo; asked Cairide&rsquo;.
+</p>
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the part where the holy man Tibraide&rsquo; was ill treated by that rap&mdash;by
+that&mdash;by Mongan.&rdquo;
+ </p>
+<p>
+Cairide&rsquo; agreed that it was ill done, but to himself he said gleefully
+that whenever he was asked to tell the story of how he told the story of
+Mongan he would remember what the abbot said.
+</p>
+<p>
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Irish Fairy Tales, by James Stephens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Irish Fairy Tales
+
+Author: James Stephens
+
+Posting Date: December 31, 2008 [EBook #2892]
+Release Date: November, 2001
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRISH FAIRY TALES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by A. Elizabeth Warren
+
+
+
+
+
+IRISH FAIRY TALES
+
+By James Stephens
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+      THE STORY OF TUAN MAC CAIRILL
+      THE BOYHOOD OF FIONN
+      THE BIRTH OF BRAN
+      OISI'N'S MOTHER
+      THE WOOING OF BECFOLA
+      THE LITTLE BRAWL AT ALLEN
+      THE CARL OF THE DRAB COAT
+      THE ENCHANTED CAVE OF CESH CORRAN
+      BECUMA OF THE WHITE SKIN
+      MONGAN'S FRENZY
+
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF TUAN MAC CAIRILL
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Finnian, the Abbott of Moville, went southwards and eastwards in great
+haste. News had come to him in Donegal that there were yet people in his
+own province who believed in gods that he did not approve of, and the
+gods that we do not approve of are treated scurvily, even by saintly
+men.
+
+He was told of a powerful gentleman who observed neither Saint's day nor
+Sunday.
+
+"A powerful person!" said Finnian.
+
+"All that," was the reply.
+
+"We shall try this person's power," said Finnian.
+
+"He is reputed to be a wise and hardy man," said his informant.
+
+"We shall test his wisdom and his hardihood."
+
+"He is," that gossip whispered--"he is a magician."
+
+"I will magician him," cried Finnian angrily. "Where does that man
+live?"
+
+He was informed, and he proceeded to that direction without delay.
+
+In no great time he came to the stronghold of the gentleman who followed
+ancient ways, and he demanded admittance in order that he might preach
+and prove the new God, and exorcise and terrify and banish even the
+memory of the old one; for to a god grown old Time is as ruthless as to
+a beggarman grown old.
+
+But the Ulster gentleman refused Finnian admittance. He barricaded
+his house, he shuttered his windows, and in a gloom of indignation and
+protest he continued the practices of ten thousand years, and would
+not hearken to Finnian calling at the window or to Time knocking at his
+door.
+
+But of those adversaries it was the first he redoubted.
+
+Finnian loomed on him as a portent and a terror; but he had no fear of
+Time. Indeed he was the foster-brother of Time, and so disdainful of the
+bitter god that he did not even disdain him; he leaped over the scythe,
+he dodged under it, and the sole occasions on which Time laughs is when
+he chances on Tuan, the son of Cairill, the son of Muredac Red-neck.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Now Finnian could not abide that any person should resist both the
+Gospel and himself, and he proceeded to force the stronghold by peaceful
+but powerful methods. He fasted on the gentleman, and he did so to such
+purpose that he was admitted to the house; for to an hospitable heart
+the idea that a stranger may expire on your doorstep from sheer famine
+cannot be tolerated. The gentleman, however, did not give in without a
+struggle: he thought that when Finnian had grown sufficiently hungry he
+would lift the siege and take himself off to some place where he might
+get food. But he did not know Finnian. The great abbot sat down on a
+spot just beyond the door, and composed himself to all that might follow
+from his action. He bent his gaze on the ground between his feet,
+and entered into a meditation from which he would Only be released by
+admission or death.
+
+The first day passed quietly.
+
+Often the gentleman would send a servitor to spy if that deserter of the
+gods was still before his door, and each time the servant replied that
+he was still there.
+
+"He will be gone in the morning," said the hopeful master.
+
+On the morrow the state of siege continued, and through that day the
+servants were sent many times to observe through spy-holes.
+
+"Go," he would say, "and find out if the worshipper of new gods has
+taken himself away."
+
+But the servants returned each time with the same information.
+
+"The new druid is still there," they said.
+
+All through that day no one could leave the stronghold. And the enforced
+seclusion wrought on the minds of the servants, while the cessation
+of all work banded them together in small groups that whispered and
+discussed and disputed. Then these groups would disperse to peep through
+the spy-hole at the patient, immobile figure seated before the door,
+wrapped in a meditation that was timeless and unconcerned. They
+took fright at the spectacle, and once or twice a woman screamed
+hysterically, and was bundled away with a companion's hand clapped on
+her mouth, so that the ear of their master should not be affronted.
+
+"He has his own troubles," they said. "It is a combat of the gods that
+is taking place."
+
+So much for the women; but the men also were uneasy. They prowled up and
+down, tramping from the spy-hole to the kitchen, and from the kitchen
+to the turreted roof. And from the roof they would look down on the
+motionless figure below, and speculate on many things, including
+the staunchness of man, the qualities of their master, and even the
+possibility that the new gods might be as powerful as the old.
+From these peepings and discussions they would return languid and
+discouraged.
+
+"If," said one irritable guard, "if we buzzed a spear at the persistent
+stranger, or if one slung at him with a jagged pebble!"
+
+"What!" his master demanded wrathfully, "is a spear to be thrown at
+an unarmed stranger? And from this house!" And he soundly cuffed that
+indelicate servant.
+
+"Be at peace all of you," he said, "for hunger has a whip, and he will
+drive the stranger away in the night."
+
+The household retired to wretched beds; but for the master of the house
+there was no sleep. He marched his halls all night, going often to
+the spy-hole to see if that shadow was still sitting in the shade, and
+pacing thence, tormented, preoccupied, refusing even the nose of his
+favourite dog as it pressed lovingly into his closed palm.
+
+On the morrow he gave in.
+
+The great door was swung wide, and two of his servants carried Finnian
+into the house, for the saint could no longer walk or stand upright by
+reason of the hunger and exposure to which he had submitted. But his
+frame was tough as the unconquerable spirit that dwelt within it, and
+in no long time he was ready for whatever might come of dispute or
+anathema.
+
+Being quite re-established he undertook the conversion of the master of
+the house, and the siege he laid against that notable intelligence was
+long spoken of among those who are interested in such things.
+
+He had beaten the disease of Mugain; he had beaten his own pupil the
+great Colm Cille; he beat Tuan also, and just as the latter's door had
+opened to the persistent stranger, so his heart opened, and Finnian
+marched there to do the will of God, and his own will.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+One day they were talking together about the majesty of God and His
+love, for although Tuan had now received much instruction on this
+subject he yet needed more, and he laid as close a siege on Finnian
+as Finnian had before that laid on him. But man works outwardly and
+inwardly. After rest he has energy, after energy he needs repose; so,
+when we have given instruction for a time, we need instruction, and must
+receive it or the spirit faints and wisdom herself grows bitter.
+
+Therefore Finnian said: "Tell me now about yourself, dear heart."
+
+But Tuan was avid of information about the True God. "No, no," he
+said, "the past has nothing more of interest for me, and I do not wish
+anything to come between my soul and its instruction; continue to teach
+me, dear friend and saintly father."
+
+"I will do that," Finnian replied, "but I must first meditate deeply on
+you, and must know you well. Tell me your past, my beloved, for a man is
+his past, and is to be known by it."
+
+But Tuan pleaded: "Let the past be content with itself, for man needs
+forgetfulness as well as memory."
+
+"My son," said Finnian, "all that has ever been done has been done for
+the glory of God, and to confess our good and evil deeds is part of
+instruction; for the soul must recall its acts and abide by them, or
+renounce them by confession and penitence. Tell me your genealogy first,
+and by what descent you occupy these lands and stronghold, and then I
+will examine your acts and your conscience."
+
+Tuan replied obediently: "I am known as Tuan, son of Cairill, son of
+Muredac Red-neck, and these are the hereditary lands of my father."
+
+The saint nodded.
+
+"I am not as well acquainted with Ulster genealogies as I should be, yet
+I know something of them. I am by blood a Leinsterman," he continued.
+
+"Mine is a long pedigree," Tuan murmured.
+
+Finnian received that information with respect and interest.
+
+"I also," he said, "have an honourable record."
+
+His host continued: "I am indeed Tuan, the son of Starn, the son of
+Sera, who was brother to Partholon."
+
+"But," said Finnian in bewilderment, "there is an error here, for you
+have recited two different genealogies."
+
+"Different genealogies, indeed," replied Tuan thoughtfully, "but they
+are my genealogies."
+
+"I do not understand this," Finnian declared roundly.
+
+"I am now known as Tuan mac Cairill," the other replied, "but in the
+days of old I was known as Tuan mac Starn, mac Sera."
+
+"The brother of Partholon," the saint gasped.
+
+"That is my pedigree," Tuan said.
+
+"But," Finnian objected in bewilderment, "Partholon came to Ireland not
+long after the Flood."
+
+"I came with him," said Tuan mildly.
+
+The saint pushed his chair back hastily, and sat staring at his host,
+and as he stared the blood grew chill in his veins, and his hair crept
+along his scalp and stood on end.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+But Finnian was not one who remained long in bewilderment. He thought on
+the might of God and he became that might, and was tranquil.
+
+He was one who loved God and Ireland, and to the person who could
+instruct him in these great themes he gave all the interest of his mind
+and the sympathy of his heart.
+
+"It is a wonder you tell me, my beloved," he said. "And now you must
+tell me more."
+
+"What must I tell?" asked Tuan resignedly.
+
+"Tell me of the beginning of time in Ireland, and of the bearing of
+Partholon, the son of Noah's son."
+
+"I have almost forgotten him," said Tuan. "A greatly bearded, greatly
+shouldered man he was. A man of sweet deeds and sweet ways."
+
+"Continue, my love," said Finnian.
+
+"He came to Ireland in a ship. Twenty-four men and twenty-four women
+came with him. But before that time no man had come to Ireland, and in
+the western parts of the world no human being lived or moved. As we drew
+on Ireland from the sea the country seemed like an unending forest. Far
+as the eye could reach, and in whatever direction, there were trees; and
+from these there came the unceasing singing of birds. Over all that land
+the sun shone warm and beautiful, so that to our sea-weary eyes, our
+wind-tormented ears, it seemed as if we were driving on Paradise.
+
+"We landed and we heard the rumble of water going gloomily through the
+darkness of the forest. Following the water we came to a glade where
+the sun shone and where the earth was warmed, and there Partholon rested
+with his twenty-four couples, and made a city and a livelihood.
+
+"There were fish in the rivers of Eire', there were animals in her
+coverts. Wild and shy and monstrous creatures ranged in her plains and
+forests. Creatures that one could see through and walk through. Long we
+lived in ease, and we saw new animals grow,--the bear, the wolf, the
+badger, the deer, and the boar.
+
+"Partholon's people increased until from twenty-four couples there came
+five thousand people, who lived in amity and contentment although they
+had no wits."
+
+"They had no wits!" Finnian commented.
+
+"They had no need of wits," Tuan said.
+
+"I have heard that the first-born were mindless," said Finnian.
+"Continue your story, my beloved."
+
+"Then, sudden as a rising wind, between one night and a morning, there
+came a sickness that bloated the stomach and purpled the skin, and on
+the seventh day all of the race of Partholon were dead, save one man
+only." "There always escapes one man," said Finnian thoughtfully.
+
+"And I am that man," his companion affirmed.
+
+Tuan shaded his brow with his hand, and he remembered backwards through
+incredible ages to the beginning of the world and the first days of
+Eire'. And Finnian, with his blood again running chill and his scalp
+crawling uneasily, stared backwards with him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+"Tell on, my love," Finnian murmured
+
+"I was alone," said Tuan. "I was so alone that my own shadow frightened
+me. I was so alone that the sound of a bird in flight, or the creaking
+of a dew-drenched bough, whipped me to cover as a rabbit is scared to
+his burrow.
+
+"The creatures of the forest scented me and knew I was alone. They stole
+with silken pad behind my back and snarled when I faced them; the long,
+grey wolves with hanging tongues and staring eyes chased me to my cleft
+rock; there was no creature so weak but it might hunt me, there was no
+creature so timid but it might outface me. And so I lived for two tens
+of years and two years, until I knew all that a beast surmises and had
+forgotten all that a man had known.
+
+"I could pad as gently as any; I could run as tirelessly. I could be
+invisible and patient as a wild cat crouching among leaves; I could
+smell danger in my sleep and leap at it with wakeful claws; I could bark
+and growl and clash with my teeth and tear with them."
+
+"Tell on, my beloved," said Finnian, "you shall rest in God, dear
+heart."
+
+"At the end of that time," said Tuan, "Nemed the son of Agnoman came to
+Ireland with a fleet of thirty-four barques, and in each barque there
+were thirty couples of people."
+
+"I have heard it," said Finnian.
+
+"My heart leaped for joy when I saw the great fleet rounding the land,
+and I followed them along scarped cliffs, leaping from rock to rock like
+a wild goat, while the ships tacked and swung seeking a harbour. There I
+stooped to drink at a pool, and I saw myself in the chill water.
+
+"I saw that I was hairy and tufty and bristled as a savage boar; that I
+was lean as a stripped bush; that I was greyer than a badger; withered
+and wrinkled like an empty sack; naked as a fish; wretched as a starving
+crow in winter; and on my fingers and toes there were great curving
+claws, so that I looked like nothing that was known, like nothing that
+was animal or divine. And I sat by the pool weeping my loneliness and
+wildness and my stern old age; and I could do no more than cry and
+lament between the earth and the sky, while the beasts that tracked me
+listened from behind the trees, or crouched among bushes to stare at me
+from their drowsy covert.
+
+"A storm arose, and when I looked again from my tall cliff I saw that
+great fleet rolling as in a giant's hand. At times they were pitched
+against the sky and staggered aloft, spinning gustily there like
+wind-blown leaves. Then they were hurled from these dizzy tops to the
+flat, moaning gulf, to the glassy, inky horror that swirled and whirled
+between ten waves. At times a wave leaped howling under a ship, and with
+a buffet dashed it into air, and chased it upwards with thunder stroke
+on stroke, and followed again, close as a chasing wolf, trying with
+hammering on hammering to beat in the wide-wombed bottom and suck out
+the frightened lives through one black gape. A wave fell on a ship and
+sunk it down with a thrust, stern as though a whole sky had tumbled at
+it, and the barque did not cease to go down until it crashed and sank in
+the sand at the bottom of the sea.
+
+"The night came, and with it a thousand darknesses fell from the
+screeching sky. Not a round-eyed creature of the night might pierce an
+inch of that multiplied gloom. Not a creature dared creep or stand. For
+a great wind strode the world lashing its league-long whips in cracks
+of thunder, and singing to itself, now in a world-wide yell, now in an
+ear-dizzying hum and buzz; or with a long snarl and whine it hovered
+over the world searching for life to destroy.
+
+"And at times, from the moaning and yelping blackness of the sea, there
+came a sound--thin-drawn as from millions of miles away, distinct as
+though uttered in the ear like a whisper of confidence--and I knew that
+a drowning man was calling on his God as he thrashed and was battered
+into silence, and that a blue-lipped woman was calling on her man as her
+hair whipped round her brows and she whirled about like a top.
+
+"Around me the trees were dragged from earth with dying groans; they
+leaped into the air and flew like birds. Great waves whizzed from the
+sea: spinning across the cliffs and hurtling to the earth in monstrous
+clots of foam; the very rocks came trundling and sidling and grinding
+among the trees; and in that rage, and in that horror of blackness I
+fell asleep, or I was beaten into slumber."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+"THERE I dreamed, and I saw myself changing into a stag in dream, and
+I felt in dream the beating of a new heart within me, and in dream I
+arched my neck and braced my powerful limbs.
+
+"I awoke from the dream, and I was that which I had dreamed.
+
+"I stood a while stamping upon a rock, with my bristling head swung
+high, breathing through wide nostrils all the savour of the world. For
+I had come marvellously from decrepitude to strength. I had writhed from
+the bonds of age and was young again. I smelled the turf and knew for
+the first time how sweet that smelled. And like lightning my moving nose
+sniffed all things to my heart and separated them into knowledge.
+
+"Long I stood there, ringing my iron hoof on stone, and learning all
+things through my nose. Each breeze that came from the right hand or the
+left brought me a tale. A wind carried me the tang of wolf, and against
+that smell I stared and stamped. And on a wind there came the scent of
+my own kind, and at that I belled. Oh, loud and clear and sweet was the
+voice of the great stag. With what ease my lovely note went lilting.
+With what joy I heard the answering call. With what delight I bounded,
+bounded, bounded; light as a bird's plume, powerful as a storm, untiring
+as the sea.
+
+"Here now was ease in ten-yard springings, with a swinging head, with
+the rise and fall of a swallow, with the curve and flow and urge of an
+otter of the sea. What a tingle dwelt about my heart! What a thrill spun
+to the lofty points of my antlers! How the world was new! How the sun
+was new! How the wind caressed me!
+
+"With unswerving forehead and steady eye I met all that came. The old,
+lone wolf leaped sideways, snarling, and slunk away. The lumbering bear
+swung his head of hesitations and thought again; he trotted his small
+red eye away with him to a near-by brake. The stags of my race fled from
+my rocky forehead, or were pushed back and back until their legs broke
+under them and I trampled them to death. I was the beloved, the well
+known, the leader of the herds of Ireland.
+
+"And at times I came back from my boundings about Eire', for the strings
+of my heart were drawn to Ulster; and, standing away, my wide nose took
+the air, while I knew with joy, with terror, that men were blown on the
+wind. A proud head hung to the turf then, and the tears of memory rolled
+from a large, bright eye.
+
+"At times I drew near, delicately, standing among thick leaves or
+crouched in long grown grasses, and I stared and mourned as I looked on
+men. For Nemed and four couples had been saved from that fierce storm,
+and I saw them increase and multiply until four thousand couples lived
+and laughed and were riotous in the sun, for the people of Nemed had
+small minds but great activity. They were savage fighters and hunters.
+
+"But one time I came, drawn by that intolerable anguish of memory, and
+all of these people were gone: the place that knew them was silent: in
+the land where they had moved there was nothing of them but their bones
+that glinted in the sun.
+
+"Old age came on me there. Among these bones weariness crept into my
+limbs. My head grew heavy, my eyes dim, my knees jerked and trembled,
+and there the wolves dared chase me.
+
+"I went again to the cave that had been my home when I was an old man.
+
+"One day I stole from the cave to snatch a mouthful of grass, for I was
+closely besieged by wolves. They made their rush, and I barely escaped
+from them. They sat beyond the cave staring at me.
+
+"I knew their tongue. I knew all that they said to each other, and all
+that they said to me. But there was yet a thud left in my forehead, a
+deadly trample in my hoof. They did not dare come into the cave.
+
+"'To-morrow,' they said, 'we will tear out your throat, and gnaw on your
+living haunch'."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+"Then my soul rose to the height of Doom, and I intended all that might
+happen to me, and agreed to it.
+
+"'To-morrow,' I said, 'I will go out among ye, and I will die,' and at
+that the wolves howled joyfully, hungrily, impatiently.
+
+"I slept, and I saw myself changing into a boar in dream, and I felt in
+dream the beating of a new heart within me, and in dream I stretched my
+powerful neck and braced my eager limbs. I awoke from my dream, and I
+was that which I had dreamed.
+
+"The night wore away, the darkness lifted, the day came; and from
+without the cave the wolves called to me: "'Come out, O Skinny Stag.
+Come out and die.'
+
+"And I, with joyful heart, thrust a black bristle through the hole of
+the cave, and when they saw that wriggling snout, those curving tusks,
+that red fierce eye, the wolves fled yelping, tumbling over each other,
+frantic with terror; and I behind them, a wild cat for leaping, a giant
+for strength, a devil for ferocity; a madness and gladness of lusty,
+unsparing life; a killer, a champion, a boar who could not be defied.
+
+"I took the lordship of the boars of Ireland.
+
+"Wherever I looked among my tribes I saw love and obedience: whenever
+I appeared among the strangers they fled away. And the wolves feared me
+then, and the great, grim bear went bounding on heavy paws. I charged
+him at the head of my troop and rolled him over and over; but it is not
+easy to kill the bear, so deeply is his life packed under that stinking
+pelt. He picked himself up and ran, and was knocked down, and ran again
+blindly, butting into trees and stones. Not a claw did the big bear
+flash, not a tooth did he show, as he ran whimpering like a baby, or
+as he stood with my nose rammed against his mouth, snarling up into his
+nostrils.
+
+"I challenged all that moved. All creatures but one. For men had again
+come to Ireland. Semion, the son of Stariath, with his people, from whom
+the men of Domnann and the Fir Bolg and the Galiuin are descended. These
+I did not chase, and when they chased me I fled.
+
+"Often I would go, drawn by my memoried heart, to look at them as they
+moved among their fields; and I spoke to my mind in bitterness: 'When
+the people of Partholon were gathered in counsel my voice was heard; it
+was sweet to all who heard it, and the words I spoke were wise. The eyes
+of women brightened and softened when they looked at me. They loved to
+hear him when he sang who now wanders in the forest with a tusky herd.'"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+"OLD age again overtook me. Weariness stole into my limbs, and anguish
+dozed into my mind. I went to my Ulster cave and dreamed my dream, and I
+changed into a hawk.
+
+"I left the ground. The sweet air was my kingdom, and my bright eye
+stared on a hundred miles. I soared, I swooped; I hung, motionless as a
+living stone, over the abyss; I lived in joy and slept in peace, and had
+my fill of the sweetness of life.
+
+"During that time Beothach, the son of Iarbonel the Prophet, came to
+Ireland with his people, and there was a great battle between his men
+and the children of Semion. Long I hung over that combat, seeing every
+spear that hurtled, every stone that whizzed from a sling, every sword
+that flashed up and down, and the endless glittering of the shields. And
+at the end I saw that the victory was with Iarbonel. And from his people
+the Tuatha De' and the Ande' came, although their origin is forgotten,
+and learned people, because of their excellent wisdom and intelligence,
+say that they came from heaven.
+
+"These are the people of Faery. All these are the gods.
+
+"For long, long years I was a hawk. I knew every hill and stream; every
+field and glen of Ireland. I knew the shape of cliffs and coasts, and
+how all places looked under the sun or moon. And I was still a hawk when
+the sons of Mil drove the Tuatha De' Danann under the ground, and held
+Ireland against arms or wizardry; and this was the coming of men and the
+beginning of genealogies.
+
+"Then I grew old, and in my Ulster cave close to the sea I dreamed my
+dream, and in it I became a salmon. The green tides of ocean rose over
+me and my dream, so that I drowned in the sea and did not die, for I
+awoke in deep waters, and I was that which I dreamed. I had been a man,
+a stag, a boar, a bird, and now I was a fish. In all my changes I had
+joy and fulness of life. But in the water joy lay deeper, life pulsed
+deeper. For on land or air there is always something excessive and
+hindering; as arms that swing at the sides of a man, and which the
+mind must remember. The stag has legs to be tucked away for sleep, and
+untucked for movement; and the bird has wings that must be folded and
+pecked and cared for. But the fish has but one piece from his nose to
+his tail. He is complete, single and unencumbered. He turns in one turn,
+and goes up and down and round in one sole movement.
+
+"How I flew through the soft element: how I joyed in the country where
+there is no harshness: in the element which upholds and gives way; which
+caresses and lets go, and will not let you fall. For man may stumble in
+a furrow; the stag tumble from a cliff; the hawk, wing-weary and beaten,
+with darkness around him and the storm behind, may dash his brains
+against a tree. But the home of the salmon is his delight, and the sea
+guards all her creatures."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"I became the king of the salmon, and, with my multitudes, I ranged on
+the tides of the world. Green and purple distances were under me: green
+and gold the sunlit regions above. In these latitudes I moved through a
+world of amber, myself amber and gold; in those others, in a sparkle
+of lucent blue, I curved, lit like a living jewel: and in these again,
+through dusks of ebony all mazed with silver, I shot and shone, the
+wonder of the sea.
+
+"I saw the monsters of the uttermost ocean go heaving by; and the long
+lithe brutes that are toothed to their tails: and below, where gloom
+dipped down on gloom, vast, livid tangles that coiled and uncoiled, and
+lapsed down steeps and hells of the sea where even the salmon could not
+go.
+
+"I knew the sea. I knew the secret caves where ocean roars to ocean; the
+floods that are icy cold, from which the nose of a salmon leaps back as
+at a sting; and the warm streams in which we rocked and dozed and were
+carried forward without motion. I swam on the outermost rim of the great
+world, where nothing was but the sea and the sky and the salmon; where
+even the wind was silent, and the water was clear as clean grey rock.
+
+"And then, far away in the sea, I remembered Ulster, and there came on
+me an instant, uncontrollable anguish to be there. I turned, and through
+days and nights I swam tirelessly, jubilantly; with terror wakening in
+me, too, and a whisper through my being that I must reach Ireland or
+die.
+
+"I fought my way to Ulster from the sea.
+
+"Ah, how that end of the journey was hard! A sickness was racking in
+every one of my bones, a languor and weariness creeping through my every
+fibre and muscle. The waves held me back and held me back; the soft
+waters seemed to have grown hard; and it was as though I were urging
+through a rock as I strained towards Ulster from the sea.
+
+"So tired I was! I could have loosened my frame and been swept away;
+I could have slept and been drifted and wafted away; swinging on
+grey-green billows that had turned from the land and were heaving and
+mounting and surging to the far blue water.
+
+"Only the unconquerable heart of the salmon could brave that end of
+toil. The sound of the rivers of Ireland racing down to the sea came to
+me in the last numb effort: the love of Ireland bore me up: the gods of
+the rivers trod to me in the white-curled breakers, so that I left
+the sea at long, long last; and I lay in sweet water in the curve of a
+crannied rock, exhausted, three parts dead, triumphant."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"Delight and strength came to me again, and now I explored all the
+inland ways, the great lakes of Ireland, and her swift brown rivers.
+
+"What a joy to lie under an inch of water basking in the sun, or beneath
+a shady ledge to watch the small creatures that speed like lightning on
+the rippling top. I saw the dragon-flies flash and dart and turn, with
+a poise, with a speed that no other winged thing knows: I saw the hawk
+hover and stare and swoop: he fell like a falling stone, but he could
+not catch the king of the salmon: I saw the cold-eyed cat stretching
+along a bough level with the water, eager to hook and lift the creatures
+of the river. And I saw men.
+
+"They saw me also. They came to know me and look for me. They lay in
+wait at the waterfalls up which I leaped like a silver flash. They held
+out nets for me; they hid traps under leaves; they made cords of the
+colour of water, of the colour of weeds--but this salmon had a nose that
+knew how a weed felt and how a string--they drifted meat on a sightless
+string, but I knew of the hook; they thrust spears at me, and threw
+lances which they drew back again with a cord. Many a wound I got from
+men, many a sorrowful scar.
+
+"Every beast pursued me in the waters and along the banks; the barking,
+black-skinned otter came after me in lust and gust and swirl; the wild
+cat fished for me; the hawk and the steep-winged, spear-beaked birds
+dived down on me, and men crept on me with nets the width of a river,
+so that I got no rest. My life became a ceaseless scurry and wound and
+escape, a burden and anguish of watchfulness--and then I was caught."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+"THE fisherman of Cairill, the King of Ulster, took me in his net. Ah,
+that was a happy man when he saw me! He shouted for joy when he saw the
+great salmon in his net.
+
+"I was still in the water as he hauled delicately. I was still in the
+water as he pulled me to the bank. My nose touched air and spun from it
+as from fire, and I dived with all my might against the bottom of the
+net, holding yet to the water, loving it, mad with terror that I must
+quit that loveliness. But the net held and I came up.
+
+"'Be quiet, King of the River,' said the fisherman, 'give in to Doom,'
+said he.
+
+"I was in air, and it was as though I were in fire. The air pressed on
+me like a fiery mountain. It beat on my scales and scorched them. It
+rushed down my throat and scalded me. It weighed on me and squeezed me,
+so that my eyes felt as though they must burst from my head, my head as
+though it would leap from my body, and my body as though it would swell
+and expand and fly in a thousand pieces.
+
+"The light blinded me, the heat tormented me, the dry air made me
+shrivel and gasp; and, as he lay on the grass, the great salmon whirled
+his desperate nose once more to the river, and leaped, leaped, leaped,
+even under the mountain of air. He could leap upwards, but not forwards,
+and yet he leaped, for in each rise he could see the twinkling waves,
+the rippling and curling waters.
+
+"'Be at ease, O King,' said the fisherman. 'Be at rest, my beloved. Let
+go the stream. Let the oozy marge be forgotten, and the sandy bed where
+the shades dance all in green and gloom, and the brown flood sings
+along.'
+
+"And as he carried me to the palace he sang a song of the river, and a
+song of Doom, and a song in praise of the King of the Waters.
+
+"When the king's wife saw me she desired me. I was put over a fire and
+roasted, and she ate me. And when time passed she gave birth to me, and
+I was her son and the son of Cairill the king. I remember warmth and
+darkness and movement and unseen sounds. All that happened I remember,
+from the time I was on the gridiron until the time I was born. I forget
+nothing of these things."
+
+"And now," said Finnian, "you will be born again, for I shall baptize
+you into the family of the Living God." ---- So far the story of Tuan,
+the son of Cairill.
+
+No man knows if he died in those distant ages when Finnian was Abbot of
+Moville, or if he still keeps his fort in Ulster, watching all things,
+and remembering them for the glory of God and the honour of Ireland.
+
+
+
+
+THE BOYHOOD OF FIONN
+
+
+
+
+He was a king, a seer and a poet. He was a lord with a manifold and
+great train. He was our magician, our knowledgable one, our soothsayer.
+All that he did was sweet with him. And, however ye deem my testimony
+of Fionn excessive, and, although ye hold my praising overstrained,
+nevertheless, and by the King that is above me, he was three times
+better than all I say.--Saint PATRICK.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Fionn [pronounce Fewn to rhyme with "tune"] got his first training among
+women. There is no wonder in that, for it is the pup's mother teaches it
+to fight, and women know that fighting is a necessary art although men
+pretend there are others that are better. These were the women druids,
+Bovmall and Lia Luachra. It will be wondered why his own mother did not
+train him in the first natural savageries of existence, but she could
+not do it. She could not keep him with her for dread of the clann-Morna.
+The sons of Morna had been fighting and intriguing for a long time to
+oust her husband, Uail, from the captaincy of the Fianna of Ireland,
+and they had ousted him at last by killing him. It was the only way
+they could get rid of such a man; but it was not an easy way, for what
+Fionn's father did not know in arms could not be taught to him even by
+Morna. Still, the hound that can wait will catch a hare at last, and
+even Manana'nn sleeps. Fionn's mother was beautiful, long-haired Muirne:
+so she is always referred to. She was the daughter of Teigue, the son of
+Nuada from Faery, and her mother was Ethlinn. That is, her brother
+was Lugh of the Long Hand himself, and with a god, and such a god, for
+brother we may marvel that she could have been in dread of Morna or his
+sons, or of any one. But women have strange loves, strange fears, and
+these are so bound up with one another that the thing which is presented
+to us is not often the thing that is to be seen.
+
+However it may be, when Uall died Muirne got married again to the King
+of Kerry. She gave the child to Bovmall and Lia Luachra to rear, and we
+may be sure that she gave injunctions with him, and many of them. The
+youngster was brought to the woods of Slieve Bloom and was nursed there
+in secret.
+
+It is likely the women were fond of him, for other than Fionn there
+was no life about them. He would be their life; and their eyes may
+have seemed as twin benedictions resting on the small fair head. He was
+fair-haired, and it was for his fairness that he was afterwards called
+Fionn; but at this period he was known as Deimne. They saw the food they
+put into his little frame reproduce itself length-ways and sideways in
+tough inches, and in springs and energies that crawled at first, and
+then toddled, and then ran. He had birds for playmates, but all the
+creatures that live in a wood must have been his comrades. There would
+have been for little Fionn long hours of lonely sunshine, when the world
+seemed just sunshine and a sky. There would have been hours as long,
+when existence passed like a shade among shadows, in the multitudinous
+tappings of rain that dripped from leaf to leaf in the wood, and slipped
+so to the ground. He would have known little snaky paths, narrow enough
+to be filled by his own small feet, or a goat's; and he would have
+wondered where they went, and have marvelled again to find that,
+wherever they went, they came at last, through loops and twists of the
+branchy wood, to his own door. He may have thought of his own door as
+the beginning and end of the world, whence all things went, and whither
+all things came.
+
+Perhaps he did not see the lark for a long time, but he would have heard
+him, far out of sight in the endless sky, thrilling and thrilling until
+the world seemed to have no other sound but that clear sweetness; and
+what a world it was to make that sound! Whistles and chirps, coos and
+caws and croaks, would have grown familiar to him. And he could at last
+have told which brother of the great brotherhood was making the noise
+he heard at any moment. The wind too: he would have listened to its
+thousand voices as it moved in all seasons and in all moods. Perhaps a
+horse would stray into the thick screen about his home, and would look
+as solemnly on Fionn as Fionn did on it. Or, coming suddenly on him,
+the horse might stare, all a-cock with eyes and ears and nose, one
+long-drawn facial extension, ere he turned and bounded away with
+manes all over him and hoofs all under him and tails all round him. A
+solemn-nosed, stern-eyed cow would amble and stamp in his wood to find a
+flyless shadow; or a strayed sheep would poke its gentle muzzle through
+leaves.
+
+"A boy," he might think, as he stared on a staring horse, "a boy cannot
+wag his tail to keep the flies off," and that lack may have saddened
+him. He may have thought that a cow can snort and be dignified at
+the one moment, and that timidity is comely in a sheep. He would have
+scolded the jackdaw, and tried to out-whistle the throstle, and wondered
+why his pipe got tired when the blackbird's didn't. There would be flies
+to be watched, slender atoms in yellow gauze that flew, and filmy specks
+that flittered, and sturdy, thick-ribbed brutes that pounced like cats
+and bit like dogs and flew like lightning. He may have mourned for the
+spider in bad luck who caught that fly. There would be much to see and
+remember and compare, and there would be, always, his two guardians. The
+flies change from second to second; one cannot tell if this bird is a
+visitor or an inhabitant, and a sheep is just sister to a sheep; but the
+women were as rooted as the house itself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Were his nurses comely or harsh-looking? Fionn would not know. This was
+the one who picked him up when he fell, and that was the one who patted
+the bruise. This one said: "Mind you do not tumble in the well!"
+
+And that one: "Mind the little knees among the nettles."
+
+But he did tumble and record that the only notable thing about a well
+is that it is wet. And as for nettles, if they hit him he hit back. He
+slashed into them with a stick and brought them low. There was nothing
+in wells or nettles, only women dreaded them. One patronised women and
+instructed them and comforted them, for they were afraid about one.
+
+They thought that one should not climb a tree!
+
+"Next week," they said at last, "you may climb this one," and "next
+week" lived at the end of the world!
+
+But the tree that was climbed was not worth while when it had been
+climbed twice. There was a bigger one near by. There were trees that no
+one could climb, with vast shadow on one side and vaster sunshine on
+the other. It took a long time to walk round them, and you could not see
+their tops.
+
+It was pleasant to stand on a branch that swayed and sprung, and it was
+good to stare at an impenetrable roof of leaves and then climb into it.
+How wonderful the loneliness was up there! When he looked down there
+was an undulating floor of leaves, green and green and greener to a very
+blackness of greeniness; and when he looked up there were leaves
+again, green and less green and not green at all, up to a very snow and
+blindness of greeniness; and above and below and around there was sway
+and motion, the whisper of leaf on leaf, and the eternal silence to
+which one listened and at which one tried to look.
+
+When he was six years of age his mother, beautiful, long-haired Muirne,
+came to see him. She came secretly, for she feared the sons of Morna,
+and she had paced through lonely places in many counties before she
+reached the hut in the wood, and the cot where he lay with his fists
+shut and sleep gripped in them.
+
+He awakened to be sure. He would have one ear that would catch an
+unusual voice, one eye that would open, however sleepy the other one
+was. She took him in her arms and kissed him, and she sang a sleepy song
+until the small boy slept again.
+
+We may be sure that the eye that could stay open stayed open that night
+as long as it could, and that the one ear listened to the sleepy song
+until the song got too low to be heard, until it was too tender to be
+felt vibrating along those soft arms, until Fionn was asleep again, with
+a new picture in his little head and a new notion to ponder on.
+
+The mother of himself! His own mother!
+
+But when he awakened she was gone.
+
+She was going back secretly, in dread of the sons of Morna, slipping
+through gloomy woods, keeping away from habitations, getting by desolate
+and lonely ways to her lord in Kerry.
+
+Perhaps it was he that was afraid of the sons of Morna, and perhaps she
+loved him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE women druids, his guardians, belonged to his father's people.
+Bovmall was Uail's sister, and, consequently, Fionn's aunt. Only such
+a blood-tie could have bound them to the clann-Baiscne, for it is not
+easy, having moved in the world of court and camp, to go hide with a
+baby in a wood; and to live, as they must have lived, in terror.
+
+What stories they would have told the child of the sons of Morna. Of
+Morna himself, the huge-shouldered, stern-eyed, violent Connachtman; and
+of his sons--young Goll Mor mac Morna in particular, as huge-shouldered
+as his father, as fierce in the onset, but merry-eyed when the other
+was grim, and bubbling with a laughter that made men forgive even his
+butcheries. Of Cona'n Mael mac Morna his brother, gruff as a badger,
+bearded like a boar, bald as a crow, and with a tongue that could manage
+an insult where another man would not find even a stammer. His boast was
+that when he saw an open door he went into it, and when he saw a closed
+door he went into it. When he saw a peaceful man he insulted him, and
+when he met a man who was not peaceful he insulted him. There was Garra
+Duv mac Morna, and savage Art Og, who cared as little for their own
+skins as they did for the next man's, and Garra must have been rough
+indeed to have earned in that clan the name of the Rough mac Morna.
+There were others: wild Connachtmen all, as untameable, as unaccountable
+as their own wonderful countryside.
+
+Fionn would have heard much of them, and it is likely that he practised
+on a nettle at taking the head off Goll, and that he hunted a sheep
+from cover in the implacable manner he intended later on for Cona'n the
+Swearer.
+
+But it is of Uail mac Baiscne he would have heard most. With what a
+dilation of spirit the ladies would have told tales of him, Fionn's
+father. How their voices would have become a chant as feat was added
+to feat, glory piled on glory. The most famous of men and the most
+beautiful; the hardest fighter; the easiest giver; the kingly champion;
+the chief of the Fianna na h-Eirinn. Tales of how he had been way-laid
+and got free; of how he had been generous and got free; of how he had
+been angry and went marching with the speed of an eagle and the direct
+onfall of a storm; while in front and at the sides, angled from the prow
+of his terrific advance, were fleeing multitudes who did not dare to
+wait and scarce had time to run. And of how at last, when the time
+came to quell him, nothing less than the whole might of Ireland was
+sufficient for that great downfall.
+
+We may be sure that on these adventures Fionn was with his father, going
+step for step with the long-striding hero, and heartening him mightily.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+He was given good training by the women in running and leaping and
+swimming.
+
+One of them would take a thorn switch in her hand, and Fionn would
+take a thorn switch in his hand, and each would try to strike the other
+running round a tree.
+
+You had to go fast to keep away from the switch behind, and a small boy
+feels a switch. Fionn would run his best to get away from that prickly
+stinger, but how he would run when it was his turn to deal the strokes!
+
+With reason too, for his nurses had suddenly grown implacable. They
+pursued him with a savagery which he could not distinguish from hatred,
+and they swished him well whenever they got the chance.
+
+Fionn learned to run. After a while he could buzz around a tree like
+a maddened fly, and oh, the joy, when he felt himself drawing from the
+switch and gaining from behind on its bearer! How he strained and panted
+to catch on that pursuing person and pursue her and get his own switch
+into action.
+
+He learned to jump by chasing hares in a bumpy field. Up went the hare
+and up went Fionn, and away with the two of them, hopping and popping
+across the field. If the hare turned while Fionn was after her it was
+switch for Fionn; so that in a while it did not matter to Fionn which
+way the hare jumped for he could jump that way too. Long-ways, sideways
+or baw-ways, Fionn hopped where the hare hopped, and at last he was the
+owner of a hop that any hare would give an ear for.
+
+He was taught to swim, and it may be that his heart sank when he fronted
+the lesson. The water was cold. It was deep. One could see the bottom,
+leagues below, millions of miles below. A small boy might shiver as he
+stared into that wink and blink and twink of brown pebbles and murder.
+And these implacable women threw him in!
+
+Perhaps he would not go in at first. He may have smiled at them, and
+coaxed, and hung back. It was a leg and an arm gripped then; a swing for
+Fionn, and out and away with him; plop and flop for him; down into chill
+deep death for him, and up with a splutter; with a sob; with a grasp
+at everything that caught nothing; with a wild flurry; with a raging
+despair; with a bubble and snort as he was hauled again down, and down,
+and down, and found as suddenly that he had been hauled out.
+
+Fionn learned to swim until he could pop into the water like an otter
+and slide through it like an eel.
+
+He used to try to chase a fish the way he chased hares in the bumpy
+field--but there are terrible spurts in a fish. It may be that a fish
+cannot hop, but he gets there in a flash, and he isn't there in another.
+Up or down, sideways or endways, it is all one to a fish. He goes and
+is gone. He twists this way and disappears the other way. He is over
+you when he ought to be under you, and he is biting your toe when you
+thought you were biting his tail.
+
+You cannot catch a fish by swimming, but you can try, and Fionn tried.
+He got a grudging commendation from the terrible women when he was able
+to slip noiselessly in the tide, swim under water to where a wild duck
+was floating and grip it by the leg.
+
+"Qu--," said the duck, and he disappeared before he had time to get the
+"-ack" out of him.
+
+So the time went, and Fionn grew long and straight and tough like a
+sapling; limber as a willow, and with the flirt and spring of a young
+bird. One of the ladies may have said, "He is shaping very well, my
+dear," and the other replied, as is the morose privilege of an aunt,
+"He will never be as good as his father," but their hearts must have
+overflowed in the night, in the silence, in the darkness, when they
+thought of the living swiftness they had fashioned, and that dear fair
+head.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ONE day his guardians were agitated: they held confabulations at which
+Fionn was not permitted to assist. A man who passed by in the morning
+had spoken to them. They fed the man, and during his feeding Fionn had
+been shooed from the door as if he were a chicken. When the stranger
+took his road the women went with him a short distance. As they passed
+the man lifted a hand and bent a knee to Fionn.
+
+"My soul to you, young master," he said, and as he said it, Fionn
+knew that he could have the man's soul, or his boots, or his feet, or
+anything that belonged to him.
+
+When the women returned they were mysterious and whispery. They chased
+Fionn into the house, and when they got him in they chased him out
+again. They chased each other around the house for another whisper. They
+calculated things by the shape of clouds, by lengths of shadows, by the
+flight of birds, by two flies racing on a flat stone, by throwing bones
+over their left shoulders, and by every kind of trick and game and
+chance that you could put a mind to.
+
+They told Fionn he must sleep in a tree that night, and they put him
+under bonds not to sing or whistle or cough or sneeze until the morning.
+
+Fionn did sneeze. He never sneezed so much in his life. He sat up in his
+tree and nearly sneezed himself out of it. Flies got up his nose, two
+at a time, one up each nose, and his head nearly fell off the way he
+sneezed.
+
+"You are doing that on purpose," said a savage whisper from the foot of
+the tree.
+
+But Fionn was not doing it on purpose. He tucked himself into a fork the
+way he had been taught, and he passed the crawliest, tickliest night he
+had ever known. After a while he did not want to sneeze, he wanted to
+scream: and in particular he wanted to come down from the tree. But he
+did not scream, nor did he leave the tree. His word was passed, and he
+stayed in his tree as silent as a mouse and as watchful, until he fell
+out of it.
+
+In the morning a band of travelling poets were passing, and the
+women handed Fionn over to them. This time they could not prevent him
+overhearing.
+
+"The sons of Morna!" they said.
+
+And Fionn's heart might have swelled with rage, but that it was already
+swollen with adventure. And also the expected was happening. Behind
+every hour of their day and every moment of their lives lay the sons of
+Morna. Fionn had run after them as deer: he jumped after them as hares:
+he dived after them as fish. They lived in the house with him: they
+sat at the table and ate his meat. One dreamed of them, and they were
+expected in the morning as the sun is. They knew only too well that the
+son of Uail was living, and they knew that their own sons would know
+no ease while that son lived; for they believed in those days that like
+breeds like, and that the son of Uail would be Uail with additions.
+
+His guardians knew that their hiding-place must at last be discovered,
+and that, when it was found, the sons of Morna would come. They had
+no doubt of that, and every action of their lives was based on that
+certainty. For no secret can remain secret. Some broken soldier tramping
+home to his people will find it out; a herd seeking his strayed cattle
+or a band of travelling musicians will get the wind of it. How many
+people will move through even the remotest wood in a year! The crows
+will tell a secret if no one else does; and under a bush, behind a clump
+of bracken, what eyes may there not be! But if your secret is legged
+like a young goat! If it is tongued like a wolf! One can hide a baby,
+but you cannot hide a boy. He will rove unless you tie him to a post,
+and he will whistle then.
+
+The sons of Morna came, but there were only two grim women living in a
+lonely hut to greet them. We may be sure they were well greeted. One can
+imagine Goll's merry stare taking in all that could be seen; Cona'n's
+grim eye raking the women's faces while his tongue raked them again; the
+Rough mac Morna shouldering here and there in the house and about it,
+with maybe a hatchet in his hand, and Art Og coursing further afield and
+vowing that if the cub was there he would find him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+But Fionn was gone. He was away, bound with his band of poets for the
+Galtees.
+
+It is likely they were junior poets come to the end of a year's
+training, and returning to their own province to see again the people at
+home, and to be wondered at and exclaimed at as they exhibited bits of
+the knowledge which they had brought from the great schools. They would
+know tags of rhyme and tricks about learning which Fionn would hear of;
+and now and again, as they rested in a glade or by the brink of a river,
+they might try their lessons over. They might even refer to the ogham
+wands on which the first words of their tasks and the opening lines of
+poems were cut; and it is likely that, being new to these things, they
+would talk of them to a youngster, and, thinking that his wits could be
+no better than their own, they might have explained to him how ogham was
+written. But it is far more likely that his women guardians had already
+started him at those lessons.
+
+Still this band of young bards would have been of infinite interest to
+Fionn, not on account of what they had learned, but because of what they
+knew. All the things that he should have known as by nature: the look,
+the movement, the feeling of crowds; the shouldering and intercourse of
+man with man; the clustering of houses and how people bore themselves
+in and about them; the movement of armed men, and the homecoming look
+of wounds; tales of births, and marriages and deaths; the chase with its
+multitudes of men and dogs; all the noise, the dust, the excitement of
+mere living. These, to Fionn, new come from leaves and shadows and the
+dipple and dapple of a wood, would have seemed wonderful; and the tales
+they would have told of their masters, their looks, fads, severities,
+sillinesses, would have been wonderful also.
+
+That band should have chattered like a rookery.
+
+They must have been young, for one time a Leinsterman came on them, a
+great robber named Fiacuil mac Cona, and he killed the poets. He chopped
+them up and chopped them down. He did not leave one poeteen of them
+all. He put them out of the world and out of life, so that they stopped
+being, and no one could tell where they went or what had really happened
+to them; and it is a wonder indeed that one can do that to anything let
+alone a band. If they were not youngsters, the bold Fiacuil could not
+have managed them all. Or, perhaps, he too had a band, although the
+record does not say so; but kill them he did, and they died that way.
+
+Fionn saw that deed, and his blood may have been cold enough as he
+watched the great robber coursing the poets as a wild dog rages in a
+flock. And when his turn came, when they were all dead, and the grim,
+red-handed man trod at him, Fionn may have shivered, but he would have
+shown his teeth and laid roundly on the monster with his hands. Perhaps
+he did that, and perhaps for that he was spared.
+
+"Who are you?" roared the staring black-mouth with the red tongue
+squirming in it like a frisky fish.
+
+"The son of Uail, son of Baiscne," quoth hardy Fionn. And at that the
+robber ceased to be a robber, the murderer disappeared, the black-rimmed
+chasm packed with red fish and precipices changed to something else, and
+the round eyes that had been popping out of their sockets and trying
+to bite, changed also. There remained a laughing and crying and loving
+servant who wanted to tie himself into knots if that would please the
+son of his great captain. Fionn went home on the robber's shoulder, and
+the robber gave great snorts and made great jumps and behaved like a
+first-rate horse. For this same Fiacuil was the husband of Bovmall,
+Fionn's aunt. He had taken to the wilds when clann-Baiscne was broken,
+and he was at war with a world that had dared to kill his Chief.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A new life for Fionn in the robber's den that was hidden in a vast cold
+marsh.
+
+A tricky place that would be, with sudden exits and even suddener
+entrances, and with damp, winding, spidery places to hoard treasure in,
+or to hide oneself in.
+
+If the robber was a solitary he would, for lack of someone else,
+have talked greatly to Fionn. He would have shown his weapons and
+demonstrated how he used them, and with what slash he chipped his
+victim, and with what slice he chopped him. He would have told why a
+slash was enough for this man and why that man should be sliced. All men
+are masters when one is young, and Fionn would have found knowledge here
+also. He would have seen Fiacuil's great spear that had thirty rivets
+of Arabian gold in its socket, and that had to be kept wrapped up and
+tied down so that it would not kill people out of mere spitefulness. It
+had come from Faery, out of the Shi' of Aillen mac Midna, and it would
+be brought back again later on between the same man's shoulder-blades.
+
+What tales that man could tell a boy, and what questions a boy could ask
+him. He would have known a thousand tricks, and because our instinct is
+to teach, and because no man can keep a trick from a boy, he would show
+them to Fionn.
+
+There was the marsh too; a whole new life to be learned; a complicated,
+mysterious, dank, slippery, reedy, treacherous life, but with its own
+beauty and an allurement that could grow on one, so that you could
+forget the solid world and love only that which quaked and gurgled.
+
+In this place you may swim. By this sign and this you will know if it is
+safe to do so, said Fiacuil mac Cona; but in this place, with this sign
+on it and that, you must not venture a toe.
+
+But where Fionn would venture his toes his ears would follow.
+
+There are coiling weeds down there, the robber counselled him; there are
+thin, tough, snaky binders that will trip you and grip you, that will
+pull you and will not let you go again until you are drowned; until
+you are swaying and swinging away below, with outstretched arms, with
+outstretched legs, with a face all stares and smiles and jockeyings,
+gripped in those leathery arms, until there is no more to be gripped of
+you even by them.
+
+"Watch these and this and that," Fionn would have been told, "and always
+swim with a knife in your teeth."
+
+He lived there until his guardians found out where he was and came after
+him. Fiacuil gave him up to them, and he was brought home again to
+the woods of Slieve Bloom, but he had gathered great knowledge and new
+supplenesses.
+
+The sons of Morna left him alone for a long time. Having made their
+essay they grew careless.
+
+"Let him be," they said. "He will come to us when the time comes."
+
+But it is likely too that they had had their own means of getting
+information about him. How he shaped? what muscles he had? and did
+he spring clean from the mark or had he to get off with a push? Fionn
+stayed with his guardians and hunted for them. He could run a deer down
+and haul it home by the reluctant skull. "Come on, Goll," he would say
+to his stag, or, lifting it over a tussock with a tough grip on the
+snout, "Are you coming, bald Cona'n, or shall I kick you in the neck?"
+
+The time must have been nigh when he would think of taking the world
+itself by the nose, to haul it over tussocks and drag it into his
+pen; for he was of the breed in whom mastery is born, and who are good
+masters.
+
+But reports of his prowess were getting abroad. Clann-Morna began to
+stretch itself uneasily, and, one day, his guardians sent him on his
+travels.
+
+"It is best for you to leave us now," they said to the tall stripling,
+"for the sons of Morna are watching again to kill you."
+
+The woods at that may have seemed haunted. A stone might sling at one
+from a tree-top; but from which tree of a thousand trees did it come? An
+arrow buzzing by one's ear would slide into the ground and quiver there
+silently, menacingly, hinting of the brothers it had left in the quiver
+behind; to the right? to the left? how many brothers? in how many
+quivers...? Fionn was a woodsman, but he had only two eyes to look with,
+one set of feet to carry him in one sole direction. But when he was
+looking to the front what, or how many whats, could be staring at him
+from the back? He might face in this direction, away from, or towards a
+smile on a hidden face and a finger on a string. A lance might slide at
+him from this bush or from the one yonder.. In the night he might have
+fought them; his ears against theirs; his noiseless feet against their
+lurking ones; his knowledge of the wood against their legion: but during
+the day he had no chance.
+
+Fionn went to seek his fortune, to match himself against all that might
+happen, and to carve a name for himself that will live while Time has an
+ear and knows an Irishman.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Fionn went away, and now he was alone. But he was as fitted for
+loneliness as the crane is that haunts the solitudes and bleak wastes
+of the sea; for the man with a thought has a comrade, and Fionn's mind
+worked as featly as his body did. To be alone was no trouble to him who,
+however surrounded, was to be lonely his life long; for this will be
+said of Fionn when all is said, that all that came to him went from him,
+and that happiness was never his companion for more than a moment.
+
+But he was not now looking for loneliness. He was seeking the
+instruction of a crowd, and therefore when he met a crowd he went into
+it. His eyes were skilled to observe in the moving dusk and dapple of
+green woods. They were trained to pick out of shadows birds that were
+themselves dun-coloured shades, and to see among trees the animals that
+are coloured like the bark of trees. The hare crouching in the fronds
+was visible to him, and the fish that swayed in-visibly in the sway and
+flicker of a green bank. He would see all that was to be seen, and he
+would see all that is passed by the eye that is half blind from use and
+wont.
+
+At Moy Life' he came on lads swimming in a pool; and, as he looked
+on them sporting in the flush tide, he thought that the tricks they
+performed were not hard for him, and that he could have shown them new
+ones.
+
+Boys must know what another boy can do, and they will match themselves
+against everything. They did their best under these observing eyes, and
+it was not long until he was invited to compete with them and show his
+mettle. Such an invitation is a challenge; it is almost, among boys, a
+declaration of war. But Fionn was so far beyond them in swimming that
+even the word master did not apply to that superiority.
+
+While he was swimming one remarked: "He is fair and well shaped," and
+thereafter he was called "Fionn" or the Fair One. His name came from
+boys, and will, perhaps, be preserved by them.
+
+He stayed with these lads for some time, and it may be that they
+idolised him at first, for it is the way with boys to be astounded and
+enraptured by feats; but in the end, and that was inevitable, they grew
+jealous of the stranger. Those who had been the champions before he came
+would marshal each other, and, by social pressure, would muster all the
+others against him; so that in the end not a friendly eye was turned on
+Fionn in that assembly. For not only did he beat them at swimming, he
+beat their best at running and jumping, and when the sport degenerated
+into violence, as it was bound to, the roughness of Fionn would be ten
+times as rough as the roughness of the roughest rough they could put
+forward. Bravery is pride when one is young, and Fionn was proud.
+
+There must have been anger in his mind as he went away leaving that lake
+behind him, and those snarling and scowling boys, but there would have
+been disappointment also, for his desire at this time should have been
+towards friendliness.
+
+He went thence to Lock Le'in and took service with the King of
+Finntraigh. That kingdom may have been thus called from Fionn himself
+and would have been known by another name when he arrived there.
+
+He hunted for the King of Finntraigh, and it soon grew evident that
+there was no hunter in his service to equal Fionn. More, there was no
+hunter of them all who even distantly approached him in excellence. The
+others ran after deer, using the speed of their legs, the noses of their
+dogs and a thousand well-worn tricks to bring them within reach, and,
+often enough, the animal escaped them. But the deer that Fionn got the
+track of did not get away, and it seemed even that the animals sought
+him so many did he catch.
+
+The king marvelled at the stories that were told of this new hunter, but
+as kings are greater than other people so they are more curious; and,
+being on the plane of excellence, they must see all that is excellently
+told of.
+
+The king wished to see him, and Fionn must have wondered what the king
+thought as that gracious lord looked on him. Whatever was thought, what
+the king said was as direct in utterance as it was in observation.
+
+"If Uail the son of Baiscne has a son," said the king, "you would surely
+be that son."
+
+We are not told if the King of Finntraigh said anything more, but we
+know that Fionn left his service soon afterwards.
+
+He went southwards and was next in the employment of the King of Kerry,
+the same lord who had married his own mother. In that service he came to
+such consideration that we hear of him as playing a match of chess with
+the king, and by this game we know that he was still a boy in his mind
+however mightily his limbs were spreading. Able as he was in sports and
+huntings, he was yet too young to be politic, but he remained impolitic
+to the end of his days, for whatever he was able to do he would do, no
+matter who was offended thereat; and whatever he was not able to do he
+would do also. That was Fionn.
+
+Once, as they rested on a chase, a debate arose among the Fianna-Finn as
+to what was the finest music in the world.
+
+"Tell us that," said Fionn turning to Oisi'n [pronounced Usheen]
+
+"The cuckoo calling from the tree that is highest in the hedge," cried
+his merry son.
+
+"A good sound," said Fionn. "And you, Oscar," he asked, "what is to your
+mind the finest of music?"
+
+"The top of music is the ring of a spear on a shield," cried the stout
+lad.
+
+"It is a good sound," said Fionn. And the other champions told their
+delight; the belling of a stag across water, the baying of a tuneful
+pack heard in the distance, the song of a lark, the laugh of a gleeful
+girl, or the whisper of a moved one.
+
+"They are good sounds all," said Fionn.
+
+"Tell us, chief," one ventured, "what you think?"
+
+"The music of what happens," said great Fionn, "that is the finest music
+in the world."
+
+He loved "what happened," and would not evade it by the swerve of
+a hair; so on this occasion what was occurring he would have occur,
+although a king was his rival and his master. It may be that his mother
+was watching the match and that he could not but exhibit his skill
+before her. He committed the enormity of winning seven games in
+succession from the king himself!!!
+
+It is seldom indeed that a subject can beat a king at chess, and this
+monarch was properly amazed.
+
+"Who are you at all?" he cried, starting back from the chessboard and
+staring on Fionn.
+
+"I am the son of a countryman of the Luigne of Tara," said Fionn.
+
+He may have blushed as he said it, for the king, possibly for the first
+time, was really looking at him, and was looking back through twenty
+years of time as he did so. The observation of a king is faultless--it
+is proved a thousand times over in the tales, and this king's equipment
+was as royal as the next.
+
+"You are no such son," said the indignant monarch, "but you are the son
+that Muirne my wife bore to Uall mac Balscne."
+
+And at that Fionn had no more to say; but his eyes may have flown to his
+mother and stayed there.
+
+"You cannot remain here," his step-father continued. "I do not want you
+killed under my protection," he explained, or complained.
+
+Perhaps it was on Fionn's account he dreaded the sons of Morna, but no
+one knows what Fionn thought of him for he never thereafter spoke of his
+step-father. As for Muirne she must have loved her lord; or she may have
+been terrified in truth of the sons of Morna and for Fionn; but it is so
+also, that if a woman loves her second husband she can dislike all that
+reminds her of the first one. Fionn went on his travels again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+All desires save one are fleeting, but that one lasts for ever. Fionn,
+with all desires, had the lasting one, for he would go anywhere and
+forsake anything for wisdom; and it was in search of this that he went
+to the place where Finegas lived on a bank of the Boyne Water. But
+for dread of the clann-Morna he did not go as Fionn. He called himself
+Deimne on that journey.
+
+We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered we
+get wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as
+a snail carries its shell. Fionn asked every question he could think of,
+and his master, who was a poet, and so an honourable man, answered them
+all, not to the limit of his patience, for it was limitless, but to the
+limit of his ability.
+
+"Why do you live on the bank of a river?" was one of these questions.
+"Because a poem is a revelation, and it is by the brink of running water
+that poetry is revealed to the mind."
+
+"How long have you been here?" was the next query. "Seven years," the
+poet answered.
+
+"It is a long time," said wondering Fionn.
+
+"I would wait twice as long for a poem," said the inveterate bard.
+
+"Have you caught good poems?" Fionn asked him.
+
+"The poems I am fit for," said the mild master. "No person can get more
+than that, for a man's readiness is his limit."
+
+"Would you have got as good poems by the Shannon or the Suir or by sweet
+Ana Life'?"
+
+"They are good rivers," was the answer. "They all belong to good gods."
+
+"But why did you choose this river out of all the rivers?"
+
+Finegas beamed on his pupil.
+
+"I would tell you anything," said he, "and I will tell you that."
+
+Fionn sat at the kindly man's feet, his hands absent among tall grasses,
+and listening with all his ears. "A prophecy was made to me," Finegas
+began. "A man of knowledge foretold that I should catch the Salmon of
+Knowledge in the Boyne Water."
+
+"And then?" said Fionn eagerly.
+
+"Then I would have All Knowledge."
+
+"And after that?" the boy insisted.
+
+"What should there be after that?" the poet retorted.
+
+"I mean, what would you do with All Knowledge?"
+
+"A weighty question," said Finegas smilingly. "I could answer it if I
+had All Knowledge, but not until then. What would you do, my dear?"
+
+"I would make a poem," Fionn cried.
+
+"I think too," said the poet, "that that is what would be done."
+
+In return for instruction Fionn had taken over the service of his
+master's hut, and as he went about the household duties, drawing the
+water, lighting the fire, and carrying rushes for the floor and the
+beds, he thought over all the poet had taught him, and his mind dwelt on
+the rules of metre, the cunningness of words, and the need for a clean,
+brave mind. But in his thousand thoughts he yet remembered the Salmon of
+Knowledge as eagerly as his master did. He already venerated Finegas
+for his great learning, his poetic skill, for an hundred reasons; but,
+looking on him as the ordained eater of the Salmon of Knowledge, he
+venerated him to the edge of measure. Indeed, he loved as well as
+venerated this master because of his unfailing kindness, his patience,
+his readiness to teach, and his skill in teaching.
+
+"I have learned much from you, dear master," said Fionn gratefully.
+
+"All that I have is yours if you can take it," the poet answered, "for
+you are entitled to all that you can take, but to no more than that.
+Take, so, with both hands."
+
+"You may catch the salmon while I am with you," the hopeful boy mused.
+"Would not that be a great happening!" and he stared in ecstasy across
+the grass at those visions which a boy's mind knows.
+
+"Let us pray for that," said Finegas fervently.
+
+"Here is a question," Fionn continued. "How does this salmon get wisdom
+into his flesh?"
+
+"There is a hazel bush overhanging a secret pool in a secret place. The
+Nuts of Knowledge drop from the Sacred Bush into the pool, and as they
+float, a salmon takes them in his mouth and eats them."
+
+"It would be almost as easy," the boy submitted, "if one were to set on
+the track of the Sacred Hazel and eat the nuts straight from the bush."
+
+"That would not be very easy," said the poet, "and yet it is not as easy
+as that, for the bush can only be found by its own knowledge, and that
+knowledge can only be got by eating the nuts, and the nuts can only be
+got by eating the salmon."
+
+"We must wait for the salmon," said Fionn in a rage of resignation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Life continued for him in a round of timeless time, wherein days and
+nights were uneventful and were yet filled with interest. As the day
+packed its load of strength into his frame, so it added its store of
+knowledge to his mind, and each night sealed the twain, for it is in the
+night that we make secure what we have gathered in the day.
+
+If he had told of these days he would have told of a succession of meals
+and sleeps, and of an endless conversation, from which his mind would
+now and again slip away to a solitude of its own, where, in large hazy
+atmospheres, it swung and drifted and reposed. Then he would be back
+again, and it was a pleasure for him to catch up on the thought that was
+forward and re-create for it all the matter he had missed. But he could
+not often make these sleepy sallies; his master was too experienced a
+teacher to allow any such bright-faced, eager-eyed abstractions, and as
+the druid women had switched his legs around a tree, so Finegas chased
+his mind, demanding sense in his questions and understanding in his
+replies.
+
+To ask questions can become the laziest and wobbliest occupation of a
+mind, but when you must yourself answer the problem that you have posed,
+you will meditate your question with care and frame it with precision.
+Fionn's mind learned to jump in a bumpier field than that in which he
+had chased rabbits. And when he had asked his question, and given his
+own answer to it, Finegas would take the matter up and make clear to him
+where the query was badly formed or at what point the answer had begun
+to go astray, so that Fionn came to understand by what successions a
+good question grows at last to a good answer.
+
+One day, not long after the conversation told of, Finegas came to the
+place where Fionn was. The poet had a shallow osier basket on his arm,
+and on his face there was a look that was at once triumphant and gloomy.
+He was excited certainly, but he was sad also, and as he stood gazing on
+Fionn his eyes were so kind that the boy was touched, and they were yet
+so melancholy that it almost made Fionn weep. "What is it, my master?"
+said the alarmed boy.
+
+The poet placed his osier basket on the grass.
+
+"Look in the basket, dear son," he said. Fionn looked.
+
+"There is a salmon in the basket."
+
+"It is The Salmon," said Finegas with a great sigh. Fionn leaped for
+delight.
+
+"I am glad for you, master," he cried. "Indeed I am glad for you."
+
+"And I am glad, my dear soul," the master rejoined.
+
+But, having said it, he bent his brow to his hand and for a long time he
+was silent and gathered into himself.
+
+"What should be done now?" Fionn demanded, as he stared on the beautiful
+fish.
+
+Finegas rose from where he sat by the osier basket.
+
+"I will be back in a short time," he said heavily. "While I am away you
+may roast the salmon, so that it will be ready against my return."
+
+"I will roast it indeed," said Fionn.
+
+The poet gazed long and earnestly on him.
+
+"You will not eat any of my salmon while I am away?" he asked.
+
+"I will not eat the littlest piece," said Fionn.
+
+"I am sure you will not," the other murmured, as he turned and walked
+slowly across the grass and behind the sheltering bushes on the ridge.
+
+Fionn cooked the salmon. It was beautiful and tempting and savoury as
+it smoked on a wooden platter among cool green leaves; and it looked all
+these to Finegas when he came from behind the fringing bushes and sat
+in the grass outside his door. He gazed on the fish with more than his
+eyes. He looked on it with his heart, with his soul in his eyes, and
+when he turned to look on Fionn the boy did not know whether the love
+that was in his eyes was for the fish or for himself. Yet he did know
+that a great moment had arrived for the poet.
+
+"So," said Finegas, "you did not eat it on me after all?" "Did I not
+promise?" Fionn replied.
+
+"And yet," his master continued, "I went away so that you might eat the
+fish if you felt you had to."
+
+"Why should I want another man's fish?" said proud Fionn.
+
+"Because young people have strong desires. I thought you might have
+tasted it, and then you would have eaten it on me."
+
+"I did taste it by chance," Fionn laughed, "for while the fish was
+roasting a great blister rose on its skin. I did not like the look of
+that blister, and I pressed it down with my thumb. That burned my thumb,
+so I popped it in my mouth to heal the smart. If your salmon tastes as
+nice as my thumb did," he laughed, "it will taste very nice."
+
+"What did you say your name was, dear heart?" the poet asked.
+
+"I said my name was Deimne."
+
+"Your name is not Deimne," said the mild man, "your name is Fionn."
+
+"That is true," the boy answered, "but I do not know how you know it."
+
+"Even if I have not eaten the Salmon of Knowledge I have some small
+science of my own."
+
+"It is very clever to know things as you know them," Fionn replied
+wonderingly. "What more do you know of me, dear master?"
+
+"I know that I did not tell you the truth," said the heavy-hearted man.
+
+"What did you tell me instead of it?"
+
+"I told you a lie."
+
+"It is not a good thing to do," Fionn admitted. "What sort of a lie was
+the lie, master?" "I told you that the Salmon of Knowledge was to be
+caught by me, according to the prophecy."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That was true indeed, and I have caught the fish. But I did not tell
+you that the salmon was not to be eaten by me, although that also was in
+the prophecy, and that omission was the lie."
+
+"It is not a great lie," said Fionn soothingly.
+
+"It must not become a greater one," the poet replied sternly.
+
+"Who was the fish given to?" his companion wondered.
+
+"It was given to you," Finegas answered. "It was given to Fionn, the son
+of Uail, the son of Baiscne, and it will be given to him."
+
+"You shall have a half of the fish," cried Fionn.
+
+"I will not eat a piece of its skin that is as small as the point of its
+smallest bone," said the resolute and trembling bard. "Let you now eat
+up the fish, and I shall watch you and give praise to the gods of the
+Underworld and of the Elements."
+
+Fionn then ate the Salmon of Knowledge, and when it had disappeared a
+great jollity and tranquillity and exuberance returned to the poet.
+
+"Ah," said he, "I had a great combat with that fish."
+
+"Did it fight for its life?" Fionn inquired.
+
+"It did, but that was not the fight I meant."
+
+"You shall eat a Salmon of Knowledge too," Fionn assured him.
+
+"You have eaten one," cried the blithe poet, "and if you make such a
+promise it will be because you know."
+
+"I promise it and know it," said Fionn, "you shall eat a Salmon of
+Knowledge yet."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+He had received all that he could get from Finegas. His education was
+finished and the time had come to test it, and to try all else that he
+had of mind and body. He bade farewell to the gentle poet, and set out
+for Tara of the Kings.
+
+It was Samhain-tide, and the feast of Tara was being held, at which all
+that was wise or skilful or well-born in Ireland were gathered together.
+
+This is how Tara was when Tara was. There was the High King's palace
+with its fortification; without it was another fortification enclosing
+the four minor palaces, each of which was maintained by one of the four
+provincial kings; without that again was the great banqueting hall, and
+around it and enclosing all of the sacred hill in its gigantic bound ran
+the main outer ramparts of Tara. From it, the centre of Ireland, four
+great roads went, north, south, east, and west, and along these roads,
+from the top and the bottom and the two sides of Ireland, there moved
+for weeks before Samhain an endless stream of passengers.
+
+Here a gay band went carrying rich treasure to decorate the pavilion of
+a Munster lord. On another road a vat of seasoned yew, monstrous as a
+house on wheels and drawn by an hundred laborious oxen, came bumping and
+joggling the ale that thirsty Connaught princes would drink. On a road
+again the learned men of Leinster, each with an idea in his head that
+would discomfit a northern ollav and make a southern one gape and
+fidget, would be marching solemnly, each by a horse that was piled high
+on the back and widely at the sides with clean-peeled willow or oaken
+wands, that were carved from the top to the bottom with the ogham signs;
+the first lines of poems (for it was an offence against wisdom to commit
+more than initial lines to writing), the names and dates of kings, the
+procession of laws of Tara and of the sub-kingdoms, the names of places
+and their meanings. On the brown stallion ambling peacefully yonder
+there might go the warring of the gods for two or ten thousand years;
+this mare with the dainty pace and the vicious eye might be sidling
+under a load of oaken odes in honour of her owner's family, with a
+few bundles of tales of wonder added in case they might be useful; and
+perhaps the restive piebald was backing the history of Ireland into a
+ditch.
+
+On such a journey all people spoke together, for all were friends, and
+no person regarded the weapon in another man's hand other than as an
+implement to poke a reluctant cow with, or to pacify with loud wallops
+some hoof-proud colt.
+
+Into this teem and profusion of jolly humanity Fionn slipped, and if his
+mood had been as bellicose as a wounded boar he would yet have found
+no man to quarrel with, and if his eye had been as sharp as a jealous
+husband's he would have found no eye to meet it with calculation or
+menace or fear; for the Peace of Ireland was in being, and for six weeks
+man was neighbour to man, and the nation was the guest of the High King.
+Fionn went in with the notables.
+
+His arrival had been timed for the opening day and the great feast of
+welcome. He may have marvelled, looking on the bright city, with its
+pillars of gleaming bronze and the roofs that were painted in many
+colours, so that each house seemed to be covered by the spreading wings
+of some gigantic and gorgeous bird. And the palaces themselves, mellow
+with red oak, polished within and without by the wear and the care of
+a thousand years, and carved with the patient skill of unending
+generations of the most famous artists of the most artistic country of
+the western world, would have given him much to marvel at also. It
+must have seemed like a city of dream, a city to catch the heart, when,
+coming over the great plain, Fionn saw Tara of the Kings held on its
+hill as in a hand to gather all the gold of the falling sun, and to
+restore a brightness as mellow and tender as that universal largess.
+
+In the great banqueting hall everything was in order for the feast. The
+nobles of Ireland with their winsome consorts, the learned and artistic
+professions represented by the pick of their time were in place. The
+Ard-Ri, Corm of the Hundred Battles, had taken his place on the raised
+dais which commanded the whole of that vast hall. At his Right hand his
+son Art, to be afterwards as famous as his famous father, took his seat,
+and on his left Goll mor mac Morna, chief of the Fianna of Ireland, had
+the seat of honour. As the High King took his place he could see every
+person who was noted in the land for any reason. He would know every one
+who was present, for the fame of all men is sealed at Tara, and behind
+his chair a herald stood to tell anything the king might not know or had
+forgotten.
+
+Conn gave the signal and his guests seated themselves.
+
+The time had come for the squires to take their stations behind their
+masters and mistresses. But, for the moment, the great room was seated,
+and the doors were held to allow a moment of respect to pass before the
+servers and squires came in.
+
+Looking over his guests, Conn observed that a young man was yet
+standing.
+
+"There is a gentleman," he murmured, "for whom no seat has been found."
+
+We may be sure that the Master of the Banquet blushed at that.
+
+"And," the king continued, "I do not seem to know the young man."
+
+Nor did his herald, nor did the unfortunate Master, nor did anybody; for
+the eyes of all were now turned where the king's went.
+
+"Give me my horn," said the gracious monarch.
+
+The horn of state was put to his hand.
+
+"Young gentleman," he called to the stranger, "I wish to drink to your
+health and to welcome you to Tara."
+
+The young man came forward then, greater-shouldered than any mighty
+man of that gathering, longer and cleaner limbed, with his fair curls
+dancing about his beardless face. The king put the great horn into his
+hand.
+
+"Tell me your name," he commanded gently.
+
+"I am Fionn, the son of Uail, the son of Baiscne," said the youth.
+
+And at that saying a touch as of lightning went through the gathering
+so that each person quivered, and the son of the great, murdered captain
+looked by the king's shoulder into the twinkling eye of Goll. But no
+word was uttered, no movement made except the movement and the utterance
+of the Ard-Ri'.
+
+"You are the son of a friend," said the great-hearted monarch. "You
+shall have the seat of a friend."
+
+He placed Fionn at the right hand of his own son Art.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+It is to be known that on the night of the Feast of Samhain the doors
+separating this world and the next one are opened, and the inhabitants
+of either world can leave their respective spheres and appear in the
+world of the other beings.
+
+Now there was a grandson to the Dagda Mor, the Lord of the Underworld,
+and he was named Aillen mac Midna, out of Shi' Finnachy, and this Aillen
+bore an implacable enmity to Tara and the Ard-Ri'.
+
+As well as being monarch of Ireland her High King was chief of the
+people learned in magic, and it is possible that at some time Conn had
+adventured into Tir na n-Og, the Land of the Young, and had done some
+deed or misdeed in Aillen's lordship or in his family. It must have been
+an ill deed in truth, for it was in a very rage of revenge that Aillen
+came yearly at the permitted time to ravage Tara.
+
+Nine times he had come on this mission of revenge, but it is not to be
+supposed that he could actually destroy the holy city: the Ard-Ri'
+and magicians could prevent that, but he could yet do a damage so
+considerable that it was worth Conn's while to take special extra
+precautions against him, including the precaution of chance.
+
+Therefore, when the feast was over and the banquet had commenced, the
+Hundred Fighter stood from his throne and looked over his assembled
+people.
+
+The Chain of Silence was shaken by the attendant whose duty and honour
+was the Silver Chain, and at that delicate chime the halt went silent,
+and a general wonder ensued as to what matter the High King would submit
+to his people.
+
+"Friends and heroes," said Conn, "Aillen, the son of Midna, will come
+to-night from Slieve Fuaid with occult, terrible fire against our
+city. Is there among you one who loves Tara and the king, and who will
+undertake our defence against that being?"
+
+He spoke in silence, and when he had finished he listened to the same
+silence, but it was now deep, ominous, agonized. Each man glanced
+uneasily on his neighbour and then stared at his wine-cup or his
+fingers. The hearts of young men went hot for a gallant moment and were
+chilled in the succeeding one, for they had all heard of Aillen out of
+Shl Finnachy in the north. The lesser gentlemen looked under their brows
+at the greater champions, and these peered furtively at the greatest of
+all. Art og mac Morna of the Hard Strokes fell to biting his fingers,
+Cona'n the Swearer and Garra mac Morna grumbled irritably to each other
+and at their neighbours, even Caelte, the son of Rona'n, looked down
+into his own lap, and Goll Mor sipped at his wine without any twinkle
+in his eye. A horrid embarrassment came into the great hall, and as the
+High King stood in that palpitating silence his noble face changed
+from kindly to grave and from that to a terrible sternness. In another
+moment, to the undying shame of every person present, he would have been
+compelled to lift his own challenge and declare himself the champion of
+Tara for that night, but the shame that was on the faces of his people
+would remain in the heart of their king. Goll's merry mind would help
+him to forget, but even his heart would be wrung by a memory that he
+would not dare to face. It was at that terrible moment that Fionn stood
+up.
+
+"What," said he, "will be given to the man who undertakes this defence?"
+
+"All that can be rightly asked will be royally bestowed," was the king's
+answer.
+
+"Who are the sureties?" said Fionn.
+
+"The kings of Ireland, and Red Cith with his magicians."
+
+"I will undertake the defence," said Fionn. And on that, the kings and
+magicians who were present bound themselves to the fulfilment of the
+bargain.
+
+Fionn marched from the banqueting hall, and as he went, all who were
+present of nobles and retainers and servants acclaimed him and wished
+him luck. But in their hearts they were bidding him good-bye, for all
+were assured that the lad was marching to a death so unescapeable that
+he might already be counted as a dead man.
+
+It is likely that Fionn looked for help to the people of the Shi'
+themselves, for, through his mother, he belonged to the tribes of Dana,
+although, on the father's side, his blood was well compounded with
+mortal clay. It may be, too, that he knew how events would turn, for he
+had eaten the Salmon of Knowledge. Yet it is not recorded that on this
+occasion he invoked any magical art as he did on other adventures.
+
+Fionn's way of discovering whatever was happening and hidden was always
+the same and is many times referred to. A shallow, oblong dish of pure,
+pale gold was brought to him. This dish was filled with clear water.
+Then Fionn would bend his head and stare into the water, and as he
+stared he would place his thumb in his mouth under his "Tooth of
+Knowledge," his "wisdom tooth."
+
+Knowledge, may it be said, is higher than magic and is more to be
+sought. It is quite possible to see what is happening and yet not know
+what is forward, for while seeing is believing it does not follow that
+either seeing or believing is knowing. Many a person can see a thing and
+believe a thing and know just as little about it as the person who does
+neither. But Fionn would see and know, or he would under-stand a decent
+ratio of his visions. That he was versed in magic is true, for he was
+ever known as the Knowledgeable man, and later he had two magicians
+in his household named Dirim and mac-Reith to do the rough work of
+knowledge for their busy master.
+
+It was not from the Shi', however, that assistance came to Fionn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+He marched through the successive fortifications until he came to the
+outer, great wall, the boundary of the city, and when he had passed this
+he was on the wide plain of Tara.
+
+Other than himself no person was abroad, for on the night of the Feast
+of Samhain none but a madman would quit the shelter of a house even if
+it were on fire; for whatever disasters might be within a house would be
+as nothing to the calamities without it.
+
+The noise of the banquet was not now audible to Fionn--it is possible,
+however, that there was a shamefaced silence in the great hall--and the
+lights of the city were hidden by the successive great ramparts. The sky
+was over him; the earth under him; and than these there was nothing, or
+there was but the darkness and the wind.
+
+But darkness was not a thing to terrify him, bred in the nightness of
+a wood and the very fosterling of gloom; nor could the wind afflict his
+ear or his heart. There was no note in its orchestra that he had not
+brooded on and become, which becoming is magic. The long-drawn moan of
+it; the thrilling whisper and hush; the shrill, sweet whistle, so thin
+it can scarcely be heard, and is taken more by the nerves than by the
+ear; the screech, sudden as a devil's yell and loud as ten thunders; the
+cry as of one who flies with backward look to the shelter of leaves and
+darkness; and the sob as of one stricken with an age-long misery, only
+at times remembered, but remembered then with what a pang! His ear
+knew by what successions they arrived, and by what stages they grew and
+diminished. Listening in the dark to the bundle of noises which make a
+noise he could disentangle them and assign a place and a reason to each
+gradation of sound that formed the chorus: there was the patter of a
+rabbit, and there the scurrying of a hare; a bush rustled yonder,
+but that brief rustle was a bird; that pressure was a wolf, and this
+hesitation a fox; the scraping yonder was but a rough leaf against bark,
+and the scratching beyond it was a ferret's claw.
+
+Fear cannot be where knowledge is, and Fionn was not fearful.
+
+His mind, quietly busy on all sides, picked up one sound and dwelt on
+it. "A man," said Fionn, and he listened in that direction, back towards
+the city.
+
+A man it was, almost as skilled in darkness as Fionn himself "This is no
+enemy," Fionn thought; "his walking is open."
+
+"Who comes?" he called.
+
+"A friend," said the newcomer.
+
+"Give a friend's name," said Fionn.
+
+"Fiacuil mac Cona," was the answer.
+
+"Ah, my pulse and heart!" cried Fionn, and he strode a few paces to meet
+the great robber who had fostered him among the marshes.
+
+"So you are not afraid," he said joyfully.
+
+"I am afraid in good truth," Fiacuil whispered, "and the minute my
+business with you is finished I will trot back as quick as legs will
+carry me. May the gods protect my going as they protected my coming,"
+said the robber piously.
+
+"Amen," said Fionn, "and now, tell me what you have come for?"
+
+"Have you any plan against this lord of the Shl?" Fiacuil whispered.
+
+"I will attack him," said Fionn.
+
+"That is not a plan," the other groaned, "we do not plan to deliver an
+attack but to win a victory."
+
+"Is this a very terrible person?" Fionn asked.
+
+"Terrible indeed. No one can get near him or away from him. He comes out
+of the Shi' playing sweet, low music on a timpan and a pipe, and all who
+hear this music fall asleep."
+
+"I will not fall asleep," said Fionn.
+
+"You will indeed, for everybody does."
+
+"What happens then?" Fionn asked.
+
+"When all are asleep Aillen mac Midna blows a dart of fire out of his
+mouth, and everything that is touched by that fire is destroyed, and he
+can blow his fire to an incredible distance and to any direction."
+
+"You are very brave to come to help me," Fionn murmured, "especially
+when you are not able to help me at all."
+
+"I can help," Fiacuil replied, "but I must be paid."
+
+"What payment?"
+
+"A third of all you earn and a seat at your council."
+
+"I grant that," said Fionn, "and now, tell me your plan?"
+
+"You remember my spear with the thirty rivets of Arabian gold in its
+socket?"
+
+"The one," Fionn queried, "that had its head wrapped in a blanket and
+was stuck in a bucket of water and was chained to a wall as well--the
+venomous Birgha?" "That one," Fiacuil replied.
+
+"It is Aillen mac Midna's own spear," he continued, "and it was taken
+out of his Shi' by your father."
+
+"Well?" said Fionn, wondering nevertheless where Fiacuil got the spear,
+but too generous to ask.
+
+"When you hear the great man of the Shi' coming, take the wrappings off
+the head of the spear and bend your face over it; the heat of the spear,
+the stench of it, all its pernicious and acrid qualities will prevent
+you from going to sleep."
+
+"Are you sure of that?" said Fionn.
+
+"You couldn't go to sleep close to that stench; nobody could," Fiacuil
+replied decidedly.
+
+He continued: "Aillen mac Midna will be off his guard when he stops
+playing and begins to blow his fire; he will think everybody is asleep;
+then you can deliver the attack you were speaking of, and all good luck
+go with it."
+
+"I will give him back his spear," said Fionn.
+
+"Here it is," said Fiacuil, taking the Birgha from under his cloak. "But
+be as careful of it, my pulse, be as frightened of it as you are of the
+man of Dana."
+
+"I will be frightened of nothing," said Fionn, "and the only person I
+will be sorry for is that Aillen mac Midna, who is going to get his own
+spear back."
+
+"I will go away now," his companion whispered, "for it is growing darker
+where you would have thought there was no more room for darkness, and
+there is an eerie feeling abroad which I do not like. That man from the
+Shi' may come any minute, and if I catch one sound of his music I am
+done for."
+
+The robber went away and again Fionn was alone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+He listened to the retreating footsteps until they could be heard no
+more, and the one sound that came to his tense ears was the beating of
+his own heart.
+
+Even the wind had ceased, and there seemed to be nothing in the world
+but the darkness and himself. In that gigantic blackness, in that unseen
+quietude and vacancy, the mind could cease to be personal to itself. It
+could be overwhelmed and merged in space, so that consciousness would
+be transferred or dissipated, and one might sleep standing; for the mind
+fears loneliness more than all else, and will escape to the moon rather
+than be driven inwards on its own being.
+
+But Fionn was not lonely, and he was not afraid when the son of Midna
+came.
+
+A long stretch of the silent night had gone by, minute following minute
+in a slow sequence, wherein as there was no change there was no time;
+wherein there was no past and no future, but a stupefying, endless
+present which is almost the annihilation of consciousness. A change
+came then, for the clouds had also been moving and the moon at last was
+sensed behind them--not as a radiance, but as a percolation of light,
+a gleam that was strained through matter after matter and was less than
+the very wraith or remembrance of itself; a thing seen so narrowly,
+so sparsely, that the eye could doubt if it was or was not seeing, and
+might conceive that its own memory was re-creating that which was still
+absent.
+
+But Fionn's eye was the eye of a wild creature that spies on darkness
+and moves there wittingly. He saw, then, not a thing but a movement;
+something that was darker than the darkness it loomed on; not a being
+but a presence, and, as it were, impending pressure. And in a little he
+heard the deliberate pace of that great being.
+
+Fionn bent to his spear and unloosed its coverings.
+
+Then from the darkness there came another sound; a low, sweet sound;
+thrillingly joyous, thrillingly low; so low the ear could scarcely note
+it, so sweet the ear wished to catch nothing else and would strive to
+hear it rather than all sounds that may be heard by man: the music of
+another world! the unearthly, dear melody of the Shi'! So sweet it was
+that the sense strained to it, and having reached must follow drowsily
+in its wake, and would merge in it, and could not return again to its
+own place until that strange harmony was finished and the ear restored
+to freedom.
+
+But Fionn had taken the covering from his spear, and with his brow
+pressed close to it he kept his mind and all his senses engaged on that
+sizzling, murderous point.
+
+The music ceased and Aillen hissed a fierce blue flame from his mouth,
+and it was as though he hissed lightning.
+
+Here it would seem that Fionn used magic, for spreading out his fringed
+mantle he caught the flame. Rather he stopped it, for it slid from the
+mantle and sped down into the earth to the depth of twenty-six spans;
+from which that slope is still called the Glen of the Mantle, and the
+rise on which Aillen stood is known as the Ard of Fire.
+
+One can imagine the surprise of Aillen mac Midna, seeing his fire caught
+and quenched by an invisible hand. And one can imagine that at this
+check he might be frightened, for who would be more terrified than a
+magician who sees his magic fail, and who, knowing of power, will guess
+at powers of which he has no conception and may well dread.
+
+Everything had been done by him as it should be done. His pipe had been
+played and his timpan, all who heard that music should be asleep, and
+yet his fire was caught in full course and was quenched.
+
+Aillen, with all the terrific strength of which he was master, blew
+again, and the great jet of blue flame came roaring and whistling from
+him and was caught and disappeared.
+
+Panic swirled into the man from Faery; he turned from that terrible spot
+and fled, not knowing what might be behind, but dreading it as he
+had never before dreaded anything, and the unknown pursued him; that
+terrible defence became offence and hung to his heel as a wolf pads by
+the flank of a bull.
+
+And Aillen was not in his own world! He was in the world of men, where
+movement is not easy and the very air a burden. In his own sphere, in
+his own element, he might have outrun Fionn, but this was Fionn's world,
+Fionn's element, and the flying god was not gross enough to outstrip
+him. Yet what a race he gave, for it was but at the entrance to his
+own Shi' that the pursuer got close enough. Fionn put a finger into
+the thong of the great spear, and at that cast night fell on Aillen
+mac Midna. His eyes went black, his mind whirled and ceased, there
+came nothingness where he had been, and as the Birgha whistled into his
+shoulder-blades he withered away, he tumbled emptily and was dead. Fionn
+took his lovely head from its shoulders and went back through the night
+to Tara.
+
+Triumphant Fionn, who had dealt death to a god, and to whom death would
+be dealt, and who is now dead!
+
+He reached the palace at sunrise.
+
+On that morning all were astir early. They wished to see what
+destruction had been wrought by the great being, but it was young Fionn
+they saw and that redoubtable head swinging by its hair. "What is your
+demand?" said the Ard-Ri'. "The thing that it is right I should ask,"
+said Fionn: "the command of the Fianna of Ireland."
+
+"Make your choice," said Conn to Goll Mor; "you will leave Ireland, or
+you will place your hand in the hand of this champion and be his man."
+
+Goll could do a thing that would be hard for another person, and he
+could do it so beautifully that he was not diminished by any action.
+
+"Here is my hand," said Goll.
+
+And he twinkled at the stern, young eyes that gazed on him as he made
+his submission.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRTH OF BRAN
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+There are people who do not like dogs a bit--they are usually women--but
+in this story there is a man who did not like dogs. In fact, he hated
+them. When he saw one he used to go black in the face, and he threw
+rocks at it until it got out of sight. But the Power that protects all
+creatures had put a squint into this man's eye, so that he always threw
+crooked.
+
+This gentleman's name was Fergus Fionnliath, and his stronghold was near
+the harbour of Galway. Whenever a dog barked he would leap out of his
+seat, and he would throw everything that he owned out of the window in
+the direction of the bark. He gave prizes to servants who disliked dogs,
+and when he heard that a man had drowned a litter of pups he used to
+visit that person and try to marry his daughter.
+
+Now Fionn, the son of Uail, was the reverse of Fergus Fionnliath in this
+matter, for he delighted in dogs, and he knew everything about them from
+the setting of the first little white tooth to the rocking of the last
+long yellow one. He knew the affections and antipathies which are proper
+in a dog; the degree of obedience to which dogs may be trained without
+losing their honourable qualities or becoming servile and suspicious;
+he knew the hopes that animate them, the apprehensions which tingle in
+their blood, and all that is to be demanded from, or forgiven in, a
+paw, an ear, a nose, an eye, or a tooth; and he understood these things
+because he loved dogs, for it is by love alone that we understand
+anything.
+
+Among the three hundred dogs which Fionn owned there were two to whom
+he gave an especial tenderness, and who were his daily and nightly
+companions. These two were Bran and Sceo'lan, but if a person were to
+guess for twenty years he would not find out why Fionn loved these two
+dogs and why he would never be separated from them.
+
+Fionn's mother, Muirne, went to wide Allen of Leinster to visit her son,
+and she brought her young sister Tuiren with her. The mother and aunt
+of the great captain were well treated among the Fianna, first, because
+they were parents to Fionn, and second, because they were beautiful and
+noble women.
+
+No words can describe how delightful Muirne was--she took the branch;
+and as to Tuiren, a man could not look at her without becoming angry
+or dejected. Her face was fresh as a spring morning; her voice more
+cheerful than the cuckoo calling from the branch that is highest in the
+hedge; and her form swayed like a reed and flowed like a river, so that
+each person thought she would surely flow to him.
+
+Men who had wives of their own grew moody and downcast because they
+could not hope to marry her, while the bachelors of the Fianna stared at
+each other with truculent, bloodshot eyes, and then they gazed on Tuiren
+so gently that she may have imagined she was being beamed on by the mild
+eyes of the dawn.
+
+It was to an Ulster gentleman, Iollan Eachtach, that she gave her love,
+and this chief stated his rights and qualities and asked for her in
+marriage.
+
+Now Fionn did not dislike the man of Ulster, but either he did not
+know them well or else he knew them too well, for he made a curious
+stipulation before consenting to the marriage. He bound Iollan to return
+the lady if there should be occasion to think her unhappy, and Iollan
+agreed to do so. The sureties to this bargain were Caelte mac Ronan,
+Goll mac Morna, and Lugaidh. Lugaidh himself gave the bride away, but
+it was not a pleasant ceremony for him, because he also was in love with
+the lady, and he would have preferred keeping her to giving her away.
+When she had gone he made a poem about her, beginning:
+
+       "There is no more light in the sky--"
+
+And hundreds of sad people learned the poem by heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+When Iollan and Tuiren were married they went to Ulster, and they lived
+together very happily. But the law of life is change; nothing
+continues in the same way for any length of time; happiness must become
+unhappiness, and will be succeeded again by the joy it had displaced.
+The past also must be reckoned with; it is seldom as far behind us as we
+could wish: it is more often in front, blocking the way, and the future
+trips over it just when we think that the road is clear and joy our own.
+
+Iollan had a past. He was not ashamed of it; he merely thought it
+was finished, although in truth it was only beginning, for it is that
+perpetual beginning of the past that we call the future.
+
+Before he joined the Fianna he had been in love with a lady of the Shi',
+named Uct Dealv (Fair Breast), and they had been sweethearts for years.
+How often he had visited his sweetheart in Faery! With what eagerness
+and anticipation he had gone there; the lover's whistle that he used to
+give was known to every person in that Shi', and he had been discussed
+by more than one of the delicate sweet ladies of Faery. "That is your
+whistle, Fair Breast," her sister of the Shi' would say.
+
+And Uct Dealv would reply: "Yes, that is my mortal, my lover, my pulse,
+and my one treasure."
+
+She laid her spinning aside, or her embroidery if she was at that, or if
+she were baking a cake of fine wheaten bread mixed with honey she would
+leave the cake to bake itself and fly to Iollan. Then they went hand in
+hand in the country that smells of apple-blossom and honey, looking on
+heavy-boughed trees and on dancing and beaming clouds. Or they stood
+dreaming together, locked in a clasping of arms and eyes, gazing up
+and down on each other, Iollan staring down into sweet grey wells that
+peeped and flickered under thin brows, and Uct Dealv looking up into
+great black ones that went dreamy and went hot in endless alternation.
+
+Then Iollan would go back to the world of men, and Uct Dealv would
+return to her occupations in the Land of the Ever Young.
+
+"What did he say?" her sister of the Shi' would ask.
+
+"He said I was the Berry of the Mountain, the Star of Knowledge, and the
+Blossom of the Raspberry."
+
+"They always say the same thing," her sister pouted.
+
+"But they look other things," Uct Dealv insisted. "They feel other
+things," she murmured; and an endless conversation recommenced.
+
+Then for some time Iollan did not come to Faery, and Uct Dealv marvelled
+at that, while her sister made an hundred surmises, each one worse than
+the last.
+
+"He is not dead or he would be here," she said. "He has forgotten you,
+my darling."
+
+News was brought to Tlr na n-Og of the marriage of Iollan and Tuiren,
+and when Uct Dealv heard that news her heart ceased to beat for a
+moment, and she closed her eyes.
+
+"Now!" said her sister of the Shi'. "That is how long the love of a
+mortal lasts," she added, in the voice of sad triumph which is proper to
+sisters.
+
+But on Uct Dealv there came a rage of jealousy and despair such as no
+person in the Shi' had ever heard of, and from that moment she
+became capable of every ill deed; for there are two things not easily
+controlled, and they are hunger and jealousy. She determined that the
+woman who had supplanted her in Iollan's affections should rue the day
+she did it. She pondered and brooded revenge in her heart, sitting in
+thoughtful solitude and bitter collectedness until at last she had a
+plan.
+
+She understood the arts of magic and shape-changing, so she changed
+her shape into that of Fionn's female runner, the best-known woman in
+Ireland; then she set out from Faery and appeared in the world. She
+travelled in the direction of Iollan's stronghold.
+
+Iollan knew the appearance of Fionn's messenger, but he was surprised to
+see her.
+
+She saluted him.
+
+"Health and long life, my master.".
+
+"Health and good days," he replied. "What brings you here, dear heart?"
+
+"I come from Fionn."
+
+"And your message?" said he.
+
+"The royal captain intends to visit you."
+
+"He will be welcome," said Iollan. "We shall give him an Ulster feast."
+
+"The world knows what that is," said the messenger courteously. "And
+now," she continued, "I have messages for your queen."
+
+Tuiren then walked from the house with the messenger, but when they had
+gone a short distance Uct Dealv drew a hazel rod from beneath her cloak
+and struck it on the queen's shoulder, and on the instant Tuiren's
+figure trembled and quivered, and it began to whirl inwards and
+downwards, and she changed into the appearance of a hound.
+
+It was sad to see the beautiful, slender dog standing shivering and
+astonished, and sad to see the lovely eyes that looked out pitifully
+in terror and amazement. But Uct Dealv did not feel sad. She clasped
+a chain about the hound's neck, and they set off westward towards the
+house of Fergus Fionnliath, who was reputed to be the unfriendliest man
+in the world to a dog. It was because of his reputation that Uct Dealv
+was bringing the hound to him. She did not want a good home for this
+dog: she wanted the worst home that could be found in the world, and she
+thought that Fergus would revenge for her the rage and jealousy which
+she felt towards Tuiren.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+As they paced along Uct Dealv railed bitterly against the hound, and
+shook and jerked her chain. Many a sharp cry the hound gave in that
+journey, many a mild lament.
+
+"Ah, supplanter! Ah, taker of another girl's sweetheart!" said Uct Dealv
+fiercely. "How would your lover take it if he could see you now? How
+would he look if he saw your pointy ears, your long thin snout, your
+shivering, skinny legs, and your long grey tail. He would not love you
+now, bad girl!"
+
+"Have you heard of Fergus Fionnliath," she said again, "the man who does
+not like dogs?"
+
+Tuiren had indeed heard of him.
+
+"It is to Fergus I shall bring you," cried Uct Dealv. "He will throw
+stones at you. You have never had a stone thrown at you. Ah, bad girl!
+You do not know how a stone sounds as it nips the ear with a whirling
+buzz, nor how jagged and heavy it feels as it thumps against a skinny
+leg. Robber! Mortal! Bad girl! You have never been whipped, but you will
+be whipped now. You shall hear the song of a lash as it curls forward
+and bites inward and drags backward. You shall dig up old bones
+stealthily at night, and chew them against famine. You shall whine and
+squeal at the moon, and shiver in the cold, and you will never take
+another girl's sweetheart again."
+
+And it was in those terms and in that tone that she spoke to Tuiren
+as they journeyed forward, so that the hound trembled and shrank, and
+whined pitifully and in despair.
+
+They came to Fergus Fionnliath's stronghold, and Uct Dealv demanded
+admittance.
+
+"Leave that dog outside," said the servant.
+
+"I will not do so," said the pretended messenger.
+
+"You can come in without the dog, or you can stay out with the dog,"
+said the surly guardian.
+
+"By my hand," cried Uct Dealv, "I will come in with this dog, or your
+master shall answer for it to Fionn."
+
+At the name of Fionn the servant almost fell out of his standing. He
+flew to acquaint his master, and Fergus himself came to the great door
+of the stronghold.
+
+"By my faith," he cried in amazement, "it is a dog."
+
+"A dog it is," growled the glum servant.
+
+"Go you away," said Fergus to Uct Dealv, "and when you have killed the
+dog come back to me and I will give you a present."
+
+"Life and health, my good master, from Fionn, the son of Uail, the son
+of Baiscne," said she to Fergus.
+
+"Life and health back to Fionn," he replied. "Come into the house and
+give your message, but leave the dog outside, for I don't like dogs."
+
+"The dog comes in," the messenger replied.
+
+"How is that?" cried Fergus angrily.
+
+"Fionn sends you this hound to take care of until he comes for her,"
+said the messenger.
+
+"I wonder at that," Fergus growled, "for Fionn knows well that there is
+not a man in the world has less of a liking for dogs than I have."
+
+"However that may be, master, I have given Fionn's message, and here at
+my heel is the dog. Do you take her or refuse her?"
+
+"If I could refuse anything to Fionn it would be a dog," said Fergus,
+"but I could not refuse anything to Fionn, so give me the hound."
+
+Uct Dealv put the chain in his hand.
+
+"Ah, bad dog!" said she.
+
+And then she went away well satisfied with her revenge, and returned to
+her own people in the Shi.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+On the following day Fergus called his servant.
+
+"Has that dog stopped shivering yet?" he asked.
+
+"It has not, sir," said the servant.
+
+"Bring the beast here," said his master, "for whoever else is
+dissatisfied Fionn must be satisfied."
+
+The dog was brought, and he examined it with a jaundiced and bitter eye.
+
+"It has the shivers indeed," he said.
+
+"The shivers it has," said the servant.
+
+"How do you cure the shivers?" his master demanded, for he thought that
+if the animal's legs dropped off Fionn would not be satisfied.
+
+"There is a way," said the servant doubtfully.
+
+"If there is a way, tell it to me," cried his master angrily.
+
+"If you were to take the beast up in your arms and hug it and kiss it,
+the shivers would stop," said the man.
+
+"Do you mean--?" his master thundered, and he stretched his hand for a
+club.
+
+"I heard that," said the servant humbly.
+
+"Take that dog up," Fergus commanded, "and hug it and kiss it, and if I
+find a single shiver left in the beast I'll break your head."
+
+The man bent to the hound, but it snapped a piece out of his hand, and
+nearly bit his nose off as well.
+
+"That dog doesn't like me," said the man.
+
+"Nor do I," roared Fergus; "get out of my sight."
+
+The man went away and Fergus was left alone with the hound, but the poor
+creature was so terrified that it began to tremble ten times worse than
+before.
+
+"Its legs will drop off," said Fergus. "Fionn will blame me," he cried
+in despair.
+
+He walked to the hound.
+
+"If you snap at my nose, or if you put as much as the start of a tooth
+into the beginning of a finger!" he growled.
+
+He picked up the dog, but it did not snap, it only trembled. He held it
+gingerly for a few moments.
+
+"If it has to be hugged," he said, "I'll hug it. I'd do more than that
+for Fionn."
+
+He tucked and tightened the animal into his breast, and marched moodily
+up and down the room. The dog's nose lay along his breast under his
+chin, and as he gave it dutiful hugs, one hug to every five paces, the
+dog put out its tongue and licked him timidly under the chin.
+
+"Stop," roared Fergus, "stop that forever," and he grew very red in
+the face, and stared truculently down along his nose. A soft brown eye
+looked up at him and the shy tongue touched again on his chin.
+
+"If it has to be kissed," said Fergus gloomily, "I'll kiss it; I'd do
+more than that for Fionn," he groaned.
+
+He bent his head, shut his eyes, and brought the dog's jaw against his
+lips. And at that the dog gave little wriggles in his arms, and little
+barks, and little licks, so that he could scarcely hold her. He put the
+hound down at last.
+
+"There is not a single shiver left in her," he said.
+
+And that was true.
+
+Everywhere he walked the dog followed him, giving little prances and
+little pats against him, and keeping her eyes fixed on his with such
+eagerness and intelligence that he marvelled.
+
+"That dog likes me," he murmured in amazement.
+
+"By my hand," he cried next day, "I like that dog."
+
+The day after that he was calling her "My One Treasure, My Little
+Branch." And within a week he could not bear her to be out of his sight
+for an instant.
+
+He was tormented by the idea that some evil person might throw a stone
+at the hound, so he assembled his servants and retainers and addressed
+them.
+
+He told them that the hound was the Queen of Creatures, the Pulse of his
+Heart, and the Apple of his Eye, and he warned them that the person who
+as much as looked sideways on her, or knocked one shiver out of her,
+would answer for the deed with pains and indignities. He recited a list
+of calamities which would befall such a miscreant, and these woes began
+with flaying and ended with dismemberment, and had inside bits of such
+complicated and ingenious torment that the blood of the men who heard it
+ran chill in their veins, and the women of the household fainted where
+they stood.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+In course of time the news came to Fionn that his mother's sister
+was not living with Iollan. He at once sent a messenger calling
+for fulfilment of the pledge that had been given to the Fianna, and
+demanding the instant return of Tuiren. Iollan was in a sad condition
+when this demand was made. He guessed that Uct Dealv had a hand in the
+disappearance of his queen, and he begged that time should be given him
+in which to find the lost girl. He promised if he could not discover
+her within a certain period that he would deliver his body into Fionn's
+hands, and would abide by whatever judgement Fionn might pronounce. The
+great captain agreed to that.
+
+"Tell the wife-loser that I will have the girl or I will have his head,"
+said Fionn.
+
+Iollan set out then for Faery. He knew the way, and in no great time he
+came to the hill where Uct Dealv was.
+
+It was hard to get Uct Dealv to meet him, but at last she consented, and
+they met under the apple boughs of Faery.
+
+"Well!" said Uct Dealv. "Ah! Breaker of Vows and Traitor to Love," said
+she.
+
+"Hail and a blessing," said Iollan humbly.
+
+"By my hand," she cried, "I will give you no blessing, for it was no
+blessing you left with me when we parted."
+
+"I am in danger," said Iollan.
+
+"What is that to me?" she replied fiercely.
+
+"Fionn may claim my head," he murmured.
+
+"Let him claim what he can take," said she.
+
+"No," said Iollan proudly, "he will claim what I can give."
+
+"Tell me your tale," said she coldly.
+
+Iollan told his story then, and, he concluded, "I am certain that you
+have hidden the girl."
+
+"If I save your head from Fionn," the woman of the Shi' replied, "then
+your head will belong to me."
+
+"That is true," said Iollan.
+
+"And if your head is mine, the body that goes under it is mine. Do you
+agree to that?"
+
+"I do," said Iollan.
+
+"Give me your pledge," said Uct Dealv, "that if I save you from this
+danger you will keep me as your sweetheart until the end of life and
+time."
+
+"I give that pledge," said Iollan.
+
+Uct Dealv went then to the house of Fergus Fionnliath, and she broke the
+enchantment that was on the hound, so that Tuiren's own shape came back
+to her; but in the matter of two small whelps, to which the hound had
+given birth, the enchantment could not be broken, so they had to remain
+as they were. These two whelps were Bran and Sceo'lan. They were sent
+to Fionn, and he loved them for ever after, for they were loyal and
+affectionate, as only dogs can be, and they were as intelligent as human
+beings. Besides that, they were Fionn's own cousins.
+
+Tuiren was then asked in marriage by Lugaidh who had loved her so long.
+He had to prove to her that he was not any other woman's sweetheart,
+and when he proved that they were married, and they lived happily ever
+after, which is the proper way to live. He wrote a poem beginning:
+
+     "Lovely the day. Dear is the eye of the dawn--"
+
+And a thousand merry people learned it after him.
+
+But as to Fergus Fionnliath, he took to his bed, and he stayed there for
+a year and a day suffering from blighted affection, and he would have
+died in the bed only that Fionn sent him a special pup, and in a week
+that young hound became the Star of Fortune and the very Pulse of his
+Heart, so that he got well again, and he also lived happily ever after.
+
+
+
+
+OISIN'S MOTHER
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+EVENING was drawing nigh, and the Fianna-Finn had decided to hunt no
+more that day. The hounds were whistled to heel, and a sober, homeward
+march began. For men will walk soberly in the evening, however they go
+in the day, and dogs will take the mood from their masters. They were
+pacing so, through the golden-shafted, tender-coloured eve, when a
+fawn leaped suddenly from covert, and, with that leap, all quietness
+vanished: the men shouted, the dogs gave tongue, and a furious chase
+commenced.
+
+Fionn loved a chase at any hour, and, with Bran and Sceo'lan, he
+outstripped the men and dogs of his troop, until nothing remained in the
+limpid world but Fionn, the two hounds, and the nimble, beautiful fawn.
+These, and the occasional boulders, round which they raced, or over
+which they scrambled; the solitary tree which dozed aloof and beautiful
+in the path, the occasional clump of trees that hived sweet shadow as
+a hive hoards honey, and the rustling grass that stretched to infinity,
+and that moved and crept and swung under the breeze in endless, rhythmic
+billowings.
+
+In his wildest moment Fionn was thoughtful, and now, although running
+hard, he was thoughtful. There was no movement of his beloved hounds
+that he did not know; not a twitch or fling of the head, not a cock
+of the ears or tail that was not significant to him. But on this chase
+whatever signs the dogs gave were not understood by their master.
+
+He had never seen them in such eager flight. They were almost utterly
+absorbed in it, but they did not whine with eagerness, nor did they cast
+any glance towards him for the encouraging word which he never failed to
+give when they sought it.
+
+They did look at him, but it was a look which he could not comprehend.
+There was a question and a statement in those deep eyes, and he could
+not understand what that question might be, nor what it was they sought
+to convey. Now and again one of the dogs turned a head in full flight,
+and stared, not at Fionn, but distantly backwards, over the spreading
+and swelling plain where their companions of the hunt had disappeared.
+"They are looking for the other hounds," said Fionn.
+
+"And yet they do not give tongue! Tongue it, a Vran!" he shouted, "Bell
+it out, a Heo'lan!"
+
+It was then they looked at him, the look which he could not understand
+and had never seen on a chase. They did not tongue it, nor bell it, but
+they added silence to silence and speed to speed, until the lean grey
+bodies were one pucker and lashing of movement.
+
+Fionn marvelled. "They do not want the other dogs to hear or to come on
+this chase," he murmured, and he wondered what might be passing within
+those slender heads.
+
+"The fawn runs well," his thought continued. "What is it, a Vran, my
+heart? After her, a Heo'lan! Hist and away, my loves!"
+
+"There is going and to spare in that beast yet," his mind went on. "She
+is not stretched to the full, nor half stretched. She may outrun even
+Bran," he thought ragingly.
+
+They were racing through a smooth valley in a steady, beautiful, speedy
+flight when, suddenly, the fawn stopped and lay on the grass, and it lay
+with the calm of an animal that has no fear, and the leisure of one that
+is not pressed.
+
+"Here is a change," said Fionn, staring in astonishment.
+
+"She is not winded," he said. "What is she lying down for?" But Bran and
+Sceo'lan did not stop; they added another inch to their long-stretched
+easy bodies, and came up on the fawn.
+
+"It is an easy kill," said Fionn regretfully. "They have her," he cried.
+
+But he was again astonished, for the dogs did not kill. They leaped and
+played about the fawn, licking its face, and rubbing delighted noses
+against its neck.
+
+Fionn came up then. His long spear was lowered in his fist at the
+thrust, and his sharp knife was in its sheath, but he did not use them,
+for the fawn and the two hounds began to play round him, and the fawn
+was as affectionate towards him as the hounds were; so that when a
+velvet nose was thrust in his palm, it was as often a fawn's muzzle as a
+hound's.
+
+In that joyous company he came to wide Allen of Leinster, where the
+people were surprised to see the hounds and the fawn and the Chief and
+none other of the hunters that had set out with them.
+
+When the others reached home, the Chief told of his chase, and it was
+agreed that such a fawn must not be killed, but that it should be kept
+and well treated, and that it should be the pet fawn of the Fianna.
+But some of those who remembered Brah's parentage thought that as Bran
+herself had come from the Shi so this fawn might have come out of the
+Shi also.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Late that night, when he was preparing for rest, the door of Fionn's
+chamber opened gently and a young woman came into the room. The captain
+stared at her, as he well might, for he had never seen or imagined to
+see a woman so beautiful as this was. Indeed, she was not a woman, but
+a young girl, and her bearing was so gently noble, her look so modestly
+high, that the champion dared scarcely look at her, although he could
+not by any means have looked away.
+
+As she stood within the doorway, smiling, and shy as a flower,
+beautifully timid as a fawn, the Chief communed with his heart.
+
+"She is the Sky-woman of the Dawn," he said. "She is the light on the
+foam. She is white and odorous as an apple-blossom. She smells of spice
+and honey. She is my beloved beyond the women of the world. She shall
+never be taken from me."
+
+And that thought was delight and anguish to him: delight because of such
+sweet prospect, anguish because it was not yet realised, and might not
+be.
+
+As the dogs had looked at him on the chase with a look that he did not
+understand, so she looked at him, and in her regard there was a question
+that baffled him and a statement which he could not follow.
+
+He spoke to her then, mastering his heart to do it.
+
+"I do not seem to know you," he said.
+
+"You do not know me indeed," she replied.
+
+"It is the more wonderful," he continued gently, "for I should know
+every person that is here. What do you require from me?"
+
+"I beg your protection, royal captain."
+
+"I give that to all," he answered. "Against whom do you desire
+protection?"
+
+"I am in terror of the Fear Doirche."
+
+"The Dark Man of the Shi?"
+
+"He is my enemy," she said.
+
+"He is mine now," said Fionn. "Tell me your story."
+
+"My name is Saeve, and I am a woman of Faery," she commenced. "In the
+Shi' many men gave me their love, but I gave my love to no man of my
+country."
+
+"That was not reasonable," the other chided with a blithe heart.
+
+"I was contented," she replied, "and what we do not want we do not lack.
+But if my love went anywhere it went to a mortal, a man of the men of
+Ireland."
+
+"By my hand," said Fionn in mortal distress, "I marvel who that man can
+be!"
+
+"He is known to you," she murmured. "I lived thus in the peace of Faery,
+hearing often of my mortal champion, for the rumour of his great deeds
+had gone through the Shi', until a day came when the Black Magician
+of the Men of God put his eye on me, and, after that day, in whatever
+direction I looked I saw his eye."
+
+She stopped at that, and the terror that was in her heart was on her
+face. "He is everywhere," she whispered. "He is in the bushes, and on
+the hill. He looked up at me from the water, and he stared down on
+me from the sky. His voice commands out of the spaces, and it demands
+secretly in the heart. He is not here or there, he is in all places at
+all times. I cannot escape from him," she said, "and I am afraid," and
+at that she wept noiselessly and stared on Fionn.
+
+"He is my enemy," Fionn growled. "I name him as my enemy."
+
+"You will protect me," she implored.
+
+"Where I am let him not come," said Fionn. "I also have knowledge. I am
+Fionn, the son of Uail, the son of Baiscne, a man among men and a god
+where the gods are."
+
+"He asked me in marriage," she continued, "but my mind was full of my
+own dear hero, and I refused the Dark Man."
+
+"That was your right, and I swear by my hand that if the man you desire
+is alive and unmarried he shall marry you or he will answer to me for
+the refusal."
+
+"He is not married," said Saeve, "and you have small control over him."
+The Chief frowned thoughtfully. "Except the High King and the kings I
+have authority in this land."
+
+"What man has authority over himself?" said Saeve.
+
+"Do you mean that I am the man you seek?" said Fionn.
+
+"It is to yourself I gave my love," she replied. "This is good news,"
+Fionn cried joyfully, "for the moment you came through the door I loved
+and desired you, and the thought that you wished for another man went
+into my heart like a sword." Indeed, Fionn loved Saeve as he had not
+loved a woman before and would never love one again. He loved her as he
+had never loved anything before. He could not bear to be away from her.
+When he saw her he did not see the world, and when he saw the world
+without her it was as though he saw nothing, or as if he looked on a
+prospect that was bleak and depressing. The belling of a stag had been
+music to Fionn, but when Saeve spoke that was sound enough for him. He
+had loved to hear the cuckoo calling in the spring from the tree that
+is highest in the hedge, or the blackbird's jolly whistle in an autumn
+bush, or the thin, sweet enchantment that comes to the mind when a lark
+thrills out of sight in the air and the hushed fields listen to the
+song. But his wife's voice was sweeter to Fionn than the singing of a
+lark. She filled him with wonder and surmise. There was magic in the
+tips of her fingers. Her thin palm ravished him. Her slender foot set
+his heart beating; and whatever way her head moved there came a new
+shape of beauty to her face.
+
+"She is always new," said Fionn. "She is always better than any other
+woman; she is always better than herself."
+
+He attended no more to the Fianna. He ceased to hunt. He did not listen
+to the songs of poets or the curious sayings of magicians, for all of
+these were in his wife, and something that was beyond these was in her
+also.
+
+"She is this world and the next one; she is completion," said Fionn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+It happened that the men of Lochlann came on an expedition against
+Ireland. A monstrous fleet rounded the bluffs of Ben Edair, and the
+Danes landed there, to prepare an attack which would render them masters
+of the country. Fionn and the Fianna-Finn marched against them. He did
+not like the men of Lochlann at any time, but this time he moved against
+them in wrath, for not only were they attacking Ireland, but they had
+come between him and the deepest joy his life had known.
+
+It was a hard fight, but a short one. The Lochlannachs were driven back
+to their ships, and within a week the only Danes remaining in Ireland
+were those that had been buried there.
+
+That finished, he left the victorious Fianna and returned swiftly to the
+plain of Allen, for he could not bear to be one unnecessary day parted
+from Saeve.
+
+"You are not leaving us!" exclaimed Goll mac Morna.
+
+"I must go," Fionn replied.
+
+"You will not desert the victory feast," Conan reproached him.
+
+"Stay with us, Chief," Caelte begged.
+
+"What is a feast without Fionn?" they complained.
+
+But he would not stay.
+
+"By my hand," he cried, "I must go. She will be looking for me from the
+window."
+
+"That will happen indeed," Goll admitted.
+
+"That will happen," cried Fionn. "And when she sees me far out on the
+plain, she will run through the great gate to meet me."
+
+"It would be the queer wife would neglect that run," Cona'n growled.
+
+"I shall hold her hand again," Fionn entrusted to Caelte's ear.
+
+"You will do that, surely."
+
+"I shall look into her face," his lord insisted. But he saw that not
+even beloved Caelte understood the meaning of that, and he knew sadly
+and yet proudly that what he meant could not be explained by any one and
+could not be comprehended by any one.
+
+"You are in love, dear heart," said Caelte.
+
+"In love he is," Cona'n grumbled. "A cordial for women, a disease for
+men, a state of wretchedness."
+
+"Wretched in truth," the Chief murmured. "Love makes us poor We have not
+eyes enough to see all that is to be seen, nor hands enough to seize the
+tenth of all we want. When I look in her eyes I am tormented because I
+am not looking at her lips, and when I see her lips my soul cries out,
+'Look at her eyes, look at her eyes.'"
+
+"That is how it happens," said Goll rememberingly.
+
+"That way and no other," Caelte agreed.
+
+And the champions looked backwards in time on these lips and those, and
+knew their Chief would go.
+
+When Fionn came in sight of the great keep his blood and his feet
+quickened, and now and again he waved a spear in the air.
+
+"She does not see me yet," he thought mournfully.
+
+"She cannot see me yet," he amended, reproaching himself.
+
+But his mind was troubled, for he thought also, or he felt without
+thinking, that had the positions been changed he would have seen her at
+twice the distance.
+
+"She thinks I have been unable to get away from the battle, or that I
+was forced to remain for the feast."
+
+And, without thinking it, he thought that had the positions been changed
+he would have known that nothing could retain the one that was absent.
+
+"Women," he said, "are shamefaced, they do not like to appear eager when
+others are observing them."
+
+But he knew that he would not have known if others were observing him,
+and that he would not have cared about it if he had known. And he knew
+that his Saeve would not have seen, and would not have cared for any
+eyes than his.
+
+He gripped his spear on that reflection, and ran as he had not run in
+his life, so that it was a panting, dishevelled man that raced heavily
+through the gates of the great Dun.
+
+Within the Dun there was disorder. Servants were shouting to one
+another, and women were running to and fro aimlessly, wringing their
+hands and screaming; and, when they saw the Champion, those nearest to
+him ran away, and there was a general effort on the part of every
+person to get behind every other person. But Fionn caught the eye of his
+butler, Gariv Crona'n, the Rough Buzzer, and held it.
+
+"Come you here," he said.
+
+And the Rough Buzzer came to him without a single buzz in his body.
+
+"Where is the Flower of Allen?" his master demanded.
+
+"I do not know, master," the terrified servant replied.
+
+"You do not know!" said Fionn. "Tell what you do know."
+
+And the man told him this story.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"When you had been away for a day the guards were surprised. They were
+looking from the heights of the Dun, and the Flower of Allen was with
+them. She, for she had a quest's eye, called out that the master of the
+Fianna was coming over the ridges to the Dun, and she ran from the keep
+to meet you."
+
+"It was not I," said Fionn.
+
+"It bore your shape," replied Gariv Cronan. "It had your armour and your
+face, and the dogs, Bran and Sceo'lan, were with it."
+
+"They were with me," said Fionn.
+
+"They seemed to be with it," said the servant humbly
+
+"Tell us this tale," cried Fionn.
+
+"We were distrustful," the servant continued. "We had never known Fionn
+to return from a combat before it had been fought, and we knew you could
+not have reached Ben Edar or encountered the Lochlannachs. So we urged
+our lady to let us go out to meet you, but to remain herself in the
+Dun."
+
+"It was good urging," Fionn assented.
+
+"She would not be advised," the servant wailed. "She cried to us, 'Let
+me go to meet my love'."
+
+"Alas!" said Fionn.
+
+"She cried on us, 'Let me go to meet my husband, the father of the child
+that is not born.'"
+
+"Alas!" groaned deep-wounded Fionn. "She ran towards your appearance
+that had your arms stretched out to her."
+
+At that wise Fionn put his hand before his eyes, seeing all that
+happened.
+
+"Tell on your tale," said he.
+
+"She ran to those arms, and when she reached them the figure lifted
+its hand. It touched her with a hazel rod, and, while we looked, she
+disappeared, and where she had been there was a fawn standing and
+shivering. The fawn turned and bounded towards the gate of the Dun, but
+the hounds that were by flew after her."
+
+Fionn stared on him like a lost man.
+
+"They took her by the throat--" the shivering servant whispered.
+
+"Ah!" cried Fionn in a terrible voice.
+
+"And they dragged her back to the figure that seemed to be Fionn. Three
+times she broke away and came bounding to us, and three times the dogs
+took her by the throat and dragged her back."
+
+"You stood to look!" the Chief snarled.
+
+"No, master, we ran, but she vanished as we got to her; the great hounds
+vanished away, and that being that seemed to be Fionn disappeared with
+them. We were left in the rough grass, staring about us and at each
+other, and listening to the moan of the wind and the terror of our
+hearts."
+
+"Forgive us, dear master," the servant cried. But the great captain made
+him no answer. He stood as though he were dumb and blind, and now and
+again he beat terribly on his breast with his closed fist, as though he
+would kill that within him which should be dead and could not die. He
+went so, beating on his breast, to his inner room in the Dun, and he was
+not seen again for the rest of that day, nor until the sun rose over Moy
+Life' in the morning.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+For many years after that time, when he was not fighting against the
+enemies of Ireland, Fionn was searching and hunting through the length
+and breadth of the country in the hope that he might again chance on his
+lovely lady from the Shi'. Through all that time he slept in misery each
+night and he rose each day to grief. Whenever he hunted he brought only
+the hounds that he trusted, Bran and Sceo'lan, Lomaire, Brod, and Lomlu;
+for if a fawn was chased each of these five great dogs would know if
+that was a fawn to be killed or one to be protected, and so there was
+small danger to Saeve and a small hope of finding her.
+
+Once, when seven years had passed in fruitless search, Fionn and the
+chief nobles of the Fianna were hunting Ben Gulbain. All the hounds of
+the Fianna were out, for Fionn had now given up hope of encountering
+the Flower of Allen. As the hunt swept along the sides of the hill there
+arose a great outcry of hounds from a narrow place high on the slope
+and, over all that uproar there came the savage baying of Fionn's own
+dogs.
+
+"What is this for?" said Fionn, and with his companions he pressed to
+the spot whence the noise came.
+
+"They are fighting all the hounds of the Fianna," cried a champion.
+
+And they were. The five wise hounds were in a circle and were giving
+battle to an hundred dogs at once. They were bristling and terrible, and
+each bite from those great, keen jaws was woe to the beast that received
+it. Nor did they fight in silence as was their custom and training, but
+between each onslaught the great heads were uplifted, and they pealed
+loudly, mournfully, urgently, for their master.
+
+"They are calling on me," he roared.
+
+And with that he ran, as he had only once before run, and the men who
+were nigh to him went racing as they would not have run for their lives.
+They came to the narrow place on the slope of the mountain, and they saw
+the five great hounds in a circle keeping off the other dogs, and in
+the middle of the ring a little boy was standing. He had long, beautiful
+hair, and he was naked. He was not daunted by the terrible combat and
+clamour of the hounds. He did not look at the hounds, but he stared like
+a young prince at Fionn and the champions as they rushed towards him
+scattering the pack with the butts of their spears. When the fight was
+over, Bran and Sceo'lan ran whining to the little boy and licked his
+hands.
+
+"They do that to no one," said a bystander. "What new master is this
+they have found?"
+
+Fionn bent to the boy. "Tell me, my little prince and pulse, what your
+name is, and how you have come into the middle of a hunting-pack, and
+why you are naked?"
+
+But the boy did not understand the language of the men of Ireland. He
+put his hand into Fionn's, and the Chief felt as if that little hand had
+been put into his heart. He lifted the lad to his great shoulder.
+
+"We have caught something on this hunt," said he to Caelte mac Rongn.
+"We must bring this treasure home. You shall be one of the Fianna-Finn,
+my darling," he called upwards.
+
+The boy looked down on him, and in the noble trust and fearlessness of
+that regard Fionn's heart melted away.
+
+"My little fawn!" he said.
+
+And he remembered that other fawn. He set the boy between his knees and
+stared at him earnestly and long.
+
+"There is surely the same look," he said to his wakening heart; "that is
+the very eye of Saeve."
+
+The grief flooded out of his heart as at a stroke, and joy foamed into
+it in one great tide. He marched back singing to the encampment, and men
+saw once more the merry Chief they had almost forgotten.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Just as at one time he could not be parted from Saeve, so now he could
+not be separated from this boy. He had a thousand names for him, each
+one more tender than the last: "My Fawn, My Pulse, My Secret Little
+Treasure," or he would call him "My Music, My Blossoming Branch, My
+Store in the Heart, My Soul." And the dogs were as wild for the boy as
+Fionn was. He could sit in safety among a pack that would have torn any
+man to pieces, and the reason was that Bran and Sceo'lan, with their
+three whelps, followed him about like shadows. When he was with the pack
+these five were with him, and woeful indeed was the eye they turned
+on their comrades when these pushed too closely or were not properly
+humble. They thrashed the pack severally and collectively until every
+hound in Fionn's kennels knew that the little lad was their master, and
+that there was nothing in the world so sacred as he was.
+
+In no long time the five wise hounds could have given over their
+guardianship, so complete was the recognition of their young lord. But
+they did not so give over, for it was not love they gave the lad but
+adoration.
+
+Fionn even may have been embarrassed by their too close attendance. If
+he had been able to do so he might have spoken harshly to his dogs, but
+he could not; it was unthinkable that he should; and the boy might have
+spoken harshly to him if he had dared to do it. For this was the order
+of Fionn's affection: first there was the boy; next, Bran and Sceo'lan
+with their three whelps; then Caelte mac Rona'n, and from him down
+through the champions. He loved them all, but it was along that
+precedence his affections ran. The thorn that went into Bran's foot ran
+into Fionn's also. The world knew it, and there was not a champion but
+admitted sorrowfully that there was reason for his love.
+
+Little by little the boy came to understand their speech and to speak it
+himself, and at last he was able to tell his story to Fionn.
+
+There were many blanks in the tale, for a young child does not remember
+very well. Deeds grow old in a day and are buried in a night. New
+memories come crowding on old ones, and one must learn to forget as well
+as to remember. A whole new life had come on this boy, a life that was
+instant and memorable, so that his present memories blended into and
+obscured the past, and he could not be quite sure if that which he told
+of had happened in this world or in the world he had left.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+"I used to live," he said, "in a wide, beautiful place. There were hills
+and valleys there, and woods and streams, but in whatever direction I
+went I came always to a cliff, so tall it seemed to lean against the
+sky, and so straight that even a goat would not have imagined to climb
+it."
+
+"I do not know of any such place," Fionn mused.
+
+"There is no such place in Ireland," said Caelte, "but in the Shi' there
+is such a place."
+
+"There is in truth," said Fionn.
+
+"I used to eat fruits and roots in the summer," the boy continued, "but
+in the winter food was left for me in a cave."
+
+"Was there no one with you?" Fionn asked.
+
+"No one but a deer that loved me, and that I loved."
+
+"Ah me!" cried Fionn in anguish, "tell me your tale, my son."
+
+"A dark stern man came often after us, and he used to speak with the
+deer. Sometimes he talked gently and softly and coaxingly, but at times
+again he would shout loudly and in a harsh, angry voice. But whatever
+way he talked the deer would draw away from him in dread, and he always
+left her at last furiously."
+
+"It is the Dark Magician of the Men of God," cried Fionn despairingly.
+
+"It is indeed, my soul," said Caelte.
+
+"The last time I saw the deer," the child continued, "the dark man was
+speaking to her. He spoke for a long time. He spoke gently and angrily,
+and gently and angrily, so that I thought he would never stop talking,
+but in the end he struck her with a hazel rod, so that she was forced
+to follow him when he went away. She was looking back at me all the time
+and she was crying so bitterly that any one would pity her. I tried to
+follow her also, but I could not move, and I cried after her too, with
+rage and grief, until I could see her no more and hear her no more. Then
+I fell on the grass, my senses went away from me, and when I awoke I was
+on the hill in the middle of the hounds where you found me."
+
+That was the boy whom the Fianna called Oisi'n, or the Little Fawn. He
+grew to be a great fighter afterwards, and he was the chief maker of
+poems in the world. But he was not yet finished with the Shi. He was to
+go back into Faery when the time came, and to come thence again to tell
+these tales, for it was by him these tales were told.
+
+
+
+
+THE WOOING OF BECFOLA
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+We do not know where Becfola came from. Nor do we know for certain where
+she went to. We do not even know her real name, for the name Becfola,
+"Dowerless" or "Small-dowered," was given to her as a nickname. This
+only is certain, that she disappeared from the world we know of, and
+that she went to a realm where even conjecture may not follow her.
+
+It happened in the days when Dermod, son of the famous Ae of Slane, was
+monarch of all Ireland. He was unmarried, but he had many foster-sons,
+princes from the Four Provinces, who were sent by their fathers as
+tokens of loyalty and affection to the Ard-Ri, and his duties as a
+foster-father were righteously acquitted. Among the young princes of his
+household there was one, Crimthann, son of Ae, King of Leinster, whom
+the High King preferred to the others over whom he held fatherly sway.
+Nor was this wonderful, for the lad loved him also, and was as eager and
+intelligent and modest as becomes a prince.
+
+The High King and Crimthann would often set out from Tara to hunt and
+hawk, sometimes unaccompanied even by a servant; and on these excursions
+the king imparted to his foster-son his own wide knowledge of forest
+craft, and advised him generally as to the bearing and duties of a
+prince, the conduct of a court, and the care of a people.
+
+Dermod mac Ae delighted in these solitary adventures, and when he
+could steal a day from policy and affairs he would send word privily to
+Crimthann. The boy, having donned his hunting gear, would join the king
+at a place arranged between them, and then they ranged abroad as chance
+might direct.
+
+On one of these adventures, as they searched a flooded river to find the
+ford, they saw a solitary woman in a chariot driving from the west.
+
+"I wonder what that means?" the king exclaimed thoughtfully.
+
+"Why should you wonder at a woman in a chariot?" his companion inquired,
+for Crimthann loved and would have knowledge.
+
+"Good, my Treasure," Dermod answered, "our minds are astonished when we
+see a woman able to drive a cow to pasture, for it has always seemed to
+us that they do not drive well."
+
+Crimthann absorbed instruction like a sponge and digested it as rapidly.
+
+"I think that is justly said," he agreed.
+
+"But," Dermod continued, "when we see a woman driving a chariot of two
+horses, then we are amazed indeed."
+
+When the machinery of anything is explained to us we grow interested,
+and Crimthann became, by instruction, as astonished as the king was.
+
+"In good truth," said he, "the woman is driving two horses."
+
+"Had you not observed it before?" his master asked with kindly malice.
+
+"I had observed but not noticed," the young man admitted.
+
+"Further," said the king, "surmise is aroused in us when we discover a
+woman far from a house; for you will have both observed and noticed that
+women are home-dwellers, and that a house without a woman or a woman
+without a house are imperfect objects, and although they be but half
+observed, they are noticed on the double."
+
+"There is no doubting it," the prince answered from a knitted and
+thought-tormented brow.
+
+"We shall ask this woman for information about herself," said the king
+decidedly.
+
+"Let us do so," his ward agreed
+
+"The king's majesty uses the words 'we' and 'us' when referring to
+the king's majesty," said Dermod, "but princes who do not yet
+rule territories must use another form of speech when referring to
+themselves."
+
+"I am very thoughtless," said Crimthann humbly.
+
+The king kissed him on both cheeks.
+
+"Indeed, my dear heart and my son, we are not scolding you, but you must
+try not to look so terribly thoughtful when you think. It is part of the
+art of a ruler."
+
+"I shall never master that hard art," lamented his fosterling.
+
+"We must all master it," Dermod replied. "We may think with our minds
+and with our tongues, but we should never think with our noses and with
+our eyebrows."
+
+The woman in the chariot had drawn nigh to the ford by which they were
+standing, and, without pause, she swung her steeds into the shallows and
+came across the river in a tumult of foam and spray.
+
+"Does she not drive well?" cried Crimthann admiringly.
+
+"When you are older," the king counselled him, "you will admire that
+which is truly admirable, for although the driving is good the lady is
+better."
+
+He continued with enthusiasm.
+
+"She is in truth a wonder of the world and an endless delight to the
+eye."
+
+She was all that and more, and, as she took the horses through the river
+and lifted them up the bank, her flying hair and parted lips and all the
+young strength and grace of her body went into the king's eye and could
+not easily come out again.
+
+Nevertheless, it was upon his ward that the lady's gaze rested, and if
+the king could scarcely look away from her, she could, but only with an
+equal effort, look away from Crimthann.
+
+"Halt there!" cried the king.
+
+"Who should I halt for?" the lady demanded, halting all the same, as is
+the manner of women, who rebel against command and yet receive it.
+
+"Halt for Dermod!"
+
+"There are Dermods and Dermods in this world," she quoted.
+
+"There is yet but one Ard-Ri'," the monarch answered.
+
+She then descended from the chariot and made her reverence.
+
+"I wish to know your name?" said he.
+
+But at this demand the lady frowned and answered decidedly:
+
+"I do not wish to tell it."
+
+"I wish to know also where you come from and to what place you are
+going?"
+
+"I do not wish to tell any of these things."
+
+"Not to the king!"
+
+"I do not wish to tell them to any one."
+
+Crimthann was scandalised.
+
+"Lady," he pleaded, "you will surely not withhold information from the
+Ard-Ri'?"
+
+But the lady stared as royally on the High King as the High King did on
+her, and, whatever it was he saw in those lovely eyes, the king did not
+insist.
+
+He drew Crimthann apart, for he withheld no instruction from that lad.
+
+"My heart," he said, "we must always try to act wisely, and we should
+only insist on receiving answers to questions in which we are personally
+concerned."
+
+Crimthann imbibed all the justice of that remark.
+
+"Thus I do not really require to know this lady's name, nor do I care
+from what direction she comes."
+
+"You do not?" Crimthann asked.
+
+"No, but what I do wish to know is, Will she marry me?"
+
+"By my hand that is a notable question," his companion stammered.
+
+"It is a question that must be answered," the king cried triumphantly.
+"But," he continued, "to learn what woman she is, or where she comes
+from, might bring us torment as well as information. Who knows in what
+adventures the past has engaged her!"
+
+And he stared for a profound moment on disturbing, sinister horizons,
+and Crimthann meditated there with him.
+
+"The past is hers," he concluded, "but the future is ours, and we shall
+only demand that which is pertinent to the future."
+
+He returned to the lady.
+
+"We wish you to be our wife," he said. And he gazed on her benevolently
+and firmly and carefully when he said that, so that her regard could
+not stray otherwhere. Yet, even as he looked, a tear did well into those
+lovely eyes, and behind her brow a thought moved of the beautiful boy
+who was looking at her from the king's side.
+
+But when the High King of Ireland asks us to marry him we do not refuse,
+for it is not a thing that we shall be asked to do every day in the
+week, and there is no woman in the world but would love to rule it in
+Tara.
+
+No second tear crept on the lady's lashes, and, with her hand in the
+king's hand, they paced together towards the palace, while behind them,
+in melancholy mood, Crimthann mac Ae led the horses and the chariot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+They were married in a haste which equalled the king's desire; and as he
+did not again ask her name, and as she did not volunteer to give it, and
+as she brought no dowry to her husband and received none from him, she
+was called Becfola, the Dowerless.
+
+Time passed, and the king's happiness was as great as his expectation
+of it had promised. But on the part of Becfola no similar tidings can be
+given.
+
+There are those whose happiness lies in ambition and station, and to
+such a one the fact of being queen to the High King of Ireland is a
+satisfaction at which desire is sated. But the mind of Becfola was not
+of this temperate quality, and, lacking Crimthann, it seemed to her that
+she possessed nothing.
+
+For to her mind he was the sunlight in the sun, the brightness in the
+moonbeam; he was the savour in fruit and the taste in honey; and when
+she looked from Crimthann to the king she could not but consider that
+the right man was in the wrong place. She thought that crowned only with
+his curls Crlmthann mac Ae was more nobly diademed than are the masters
+of the world, and she told him so.
+
+His terror on hearing this unexpected news was so great that he
+meditated immediate flight from Tara; but when a thing has been uttered
+once it is easier said the second time and on the third repetition it is
+patiently listened to.
+
+After no great delay Crimthann mac Ae agreed and arranged that he and
+Becfola should fly from Tara, and it was part of their understanding
+that they should live happily ever after.
+
+One morning, when not even a bird was astir, the king felt that his dear
+companion was rising. He looked with one eye at the light that stole
+greyly through the window, and recognised that it could not in justice
+be called light.
+
+"There is not even a bird up," he murmured.
+
+And then to Becfola.
+
+"What is the early rising for, dear heart?"
+
+"An engagement I have," she replied.
+
+"This is not a time for engagements," said the calm monarch.
+
+"Let it be so," she replied, and she dressed rapidly.
+
+"And what is the engagement?" he pursued.
+
+"Raiment that I left at a certain place and must have. Eight silken
+smocks embroidered with gold, eight precious brooches of beaten gold,
+three diadems of pure gold."
+
+"At this hour," said the patient king, "the bed is better than the
+road."
+
+"Let it be so," said she.
+
+"And moreover," he continued, "a Sunday journey brings bad luck."
+
+"Let the luck come that will come," she answered.
+
+"To keep a cat from cream or a woman from her gear is not work for a
+king," said the monarch severely.
+
+The Ard-Ri' could look on all things with composure, and regard all
+beings with a tranquil eye; but it should be known that there was one
+deed entirely hateful to him, and he would punish its commission with
+the very last rigour--this was, a transgression of the Sunday. During
+six days of the week all that could happen might happen, so far as
+Dermod was concerned, but on the seventh day nothing should happen at
+all if the High King could restrain it. Had it been possible he would
+have tethered the birds to their own green branches on that day, and
+forbidden the clouds to pack the upper world with stir and colour. These
+the king permitted, with a tight lip, perhaps, but all else that came
+under his hand felt his control.
+
+It was his custom when he arose on the morn of Sunday to climb to the
+most elevated point of Tara, and gaze thence on every side, so that
+he might see if any fairies or people of the Shi' were disporting
+themselves in his lordship; for he absolutely prohibited the usage of
+the earth to these beings on the Sunday, and woe's worth was it for the
+sweet being he discovered breaking his law.
+
+We do not know what ill he could do to the fairies, but during Dermod's
+reign the world said its prayers on Sunday and the Shi' folk stayed in
+their hills.
+
+It may be imagined, therefore, with what wrath he saw his wife's
+preparations for her journey, but, although a king can do everything,
+what can a husband do...? He rearranged himself for slumber.
+
+"I am no party to this untimely journey," he said angrily.
+
+"Let it be so," said Becfola.
+
+She left the palace with one maid, and as she crossed the doorway
+something happened to her, but by what means it happened would be hard
+to tell; for in the one pace she passed out of the palace and out of the
+world, and the second step she trod was in Faery, but she did not know
+this.
+
+Her intention was to go to Cluain da chaillech to meet Crimthann, but
+when she left the palace she did not remember Crimthann any more.
+
+To her eye and to the eye of her maid the world was as it always had
+been, and the landmarks they knew were about them. But the object for
+which they were travelling was different, although unknown, and the
+people they passed on the roads were unknown, and were yet people that
+they knew.
+
+They set out southwards from Tara into the Duffry of Leinster, and after
+some time they came into wild country and went astray. At last Becfola
+halted, saying:
+
+"I do not know where we are."
+
+The maid replied that she also did not know.
+
+"Yet," said Becfola, "if we continue to walk straight on we shall arrive
+somewhere."
+
+They went on, and the maid watered the road with her tears.
+
+Night drew on them; a grey chill, a grey silence, and they were
+enveloped in that chill and silence; and they began to go in expectation
+and terror, for they both knew and did not know that which they were
+bound for.
+
+As they toiled desolately up the rustling and whispering side of a
+low hill the maid chanced to look back, and when she looked back she
+screamed and pointed, and clung to Becfola's arm. Becfola followed the
+pointing finger, and saw below a large black mass that moved jerkily
+forward.
+
+"Wolves!" cried the maid. "Run to the trees yonder," her mistress
+ordered. "We will climb them and sit among the branches."
+
+They ran then, the maid moaning and lamenting all the while.
+
+"I cannot climb a tree," she sobbed, "I shall be eaten by the wolves."
+
+And that was true.
+
+But her mistress climbed a tree, and drew by a hand's breadth from the
+rap and snap and slaver of those steel jaws. Then, sitting on a branch,
+she looked with angry woe at the straining and snarling horde below,
+seeing many a white fang in those grinning jowls, and the smouldering,
+red blink of those leaping and prowling eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+But after some time the moon arose and the wolves went away, for their
+leader, a sagacious and crafty chief, declared that as long as they
+remained where they were, the lady would remain where she was; and so,
+with a hearty curse on trees, the troop departed. Becfola had pains in
+her legs from the way she had wrapped them about the branch, but there
+was no part of her that did not ache, for a lady does not sit with any
+ease upon a tree.
+
+For some time she did not care to come down from the branch. "Those
+wolves may return," she said, "for their chief is crafty and sagacious,
+and it is certain, from the look I caught in his eye as he departed,
+that he would rather taste of me than cat any woman he has met."
+
+She looked carefully in every direction to see if one might discover
+them in hiding; she looked closely and lingeringly at the shadows under
+distant trees to see if these shadows moved; and she listened on every
+wind to try if she could distinguish a yap or a yawn or a sneeze. But
+she saw or heard nothing; and little by little tranquillity crept into
+her mind, and she began to consider that a danger which is past is a
+danger that may be neglected.
+
+Yet ere she descended she looked again on the world of jet and silver
+that dozed about her, and she spied a red glimmer among distant trees.
+
+"There is no danger where there is light," she said, and she thereupon
+came from the tree and ran in the direction that she had noted.
+
+In a spot between three great oaks she came upon a man who was roasting
+a wild boar over a fire. She saluted this youth and sat beside him. But
+after the first glance and greeting he did not look at her again, nor
+did he speak.
+
+When the boar was cooked he ate of it and she had her share. Then he
+arose from the fire and walked away among the trees. Becfola followed,
+feeling ruefully that something new to her experience had arrived;
+"for," she thought, "it is usual that young men should not speak to me
+now that I am the mate of a king, but it is very unusual that young men
+should not look at me."
+
+But if the young man did not look at her she looked well at him, and
+what she saw pleased her so much that she had no time for further
+cogitation. For if Crimthann had been beautiful, this youth was ten
+times more beautiful. The curls on Crimthann's head had been indeed as
+a benediction to the queen's eye, so that she had eaten the better and
+slept the sounder for seeing him. But the sight of this youth left her
+without the desire to eat, and, as for sleep, she dreaded it, for if she
+closed an eye she would be robbed of the one delight in time, which was
+to look at this young man, and not to cease looking at him while her eye
+could peer or her head could remain upright.
+
+They came to an inlet of the sea all sweet and calm under the round,
+silver-flooding moon, and the young man, with Becfola treading on his
+heel, stepped into a boat and rowed to a high-jutting, pleasant island.
+There they went inland towards a vast palace, in which there was no
+person but themselves alone, and there the young man went to sleep,
+while Becfola sat staring at him until the unavoidable peace pressed
+down her eyelids and she too slumbered.
+
+She was awakened in the morning by a great shout.
+
+"Come out, Flann, come out, my heart!"
+
+The young man leaped from his couch, girded on his harness, and strode
+out. Three young men met him, each in battle harness, and these four
+advanced to meet four other men who awaited them at a little distance on
+the lawn. Then these two sets of four fought togethor with every warlike
+courtesy but with every warlike severity, and at the end of that combat
+there was but one man standing, and the other seven lay tossed in death.
+
+Becfola spoke to the youth.
+
+"Your combat has indeed been gallant," she said.
+
+"Alas," he replied, "if it has been a gallant deed it has not been a
+good one, for my three brothers are dead and my four nephews are dead."
+
+"Ah me!" cried Becfola, "why did you fight that fight?"
+
+"For the lordship of this island, the Isle of Fedach, son of Dali."
+
+But, although Becfola was moved and horrified by this battle, it was in
+another direction that her interest lay; therefore she soon asked the
+question which lay next her heart:
+
+"Why would you not speak to me or look at me?"
+
+"Until I have won the kingship of this land from all claimants, I am no
+match for the mate of the High King of Ireland," he replied.
+
+And that reply was llke balm to the heart of Becfola.
+
+"What shall I do?" she inquired radiantly. "Return to your home," he
+counselled. "I will escort you there with your maid, for she is not
+really dead, and when I have won my lordship I will go seek you in
+Tara."
+
+"You will surely come," she insisted.
+
+"By my hand," quoth he, "I will come."
+
+These three returned then, and at the end of a day and night they saw
+far off the mighty roofs of Tara massed in the morning haze. The
+young man left them, and with many a backward look and with dragging,
+reluctant feet, Becfola crossed the threshold of the palace, wondering
+what she should say to Dermod and how she could account for an absence
+of three days' duration.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IT was so early that not even a bird was yet awake, and the dull grey
+light that came from the atmosphere enlarged and made indistinct all
+that one looked at, and swathed all things in a cold and livid gloom.
+
+As she trod cautiously through dim corridors Becfola was glad that,
+saving the guards, no creature was astir, and that for some time yet
+she need account to no person for her movements. She was glad also of
+a respite which would enable her to settle into her home and draw about
+her the composure which women feel when they are surrounded by the walls
+of their houses, and can see about them the possessions which, by the
+fact of ownership, have become almost a part of their personality.
+Sundered from her belongings, no woman is tranquil, her heart is not
+truly at ease, however her mind may function, so that under the broad
+sky or in the house of another she is not the competent, precise
+individual which she becomes when she sees again her household in order
+and her domestic requirements at her hand.
+
+Becfola pushed the door of the king's sleeping chamber and entered
+noiselessly. Then she sat quietly in a seat gazing on the recumbent
+monarch, and prepared to consider how she should advance to him when
+he awakened, and with what information she might stay his inquiries or
+reproaches.
+
+"I will reproach him," she thought. "I will call him a bad husband
+and astonish him, and he will forget everything but his own alarm and
+indignation."
+
+But at that moment the king lifted his head from the pillow and looked
+kindly at her. Her heart gave a great throb, and she prepared to speak
+at once and in great volume before he could formulate any question.
+But the king spoke first, and what he said so astonished her that the
+explanation and reproach with which her tongue was thrilling fled
+from it at a stroke, and she could only sit staring and bewildered and
+tongue-tied.
+
+"Well, my dear heart," said the king, "have you decided not to keep that
+engagement?"
+
+"I--I--!" Becfola stammered.
+
+"It is truly not an hour for engagements," Dermod insisted, "for not
+a bird of the birds has left his tree; and," he continued maliciously,
+"the light is such that you could not see an engagement even if you met
+one."
+
+"I," Becfola gasped. "I---!"
+
+"A Sunday journey," he went on, "is a notorious bad journey. No good can
+come from it. You can get your smocks and diadems to-morrow. But at this
+hour a wise person leaves engagements to the bats and the staring owls
+and the round-eyed creatures that prowl and sniff in the dark. Come back
+to the warm bed, sweet woman, and set on your journey in the morning."
+
+Such a load of apprehension was lifted from Becfola's heart that she
+instantly did as she had been commanded, and such a bewilderment had yet
+possession of her faculties that she could not think or utter a word on
+any subject.
+
+Yet the thought did come into her head as she stretched in the warm
+gloom that Crimthann the son of Ae must be now attending her at
+Cluain da chaillech, and she thought of that young man as of something
+wonderful and very ridiculous, and the fact that he was waiting for
+her troubled her no more than if a sheep had been waiting for her or a
+roadside bush.
+
+She fell asleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+In the morning as they sat at breakfast four clerics were announced, and
+when they entered the king looked on them with stern disapproval.
+
+"What is the meaning of this journey on Sunday?" he demanded.
+
+A lank-jawed, thin-browed brother, with uneasy, intertwining fingers,
+and a deep-set, venomous eye, was the spokesman of those four.
+
+"Indeed," he said, and the fingers of his right hand strangled and did
+to death the fingers of his left hand, "indeed, we have transgressed by
+order."
+
+"Explain that."
+
+"We have been sent to you hurriedly by our master, Molasius of
+Devenish."
+
+"A pious, a saintly man," the king interrupted, "and one who does not
+countenance transgressions of the Sunday."
+
+"We were ordered to tell you as follows," said the grim cleric, and he
+buried the fingers of his right hand in his left fist, so that one could
+not hope to see them resurrected again. "It was the duty of one of
+the Brothers of Devenish," he continued, "to turn out the cattle this
+morning before the dawn of day, and that Brother, while in his duty, saw
+eight comely young men who fought together."
+
+"On the morning of Sunday," Dermod exploded.
+
+The cleric nodded with savage emphasis.
+
+"On the morning of this self-same and instant sacred day."
+
+"Tell on," said the king wrathfully.
+
+But terror gripped with sudden fingers at Becfola's heart.
+
+"Do not tell horrid stories on the Sunday," she pleaded. "No good can
+come to any one from such a tale."
+
+"Nay, this must be told, sweet lady," said the king. But the cleric
+stared at her glumly, forbiddingly, and resumed his story at a gesture.
+
+"Of these eight men, seven were killed."
+
+"They are in hell," the king said gloomily.
+
+"In hell they are," the cleric replied with enthusiasm.
+
+"And the one that was not killed?"
+
+"He is alive," that cleric responded.
+
+"He would be," the monarch assented. "Tell your tale."
+
+"Molasius had those seven miscreants buried, and he took from their
+unhallowed necks and from their lewd arms and from their unblessed
+weapons the load of two men in gold and silver treasure."
+
+"Two men's load!" said Dermod thoughtfully.
+
+"That much," said the lean cleric. "No more, no less. And he has sent us
+to find out what part of that hellish treasure belongs to the Brothers
+of Devenish and how much is the property of the king."
+
+Becfola again broke in, speaking graciously, regally, hastily: "Let
+those Brothers have the entire of the treasure, for it is Sunday
+treasure, and as such it will bring no luck to any one."
+
+The cleric again looked at her coldly, with a harsh-lidded, small-set,
+grey-eyed glare, and waited for the king's reply.
+
+Dermod pondered, shaking his head as to an argument on his left side,
+and then nodding it again as to an argument on his right.
+
+"It shall be done as this sweet queen advises. Let a reliquary be formed
+with cunning workmanship of that gold and silver, dated with my date and
+signed with my name, to be in memory of my grandmother who gave birth to
+a lamb, to a salmon, and then to my father, the Ard-Ri'. And, as to the
+treasure that remains over, a pastoral staff may be beaten from it in
+honour of Molasius, the pious man."
+
+"The story is not ended," said that glum, spike-chinned cleric.
+
+The king moved with jovial impatience.
+
+"If you continue it," he said, "it will surely come to an end some time.
+A stone on a stone makes a house, dear heart, and a word on a word tells
+a tale."
+
+The cleric wrapped himself into himself, and became lean and menacing.
+He whispered: "Besides the young man, named Flann, who was not slain,
+there was another person present at the scene and the combat and the
+transgression of Sunday."
+
+"Who was that person?" said the alarmed monarch.
+
+The cleric spiked forward his chin, and then butted forward his brow.
+
+"It was the wife of the king," he shouted. "It was the woman called
+Becfola. It was that woman," he roared, and he extended a lean,
+inflexible, unending first finger at the queen.
+
+"Dog!" the king stammered, starting up.
+
+"If that be in truth a woman," the cleric screamed.
+
+"What do you mean?" the king demanded in wrath and terror.
+
+"Either she is a woman of this world to be punished, or she is a woman
+of the Shi' to be banished, but this holy morning she was in the Shi',
+and her arms were about the neck of Flann."
+
+The king sank back in his chair stupefied, gazing from one to the other,
+and then turned an unseeing, fear-dimmed eye towards Becfola.
+
+"Is this true, my pulse?" he murmured.
+
+"It is true," Becfola replied, and she became suddenly to the king's eye
+a whiteness and a stare. He pointed to the door.
+
+"Go to your engagement," he stammered. "Go to that Flann."
+
+"He is waiting for me," said Becfola with proud shame, "and the thought
+that he should wait wrings my heart."
+
+She went out from the palace then. She went away from Tara: and in all
+Ireland and in the world of living men she was not seen again, and she
+was never heard of again.
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE BRAWL AT ALLEN
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"I think," said Cairell Whiteskin, "that although judgement was given
+against Fionn, it was Fionn had the rights of it."
+
+"He had eleven hundred killed," said Cona'n amiably, "and you may call
+that the rights of it if you like."
+
+"All the same--" Cairell began argumentatively.
+
+"And it was you that commenced it," Cona'n continued.
+
+"Ho! Ho!" Cairell cried. "Why, you are as much to blame as I am."
+
+"No," said Cona'n, "for you hit me first."
+
+"And if we had not been separated--" the other growled.
+
+"Separated!" said Cona'n, with a grin that made his beard poke all
+around his face.
+
+"Yes, separated. If they had not come between us I still think--"
+
+"Don't think out loud, dear heart, for you and I are at peace by law."
+
+"That is true," said Cairell, "and a man must stick by a judgement. Come
+with me, my dear, and let us see how the youngsters are shaping in the
+school. One of them has rather a way with him as a swordsman."
+
+"No youngster is any good with a sword," Conan replied.
+
+"You are right there," said Cairell. "It takes a good ripe man for that
+weapon."
+
+"Boys are good enough with slings," Confro continued, "but except for
+eating their fill and running away from a fight, you can't count on
+boys."
+
+The two bulky men turned towards the school of the Fianna.
+
+It happened that Fionn mac Uail had summoned the gentlemen of the Fianna
+and their wives to a banquet. Everybody came, for a banquet given by
+Fionn was not a thing to be missed. There was Goll mor mac Morna and his
+people; Fionn's son Oisi'n and his grandson Oscar. There was Dermod of
+the Gay Face, Caelte mac Ronan--but indeed there were too many to be
+told of, for all the pillars of war and battle-torches of the Gael were
+there.
+
+The banquet began.
+
+Fionn sat in the Chief Captain's seat in the middle of the fort; and
+facing him, in the place of honour, he placed the mirthful Goll mac
+Morna; and from these, ranging on either side, the nobles of the Fianna
+took each the place that fitted his degree and patrimony.
+
+After good eating, good conversation; and after good conversation,
+sleep--that is the order of a banquet: so when each person had been
+served with food to the limit of desire the butlers carried in shining,
+and jewelled drinking-horns, each having its tide of smooth, heady
+liquor. Then the young heroes grew merry and audacious, the ladies
+became gentle and kind, and the poets became wonders of knowledge and
+prophecy. Every eye beamed in that assembly, and on Fionn every eye was
+turned continually in the hope of a glance from the great, mild hero.
+
+Goll spoke to him across the table enthusiastically.
+
+"There is nothing wanting to this banquet, O Chief," said he.
+
+And Fionn smiled back into that eye which seemed a well of tenderness
+and friendship.
+
+"Nothing is wanting," he replied, "but a well-shaped poem." A crier
+stood up then, holding in one hand a length of coarse iron links and in
+the other a chain of delicate, antique silver. He shook the iron chain
+so that the servants and followers of the household should be silent,
+and he shook the silver one so that the nobles and poets should hearken
+also.
+
+Fergus, called True-Lips, the poet of the Fianna-Finn, then sang of
+Fionn and his ancestors and their deeds. When he had finished Fionn and
+Oisi'n and Oscar and mac Lugac of the Terrible Hand gave him rare and
+costly presents, so that every person wondered at their munificence, and
+even the poet, accustomed to the liberality of kings and princes, was
+astonished at his gifts.
+
+Fergus then turned to the side of Goll mac Morna, and he sang of the
+Forts, the Destructions, the Raids, and the Wooings of clann-Morna; and
+as the poems succeeded each other, Goll grew more and more jovial and
+contented. When the songs were finished Goll turned in his seat.
+
+"Where is my runner?" he cried.
+
+He had a woman runner, a marvel for swiftness and trust. She stepped
+forward.
+
+"I am here, royal captain."
+
+"Have you collected my tribute from Denmark?"
+
+"It is here."
+
+And, with help, she laid beside him the load of three men of doubly
+refined gold. Out of this treasure, and from the treasure of rings and
+bracelets and torques that were with him, Goll mac Morna paid Fergus for
+his songs, and, much as Fionn had given, Goll gave twice as much.
+
+But, as the banquet proceeded, Goll gave, whether it was to harpers or
+prophets or jugglers, more than any one else gave, so that Fionn became
+displeased, and as the banquet proceeded he grew stern and silent.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+[This version of the death of Uail is not correct. Also Cnocha is not in
+Lochlann but in Ireland.]
+
+
+The wonderful gift-giving of Goll continued, and an uneasiness and
+embarrassment began to creep through the great banqueting hall.
+
+Gentlemen looked at each other questioningly, and then spoke again on
+indifferent matters, but only with half of their minds. The singers, the
+harpers, and jugglers submitted to that constraint, so that every person
+felt awkward and no one knew what should be done or what would happen,
+and from that doubt dulness came, with silence following on its heels.
+
+There is nothing more terrible than silence. Shame grows in that blank,
+or anger gathers there, and we must choose which of these is to be our
+master.
+
+That choice lay before Fionn, who never knew shame.
+
+"Goll," said he, "how long have you been taking tribute from the people
+of Lochlann?"
+
+"A long time now," said Goll.
+
+And he looked into an eye that was stern and unfriendly.
+
+"I thought that my rent was the only one those people had to pay," Fionn
+continued.
+
+"Your memory is at fault," said Goll.
+
+"Let it be so," said Fionn. "How did your tribute arise?"
+
+"Long ago, Fionn, in the days when your father forced war on me."
+
+"Ah!" said Fionn.
+
+"When he raised the High King against me and banished me from Ireland."
+
+"Continue," said Fionn, and he held Goll's eye under the great beetle of
+his brow.
+
+"I went into Britain," said Goll, "and your father followed me there. I
+went into White Lochlann (Norway) and took it. Your father banished me
+thence also."
+
+"I know it," said Fionn.
+
+"I went into the land of the Saxons and your father chased me out of
+that land. And then, in Lochlann, at the battle of Cnocha your father
+and I met at last, foot to foot, eye to eye, and there, Fionn!"
+
+"And there, Goll?"
+
+"And there I killed your father."
+
+Fionn sat rigid and unmoving, his face stony and terrible as the face of
+a monument carved on the side of a cliff.
+
+"Tell all your tale," said he.
+
+"At that battle I beat the Lochlannachs. I penetrated to the hold of the
+Danish king, and I took out of his dungeon the men who had lain
+there for a year and were awaiting their deaths. I liberated fifteen
+prisoners, and one of them was Fionn."
+
+"It is true," said Fionn.
+
+Goll's anger fled at the word.
+
+"Do not be jealous of me, dear heart, for if I had twice the tribute I
+would give it to you and to Ireland."
+
+But at the word jealous the Chief's anger revived.
+
+"It is an impertinence," he cried, "to boast at this table that you
+killed my father."
+
+"By my hand," Goll replied, "if Fionn were to treat me as his father did
+I would treat Fionn the way I treated Fionn's father."
+
+Fionn closed his eyes and beat away the anger that was rising within
+him. He smiled grimly.
+
+"If I were so minded, I would not let that last word go with you, Goll,
+for I have here an hundred men for every man of yours."
+
+Goll laughed aloud.
+
+"So had your father," he said.
+
+Fionn's brother, Cairell Whiteskin, broke into the conversation with a
+harsh laugh.
+
+"How many of Fionn's household has the wonderful Goll put down?" he
+cried.
+
+But Goll's brother, bald Cona'n the Swearer, turned a savage eye on
+Cairell.
+
+"By my weapons," said he, "there were never less than an hundred-and-one
+men with Goll, and the least of them could have put you down easily
+enough."
+
+"Ah?" cried Cairell. "And are you one of the hundred-and-one, old
+scaldhead?"
+
+"One indeed, my thick-witted, thin-livered Cairell, and I undertake to
+prove on your hide that what my brother said was true and that what your
+brother said was false."
+
+"You undertake that," growled Cairell, and on the word he loosed a
+furious buffet at Con'an, which Cona'n returned with a fist so big that
+every part of Cairell's face was hit with the one blow. The two then
+fell into grips, and went lurching and punching about the great hall.
+Two of Oscar's sons could not bear to see their uncle being worsted, and
+they leaped at Cona'n, and two of Goll's sons rushed at them. Then Oscar
+himself leaped up, and with a hammer in either hand he went battering
+into the melee.
+
+"I thank the gods," said Cona'n, "for the chance of killing yourself,
+Oscar."
+
+These two encountered then, and Oscar knocked a groan of distress out of
+Cona'n. He looked appealingly at his brother Art og mac Morna, and that
+powerful champion flew to his aid and wounded Oscar. Oisi'n, Oscar's
+father, could not abide that; he dashed in and quelled Art Og. Then
+Rough Hair mac Morna wounded Oisin and was himself tumbled by mac Lugac,
+who was again wounded by Gara mac Morna.
+
+The banqueting hall was in tumult. In every part of it men were giving
+and taking blows. Here two champions with their arms round each other's
+necks were stamping round and round in a slow, sad dance. Here were two
+crouching against each other, looking for a soft place to hit. Yonder a
+big-shouldered person lifted another man in his arms and threw him at a
+small group that charged him. In a retired corner a gentleman stood in
+a thoughtful attitude while he tried to pull out a tooth that had been
+knocked loose.
+
+"You can't fight," he mumbled, "with a loose shoe or a loose tooth."
+
+"Hurry up with that tooth," the man in front of him grum-bled, "for I
+want to knock out another one."
+
+Pressed against the wall was a bevy of ladies, some of whom were
+screaming and some laughing and all of whom were calling on the men to
+go back to their seats.
+
+Only two people remained seated in the hall.
+
+Goll sat twisted round watching the progress of the brawl critically,
+and Fionn, sitting opposite, watched Goll.
+
+Just then Faelan, another of Fionn's sons, stormed the hall with three
+hundred of the Fianna, and by this force all Goll's people were put out
+of doors, where the fight continued.
+
+Goll looked then calmly on Fionn.
+
+"Your people are using their weapons," said he.
+
+"Are they?" Fionn inquired as calmly, and as though addressing the air.
+
+"In the matter of weapons--!" said Goll.
+
+And the hard-fighting pillar of battle turned to where his arms hung on
+the wall behind him. He took his solid, well-balanced sword in his fist,
+over his left arm his ample, bossy shield, and, with another side-look
+at Fionn, he left the hall and charged irresistibly into the fray.
+
+Fionn then arose. He took his accoutrements from the wall also and
+strode out. Then he raised the triumphant Fenian shout and went into the
+combat.
+
+That was no place for a sick person to be. It was not the corner which
+a slender-fingered woman would choose to do up her hair; nor was it the
+spot an ancient man would select to think quietly in, for the tumult of
+sword on sword, of axe on shield, the roar of the contending parties,
+the crying of wounded men, and the screaming of frightened women
+destroyed peace, and over all was the rallying cry of Goll mac Morna and
+the great shout of Fionn.
+
+Then Fergus True-Lips gathered about him all the poets of the Fianna,
+and they surrounded the combatants. They began to chant and intone
+long, heavy rhymes and incantations, until the rhythmic beating of their
+voices covered even the noise of war, so that the men stopped hacking
+and hewing, and let their weapons drop from their hands. These were
+picked up by the poets and a reconciliation was effected between the two
+parties.
+
+But Fionn affirmed that he would make no peace with clann-Morna until
+the matter had been judged by the king, Cormac mac Art, and by his
+daughter Ailve, and by his son Cairbre of Ana Life' and by Fintan the
+chief poet. Goll agreed that the affair should be submitted to that
+court, and a day was appointed, a fortnight from that date, to meet
+at Tara of the Kings for judgement. Then the hall was cleansed and the
+banquet recommenced.
+
+Of Fionn's people eleven hundred of men and women were dead, while of
+Goll's people eleven men and fifty women were dead. But it was through
+fright the women died, for not one of them had a wound or a bruise or a
+mark.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+AT the end of a fortnight Fionn and Goll and the chief men of the Fianna
+attended at Tara. The king, his son and daughter, with Flahri, Feehal,
+and Fintan mac Bocna sat in the place of judgement, and Cormac called on
+the witnesses for evidence.
+
+Fionn stood up, but the moment he did so Goll mac Morna arose also.
+
+"I object to Fionn giving evidence," said he.
+
+"Why so?" the king asked.
+
+"Because in any matter that concerned me Fionn would turn a lie into
+truth and the truth into a lie."
+
+"I do not think that is so," said Fionn.
+
+"You see, he has already commenced it," cried Goll.
+
+"If you object to the testimony of the chief person present, in what way
+are we to obtain evidence?" the king demanded.
+
+"I," said Goll, "will trust to the evidence of Fergus True-Lips. He is
+Fionn's poet, and will tell no lie against his master; he is a poet, and
+will tell no lie against any one."
+
+"I agree to that," said Fionn.
+
+"I require, nevertheless," Goll continued, "that Fergus should swear
+before the Court, by his gods, that he will do justice between us."
+
+Fergus was accordingly sworn, and gave his evidence. He stated that
+Fionn's brother Cairell struck Cona'n mac Morna, that Goll's two sons
+came to help Cona'n, that Oscar went to help Cairell, and with that
+Fionn's people and the clann-Morna rose at each other, and what had
+started as a brawl ended as a battle with eleven hundred of Fionn's
+people and sixty-one of Goll's people dead.
+
+"I marvel," said the king in a discontented voice, "that, considering
+the numbers against them, the losses of clann-Morna should be so small."
+
+Fionn blushed when he heard that.
+
+Fergus replied:
+
+"Goll mac Morna covered his people with his shield. All that slaughter
+was done by him."
+
+"The press was too great," Fionn grumbled. "I could not get at him in
+time or---"
+
+"Or what?" said Goll with a great laugh.
+
+Fionn shook his head sternly and said no more.
+
+"What is your judgement?" Cormac demanded of his fellow-judges.
+
+Flahri pronounced first.
+
+"I give damages to clann-Morna."
+
+"Why?" said Cormac.
+
+"Because they were attacked first."
+
+Cormac looked at him stubbornly.
+
+"I do not agree with your judgement," he said.
+
+"What is there faulty in it?" Flahri asked.
+
+"You have not considered," the king replied, "that a soldier owes
+obedience to his captain, and that, given the time and the place, Fionn
+was the captain and Goll was only a simple soldier."
+
+Flahri considered the king's suggestion.
+
+"That," he said, "would hold good for the white-striking or blows of
+fists, but not for the red-striking or sword-strokes."
+
+"What is your judgement?" the king asked Feehal. Feehal then pronounced:
+
+"I hold that clann-Morna were attacked first, and that they are to be
+free from payment of damages."
+
+"And as regards Fionn?" said Cormac.
+
+"I hold that on account of his great losses Fionn is to be exempt
+from payment of damages, and that his losses are to be considered as
+damages."
+
+"I agree in that judgement," said Fintan.
+
+The king and his son also agreed, and the decision was imparted to the
+Fianna.
+
+"One must abide by a judgement," said Fionn.
+
+"Do you abide by it?" Goll demanded.
+
+"I do," said Fionn.
+
+Goll and Fionn then kissed each other, and thus peace was made. For,
+notwithstanding the endless bicker of these two heroes, they loved each
+other well.
+
+
+Yet, now that the years have gone by, I think the fault lay with Goll
+and not with Fionn, and that the judgement given did not consider
+everything. For at that table Goll should not have given greater gifts
+than his master and host did. And it was not right of Goll to take by
+force the position of greatest gift-giver of the Fianna, for there was
+never in the world one greater at giving gifts, or giving battle, or
+making poems than Fionn was.
+
+That side of the affair was not brought before the Court. But perhaps it
+was suppressed out of delicacy for Fionn, for if Goll could be accused
+of ostentation, Fionn was open to the uglier charge of jealousy. It
+was, nevertheless, Goll's forward and impish temper which commenced the
+brawl, and the verdict of time must be to exonerate Fionn and to let the
+blame go where it is merited.
+
+There is, however, this to be added and remembered, that whenever Fionn
+was in a tight corner it was Goll that plucked him out of it; and, later
+on, when time did his worst on them all and the Fianna were sent to hell
+as unbelievers, it was Goll mac Morna who assaulted hell, with a chain
+in his great fist and three iron balls swinging from it, and it was
+he who attacked the hosts of great devils and brought Fionn and the
+Fianna-Finn out with him.
+
+
+
+
+THE CARL OF THE DRAB COAT
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+One day something happened to Fionn, the son of Uail; that is, he
+departed from the world of men, and was set wandering in great distress
+of mind through Faery. He had days and nights there and adventures
+there, and was able to bring back the memory of these.
+
+That, by itself, is wonderful, for there are few people who remember
+that they have been to Faery or aught of all that happened to them in
+that state.
+
+In truth we do not go to Faery, we become Faery, and in the beating of a
+pulse we may live for a year or a thousand years. But when we return
+the memory is quickly clouded, and we seem to have had a dream or seen a
+vision, although we have verily been in Faery.
+
+It was wonderful, then, that Fionn should have remembered all that
+happened to him in that wide-spun moment, but in this tale there is yet
+more to marvel at; for not only did Fionn go to Faery, but the great
+army which he had marshalled to Ben Edair [The Hill of Howth] were
+translated also, and neither he nor they were aware that they had
+departed from the world until they came back to it.
+
+Fourteen battles, seven of the reserve and seven of the regular Fianna,
+had been taken by the Chief on a great march and manoeuvre. When they
+reached Ben Edair it was decided to pitch camp so that the troops
+might rest in view of the warlike plan which Fionn had imagined for the
+morrow. The camp was chosen, and each squadron and company of the host
+were lodged into an appropriate place, so there was no overcrowding and
+no halt or interruption of the march; for where a company halted that
+was its place of rest, and in that place it hindered no other company,
+and was at its own ease.
+
+When this was accomplished the leaders of battalions gathered on a
+level, grassy plateau overlooking the sea, where a consultation began
+as to the next day's manoeuvres, and during this discussion they looked
+often on the wide water that lay wrinkling and twinkling below them.
+
+A roomy ship under great press of sall was bearing on Ben Edair from the
+east.
+
+Now and again, in a lull of the discussion, a champion would look and
+remark on the hurrying vessel; and it may have been during one of these
+moments that the adventure happened to Fionn and the Fianna.
+
+"I wonder where that ship comes from?" said Cona'n idly.
+
+But no person could surmise anything about it beyond that it was a
+vessel well equipped for war.
+
+As the ship drew by the shore the watchers observed a tall man swing
+from the side by means of his spear shafts, and in a little while this
+gentleman was announced to Fionn, and was brought into his presence.
+
+A sturdy, bellicose, forthright personage he was indeed. He was equipped
+in a wonderful solidity of armour, with a hard, carven helmet on
+his head, a splendid red-bossed shield swinging on his shoulder, a
+wide-grooved, straight sword clashing along his thigh. On his shoulders
+under the shield he carried a splendid scarlet mantle; over his breast
+was a great brooch of burnt gold, and in his fist he gripped a pair of
+thick-shafted, unburnished spears.
+
+Fionn and the champions looked on this gentleman, and they admired
+exceedingly his bearing and equipment.
+
+"Of what blood are you, young gentleman?" Fionn demanded, "and from
+which of the four corners of the world do you come?"
+
+"My name is Cael of the Iron," the stranger answered, "and I am son to
+the King of Thessaly."
+
+"What errand has brought you here?"
+
+"I do not go on errands," the man replied sternly, "but on the affairs
+that please me."
+
+"Be it so. What is the pleasing affair which brings you to this land?"
+
+"Since I left my own country I have not gone from a land or an island
+until it paid tribute to me and acknowledged my lordship."
+
+"And you have come to this realm," cried Fionn, doubting his ears.
+
+"For tribute and sovereignty," growled that other, and he struck the
+haft of his spear violently on the ground.
+
+"By my hand," said Cona'n, "we have never heard of a warrior, however
+great, but his peer was found in Ireland, and the funeral songs of all
+such have been chanted by the women of this land."
+
+"By my hand and word," said the harsh stranger, "your talk makes me
+think of a small boy or of an idiot."
+
+"Take heed, sir," said Fionn, "for the champions and great dragons of
+the Gael are standing by you, and around us there are fourteen battles
+of the Fianna of Ireland."
+
+"If all the Fianna who have died in the last seven years were added to
+all that are now here," the stranger asserted, "I would treat all of
+these and those grievously, and would curtail their limbs and their
+lives."
+
+"It is no small boast," Cona'n murmured, staring at him.
+
+"It is no boast at all," said Cael, "and, to show my quality and
+standing, I will propose a deed to you."
+
+"Give out your deed," Fionn commanded.
+
+"Thus," said Cael with cold savagery. "If you can find a man among your
+fourteen battalions who can outrun or outwrestle or outfight me, I will
+take myself off to my own country, and will trouble you no more."
+
+And so harshly did he speak, and with such a belligerent eye did he
+stare, that dismay began to seize on the champions, and even Fionn felt
+that his breath had halted.
+
+"It is spoken like a hero," he admitted after a moment, "and if you
+cannot be matched on those terms it will not be from a dearth of
+applicants."
+
+"In running alone," Fionn continued thoughtfully, "we have a notable
+champion, Caelte mac Rona'n."
+
+"This son of Rona'n will not long be notable," the stranger asserted.
+
+"He can outstrip the red deer," said Cona'n.
+
+"He can outrun the wind," cried Fionn.
+
+"He will not be asked to outrun the red deer or the wind," the stranger
+sneered. "He will be asked to outrun me," he thundered. "Produce this
+runner, and we shall discover if he keeps as great heart in his feet as
+he has made you think."
+
+"He is not with us," Cona'n lamented.
+
+"These notable warriors are never with us when the call is made," said
+the grim stranger.
+
+"By my hand," cried Fionn, "he shall be here in no great time, for I
+will fetch him myself."
+
+"Be it so," said Cael. "And during my absence," Fionn continued, "I
+leave this as a compact, that you make friends with the Fianna here
+present, and that you observe all the conditions and ceremonies of
+friendship."
+
+Cael agreed to that.
+
+"I will not hurt any of these people until you return," he said.
+
+Fionn then set out towards Tara of the Kings, for he thought Caelte mac
+Romin would surely be there; "and if he is not there," said the champion
+to himself, "then I shall find him at Cesh Corran of the Fianna."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+He had not gone a great distance from Ben Edair when he came to
+an intricate, gloomy wood, where the trees grew so thickly and the
+undergrowth was such a sprout and tangle that one could scarcely pass
+through it. He remembered that a path had once been hacked through the
+wood, and he sought for this. It was a deeply scooped, hollow way, and
+it ran or wriggled through the entire length of the wood.
+
+Into this gloomy drain Fionn descended and made progress, but when he
+had penetrated deeply in the dank forest he heard a sound of thumping
+and squelching footsteps, and he saw coming towards him a horrible,
+evil-visaged being; a wild, monstrous, yellow-skinned, big-boned giant,
+dressed in nothing but an ill-made, mud-plastered, drab-coloured coat,
+which swaggled and clapped against the calves of his big bare legs. On
+his stamping feet there were great brogues of boots that were shaped
+like, but were bigger than, a boat, and each time he put a foot down it
+squashed and squirted a barrelful of mud from the sunk road.
+
+Fionn had never seen the like of this vast person, and he stood gazing
+on him, lost in a stare of astonishment.
+
+The great man saluted him.
+
+"All alone, Fionn?" he cried. "How does it happen that not one Fenian
+of the Fianna is at the side of his captain?" At this inquiry Fionn got
+back his wits.
+
+"That is too long a story and it is too intricate and pressing to be
+told, also I have no time to spare now."
+
+"Yet tell it now," the monstrous man insisted.
+
+Fionn, thus pressed, told of the coming of Cael of the Iron, of the
+challenge the latter had issued, and that he, Fionn, was off to Tara of
+the Kings to find Caelte mac Rona'n.
+
+"I know that foreigner well," the big man commented.
+
+"Is he the champion he makes himself out to be?" Fionn inquired.
+
+"He can do twice as much as he said he would do," the monster replied.
+
+"He won't outrun Caelte mac Rona'n," Fionn asserted. The big man jeered.
+
+"Say that he won't outrun a hedgehog, dear heart. This Cael will end the
+course by the time your Caelte begins to think of starting."
+
+"Then," said Fionn, "I no longer know where to turn, or how to protect
+the honour of Ireland."
+
+"I know how to do these things," the other man commented with a slow nod
+of the head.
+
+"If you do," Fionn pleaded, "tell it to me upon your honour."
+
+"I will do that," the man replied.
+
+"Do not look any further for the rusty-kneed, slow-trotting son of
+Rona'n," he continued, "but ask me to run your race, and, by this hand,
+I will be first at the post."
+
+At this the Chief began to laugh.
+
+"My good friend, you have work enough to carry the two tons of mud that
+are plastered on each of your coat-tails, to say nothing of your weighty
+boots."
+
+"By my hand," the man cried, "there is no person in Ireland but myself
+can win that race. I claim a chance."
+
+Fionn agreed then. "Be it so," said he. "And now, tell me your name?"
+
+"I am known as the Carl of the Drab Coat."
+
+"All names are names," Fionn responded, "and that also is a name."
+
+They returned then to Ben Edair.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+When they came among the host the men of Ireland gathered about the vast
+stranger; and there were some who hid their faces in their mantles so
+that they should not be seen to laugh, and there were some who rolled
+along the ground in merriment, and there were others who could only hold
+their mouths open and crook their knees and hang their arms and stare
+dumbfoundedly upon the stranger, as though they were utterly dazed.
+
+Cael of the Iron came also on the scene, and he examined the stranger
+with close and particular attention.
+
+"What in the name of the devil is this thing?" he asked of Fionn.
+
+"Dear heart," said Fionn, "this is the champion I am putting against you
+in the race."
+
+Cael of the Iron grew purple in the face, and he almost swallowed his
+tongue through wrath.
+
+"Until the end of eternity," he roared, "and until the very last moment
+of doom I will not move one foot in a race with this greasy, big-hoofed,
+ill-assembled resemblance of a beggarman."
+
+But at this the Carl burst into a roar of laughter, so that the eardrums
+of the warriors present almost burst inside of their heads.
+
+"Be reassured, my darling, I am no beggarman, and my quality is not more
+gross than is the blood of the most delicate prince in this assembly.
+You will not evade your challenge in that way, my love, and you shall
+run with me or you shall run to your ship with me behind you. What
+length of course do you propose, dear heart?"
+
+"I never run less than sixty miles," Cael replied sullenly.
+
+"It is a small run," said the Carl, "but it will do. From this place
+to the Hill of the Rushes, Slieve Luachra of Munster, is exactly sixty
+miles. Will that suit you?"
+
+"I don't care how it is done," Cael answered.
+
+"Then," said the Carl, "we may go off to Slieve Luachra now, and in the
+morning we can start our race there to here."
+
+"Let it be done that way," said Cael.
+
+These two set out then for Munster, and as the sun was setting they
+reached Slieve Luachra and prepared to spend the night there.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"Cael, my pulse," said the Carl, "we had better build a house or a hut
+to pass the night in."
+
+"I'Il build nothing," Cael replied, looking on the Carl with great
+disfavour.
+
+"No!"
+
+"I won't build house or hut for the sake of passing one night here, for
+I hope never to see this place again."
+
+"I'Il build a house myself," said the Carl, "and the man who does not
+help in the building can stay outside of the house."
+
+The Carl stumped to a near-by wood, and he never rested until he had
+felled and tied together twenty-four couples of big timber. He thrust
+these under one arm and under the other he tucked a bundle of rushes for
+his bed, and with that one load he rushed up a house, well thatched and
+snug, and with the timber that remained over he made a bonfire on the
+floor of the house.
+
+His companion sat at a distance regarding the work with rage and
+aversion.
+
+"Now Cael, my darling," said the Carl, "if you are a man help me to look
+for something to eat, for there is game here."
+
+"Help yourself," roared Cael, "for all that I want is not to be near
+you."
+
+"The tooth that does not help gets no helping," the other replied.
+
+In a short time the Carl returned with a wild boar which he had run
+down. He cooked the beast over his bonfire and ate one half of it,
+leaving the other half for his breakfast. Then he lay down on the
+rushes, and in two turns he fell asleep.
+
+But Cael lay out on the side of the hill, and if he went to sleep that
+night he slept fasting. It was he, however, who awakened the Carl in the
+morning.
+
+"Get up, beggarman, if you are going to run against me."
+
+The Carl rubbed his eyes.
+
+"I never get up until I have had my fill of sleep, and there is another
+hour of it due to me. But if you are in a hurry, my delight, you can
+start running now with a blessing. I will trot on your track when I
+waken up."
+
+Cael began to race then, and he was glad of the start, for his
+antagonist made so little account of him that he did not know what to
+expect when the Carl would begin to run.
+
+"Yet," said Cael to himself, "with an hour's start the beggarman will
+have to move his bones if he wants to catch on me," and he settled down
+to a good, pelting race.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+At the end of an hour the Carl awoke. He ate the second half of the
+boar, and he tied the unpicked bones in the tail of his coat. Then with
+a great rattling of the boar's bones he started.
+
+It is hard to tell how he ran or at what speed he ran, but he went
+forward in great two-legged jumps, and at times he moved in
+immense one-legged, mud-spattering hops, and at times again, with
+wide-stretched, far-flung, terrible-tramping, space-destroying legs he
+ran.
+
+He left the swallows behind as if they were asleep. He caught up on
+a red deer, jumped over it, and left it standing. The wind was always
+behind him, for he outran it every time; and he caught up in jumps and
+bounces on Cael of the Iron, although Cael was running well, with
+his fists up and his head back and his two legs flying in and out so
+vigorously that you could not see them because of that speedy movement.
+
+Trotting by the side of Cael, the Carl thrust a hand into the tail of
+his coat and pulled out a fistfull of red bones.
+
+"Here, my heart, is a meaty bone," said he, "for you fasted all night,
+poor friend, and if you pick a bit off the bone your stomach will get a
+rest."
+
+"Keep your filth, beggarman," the other replied, "for I would rather be
+hanged than gnaw on a bone that you have browsed."
+
+"Why don't you run, my pulse?" said the Carl earnestly; "why don't you
+try to win the race?"
+
+Cael then began to move his limbs as if they were the wings of a fly,
+or the fins of a little fish, or as if they were the six legs of a
+terrified spider.
+
+"I am running," he gasped.
+
+"But try and run like this," the Carl admonished, and he gave a
+wriggling bound and a sudden outstretching and scurrying of shanks, and
+he disappeared from Cael's sight in one wild spatter of big boots.
+
+Despair fell on Cael of the Iron, but he had a great heart. "I will run
+until I burst," he shrieked, "and when I burst, may I burst to a great
+distance, and may I trip that beggar-man up with my burstings and make
+him break his leg."
+
+He settled then to a determined, savage, implacable trot. He caught up
+on the Carl at last, for the latter had stopped to eat blackberries from
+the bushes on the road, and when he drew nigh, Cael began to jeer and
+sneer angrily at the Carl.
+
+"Who lost the tails of his coat?" he roared.
+
+"Don't ask riddles of a man that's eating blackberries," the Carl
+rebuked him.
+
+"The dog without a tall and the coat without a tail," cried Cael.
+
+"I give it up," the Carl mumbled.
+
+"It's yourself, beggarman," jeered Cael.
+
+"I am myself," the Carl gurgled through a mouthful of blackberries,
+"and as I am myself, how can it be myself? That is a silly riddle," he
+burbled.
+
+"Look at your coat, tub of grease?"
+
+The Carl did so.
+
+"My faith," said he, "where are the two tails of my coat?" "I could
+smell one of them and it wrapped around a little tree thirty miles
+back," said Cael, "and the other one was dishonouring a bush ten miles
+behind that."
+
+"It is bad luck to be separated from the tails of your own coat," the
+Carl grumbled. "I'll have to go back for them. Wait here, beloved, and
+eat blackberries until I come back, and we'll both start fair."
+
+"Not half a second will I wait," Cael replied, and he began to run
+towards Ben Edair as a lover runs to his maiden or as a bee flies to his
+hive.
+
+"I haven't had half my share of blackberries either," the Carl lamented
+as he started to run backwards for his coat-tails.
+
+He ran determinedly on that backward journey, and as the path he had
+travelled was beaten out as if it had been trampled by an hundred bulls
+yoked neck to neck, he was able to find the two bushes and the two
+coat-tails. He sewed them on his coat.
+
+Then he sprang up, and he took to a fit and a vortex and an exasperation
+of running for which no description may be found. The thumping of his
+big boots grew as con-tinuous as the pattering of hailstones on a
+roof, and the wind of his passage blew trees down. The beasts that were
+ranging beside his path dropped dead from concussion, and the steam that
+snored from his nose blew birds into bits and made great lumps of cloud
+fall out of the sky.
+
+He again caught up on Cael, who was running with his head down and his
+toes up.
+
+"If you won't try to run, my treasure," said the Carl, "you will never
+get your tribute."
+
+And with that he incensed and exploded himself into an eye-blinding,
+continuous, waggle and complexity of boots that left Cael behind him in
+a flash.
+
+"I will run until I burst," sobbed Cael, and he screwed agitation and
+despair into his legs until he hummed and buzzed like a blue-bottle on a
+window.
+
+Five miles from Ben Edair the Carl stopped, for he had again come among
+blackberries.
+
+He ate of these until he was no more than a sack of juice, and when
+he heard the humming and buzzing of Cael of the Iron he mourned and
+lamented that he could not wait to eat his fill He took off his coat,
+stuffed it full of blackberries, swung it on his shoulders, and went
+bounding stoutly and nimbly for Ben Edair.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+It would be hard to tell of the terror that was in Fionn's breast and
+in the hearts of the Fianna while they attended the conclusion of that
+race.
+
+They discussed it unendingly, and at some moment of the day a man
+upbraided Fionn because he had not found Caelte the son of Rona'n as had
+been agreed on.
+
+"There is no one can run like Caelte," one man averred.
+
+"He covers the ground," said another.
+
+"He is light as a feather."
+
+"Swift as a stag." "Lunged like a bull."
+
+"Legged like a wolf."
+
+"He runs!"
+
+These things were said to Fionn, and Fionn said these things to himself.
+
+With every passing minute a drop of lead thumped down into every heart,
+and a pang of despair stabbed up to every brain.
+
+"Go," said Fionn to a hawk-eyed man, "go to the top of this hill and
+watch for the coming of the racers."
+
+And he sent lithe men with him so that they might run back in endless
+succession with the news.
+
+The messengers began to run through his tent at minute intervals calling
+"nothing," "nothing," "nothing," as they paused and darted away.
+
+And the words, "nothing, nothing, nothing," began to drowse into the
+brains of every person present.
+
+"What can we hope from that Carl?" a champion demanded savagely.
+
+"Nothing," cried a messenger who stood and sped.
+
+"A clump!" cried a champion.
+
+"A hog!" said another.
+
+"A flat-footed."
+
+"Little-wlnded."
+
+"Big-bellied."
+
+"Lazy-boned."
+
+"Pork!"
+
+"Did you think, Fionn, that a whale could swim on land, or what did you
+imagine that lump could do?"
+
+"Nothing," cried a messenger, and was sped as he spoke.
+
+Rage began to gnaw in Fionn's soul, and a red haze danced and flickered
+before his eyes. His hands began to twitch and a desire crept over him
+to seize on champions by the neck, and to shake and worry and rage among
+them like a wild dog raging among sheep.
+
+He looked on one, and yet he seemed to look on all at once.
+
+"Be silent," he growled. "Let each man be silent as a dead man."
+
+And he sat forward, seeing all, seeing none, with his mouth drooping
+open, and such a wildness and bristle lowering from that great glum brow
+that the champions shivered as though already in the chill of death, and
+were silent.
+
+He rose and stalked to the tent-door.
+
+"Where to, O Fionn?" said a champion humbly.
+
+"To the hill-top," said Fionn, and he stalked on.
+
+They followed him, whispering among themselves, keeping their eyes on
+the ground as they climbed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+"What do you see?" Fionn demanded of the watcher.
+
+"Nothing," that man replied.
+
+"Look again," said Fionn.
+
+The eagle-eyed man lifted a face, thin and sharp as though it had been
+carven on the wind, and he stared forward with an immobile intentness.
+
+"What do you see?" said Fionn.
+
+"Nothing," the man replied.
+
+"I will look myself," said Fionn, and his great brow bent forward and
+gloomed afar.
+
+The watcher stood beside, staring with his tense face and unwinking,
+lidless eye.
+
+"What can you see, O Fionn?" said the watcher.
+
+"I can see nothing," said Fionn, and he projected again his grim, gaunt
+forehead. For it seemed as if the watcher stared with his whole face,
+aye, and with his hands; but Fionn brooded weightedly on distance with
+his puckered and crannied brow.
+
+They looked again.
+
+"What can you see?" said Fionn.
+
+"I see nothing," said the watcher.
+
+"I do not know if I see or if I surmise, but something moves," said
+Fionn. "There is a trample," he said.
+
+The watcher became then an eye, a rigidity, an intense out-thrusting and
+ransacking of thin-spun distance. At last he spoke.
+
+"There is a dust," he said.
+
+And at that the champions gazed also, straining hungrily afar, until
+their eyes became filled with a blue darkness and they could no longer
+see even the things that were close to them.
+
+"I," cried Cona'n triumphantly, "I see a dust."
+
+"And I," cried another.
+
+"And I."
+
+"I see a man," said the eagle-eyed watcher.
+
+And again they stared, until their straining eyes grew dim with tears
+and winks, and they saw trees that stood up and sat down, and fields
+that wobbled and spun round and round in a giddily swirling world.
+
+"There is a man," Cona'n roared.
+
+
+"A man there is," cried another.
+
+"And he is carrying a man on his back," said the watcher.
+
+"It is Cael of the Iron carrying the Carl on his back," he groaned.
+
+"The great pork!" a man gritted.
+
+"The no-good!" sobbed another.
+
+"The lean-hearted."
+
+"Thick-thighed."
+
+"Ramshackle."
+
+"Muddle-headed."
+
+"Hog!" screamed a champion.
+
+And he beat his fists angrily against a tree.
+
+But the eagle-eyed watcher watched until his eyes narrowed and became
+pin-points, and he ceased to be a man and became an optic.
+
+"Wait," he breathed, "wait until I screw into one other inch of sight."
+
+And they waited, looking no longer on that scarcely perceptible speck in
+the distance, but straining upon the eye of the watcher as though they
+would penetrate it and look through it.
+
+"It is the Carl," he said, "carrying something on his back, and behind
+him again there is a dust."
+
+"Are you sure?" said Fionn in a voice that rumbled and vibrated like
+thunder.
+
+"It is the Carl," said the watcher, "and the dust behind him is Cael of
+the Iron trying to catch him up."
+
+Then the Fianna gave a roar of exultation, and each man seized his
+neighbour and kissed him on both cheeks; and they gripped hands about
+Fionn, and they danced round and round in a great circle, roaring with
+laughter and relief, in the ecstasy which only comes where grisly fear
+has been and whence that bony jowl has taken itself away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The Carl of the Drab Coat came bumping and stumping and clumping into
+the camp, and was surrounded by a multitude that adored him and hailed
+him with tears.
+
+"Meal!" he bawled, "meal for the love of the stars!"
+
+And he bawled, "Meal, meal!" until he bawled everybody into silence.
+
+Fionn addressed him.
+
+"What for the meal, dear heart?"
+
+"For the inside of my mouth," said the Carl, "for the recesses and
+crannies and deep-down profundities of my stomach. Meal, meal!" he
+lamented.
+
+Meal was brought.
+
+The Carl put his coat on the ground, opened it carefully, and revealed
+a store of blackberries, squashed, crushed, mangled, democratic,
+ill-looking.
+
+"The meal!" he groaned, "the meal!"
+
+It was given to him.
+
+"What of the race, my pulse?" said Fionn.
+
+"Wait, wait," cried the Carl. "I die, I die for meal and blackberries."
+
+Into the centre of the mess of blackberries he discharged a barrel of
+meal, and be mixed the two up and through, and round and down, until
+the pile of white-black, red-brown slibber-slobber reached up to his
+shoulders. Then he commenced to paw and impel and project and cram the
+mixture into his mouth, and between each mouthful he sighed a contented
+sigh, and during every mouthful he gurgled an oozy gurgle.
+
+But while Fionn and the Fianna stared like lost minds upon the Carl,
+there came a sound of buzzing, as if a hornet or a queen of the wasps or
+a savage, steep-winged griffin was hovering about them, and looking away
+they saw Cael of the Iron charging on them with a monstrous extension
+and scurry of his legs. He had a sword in his hand, and there was
+nothing in his face but redness and ferocity.
+
+Fear fell llke night around the Fianna, and they stood with slack knees
+and hanging hands waiting for death. But the Carl lifted a pawful of his
+oozy slop and discharged this at Cael with such a smash that the man's
+head spun off his shoulders and hopped along the ground. The Carl then
+picked up the head and threw it at the body with such aim and force
+that the neck part of the head jammed into the neck part of the body and
+stuck there, as good a head as ever, you would have said, but that it
+bad got twisted the wrong way round. The Carl then lashed his opponent
+hand and foot.
+
+"Now, dear heart, do you still claim tribute and lordship of Ireland?"
+said he.
+
+"Let me go home," groaned Cael, "I want to go home."
+
+"Swear by the sun and moon, if I let you go home, that you will send to
+Fionn, yearly and every year, the rent of the land of Thessaly."
+
+"I swear that," said Cael, "and I would swear anything to get home."
+
+The Carl lifted him then and put him sitting into his ship. Then he
+raised his big boot and gave the boat a kick that drove it seven leagues
+out into the sea, and that was how the adventure of Cael of the Iron
+finished.
+
+"Who are you, sir?" said Fionn to the Carl.
+
+But before answering the Carl's shape changed into one of splendour and
+delight.
+
+"I am ruler of the Shi' of Rath Cruachan," he said.
+
+Then Fionn mac Uail made a feast and a banquet for the jovial god, and
+with that the tale is ended of the King of Thessaly's son and the Carl
+of the Drab Coat.
+
+
+
+
+THE ENCHANTED CAVE OF CESH CORRAN
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Fionn mac Uail was the most prudent chief of an army in the world, but
+he was not always prudent on his own account. Discipline sometimes
+irked him, and he would then take any opportunity that presented for an
+adventure; for he was not only a soldier, he was a poet also, that is, a
+man of science, and whatever was strange or unusual had an irresistible
+at-traction for him. Such a soldier was he that, single-handed, he could
+take the Fianna out of any hole they got into, but such an inveterate
+poet was he that all the Fianna together could scarcely retrieve him
+from the abysses into which he tumbled. It took him to keep the Fianna
+safe, but it took all the Fianna to keep their captain out of danger.
+They did not complain of this, for they loved every hair of Fionn's head
+more than they loved their wives and children, and that was reasonable
+for there was never in the world a person more worthy of love than Fionn
+was.
+
+Goll mac Morna did not admit so much in words, but he admitted it in
+all his actions, for although he never lost an opportunity of killing
+a member of Fionn's family (there was deadly feud between clann-Baiscne
+and clann-Morna), yet a call from Fionn brought Goll raging to his
+assistance like a lion that rages tenderly by his mate. Not even a call
+was necessary, for Goll felt in his heart when Fionn was threatened, and
+he would leave Fionn's own brother only half-killed to fly where his arm
+was wanted. He was never thanked, of course, for although Fionn loved
+Goll he did not like him, and that was how Goll felt towards Fionn.
+
+Fionn, with Cona'n the Swearer and the dogs Bran and Sceo'lan, was
+sitting on the hunting-mound at the top of Cesh Corran. Below and around
+on every side the Fianna were beating the coverts in Legney and Brefny,
+ranging the fastnesses of Glen Dallan, creeping in the nut and beech
+forests of Carbury, spying among the woods of Kyle Conor, and ranging
+the wide plain of Moy Conal.
+
+The great captain was happy: his eyes were resting on the sights he
+liked best--the sunlight of a clear day, the waving trees, the pure
+sky, and the lovely movement of the earth; and his ears were filled with
+delectable sounds--the baying of eager dogs, the clear calling of young
+men, the shrill whistling that came from every side, and each sound of
+which told a definite thing about the hunt. There was also the plunge
+and scurry of the deer, the yapping of badgers, and the whirr of birds
+driven into reluctant flight.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Now the king of the Shi' of Cesh Corran, Conaran, son of Imidel, was
+also watching the hunt, but Fionn did not see him, for we cannot see the
+people of Faery until we enter their realm, and Fionn was not thinking
+of Faery at that moment. Conaran did not like Fionn, and, seeing that
+the great champion was alone, save for Cona'n and the two hounds Bran
+and Sceo'lan, he thought the time had come to get Fionn into his power.
+We do not know what Fionn had done to Conaran, but it must have been bad
+enough, for the king of the Shi' of Cesh Cotran was filled with joy
+at the sight of Fionn thus close to him, thus unprotected, thus
+unsuspicious.
+
+This Conaran had four daughters. He was fond of them and proud of them,
+but if one were to search the Shi's of Ireland or the land of Ireland,
+the equal of these four would not be found for ugliness and bad humour
+and twisted temperaments.
+
+Their hair was black as ink and tough as wire: it stuck up and poked out
+and hung down about their heads in bushes and spikes and tangles. Their
+eyes were bleary and red. Their mouths were black and twisted, and in
+each of these mouths there was a hedge of curved yellow fangs. They had
+long scraggy necks that could turn all the way round like the neck of
+a hen. Their arms were long and skinny and muscular, and at the end of
+each finger they had a spiked nail that was as hard as horn and as sharp
+as a briar. Their bodies were covered with a bristle of hair and fur
+and fluff, so that they looked like dogs in some parts and like cats
+in others, and in other parts again they looked like chickens. They had
+moustaches poking under their noses and woolly wads growing out of their
+ears, so that when you looked at them the first time you never wanted
+to look at them again, and if you had to look at them a second time you
+were likely to die of the sight.
+
+They were called Caevo'g, Cuillen, and Iaran. The fourth daughter,
+Iarnach, was not present at that moment, so nothing need be said of her
+yet.
+
+Conaran called these three to him.
+
+"Fionn is alone," said he. "Fionn is alone, my treasures."
+
+"Ah!" said Caevo'g, and her jaw crunched upwards and stuck outwards, as
+was usual with her when she was satisfied.
+
+"When the chance comes take it," Conaran continued, and he smiled a
+black, beetle-browed, unbenevolent smile.
+
+"It's a good word," quoth Cuillen, and she swung her jaw loose and made
+it waggle up and down, for that was the way she smiled.
+
+"And here is the chance," her father added.
+
+"The chance is here," Iaran echoed, with a smile that was very like
+her sister's, only that it was worse, and the wen that grew on her nose
+joggled to and fro and did not get its balance again for a long time.
+
+Then they smiled a smile that was agreeable to their own eyes, but which
+would have been a deadly thing for anybody else to see.
+
+"But Fionn cannot see us," Caevo'g objected, and her brow set downwards
+and her chin set upwards and her mouth squeezed sidewards, so that her
+face looked like a badly disappointed nut.
+
+"And we are worth seeing," Cuillen continued, and the disappointment
+that was set in her sister's face got carved and twisted into hers, but
+it was worse in her case.
+
+"That is the truth," said Iaran in a voice of lamentation, and her face
+took on a gnarl and a writhe and a solidity of ugly woe that beat the
+other two and made even her father marvel.
+
+"He cannot see us now," Conaran replied, "but he will see us in a
+minute."
+
+"Won't Fionn be glad when he sees us!" said the three sisters.
+
+And then they joined hands and danced joyfully around their father, and
+they sang a song, the first line of which is:
+
+      "Fionn thinks he is safe. But who knows when the sky will
+   fall?"
+
+Lots of the people in the Shi' learned that song by heart, and they
+applied it to every kind of circumstance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BY his arts Conaran changed the sight of Fionn's eyes, and he did the
+same for Cona'n.
+
+In a few minutes Fionn stood up from his place on the mound. Everything
+was about him as before, and he did not know that he had gone into
+Faery. He walked for a minute up and down the hillock. Then, as by
+chance, he stepped down the sloping end of the mound and stood with his
+mouth open, staring. He cried out:
+
+"Come down here, Cona'n, my darling."
+
+Cona'n stepped down to him.
+
+"Am I dreaming?" Fionn demanded, and he stretched out his finger before
+him.
+
+"If you are dreaming," said Congn, "I'm dreaming too. They weren't here
+a minute ago," he stammered.
+
+Fionn looked up at the sky and found that it was still there. He stared
+to one side and saw the trees of Kyle Conor waving in the distance. He
+bent his ear to the wind and heard the shouting of hunters, the yapping
+of dogs, and the clear whistles, which told how the hunt was going.
+
+"Well!" said Fionn to himself.
+
+"By my hand!" quoth Cona'n to his own soul.
+
+And the two men stared into the hillside as though what they were
+looking at was too wonderful to be looked away from.
+
+"Who are they?" said Fionn.
+
+"What are they?" Cona'n gasped. And they stared again.
+
+For there was a great hole like a doorway in the side of the mound, and
+in that doorway the daughters of Conaran sat spinning. They had three
+crooked sticks of holly set up before the cave, and they were reeling
+yarn off these. But it was enchantment they were weaving.
+
+"One could not call them handsome," said Cona'n.
+
+"One could," Fionn replied, "but it would not be true."
+
+"I cannot see them properly," Fionn complained. "They are hiding behind
+the holly."
+
+"I would be contented if I could not see them at all," his companion
+grumbled.
+
+But the Chief insisted.
+
+"I want to make sure that it is whiskers they are wearing."
+
+"Let them wear whiskers or not wear them," Cona'n counselled. "But let
+us have nothing to do with them."
+
+"One must not be frightened of anything," Fionn stated.
+
+"I am not frightened," Cona'n explained. "I only want to keep my good
+opinion of women, and if the three yonder are women, then I feel sure I
+shall begin to dislike females from this minute out."
+
+"Come on, my love," said Fionn, "for I must find out if these whiskers
+are true."
+
+He strode resolutely into the cave. He pushed the branches of holly
+aside and marched up to Conaran's daughters, with Cona'n behind him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The instant they passed the holly a strange weakness came over the
+heroes. Their fists seemed to grow heavy as lead, and went dingle-dangle
+at the ends of their arms; their legs became as light as straws and
+began to bend in and out; their necks became too delicate to hold
+anything up, so that their heads wibbled and wobbled from side to side.
+
+"What's wrong at all?" said Cona'n, as he tumbled to the ground.
+
+"Everything is," Fionn replied, and he tumbled beside him.
+
+The three sisters then tied the heroes with every kind of loop and twist
+and knot that could be thought of.
+
+"Those are whiskers!" said Fionn.
+
+"Alas!" said Conan.
+
+"What a place you must hunt whiskers in?" he mumbled savagely. "Who
+wants whiskers?" he groaned.
+
+But Fionn was thinking of other things.
+
+"If there was any way of warning the Fianna not to come here," Fionn
+murmured.
+
+"There is no way, my darling," said Caevo'g, and she smiled a smile that
+would have killed Fionn, only that he shut his eyes in time.
+
+After a moment he murmured again:
+
+"Cona'n, my dear love, give the warning whistle so that the Fianna will
+keep out of this place."
+
+A little whoof, like the sound that would be made by a baby and it
+asleep, came from Cona'n.
+
+"Fionn," said he, "there isn't a whistle in me. We are done for," said
+he.
+
+"You are done for, indeed," said Cuillen, and she smiled a hairy and
+twisty and fangy smile that almost finished Cona'n.
+
+By that time some of the Fianna had returned to the mound to see why
+Bran and Sceo'lan were barking so outrageously. They saw the cave and
+went into it, but no sooner had they passed the holly branches than
+their strength went from them, and they were seized and bound by the
+vicious hags. Little by little all the members of the Fianna returned to
+the hill, and each of them was drawn into the cave, and each was bound
+by the sisters.
+
+Oisi'n and Oscar and mac Lugac came, with the nobles of clann-Baiscne,
+and with those of clann-Corcoran and clann-Smo'l; they all came, and
+they were all bound.
+
+It was a wonderful sight and a great deed this binding of the Fianna,
+and the three sisters laughed with a joy that was terrible to hear and
+was almost death to see. As the men were captured they were carried by
+the hags into dark mysterious holes and black perplexing labyrinths.
+
+"Here is another one," cried Caevo'g as she bundled a trussed champion
+along.
+
+"This one is fat," said Cuillen, and she rolled a bulky Fenian along
+like a wheel.
+
+"Here," said Iaran, "is a love of a man. One could eat this kind of
+man," she murmured, and she licked a lip that had whiskers growing
+inside as well as out.
+
+And the corded champion whimpered in her arms, for he did not know
+but eating might indeed be his fate, and he would have preferred to be
+coffined anywhere in the world rather than to be coffined inside of that
+face. So far for them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Within the cave there was silence except for the voices of the hags and
+the scarcely audible moaning of the Fianna-Finn, but without there was
+a dreadful uproar, for as each man returned from the chase his dogs came
+with him, and although the men went into the cave the dogs did not.
+
+They were too wise.
+
+They stood outside, filled with savagery and terror, for they could
+scent their masters and their masters' danger, and perhaps they could
+get from the cave smells till then unknown and full of alarm.
+
+From the troop of dogs there arose a baying and barking, a snarling and
+howling and growling, a yelping and squealing and bawling for which no
+words can be found. Now and again a dog nosed among a thousand smells
+and scented his master; the ruff of his neck stood up like a hog's
+bristles and a netty ridge prickled along his spine. Then with red eyes,
+with bared fangs, with a hoarse, deep snort and growl he rushed at the
+cave, and then he halted and sneaked back again with all his ruffles
+smoothed, his tail between his legs, his eyes screwed sideways in
+miserable apology and alarm, and a long thin whine of woe dribbling out
+of his nose.
+
+The three sisters took their wide-channelled, hard-tempered swords in
+their hands, and prepared to slay the Fianna, but before doing so they
+gave one more look from the door of the cave to see if there might be a
+straggler of the Fianna who was escaping death by straggling, and they
+saw one coming towards them with Bran and Sceo'lan leaping beside him,
+while all the other dogs began to burst their throats with barks and
+split their noses with snorts and wag their tails off at sight of the
+tall, valiant, white-toothed champion, Goll mor mac Morna. "We will kill
+that one first," said Caevo'g.
+
+"There is only one of him," said Cuillen.
+
+"And each of us three is the match for an hundred," said Iaran.
+
+The uncanny, misbehaved, and outrageous harridans advanced then to meet
+the son of Morna, and when he saw these three Goll whipped the sword
+from his thigh, swung his buckler round, and got to them in ten great
+leaps.
+
+Silence fell on the world during that conflict. The wind went down; the
+clouds stood still; the old hill itself held its breath; the warriors
+within ceased to be men and became each an ear; and the dogs sat in
+a vast circle round the combatants, with their heads all to one side,
+their noses poked forward, their mouths half open, and their tails
+forgotten. Now and again a dog whined in a whisper and snapped a
+little snap on the air, but except for that there was neither sound nor
+movement.
+
+It was a long fight. It was a hard and a tricky fight, and Goll won it
+by bravery and strategy and great good luck; for with one shrewd slice
+of his blade he carved two of these mighty termagants into equal halves,
+so that there were noses and whiskers to his right hand and knees and
+toes to his left: and that stroke was known afterwards as one of the
+three great sword-strokes of Ireland. The third hag, however, had
+managed to get behind Goll, and she leaped on to his back with the bound
+of a panther, and hung here with the skilful, many-legged, tight-twisted
+clutching of a spider. But the great champion gave a twist of his hips
+and a swing of his shoulders that whirled her around him like a sack.
+He got her on the ground and tied her hands with the straps of a shield,
+and he was going to give her the last blow when she appealed to his
+honour and bravery.
+
+"I put my life under your protection," said she. "And if you let me go
+free I will lift the enchantment from the Fianna-Finn and will give them
+all back to you again."
+
+"I agree to that," said Goll, and he untied her straps. The harridan did
+as she had promised, and in a short time Fionn and Oisi'n and Oscar and
+Cona'n were released, and after that all the Fianna were released.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+As each man came out of the cave he gave a jump and a shout; the courage
+of the world went into him and he felt that he could fight twenty. But
+while they were talking over the adventure and explaining how it had
+happened, a vast figure strode over the side of the hill and descended
+among them. It was Conaran's fourth daughter.
+
+If the other three had been terrible to look on, this one was more
+terrible than the three together. She was clad in iron plate, and she
+had a wicked sword by her side and a knobby club in her hand She halted
+by the bodies of her sisters, and bitter tears streamed down into her
+beard.
+
+"Alas, my sweet ones," said she, "I am too late."
+
+And then she stared fiercely at Fionn.
+
+"I demand a combat," she roared.
+
+"It is your right," said Fionn. He turned to his son.
+
+"Oisi'n, my heart, kill me this honourable hag." But for the only time
+in his life Oisi'n shrank from a combat.
+
+"I cannot do it," he said, "I feel too weak."
+
+Fionn was astounded. "Oscar," he said, "will you kill me this great
+hag?"
+
+Oscar stammered miserably. "I would not be able to," he said.
+
+Cona'n also refused, and so did Caelte mac Rona'n and mac Lugac, for
+there was no man there but was terrified by the sight of that mighty and
+valiant harridan.
+
+Fionn rose to his feet. "I will take this combat myself," he said
+sternly.
+
+And he swung his buckler forward and stretched his right hand to the
+sword. But at that terrible sight Goll mae Morna blushed deeply and
+leaped from the ground.
+
+"No, no," he cried; "no, my soul, Fionn, this would not be a proper
+combat for you. I take this fight."
+
+"You have done your share, Goll," said the captain.
+
+"I should finish the fight I began," Goll continued, "for it was I who
+killed the two sisters of this valiant hag, and it is against me the
+feud lies."
+
+"That will do for me," said the horrible daughter of Conaran. "I will
+kill Goll mor mac Morna first, and after that I will kill Fionn, and
+after that I will kill every Fenian of the Fianna-Finn."
+
+"You may begin, Goll," said Fionn, "and I give you my blessing."
+
+Goll then strode forward to the fight, and the hag moved against him
+with equal alacrity. In a moment the heavens rang to the clash of swords
+on bucklers. It was hard to with-stand the terrific blows of that mighty
+female, for her sword played with the quickness of lightning and smote
+like the heavy crashing of a storm. But into that din and encirclement
+Goll pressed and ventured, steady as a rock in water, agile as a
+creature of the sea, and when one of the combatants retreated it was
+the hag that gave backwards. As her foot moved a great shout of joy rose
+from the Fianna. A snarl went over the huge face of the monster and
+she leaped forward again, but she met Goll's point in the road; it went
+through her, and in another moment Goll took her head from its shoulders
+and swung it on high before Fionn.
+
+As the Fianna turned homewards Fionn spoke to his great champion and
+enemy.
+
+"Goll," he said, "I have a daughter."
+
+"A lovely girl, a blossom of the dawn," said Goll.
+
+"Would she please you as a wife?" the chief demanded.
+
+"She would please me," said Goll.
+
+"She is your wife," said Fionn.
+
+
+But that did not prevent Goll from killing Fionn's brother Cairell later
+on, nor did it prevent Fionn from killing Goll later on again, and
+the last did not prevent Goll from rescuing Fionn out of hell when the
+Fianna-Finn were sent there under the new God. Nor is there any reason
+to complain or to be astonished at these things, for it is a mutual
+world we llve in, a give-and-take world, and there is no great harm in
+it.
+
+
+
+
+BECUMA OF THE WHITE SKIN
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+There are more worlds than one, and in many ways they are unlike each
+other. But joy and sorrow, or, in other words, good and evil, are not
+absent in their degree from any of the worlds, for wherever there is
+life there is action, and action is but the expression of one or other
+of these qualities.
+
+After this Earth there is the world of the Shi'. Beyond it again lies
+the Many-Coloured Land. Next comes the Land of Wonder, and after that
+the Land of Promise awaits us. You will cross clay to get into the Shi';
+you will cross water to attain the Many-Coloured Land; fire must be
+passed ere the Land of Wonder is attained, but we do not know what will
+be crossed for the fourth world.
+
+This adventure of Conn the Hundred Fighter and his son Art was by the
+way of water, and therefore he was more advanced in magic than Fionn
+was, all of whose adventures were by the path of clay and into Faery
+only, but Conn was the High King and so the arch-magician of Ireland.
+
+A council had been called in the Many-Coloured Land to discuss the case
+of a lady named Becuma Cneisgel, that is, Becuma of the White Skin, the
+daughter of Eogan Inver. She had run away from her husband Labraid and
+had taken refuge with Gadiar, one of the sons of Mananna'n mac Lir, the
+god of the sea, and the ruler, therefore, of that sphere.
+
+It seems, then, that there is marriage in two other spheres. In the
+Shi' matrimony is recorded as being parallel in every respect with
+earth-marriage, and the desire which urges to it seems to be as violent
+and inconstant as it is with us; but in the Many-Coloured Land marriage
+is but a contemplation of beauty, a brooding and meditation wherein all
+grosser desire is unknown and children are born to sinless parents.
+
+In the Shi' the crime of Becuma would have been lightly considered, and
+would have received none or but a nominal punishment, but in the second
+world a horrid gravity attaches to such a lapse, and the retribution
+meted is implacable and grim. It may be dissolution by fire, and that
+can note a destruction too final for the mind to contemplate; or it may
+be banishment from that sphere to a lower and worse one.
+
+This was the fate of Becuma of the White Skin.
+
+One may wonder how, having attained to that sphere, she could have
+carried with her so strong a memory of the earth. It is certain that she
+was not a fit person to exist in the Many-Coloured Land, and it is to be
+feared that she was organised too grossly even for life in the Shi'.
+
+She was an earth-woman, and she was banished to the earth.
+
+Word was sent to the Shi's of Ireland that this lady should not be
+permitted to enter any of them; from which it would seem that the
+ordinances of the Shi come from the higher world, and, it might follow,
+that the conduct of earth lies in the Shi'.
+
+In that way, the gates of her own world and the innumerable doors of
+Faery being closed against her, Becuma was forced to appear in the world
+of men.
+
+It is pleasant, however, notwithstanding her terrible crime and her
+woeful punishment, to think how courageous she was. When she was told
+her sentence, nay, her doom, she made no outcry, nor did she waste any
+time in sorrow. She went home and put on her nicest clothes.
+
+She wore a red satin smock, and, over this, a cloak of green silk out of
+which long fringes of gold swung and sparkled, and she had light sandals
+of white bronze on her thin, shapely feet. She had long soft hair that
+was yellow as gold, and soft as the curling foam of the sea. Her eyes
+were wide and clear as water and were grey as a dove's breast. Her teeth
+were white as snow and of an evenness to marvel at. Her lips were thin
+and beautifully curved: red lips in truth, red as winter berries and
+tempting as the fruits of summer. The people who superintended her
+departure said mournfully that when she was gone there would be no more
+beauty left in their world.
+
+She stepped into a coracle, it was pushed on the enchanted waters, and
+it went forward, world within world, until land appeared, and her boat
+swung in low tide against a rock at the foot of Ben Edair.
+
+So far for her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Conn the Hundred Fighter, Ard-Ri' of Ireland, was in the lowest spirits
+that can be imagined, for his wife was dead. He had been Ard-Ri for nine
+years, and during his term the corn used to be reaped three times in
+each year, and there was full and plenty of everything. There are few
+kings who can boast of more kingly results than he can, but there was
+sore trouble in store for him.
+
+He had been married to Eithne, the daughter of Brisland Binn, King of
+Norway, and, next to his subjects, he loved his wife more than all that
+was lovable in the world. But the term of man and woman, of king or
+queen, is set in the stars, and there is no escaping Doom for any one;
+so, when her time came, Eithne died.
+
+Now there were three great burying-places in Ireland--the Brugh of the
+Boyne in Ulster, over which Angus Og is chief and god; the Shi' mound
+of Cruachan Ahi, where Ethal Anbual presides over the underworld of
+Connacht, and Tailltin, in Royal Meath. It was in this last, the sacred
+place of his own lordship, that Conn laid his wife to rest.
+
+Her funeral games were played during nine days. Her keen was sung by
+poets and harpers, and a cairn ten acres wide was heaved over her clay.
+Then the keening ceased and the games drew to an end; the princes of the
+Five Prov-inces returned by horse or by chariot to their own places;
+the concourse of mourners melted away, and there was nothing left by
+the great cairn but the sun that dozed upon it in the daytime, the heavy
+clouds that brooded on it in the night, and the desolate, memoried king.
+
+For the dead queen had been so lovely that Conn could not forget her;
+she had been so kind at every moment that he could not but miss her at
+every moment; but it was in the Council Chamber and the Judgement
+Hall that he most pondered her memory. For she had also been wise, and
+lack-ing her guidance, all grave affairs seemed graver, shadowing each
+day and going with him to the pillow at night.
+
+The trouble of the king becomes the trouble of the subject, for how
+shall we live if judgement is withheld, or if faulty decisions are
+promulgated? Therefore, with the sorrow of the king, all Ireland was in
+grief, and it was the wish of every person that he should marry again.
+
+Such an idea, however, did not occur to him, for he could not conceive
+how any woman should fill the place his queen had vacated. He grew more
+and more despondent, and less and less fitted to cope with affairs of
+state, and one day he instructed his son Art to take the rule during his
+absence, and he set out for Ben Edair.
+
+For a great wish had come upon him to walk beside the sea; to listen
+to the roll and boom of long, grey breakers; to gaze on an unfruitful,
+desolate wilderness of waters; and to forget in those sights all that
+he could forget, and if he could not forget then to remember all that he
+should remember.
+
+He was thus gazing and brooding when one day he observed a coracle
+drawing to the shore. A young girl stepped from it and walked to him
+among black boulders and patches of yellow sand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Being a king he had authority to ask questions. Conn asked her,
+therefore, all the questions that he could think of, for it is not every
+day that a lady drives from the sea, and she wearing a golden-fringed
+cloak of green silk through which a red satin smock peeped at the
+openings. She replied to his questions, but she did not tell him all the
+truth; for, indeed, she could not afford to.
+
+She knew who he was, for she retained some of the powers proper to the
+worlds she had left, and as he looked on her soft yellow hair and on her
+thin red lips, Conn recognised, as all men do, that one who is lovely
+must also be good, and so he did not frame any inquiry on that count;
+for everything is forgotten in the presence of a pretty woman, and a
+magician can be bewitched also.
+
+She told Conn that the fame of his son Art had reached even the
+Many-Coloured Land, and that she had fallen in love with the boy. This
+did not seem unreasonable to one who had himself ventured much in Faery,
+and who had known so many of the people of that world leave their own
+land for the love of a mortal.
+
+"What is your name, my sweet lady?" said the king.
+
+"I am called Delvcaem (Fair Shape) and I am the daughter of Morgan," she
+replied.
+
+"I have heard much of Morgan," said the king. "He is a very great
+magician."
+
+During this conversation Conn had been regarding her with the minute
+freedom which is right only in a king. At what precise instant he forgot
+his dead consort we do not know, but it is certain that at this moment
+his mind was no longer burdened with that dear and lovely memory. His
+voice was melancholy when he spoke again.
+
+"You love my son!"
+
+"Who could avoid loving him?" she murmured.
+
+"When a woman speaks to a man about the love she feels for another man
+she is not liked. And," he continued, "when she speaks to a man who has
+no wife of his own about her love for another man then she is disliked."
+
+"I would not be disliked by you," Becuma murmured.
+
+"Nevertheless," said he regally, "I will not come between a woman and
+her choice."
+
+"I did not know you lacked a wife," said Becuma, but indeed she did.
+
+"You know it now," the king replied sternly.
+
+"What shall I do?" she inquired, "am I to wed you or your son?"
+
+"You must choose," Conn answered.
+
+"If you allow me to choose it means that you do not want me very badly,"
+said she with a smile.
+
+"Then I will not allow you to choose," cried the king, "and it is with
+myself you shall marry."
+
+He took her hand in his and kissed it.
+
+"Lovely is this pale thin hand. Lovely is the slender foot that I see in
+a small bronze shoe," said the king.
+
+After a suitable time she continued:
+
+"I should not like your son to be at Tara when I am there, or for a year
+afterwards, for I do not wish to meet him until I have forgotten him and
+have come to know you well."
+
+"I do not wish to banish my son," the king protested.
+
+"It would not really be a banishment," she said. "A prince's duty could
+be set him, and in such an absence he would improve his knowledge both
+of Ireland and of men. Further," she continued with downcast eyes,
+"when you remember the reason that brought me here you will see that his
+presence would be an embarrassment to us both, and my presence would be
+unpleasant to him if he remembers his mother."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Conn stubbornly, "I do not wish to banish my son;
+it is awkward and unnecessary."
+
+"For a year only," she pleaded.
+
+"It is yet," he continued thoughtfully, "a reasonable reason that you
+give and I will do what you ask, but by my hand and word I don't like
+doing it."
+
+They set out then briskly and joyfully on the homeward journey, and in
+due time they reached Tara of the Kings.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+It is part of the education of a prince to be a good chess player, and
+to continually exercise his mind in view of the judgements that he will
+be called upon to give and the knotty, tortuous, and perplexing matters
+which will obscure the issues which he must judge. Art, the son of Conn,
+was sitting at chess with Cromdes, his father's magician.
+
+"Be very careful about the move you are going to make," said Cromdes.
+
+"CAN I be careful?" Art inquired. "Is the move that you are thinking of
+in my power?"
+
+"It is not," the other admitted.
+
+"Then I need not be more careful than usual," Art replied, and he made
+his move.
+
+"It is a move of banishment," said Cromdes.
+
+"As I will not banish myself, I suppose my father will do it, but I do
+not know why he should."
+
+"Your father will not banish you."
+
+"Who then?" "Your mother."
+
+"My mother is dead."
+
+"You have a new one," said the magician.
+
+"Here is news," said Art. "I think I shall not love my new mother."
+
+"You will yet love her better than she loves you," said Cromdes, meaning
+thereby that they would hate each other.
+
+While they spoke the king and Becuma entered the palace.
+
+"I had better go to greet my father," said the young man.
+
+"You had better wait until he sends for you," his companion advised, and
+they returned to their game.
+
+In due time a messenger came from the king directing Art to leave Tara
+instantly, and to leave Ireland for one full year.
+
+He left Tara that night, and for the space of a year he was not seen
+again in Ireland. But during that period things did not go well with the
+king nor with Ireland. Every year before that time three crops of corn
+used to be lifted off the land, but during Art's absence there was no
+corn in Ireland and there was no milk. The whole land went hungry.
+
+Lean people were in every house, lean cattle in every field; the bushes
+did not swing out their timely berries or seasonable nuts; the bees went
+abroad as busily as ever, but each night they returned languidly, with
+empty pouches, and there was no honey in their hives when the honey
+season came. People began to look at each other questioningly,
+meaningly, and dark remarks passed between them, for they knew that a
+bad harvest means, somehow, a bad king, and, although this belief can be
+combated, it is too firmly rooted in wisdom to be dismissed.
+
+The poets and magicians met to consider why this disaster should have
+befallen the country and by their arts they discovered the truth about
+the king's wife, and that she was Becuma of the White Skin, and they
+discovered also the cause of her banishment from the Many-Coloured Land
+that is beyond the sea, which is beyond even the grave.
+
+They told the truth to the king, but he could not bear to be parted from
+that slender-handed, gold-haired, thin-lipped, blithe enchantress, and
+he required them to discover some means whereby he might retain his wife
+and his crown. There was a way and the magicians told him of it.
+
+"If the son of a sinless couple can be found and if his blood be mixed
+with the soll of Tara the blight and ruin will depart from Ireland,"
+said the magicians.
+
+"If there is such a boy I will find him," cried the Hundred Fighter.
+
+At the end of a year Art returned to Tara. His father delivered to him
+the sceptre of Ireland, and he set out on a journey to find the son of a
+sinless couple such as he had been told of.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The High King did not know where exactly he should look for such a
+saviour, but he was well educated and knew how to look for whatever was
+lacking. This knowledge will be useful to those upon whom a similar duty
+should ever devolve.
+
+He went to Ben Edair. He stepped into a coracle and pushed out to the
+deep, and he permitted the coracle to go as the winds and the waves
+directed it.
+
+In such a way he voyaged among the small islands of the sea until he
+lost all knowledge of his course and was adrift far out in ocean. He was
+under the guidance of the stars and the great luminaries.
+
+He saw black seals that stared and barked and dived dancingly, with the
+round turn of a bow and the forward onset of an arrow. Great whales came
+heaving from the green-hued void, blowing a wave of the sea high
+into the air from their noses and smacking their wide flat tails
+thunder-ously on the water. Porpoises went snorting past in bands and
+clans. Small fish came sliding and flickering, and all the outlandish
+creatures of the deep rose by his bobbing craft and swirled and sped
+away.
+
+Wild storms howled by him so that the boat climbed painfully to the sky
+on a mile-high wave, balanced for a tense moment on its level top, and
+sped down the glassy side as a stone goes furiously from a sling.
+
+Or, again, caught in the chop of a broken sea, it stayed shuddering and
+backing, while above his head there was only a low sad sky, and around
+him the lap and wash of grey waves that were never the same and were
+never different.
+
+After long staring on the hungry nothingness of air and water he would
+stare on the skin-stretched fabric of his boat as on a strangeness, or
+he would examine his hands and the texture of his skin and the stiff
+black hairs that grew behind his knuckles and sprouted around his ring,
+and he found in these things newness and wonder.
+
+Then, when days of storm had passed, the low grey clouds shivered and
+cracked in a thousand places, each grim islet went scudding to the
+horizon as though terrified by some great breadth, and when they had
+passed he stared into vast after vast of blue infinity, in the depths
+of which his eyes stayed and could not pierce, and wherefrom they could
+scarcely be withdrawn. A sun beamed thence that filled the air with
+sparkle and the sea with a thousand lights, and looking on these he was
+reminded of his home at Tara: of the columns of white and yellow bronze
+that blazed out sunnily on the sun, and the red and white and yellow
+painted roofs that beamed at and astonished the eye.
+
+Sailing thus, lost in a succession of days and nights, of winds and
+calms, he came at last to an island.
+
+His back was turned to it, and long before he saw it he smelled it and
+wondered; for he had been sitting as in a daze, musing on a change that
+had seemed to come in his changeless world; and for a long time he could
+not tell what that was which made a difference on the salt-whipped wind
+or why he should be excited. For suddenly he had become excited and his
+heart leaped in violent expectation.
+
+"It is an October smell," he said.
+
+"It is apples that I smell."
+
+He turned then and saw the island, fragrant with apple trees, sweet with
+wells of wine; and, hearkening towards the shore, his ears, dulled yet
+with the unending rhythms of the sea, distinguished and were filled
+with song; for the isle was, as it were, a nest of birds, and they sang
+joyously, sweetly, triumphantly.
+
+He landed on that lovely island, and went forward under the darting
+birds, under the apple boughs, skirting fragrant lakes about which were
+woods of the sacred hazel and into which the nuts of knowledge fell and
+swam; and he blessed the gods of his people because of the ground that
+did not shiver and because of the deeply rooted trees that could not gad
+or budge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Having gone some distance by these pleasant ways he saw a shapely house
+dozing in the sunlight.
+
+It was thatched with the wings of birds, blue wings and yellow and white
+wings, and in the centre of the house there was a door of crystal set in
+posts of bronze.
+
+The queen of this island lived there, Rigru (Large-eyed), the daughter
+of Lodan, and wife of Daire Degamra. She was seated on a crystal
+throne with her son Segda by her side, and they welcomed the High King
+courteously.
+
+There were no servants in this palace; nor was there need for them. The
+High King found that his hands had washed themselves, and when later on
+he noticed that food had been placed before him he noticed also that
+it had come without the assistance of servile hands. A cloak was laid
+gently about his shoulders, and he was glad of it, for his own was
+soiled by exposure to sun and wind and water, and was not worthy of a
+lady's eye.
+
+Then he was invited to eat.
+
+He noticed, however, that food had been set for no one but himself, and
+this did not please him, for to eat alone was contrary to the hospitable
+usage of a king, and was contrary also to his contract with the gods.
+
+"Good, my hosts," he remonstrated, "it is geasa (taboo) for me to eat
+alone."
+
+"But we never eat together," the queen replied.
+
+"I cannot violate my geasa," said the High King.
+
+"I will eat with you," said Segda (Sweet Speech), "and thus, while you
+are our guest you will not do violence to your vows."
+
+"Indeed," said Conn, "that will be a great satisfaction, for I have
+already all the trouble that I can cope with and have no wish to add to
+it by offending the gods."
+
+"What is your trouble?" the gentle queen asked. "During a year," Conn
+replied, "there has been neither corn nor milk in Ireland. The land is
+parched, the trees are withered, the birds do not sing in Ireland, and
+the bees do not make honey."
+
+"You are certainly in trouble," the queen assented.
+
+"But," she continued, "for what purpose have you come to our island?"
+
+"I have come to ask for the loan of your son."
+
+"A loan of my son!"
+
+"I have been informed," Conn explained, "that if the son of a sinless
+couple is brought to Tara and is bathed in the waters of Ireland the
+land will be delivered from those ills."
+
+The king of this island, Daire, had not hitherto spoken, but he now did
+so with astonishment and emphasis.
+
+"We would not lend our son to any one, not even to gain the kingship of
+the world," said he.
+
+But Segda, observing that the guest's countenance was discomposed, broke
+in:
+
+"It is not kind to refuse a thing that the Ard-Ri' of Ireland asks for,
+and I will go with him."
+
+"Do not go, my pulse," his father advised.
+
+"Do not go, my one treasure," his mother pleaded.
+
+"I must go indeed," the boy replied, "for it is to do good I am
+required, and no person may shirk such a requirement."
+
+"Go then," said his father, "but I will place you under the protection
+of the High King and of the Four Provincial Kings of Ireland, and under
+the protection of Art, the son of Conn, and of Fionn, the son of Uail,
+and under the protection of the magicians and poets and the men of art
+in Ireland." And he thereupon bound these protections and safeguards on
+the Ard-Ri' with an oath.
+
+"I will answer for these protections," said Conn.
+
+He departed then from the island with Segda and in three days they
+reached Ireland, and in due time they arrived at Tara.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+On reaching the palace Conn called his magicians and poets to a council
+and informed them that he had found the boy they sought--the son of a
+virgin. These learned people consulted together, and they stated that
+the young man must be killed, and that his blood should be mixed with
+the earth of Tara and sprinkled under the withered trees.
+
+When Segda heard this he was astonished and defiant; then, seeing that
+he was alone and without prospect of succour, he grew downcast and was
+in great fear for his life. But remembering the safeguards under which
+he had been placed, he enumerated these to the assembly, and called on
+the High King to grant him the protections that were his due.
+
+Conn was greatly perturbed, but, as in duty bound, he placed the boy
+under the various protections that were in his oath, and, with the
+courage of one who has no more to gain or lose, he placed Segda,
+furthermore, under the protection of all the men of Ireland.
+
+But the men of Ireland refused to accept that bond, saying that although
+the Ard-Ri' was acting justly towards the boy he was not acting justly
+towards Ireland.
+
+"We do not wish to slay this prince for our pleasure," they argued, "but
+for the safety of Ireland he must be killed."
+
+Angry parties were formed. Art, and Fionn the son of Uail, and the
+princes of the land were outraged at the idea that one who had been
+placed under their protection should be hurt by any hand. But the men of
+Ireland and the magicians stated that the king had gone to Faery for a
+special purpose, and that his acts outside or contrary to that purpose
+were illegal, and committed no person to obedience.
+
+There were debates in the Council Hall, in the market-place, in the
+streets of Tara, some holding that national honour dissolved and
+absolved all personal honour, and others protesting that no man had
+aught but his personal honour, and that above it not the gods, not even
+Ireland, could be placed--for it is to be known that Ireland is a god.
+
+Such a debate was in course, and Segda, to whom both sides addressed
+gentle and courteous arguments, grew more and more disconsolate.
+
+"You shall die for Ireland, dear heart," said one of them, and he gave
+Segda three kisses on each cheek.
+
+"Indeed," said Segda, returning those kisses, "indeed I had not
+bargained to die for Ireland, but only to bathe in her waters and to
+remove her pestilence."
+
+"But dear child and prince," said another, kissing him likewise, "if any
+one of us could save Ireland by dying for her how cheerfully we would
+die."
+
+And Segda, returning his three kisses, agreed that the death was noble,
+but that it was not in his undertaking.
+
+Then, observing the stricken countenances about him, and the faces of
+men and women hewn thin by hunger, his resolution melted away, and he
+said:
+
+"I think I must die for you," and then he said:
+
+"I will die for you."
+
+And when he had said that, all the people present touched his cheek with
+their lips, and the love and peace of Ireland entered into his soul, so
+that he was tranquil and proud and happy.
+
+The executioner drew his wide, thin blade and all those present covered
+their eyes with their cloaks, when a wailing voice called on the
+executioner to delay yet a moment. The High King uncovered his eyes and
+saw that a woman had approached driving a cow before her.
+
+"Why are you killing the boy?" she demanded.
+
+The reason for this slaying was explained to her.
+
+"Are you sure," she asked, "that the poets and magicians really know
+everything?"
+
+"Do they not?" the king inquired.
+
+"Do they?" she insisted.
+
+And then turning to the magicians:
+
+"Let one magician of the magicians tell me what is hidden in the bags
+that are lying across the back of my cow."
+
+But no magician could tell it, nor did they try to.
+
+"Questions are not answered thus," they said. "There is formulae, and
+the calling up of spirits, and lengthy complicated preparations in our
+art."
+
+"I am not badly learned in these arts," said the woman, "and I say that
+if you slay this cow the effect will be the same as if you had killed
+the boy."
+
+"We would prefer to kill a cow or a thousand cows rather than harm this
+young prince," said Conn, "but if we spare the boy will these evils
+return?"
+
+"They will not be banished until you have banished their cause."
+
+"And what is their cause?"
+
+"Becuma is the cause, and she must be banished."
+
+"If you must tell me what to do," said Conn, "tell me at least to do
+something that I can do."
+
+"I will tell you certainly. You can keep Becuma and your ills as long as
+you want to. It does not matter to me. Come, my son," she said to
+Segda, for it was Segda's mother who had come to save him; and then
+that sinless queen and her son went back to their home of enchantment,
+leaving the king and Fionn and the magicians and nobles of Ireland
+astonished and ashamed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+There are good and evil people in this and in every other world, and the
+person who goes hence will go to the good or the evil that is native
+to him, while those who return come as surely to their due. The trouble
+which had fallen on Becuma did not leave her repentant, and the sweet
+lady began to do wrong as instantly and innocently as a flower begins
+to grow. It was she who was responsible for the ills which had come on
+Ireland, and we may wonder why she brought these plagues and droughts to
+what was now her own country.
+
+Under all wrong-doing lies personal vanity or the feeling that we are
+endowed and privileged beyond our fellows. It is probable that, however
+courageously she had accepted fate, Becuma had been sharply stricken in
+her pride; in the sense of personal strength, aloofness, and identity,
+in which the mind likens itself to god and will resist every domination
+but its own. She had been punished, that is, she had submitted to
+control, and her sense of freedom, of privilege, of very being, was
+outraged. The mind flinches even from the control of natural law, and
+how much more from the despotism of its own separated likenesses, for if
+another can control me that other has usurped me, has become me, and how
+terribly I seem diminished by the seeming addition!
+
+This sense of separateness is vanity, and is the bed of all wrong-doing.
+For we are not freedom, we are control, and we must submit to our own
+function ere we can exercise it. Even unconsciously we accept the rights
+of others to all that we have, and if we will not share our good with
+them, it is because we cannot, having none; but we will yet give what
+we have, although that be evil. To insist on other people sharing in
+our personal torment is the first step towards insisting that they shall
+share in our joy, as we shall insist when we get it.
+
+Becuma considered that if she must suffer all else she met should suffer
+also. She raged, therefore, against Ireland, and in particular she raged
+against young Art, her husband's son, and she left undone nothing that
+could afflict Ireland or the prince. She may have felt that she could
+not make them suffer, and that is a maddening thought to any woman. Or
+perhaps she had really desired the son instead of the father, and her
+thwarted desire had perpetuated itself as hate. But it is true that Art
+regarded his mother's successor with intense dislike, and it is true
+that she actively returned it.
+
+One day Becuma came on the lawn before the palace, and seeing that Art
+was at chess with Cromdes she walked to the table on which the match was
+being played and for some time regarded the game. But the young prince
+did not take any notice of her while she stood by the board, for he knew
+that this girl was the enemy of Ireland, and he could not bring himself
+even to look at her.
+
+Becuma, looking down on his beautiful head, smiled as much in rage as in
+disdain.
+
+"O son of a king," said she, "I demand a game with you for stakes."
+
+Art then raised his head and stood up courteously, but he did not look
+at her.
+
+"Whatever the queen demands I will do," said he.
+
+"Am I not your mother also?" she replied mockingly, as she took the seat
+which the chief magician leaped from.
+
+The game was set then, and her play was so skilful that Art was hard put
+to counter her moves. But at a point of the game Becuma grew thoughtful,
+and, as by a lapse of memory, she made a move which gave the victory to
+her opponent. But she had intended that. She sat then, biting on her lip
+with her white small teeth and staring angrily at Art.
+
+"What do you demand from me?" she asked.
+
+"I bind you to eat no food in Ireland until you find the wand of Curoi,
+son of Dare'."
+
+Becuma then put a cloak about her and she went from Tara northward and
+eastward until she came to the dewy, sparkling Brugh of Angus mac an Og
+in Ulster, but she was not admitted there. She went thence to the Shi'
+ruled over by Eogabal, and although this lord would not admit her, his
+daughter Aine', who was her foster-sister, let her into Faery.
+
+She made inquiries and was informed where the dun of Curoi mac Dare'
+was, and when she had received this intelligence she set out for Sliev
+Mis. By what arts she coaxed Curoi to give up his wand it matters not,
+enough that she was able to return in triumph to Tara. When she handed
+the wand to Art, she said:
+
+"I claim my game of revenge."
+
+"It is due to you," said Art, and they sat on the lawn before the palace
+and played.
+
+A hard game that was, and at times each of the combatants sat for an
+hour staring on the board before the next move was made, and at times
+they looked from the board and for hours stared on the sky seeking as
+though in heaven for advice. But Becuma's foster-sister, Aine', came
+from the Shi', and, unseen by any, she interfered with Art's play, so
+that, suddenly, when he looked again on the board, his face went pale,
+for he saw that the game was lost.
+
+"I didn't move that piece," said he sternly.
+
+"Nor did I," Becuma replied, and she called on the onlookers to confirm
+that statement.
+
+She was smiling to herself secretly, for she had seen what the mortal
+eyes around could not see.
+
+"I think the game is mine," she insisted softly.
+
+"I think that your friends in Faery have cheated," he replied, "but the
+game is yours if you are content to win it that way."
+
+"I bind you," said Becuma, "to eat no food in Ireland until you have
+found Delvcaem, the daughter of Morgan."
+
+"Where do I look for her?" said Art in despair.
+
+"She is in one of the islands of the sea," Becuma replied, "that is
+all I will tell you," and she looked at him maliciously, joyously,
+contentedly, for she thought he would never return from that journey,
+and that Morgan would see to it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Art, as his father had done before him, set out for the Many-Coloured
+Land, but it was from Inver Colpa he embarked and not from Ben Edair.
+
+At a certain time he passed from the rough green ridges of the sea to
+enchanted waters, and he roamed from island to island asking all people
+how he might come to Delvcaem, the daughter of Morgan. But he got no
+news from any one, until he reached an island that was fragrant with
+wild apples, gay with flowers, and joyous with the song of birds and the
+deep mellow drumming of the bees. In this island he was met by a lady,
+Crede', the Truly Beautiful, and when they had exchanged kisses, he told
+her who he was and on what errand he was bent.
+
+"We have been expecting you," said Crede', "but alas, poor soul, it is
+a hard, and a long, bad way that you must go; for there is sea and land,
+danger and difficulty between you and the daughter of Morgan."
+
+"Yet I must go there," he answered.
+
+"There is a wild dark ocean to be crossed. There is a dense wood where
+every thorn on every tree is sharp as a spear-point and is curved and
+clutching. There is a deep gulf to be gone through," she said, "a place
+of silence and terror, full of dumb, venomous monsters. There is an
+immense oak forest--dark, dense, thorny, a place to be strayed in,
+a place to be utterly bewildered and lost in. There is a vast dark
+wilderness, and therein is a dark house, lonely and full of echoes, and
+in it there are seven gloomy hags, who are warned already of your coming
+and are waiting to plunge you in a bath of molten lead."
+
+"It is not a choice journey," said Art, "but I have no choice and must
+go."
+
+"Should you pass those hags," she continued, "and no one has yet passed
+them, you must meet Ailill of the Black Teeth, the son of Mongan Tender
+Blossom, and who could pass that gigantic and terrible fighter?"
+
+"It is not easy to find the daughter of Morgan," said Art in a
+melancholy voice.
+
+"It is not easy," Crede' replied eagerly, "and if you will take my
+advice--"
+
+"Advise me," he broke in, "for in truth there is no man standing in such
+need of counsel as I do."
+
+"I would advise you," said Crede' in a low voice, "to seek no more for
+the sweet daughter of Morgan, but to stay in this place where all that
+is lovely is at your service."
+
+"But, but--" cried Art in astonishment.
+
+"Am I not as sweet as the daughter of Morgan?" she demanded, and she
+stood before him queenly and pleadingly, and her eyes took his with
+imperious tenderness.
+
+"By my hand," he answered, "you are sweeter and lovelier than any being
+under the sun, but--"
+
+"And with me," she said, "you will forget Ireland."
+
+"I am under bonds," cried Art, "I have passed my word, and I would
+not forget Ireland or cut myself from it for all the kingdoms of the
+Many-Coloured Land."
+
+Crede' urged no more at that time, but as they were parting she
+whispered, "There are two girls, sisters of my own, in Morgan's palace.
+They will come to you with a cup in either hand; one cup will be filled
+with wine and one with poison. Drink from the right-hand cup, O my
+dear."
+
+Art stepped into his coracle, and then, wringing her hands, she made yet
+an attempt to dissuade him from that drear journey.
+
+"Do not leave me," she urged. "Do not affront these dangers. Around the
+palace of Morgan there is a palisade of copper spikes, and on the top of
+each spike the head of a man grins and shrivels. There is one spike only
+which bears no head, and it is for your head that spike is waiting. Do
+not go there, my love."
+
+"I must go indeed," said. Art earnestly.
+
+"There is yet a danger," she called. "Beware of Delvcaem's mother, Dog
+Head, daughter of the King of the Dog Heads. Beware of her."
+
+"Indeed," said Art to himself, "there is so much to beware of that I
+will beware of nothing. I will go about my business," he said to the
+waves, "and I will let those beings and monsters and the people of the
+Dog Heads go about their business."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+He went forward in his light bark, and at some moment found that he
+had parted from those seas and was adrift on vaster and more turbulent
+billows. From those dark-green surges there gaped at him monstrous
+and cavernous jaws; and round, wicked, red-rimmed, bulging eyes stared
+fixedly at the boat. A ridge of inky water rushed foaming mountainously
+on his board, and behind that ridge came a vast warty head that gurgled
+and groaned. But at these vile creatures he thrust with his lengthy
+spear or stabbed at closer reach with a dagger.
+
+He was not spared one of the terrors which had been foretold. Thus, in
+the dark thick oak forest he slew the seven hags and buried them in the
+molten lead which they had heated for him. He climbed an icy mountain,
+the cold breath of which seemed to slip into his body and chip off
+inside of his bones, and there, until he mastered the sort of climbing
+on ice, for each step that he took upwards he slipped back ten steps.
+Almost his heart gave way before he learned to climb that venomous hill.
+In a forked glen into which he slipped at night-fall he was surrounded
+by giant toads, who spat poison, and were icy as the land they lived
+in, and were cold and foul and savage. At Sliav Saev he encountered the
+long-maned lions who lie in wait for the beasts of the world, growling
+woefully as they squat above their prey and crunch those terrified
+bones. He came on Ailill of the Black Teeth sitting on the bridge that
+spanned a torrent, and the grim giant was grinding his teeth on a pillar
+stone. Art drew nigh unobserved and brought him low.
+
+It was not for nothing that these difficulties and dangers were in his
+path. These things and creatures were the invention of Dog Head, the
+wife of Morgan, for it had become known to her that she would die on the
+day her daughter was wooed. Therefore none of the dangers encountered
+by Art were real, but were magical chimeras conjured against him by the
+great witch.
+
+Affronting all, conquering all, he came in time to Morgan's dun, a place
+so lovely that after the miseries through which he had struggled he
+almost wept to see beauty again.
+
+Delvcaem knew that he was coming. She was waiting for him, yearning for
+him. To her mind Art was not only love, he was freedom, for the poor
+girl was a captive in her father's home. A great pillar an hundred feet
+high had been built on the roof of Morgan's palace, and on the top of
+this pillar a tiny room had been constructed, and in this room Delvcaem
+was a prisoner.
+
+She was lovelier in shape than any other princess of the Many-Coloured
+Land. She was wiser than all the other women of that land, and she
+was skilful in music, embroidery, and chastity, and in all else that
+pertained to the knowledge of a queen.
+
+Although Delvcaem's mother wished nothing but ill to Art, she yet
+treated him with the courtesy proper in a queen on the one hand and
+fitting towards the son of the King of Ireland on the other. Therefore,
+when Art entered the palace he was met and kissed, and he was bathed and
+clothed and fed. Two young girls came to him then, having a cup in
+each of their hands, and presented him with the kingly drink, but,
+remembering the warning which Credl had given him, he drank only from
+the right-hand cup and escaped the poison. Next he was visited by
+Delvcaem's mother, Dog Head, daughter of the King of the Dog Heads, and
+Morgan's queen. She was dressed in full armour, and she challenged Art
+to fight with her.
+
+It was a woeful combat, for there was no craft or sagacity unknown to
+her, and Art would infallibly have perished by her hand but that her
+days were numbered, her star was out, and her time had come. It was her
+head that rolled on the ground when the combat was over, and it was
+her head that grinned and shrivelled on the vacant spike which she had
+reserved for Art's.
+
+Then Art liberated Delvcaem from her prison at the top of the pillar
+and they were affianced together. But the ceremony had scarcely been
+completed when the tread of a single man caused the palace to quake and
+seemed to jar the world.
+
+It was Morgan returning to the palace.
+
+The gloomy king challenged him to combat also, and in his honour Art
+put on the battle harness which he had brought from Ireland. He wore a
+breastplate and helmet of gold, a mantle of blue satin swung from his
+shoulders, his left hand was thrust into the grips of a purple
+shield, deeply bossed with silver, and in the other hand he held the
+wide-grooved, blue hilted sword which had rung so often into fights and
+combats, and joyous feats and exercises.
+
+Up to this time the trials through which he had passed had seemed so
+great that they could not easily be added to. But if all those trials
+had been gathered into one vast calamity they would not equal one half
+of the rage and catastrophe of his war with Morgan.
+
+For what he could not effect by arms Morgan would endeavour by guile,
+so that while Art drove at him or parried a crafty blow, the shape of
+Morgan changed before his eyes, and the monstrous king was having at him
+in another form, and from a new direction.
+
+It was well for the son of the Ard-Ri' that he had been beloved by the
+poets and magicians of his land, and that they had taught him all that
+was known of shape-changing and words of power.
+
+He had need of all these.
+
+At times, for the weapon must change with the enemy, they fought with
+their foreheads as two giant stags, and the crash of their monstrous
+onslaught rolled and lingered on the air long after their skulls had
+parted. Then as two lions, long-clawed, deep-mouthed, snarling, with
+rigid mane, with red-eyed glare, with flashing, sharp-white fangs, they
+prowled lithely about each other seeking for an opening. And then as two
+green-ridged, white-topped, broad-swung, overwhelming, vehement billows
+of the deep, they met and crashed and sunk into and rolled away from
+each other; and the noise of these two waves was as the roar of all
+ocean when the howl of the tempest is drowned in the league-long fury of
+the surge.
+
+But when the wife's time has come the husband is doomed. He is required
+elsewhere by his beloved, and Morgan went to rejoin his queen in the
+world that comes after the Many-Coloured Land, and his victor shore that
+knowledgeable head away from its giant shoulders.
+
+He did not tarry in the Many-Coloured Land, for he had nothing further
+to seek there. He gathered the things which pleased him best from among
+the treasures of its grisly king, and with Delvcaem by his side they
+stepped into the coracle.
+
+Then, setting their minds on Ireland, they went there as it were in a
+flash.
+
+The waves of all the world seemed to whirl past them in one huge, green
+cataract. The sound of all these oceans boomed in their ears for one
+eternal instant. Nothing was for that moment but a vast roar and pour
+of waters. Thence they swung into a silence equally vast, and so sudden
+that it was as thunderous in the comparison as was the elemental rage
+they quitted. For a time they sat panting, staring at each other,
+holding each other, lest not only their lives but their very souls
+should be swirled away in the gusty passage of world within world; and
+then, looking abroad, they saw the small bright waves creaming by the
+rocks of Ben Edair, and they blessed the power that had guided and
+protected them, and they blessed the comely land of Ir.
+
+On reaching Tara, Delvcaem, who was more powerful in art and magic than
+Becuma, ordered the latter to go away, and she did so.
+
+She left the king's side. She came from the midst of the counsellors and
+magicians. She did not bid farewell to any one. She did not say good-bye
+to the king as she set out for Ben Edair.
+
+Where she could go to no man knew, for she had been ban-ished from the
+Many-Coloured Land and could not return there. She was forbidden entry
+to the Shi' by Angus Og, and she could not remain in Ireland. She went
+to Sasana and she became a queen in that country, and it was she who
+fostered the rage against the Holy Land which has not ceased to this
+day.
+
+
+
+
+MONGAN'S FRENZY
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The abbot of the Monastery of Moville sent word to the story-tellers of
+Ireland that when they were in his neighbourhood they should call at
+the monastery, for he wished to collect and write down the stories which
+were in danger of being forgotten.
+
+"These things also must be told," said he.
+
+In particular he wished to gather tales which told of the deeds that had
+been done before the Gospel came to Ireland.
+
+"For," said he, "there are very good tales among those ones, and it
+would be a pity if the people who come after us should be ignorant of
+what happened long ago, and of the deeds of their fathers."
+
+So, whenever a story-teller chanced in that neighbourhood he was
+directed to the monastery, and there he received a welcome and his fill
+of all that is good for man.
+
+The abbot's manuscript boxes began to fill up, and he used to regard
+that growing store with pride and joy. In the evenings, when the days
+grew short and the light went early, he would call for some one of these
+manuscripts and have it read to him by candle-light, in order that he
+might satisfy himself that it was as good as he had judged it to be on
+the previous hearing.
+
+One day a story-teller came to the monastery, and, like all the others,
+he was heartily welcomed and given a great deal more than his need.
+
+He said that his name was Cairide', and that he had a story to tell
+which could not be bettered among the stories of Ireland.
+
+The abbot's eyes glistened when he heard that. He rubbed his hands
+together and smiled on his guest.
+
+"What is the name of your story?" he asked.
+
+"It is called 'Mongan's Frenzy.'"
+
+"I never heard of it before," cried the abbot joyfully.
+
+"I am the only man that knows it," Cairide' replied.
+
+"But how does that come about?" the abbot inquired.
+
+"Because it belongs to my family," the story-teller answered. "There
+was a Cairide' of my nation with Mongan when he went into Faery. This
+Cairide' listened to the story when it was first told. Then he told
+it to his son, and his son told it to his son, and that son's
+great-great-grandson's son told it to his son's son, and he told it to
+my father, and my father told it to me."
+
+"And you shall tell it to me," cried the abbot triumphantly.
+
+"I will indeed," said Cairide'. Vellum was then brought and quills. The
+copyists sat at their tables. Ale was placed beside the story-teller,
+and he told this tale to the abbot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Said Cairide':
+
+Mongan's wife at that time was Bro'tiarna, the Flame Lady. She was
+passionate and fierce, and because the blood would flood suddenly to her
+cheek, so that she who had seemed a lily became, while you looked upon
+her, a rose, she was called Flame Lady. She loved Mongan with ecstasy
+and abandon, and for that also he called her Flame Lady.
+
+But there may have been something of calculation even in her wildest
+moment, for if she was delighted in her affection she was tormented in
+it also, as are all those who love the great ones of life and strive to
+equal themselves where equality is not possible.
+
+For her husband was at once more than himself and less than himself.
+He was less than himself because he was now Mongan. He was more than
+himself because he was one who had long disappeared from the world of
+men. His lament had been sung and his funeral games played many,
+many years before, and Bro'tiarna sensed in him secrets, experiences,
+knowledges in which she could have no part, and for which she was
+greedily envious.
+
+So she was continually asking him little, simple questions a' propos of
+every kind of thing.
+
+She weighed all that he said on whatever subject, and when he talked in
+his sleep she listened to his dream.
+
+The knowledge that she gleaned from those listenings tormented her
+far more than it satisfied her, for the names of other women were
+continually on his lips, sometimes in terms of dear affection, sometimes
+in accents of anger or despair, and in his sleep he spoke familiarly
+of people whom the story-tellers told of, but who had been dead for
+centuries. Therefore she was perplexed, and became filled with a very
+rage of curiosity.
+
+Among the names which her husband mentioned there was one which, because
+of the frequency with which it appeared, and because of the tone of
+anguish and love and longing in which it was uttered, she thought of
+oftener than the others: this name was Duv Laca. Although she questioned
+and cross-questioned Cairide', her story-teller, she could discover
+nothing about a lady who had been known as the Black Duck. But one night
+when Mongan seemed to speak with Duv Laca he mentioned her father as
+Fiachna Duv mac Demain, and the story-teller said that king had been
+dead for a vast number of years.
+
+She asked her husband then, boldly, to tell her the story of Duv Laca,
+and under the influence of their mutual love he promised to tell it to
+her some time, but each time she reminded him of his promise he became
+confused, and said that he would tell it some other time.
+
+As time went on the poor Flame Lady grew more and more jealous of Duv
+Laca, and more and more certain that, if only she could know what
+had happened, she would get some ease to her tormented heart and some
+assuagement of her perfectly natural curiosity. Therefore she lost no
+opportunity of reminding Mongan of his promise, and on each occasion he
+renewed the promise and put it back to another time.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+In the year when Ciaran the son of the Carpenter died, the same year
+when Tuathal Maelgariv was killed and the year when Diarmait the son of
+Cerrbel became king of all Ireland, the year 538 of our era in short, it
+happened that there was a great gathering of the men of Ireland at the
+Hill of Uisneach in Royal Meath.
+
+In addition to the Council which was being held, there were games and
+tournaments and brilliant deployments of troops, and universal feastings
+and enjoyments. The gathering lasted for a week, and on the last day
+of the week Mongan was moving through the crowd with seven guards, his
+story-teller Cairide', and his wife.
+
+It had been a beautiful day, with brilliant sunshine and great sport,
+but suddenly clouds began to gather in the sky to the west, and others
+came rushing blackly from the east. When these clouds met the world went
+dark for a space, and there fell from the sky a shower of hailstones, so
+large that each man wondered at their size, and so swift and heavy that
+the women and young people of the host screamed from the pain of the
+blows they received.
+
+Mongan's men made a roof of their shields, and the hailstones battered
+on the shields so terribly that even under them they were afraid. They
+began to move away from the host looking for shelter, and when they had
+gone apart a little way they turned the edge of a small hill and a knoll
+of trees, and in the twinkling of an eye they were in fair weather.
+
+One minute they heard the clashing and bashing of the hailstones, the
+howling of the venomous wind, the screams of women and the uproar of the
+crowd on the Hill of Uisneach, and the next minute they heard nothing
+more of those sounds and saw nothing more of these sights, for they had
+been permitted to go at one step out of the world of men and into the
+world of Faery.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+There is a difference between this world and the world of Faery, but it
+is not immediately perceptible. Everything that is here is there, but
+the things that are there are better than those that are here. All
+things that are bright are there brighter. There is more gold in the
+sun and more silver in the moon of that land. There is more scent in the
+flowers, more savour in the fruit. There is more comeliness in the men
+and more tenderness in the women. Everything in Faery is better by this
+one wonderful degree, and it is by this betterness you will know that
+you are there if you should ever happen to get there.
+
+Mongan and his companions stepped from the world of storm into sunshine
+and a scented world. The instant they stepped they stood, bewildered,
+looking at each other silently, questioningly, and then with one accord
+they turned to look back whence they had come.
+
+There was no storm behind them. The sunlight drowsed there as it did in
+front, a peaceful flooding of living gold. They saw the shapes of
+the country to which their eyes were accustomed, and recognised the
+well-known landmarks, but it seemed that the distant hills were a trifle
+higher, and the grass which clothed them and stretched between was
+greener, was more velvety: that the trees were better clothed and had
+more of peace as they hung over the quiet ground.
+
+But Mongan knew what had happened, and he smiled with glee as he watched
+his astonished companions, and he sniffed that balmy air as one whose
+nostrils remembered it.
+
+"You had better come with me," he said.
+
+"Where are we?" his wife asked. "Why, we are here," cried Mongan; "where
+else should we be?"
+
+He set off then, and the others followed, staring about them cautiously,
+and each man keeping a hand on the hilt of his sword.
+
+"Are we in Faery?" the Flame Lady asked.
+
+"We are," said Mongan.
+
+When they had gone a little distance they came to a grove of ancient
+trees. Mightily tail and well grown these trees were, and the trunk of
+each could not have been spanned by ten broad men. As they went among
+these quiet giants into the dappled obscurity and silence, their
+thoughts became grave, and all the motions of their minds elevated
+as though they must equal in greatness and dignity those ancient and
+glorious trees. When they passed through the grove they saw a lovely
+house before them, built of mellow wood and with a roof of bronze--it
+was like the dwelling of a king, and over the windows of the Sunny Room
+there was a balcony. There were ladies on this balcony, and when they
+saw the travellers approaching they sent messengers to welcome them.
+
+Mongan and his companions were then brought into the house, and all was
+done for them that could be done for honoured guests. Everything within
+the house was as excellent as all without, and it was inhabited by seven
+men and seven women, and it was evident that Mongan and these people
+were well acquainted.
+
+In the evening a feast was prepared, and when they had eaten well there
+was a banquet. There were seven vats of wine, and as Mongan loved wine
+he was very happy, and he drank more on that occasion than any one had
+ever noticed him to drink before.
+
+It was while he was in this condition of glee and expansion that the
+Flame Lady put her arms about his neck and begged he would tell her the
+story of Duv Laca, and, being boisterous then and full of good spirits,
+he agreed to her request, and he prepared to tell the tale.
+
+The seven men and seven women of the Fairy Palace then took their
+places about him in a half-circle; his own seven guards sat behind
+them; his wife, the Flame Lady, sat by his side; and at the back of
+all Cairid, his story-teller sat, listening with all his ears, and
+remembering every word that was uttered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Said Mongan:
+
+In the days of long ago and the times that have disappeared for ever,
+there was one Fiachna Finn the son of Baltan, the son of Murchertach,
+the son of Muredach, the son of Eogan, the son of Neill. He went from
+his own country when he was young, for he wished to see the land of
+Lochlann, and he knew that he would be welcomed by the king of that
+country, for Fiachna's father and Eolgarg's father had done deeds in
+common and were obliged to each other.
+
+He was welcomed, and he stayed at the Court of Lochlann in great ease
+and in the midst of pleasures.
+
+It then happened that Eolgarg Mor fell sick and the doctors could not
+cure him. They sent for other doctors, but they could not cure him, nor
+could any one say what he was suffering from, beyond that he was wasting
+visibly before their eyes, and would certainly become a shadow and
+disappear in air unless he was healed and fattened and made visible.
+
+They sent for more distant doctors, and then for others more distant
+still, and at last they found a man who claimed that he could make a
+cure if the king were supplied with the medicine which he would order.
+
+"What medicine is that?" said they all.
+
+"This is the medicine," said the doctor. "Find a perfectly white cow
+with red ears, and boil it down in the lump, and if the king drinks that
+rendering he will recover."
+
+Before he had well said it messengers were going from the palace in all
+directions looking for such a cow. They found lots of cows which were
+nearly like what they wanted, but it was only by chance they came on
+the cow which would do the work, and that beast belonged to the most
+notorious and malicious and cantankerous female in Lochlann, the Black
+Hag. Now the Black Hag was not only those things that have been said;
+she was also whiskered and warty and one-eyed and obstreperous, and she
+was notorious and ill-favoured in many other ways also.
+
+They offered her a cow in the place of her own cow, but she refused to
+give it. Then they offered a cow for each leg of her cow, but she would
+not accept that offer unless Fiachna went bail for the payment. He
+agreed to do so, and they drove the beast away.
+
+On the return journey he was met by messengers who brought news from
+Ireland. They said that the King of Ulster was dead, and that he,
+Fiachna Finn, had been elected king in the dead king's place. He at once
+took ship for Ireland, and found that all he had been told was true, and
+he took up the government of Ulster.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A year passed, and one day as he was sitting at judgement there came
+a great noise from without, and this noise was so persistent that the
+people and suitors were scandalised, and Fiachna at last ordered that
+the noisy person should be brought before him to be judged.
+
+It was done, and to his surprise the person turned out to be the Black
+Hag.
+
+She blamed him in the court before his people, and complained that he
+had taken away her cow, and that she had not been paid the four cows he
+had gone bail for, and she demanded judgement from him and justice.
+
+"If you will consider it to be justice, I will give you twenty cows
+myself," said Fiachna.
+
+"I would not take all the cows in Ulster," she screamed.
+
+"Pronounce judgement yourself," said the king, "and if I can do what you
+demand I will do it." For he did not like to be in the wrong, and he did
+not wish that any person should have an unsatisfied claim upon him.
+
+The Black Hag then pronounced judgement, and the king had to fulfil it.
+
+"I have come," said she, "from the east to the west; you must come from
+the west to the east and make war for me, and revenge me on the King of
+Lochlann."
+
+Fiachna had to do as she demanded, and, although it was with a heavy
+heart, he set out in three days' time for Lochlann, and he brought with
+him ten battalions.
+
+He sent messengers before him to Big Eolgarg warning him of his coming,
+of his intention, and of the number of troops he was bringing; and when
+he landed Eolgarg met him with an equal force, and they fought together.
+
+In the first battle three hundred of the men of Lochlann were killed,
+but in the next battle Eolgarg Mor did not fight fair, for he let some
+venomous sheep out of a tent, and these attacked the men of Ulster and
+killed nine hundred of them.
+
+So vast was the slaughter made by these sheep and so great the terror
+they caused, that no one could stand before them, but by great good luck
+there was a wood at hand, and the men of Ulster, warriors and princes
+and charioteers, were forced to climb up the trees, and they roosted
+among the branches like great birds, while the venomous sheep ranged
+below bleating terribly and tearing up the ground.
+
+Fiachna Fim was also sitting in a tree, very high up, and he was
+disconsolate.
+
+"We are disgraced," said he.
+
+"It is very lucky," said the man in the branch below, "that a sheep
+cannot climb a tree."
+
+"We are disgraced for ever," said the King of Ulster.
+
+"If those sheep learn how to climb, we are undone surely," said the man
+below.
+
+"I will go down and fight the sheep," said Fiachna. But the others would
+not let the king go.
+
+"It is not right," they said, "that you should fight sheep."
+
+"Some one must fight them," said Fiachna Finn, "but no more of my men
+shall die until I fight myself; for if I am fated to die, I will die and
+I cannot escape it, and if it is the sheep's fate to die, then die they
+will; for there is no man can avoid destiny, and there is no sheep can
+dodge it either."
+
+"Praise be to god!" said the warrior that was higher up.
+
+"Amen!" said the man who was higher than he, and the rest of the
+warriors wished good luck to the king.
+
+He started then to climb down the tree with a heavy heart, but while
+he hung from the last branch and was about to let go, he noticed a tall
+warrior walking towards him. The king pulled himself up on the branch
+again and sat dangle-legged on it to see what the warrior would do.
+
+The stranger was a very tall man, dressed in a green cloak with a silver
+brooch at the shoulder. He had a golden band about his hair and golden
+sandals on his feet, and he was laughing heartily at the plight of the
+men of Ireland.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+"It is not nice of you to laugh at us," said Fiachna Finn.
+
+"Who could help laughing at a king hunkering on a branch and his army
+roosting around him like hens?" said the stranger.
+
+"Nevertheless," the king replied, "it would be courteous of you not to
+laugh at misfortune."
+
+"We laugh when we can," commented the stranger, "and are thankful for
+the chance."
+
+"You may come up into the tree," said Fiachna, "for I perceive that you
+are a mannerly person, and I see that some of the venomous sheep are
+charging in this direction. I would rather protect you," he continued,
+"than see you killed; for," said he lamentably, "I am getting down now
+to fight the sheep."
+
+"They will not hurt me," said the stranger. "Who are you?" the king
+asked.
+
+"I am Mananna'n, the son of Lir."
+
+Fiachna knew then that the stranger could not be hurt.
+
+"What will you give me if I deliver you from the sheep?" asked
+Mananna'n.
+
+"I will give you anything you ask, if I have that thing."
+
+"I ask the rights of your crown and of your household for one day."
+
+Fiachna's breath was taken away by that request, and he took a little
+time to compose himself, then he said mildly:
+
+"I will not have one man of Ireland killed if I can save him. All that
+I have they give me, all that I have I give to them, and if I must give
+this also, then I will give this, although it would be easier for me to
+give my life." "That is agreed," said Mannana'n.
+
+He had something wrapped in a fold of his cloak, and he unwrapped and
+produced this thing.
+
+It was a dog.
+
+Now if the sheep were venomous, this dog was more venomous still, for it
+was fearful to look at. In body it was not large, but its head was of a
+great size, and the mouth that was shaped in that head was able to open
+like the lid of a pot. It was not teeth which were in that head, but
+hooks and fangs and prongs. Dreadful was that mouth to look at, terrible
+to look into, woeful to think about; and from it, or from the broad,
+loose nose that waggled above it, there came a sound which no word of
+man could describe, for it was not a snarl, nor was it a howl, although
+it was both of these. It was neither a growl nor a grunt, although it
+was both of these; it was not a yowl nor a groan, although it was both
+of these: for it was one sound made up of these sounds, and there was in
+it, too, a whine and a yelp, and a long-drawn snoring noise, and a deep
+purring noise, and a noise that was like the squeal of a rusty hinge,
+and there were other noises in it also.
+
+"The gods be praised!" said the man who was in the branch above the
+king.
+
+"What for this time?" said the king.
+
+"Because that dog cannot climb a tree," said the man.
+
+And the man on a branch yet above him groaned out "Amen!"
+
+"There is nothing to frighten sheep like a dog," said Mananna'n, "and
+there is nothing to frighten these sheep like this dog."
+
+He put the dog on the ground then.
+
+"Little dogeen, little treasure," said he, "go and kill the sheep."
+
+And when he said that the dog put an addition and an addendum on to the
+noise he had been making before, so that the men of Ireland stuck their
+fingers into their ears and turned the whites of their eyes upwards, and
+nearly fell off their branches with the fear and the fright which that
+sound put into them.
+
+It did not take the dog long to do what he had been ordered. He went
+forward, at first, with a slow waddle, and as the venomous sheep came to
+meet him in bounces, he then went to meet them in wriggles; so that in a
+while he went so fast that you could see nothing of him but a head and
+a wriggle. He dealt with the sheep in this way, a jump and a chop for
+each, and he never missed his jump and he never missed his chop. When he
+got his grip he swung round on it as if it was a hinge. The swing began
+with the chop, and it ended with the bit loose and the sheep giving its
+last kick. At the end of ten minutes all the sheep were lying on the
+ground, and the same bit was out of every sheep, and every sheep was
+dead.
+
+"You can come down now," said Mananna'n.
+
+"That dog can't climb a tree," said the man in the branch above the king
+warningly.
+
+"Praise be to the gods!" said the man who was above him.
+
+"Amen!" said the warrior who was higher up than that. And the man in the
+next tree said:
+
+"Don't move a hand or a foot until the dog chokes himself to death on
+the dead meat."
+
+The dog, however, did not eat a bit of the meat. He trotted to his
+master, and Mananna'n took him up and wrapped him in his cloak.
+
+"Now you can come down," said he.
+
+"I wish that dog was dead!" said the king.
+
+But he swung himself out of the tree all the same, for he did not wish
+to seem frightened before Mananna'n. "You can go now and beat the men
+of Lochlann," said Mananna'n. "You will be King of Lochlann before
+nightfall."
+
+"I wouldn't mind that," said the king. "It's no threat," said Mananna'n.
+
+The son of Lir turned then and went away in the direction of Ireland to
+take up his one-day rights, and Fiachna continued his battle with the
+Lochlannachs.
+
+He beat them before nightfall, and by that victory he became King of
+Lochlann and King of the Saxons and the Britons.
+
+He gave the Black Hag seven castles with their territories, and he gave
+her one hundred of every sort of cattle that he had captured. She was
+satisfied.
+
+Then he went back to Ireland, and after he had been there for some time
+his wife gave birth to a son.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+"You have not told me one word about Duv Laca," said the Flame Lady
+reproachfully.
+
+"I am coming to that," replied Mongan.
+
+He motioned towards one of the great vats, and wine was brought to him,
+of which he drank so joyously and so deeply that all people wondered at
+his thirst, his capacity, and his jovial spirits.
+
+"Now, I will begin again."
+
+
+Said Mongan: There was an attendant in Fiachna Finn's palace who was
+called An Da'v, and the same night that Fiachna's wife bore a son, the
+wife of An Da'v gave birth to a son also. This latter child was called
+mac an Da'v, but the son of Fiachna's wife was named Mongan.
+
+"Ah!" murmured the Flame Lady.
+
+The queen was angry. She said it was unjust and presumptuous that the
+servant should get a child at the same time that she got one herself,
+but there was no help for it, because the child was there and could not
+be obliterated.
+
+Now this also must be told.
+
+There was a neighbouring prince called Fiachna Duv, and he was the ruler
+of the Dal Fiatach. For a long time he had been at enmity and spiteful
+warfare with Fiachna Finn; and to this Fiachna Duv there was born in
+the same night a daughter, and this girl was named Duv Laca of the White
+Hand.
+
+"Ah!" cried the Flame Lady.
+
+"You see!" said Mongan, and he drank anew and joyously of the fairy
+wine.
+
+In order to end the trouble between Fiachna Finn and Fiachna Duv the
+babies were affianced to each other in the cradle on the day after they
+were born, and the men of Ireland rejoiced at that deed and at that
+news. But soon there came dismay and sorrow in the land, for when the
+little Mongan was three days old his real father, Mananna'n the son
+of Lir, appeared in the middle of the palace. He wrapped Mongan in his
+green cloak and took him away to rear and train in the Land of Promise,
+which is beyond the sea that is at the other side of the grave.
+
+When Fiachna Duv heard that Mongan, who was affianced to his daughter
+Duv Laca, had disappeared, he considered that his compact of peace was
+at an end, and one day he came by surprise and attacked the palace.
+He killed Fiachna Finn in that battle, and be crowned himself King of
+Ulster.
+
+The men of Ulster disliked him, and they petitioned Mananna'n to bring
+Mongan back, but Mananna'n would not do this until the boy was sixteen
+years of age and well reared in the wisdom of the Land of Promise. Then
+he did bring Mongan back, and by his means peace was made between Mongan
+and Fiachna Duv, and Mongan was married to his cradle-bride, the young
+Duv Laca.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+One day Mongan and Duv Laca were playing chess in their palace. Mongan
+had just made a move of skill, and he looked up from the board to see
+if Duv Laca seemed as discontented as she had a right to be. He saw
+then over Duv Laca's shoulder a little black-faced, tufty-headed cleric
+leaning against the door-post inside the room.
+
+"What are you doing there?" said Mongan.
+
+"What are you doing there yourself?" said the little black-faced cleric.
+
+"Indeed, I have a right to be in my own house," said Mongan.
+
+"Indeed I do not agree with you," said the cleric.
+
+"Where ought I be, then?" said Mongan.
+
+"You ought to be at Dun Fiathac avenging the murder of your father,"
+replied the cleric, "and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for not
+having done it long ago. You can play chess with your wife when you have
+won the right to leisure."
+
+"But how can I kill my wife's father?" Mongan exclaimed. "By starting
+about it at once," said the cleric. "Here is a way of talking!" said
+Mongan.
+
+"I know," the cleric continued, "that Duv Laca will not agree with a
+word I say on this subject, and that she will try to prevent you from
+doing what you have a right to do, for that is a wife's business, but a
+man's business is to do what I have just told you; so come with me now
+and do not wait to think about it, and do not wait to play any more
+chess. Fiachna Duv has only a small force with him at this moment,
+and we can burn his palace as he burned your father's palace, and
+kill himself as he killed your father, and crown you King of Ulster
+rightfully the way he crowned himself wrongfully as a king."
+
+"I begin to think that you own a lucky tongue, my black-faced friend,"
+said Mongan, "and I will go with you."
+
+He collected his forces then, and he burned Fiachna Duv's fortress, and
+he killed Fiachna Duv, and he was crowned King of Ulster.
+
+Then for the first time he felt secure and at liberty to play chess.
+But he did not know until afterwards that the black-faced, tufty-headed
+person was his father Mananna'n, although that was the fact.
+
+There are some who say, however, that Fiachna the Black was killed in
+the year 624 by the lord of the Scot's Dal Riada, Condad Cerr, at the
+battle of Ard Carainn; but the people who say this do not know what they
+are talking about, and they do not care greatly what it is they say.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"There is nothing to marvel about in this Duv Laca," said the Flame Lady
+scornfully. "She has got married, and she has been beaten at chess. It
+has happened before."
+
+"Let us keep to the story," said Mongan, and, having taken some few
+dozen deep draughts of the wine, he became even more jovial than before.
+Then he recommenced his tale:
+
+It happened on a day that Mongan had need of treasure. He had many
+presents to make, and he had not as much gold and silver and cattle as
+was proper for a king. He called his nobles together and discussed what
+was the best thing to be done, and it was arranged that he should visit
+the provincial kings and ask boons from them.
+
+He set out at once on his round of visits, and the first province he
+went to was Leinster.
+
+The King of Leinster at that time was Branduv, the son of Echach. He
+welcomed Mongan and treated him well, and that night Mongan slept in his
+palace.
+
+When he awoke in the morning he looked out of a lofty window, and he
+saw on the sunny lawn before the palace a herd of cows. There were fifty
+cows in all, for he counted them, and each cow had a calf beside her,
+and each cow and calf was pure white in colour, and each of them had red
+ears.
+
+When Mongan saw these cows, he fell in love with them as he had never
+fallen in love with anything before.
+
+He came down from the window and walked on the sunny lawn among the
+cows, looking at each of them and speaking words of affection and
+endearment to them all; and while he was thus walking and talking and
+looking and loving, he noticed that some one was moving beside him. He
+looked from the cows then, and saw that the King of Leinster was at his
+side.
+
+"Are you in love with the cows?" Branduv asked him.
+
+"I am," said Mongan.
+
+"Everybody is," said the King of Leinster.
+
+"I never saw anything like them," said Mongan.
+
+"Nobody has," said the King of Leinster.
+
+"I never saw anything I would rather have than these cows," said Mongan.
+
+"These," said the King of Leinster, "are the most beautiful cows
+in Ireland, and," he continued thoughtfully, "Duv Laca is the most
+beautiful woman in Ireland."
+
+"There is no lie in what you say," said Mongan.
+
+"Is it not a queer thing," said the King of Leinster, "that I should
+have what you want with all your soul, and you should have what I want
+with all my heart?"
+
+"Queer indeed," said Mongan, "but what is it that you do want?"
+
+"Duv Laca, of course," said the King of Leinster.
+
+"Do you mean," said Mongan, "that you would exchange this herd of fifty
+pure white cows having red ears--"
+
+"And their fifty calves," said the King of Leinster--
+
+"For Duv Laca, or for any woman in the world?"
+
+"I would," cried the King of Leinster, and he thumped his knee as he
+said it.
+
+"Done," roared Mongan, and the two kings shook hands on the bargain.
+
+Mongan then called some of his own people, and before any more words
+could be said and before any alteration could be made, he set his men
+behind the cows and marched home with them to Ulster.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Duv Laca wanted to know where the cows came from, and Mongan told her
+that the King of Leinster had given them to him. She fell in love with
+them as Mongan had done, but there was nobody in the world could have
+avoided loving those cows: such cows they were! such wonders! Mongan
+and Duv Laca used to play chess together, and then they would go out
+together to look at the cows, and then they would go in together and
+would talk to each other about the cows. Everything they did they did
+together, for they loved to be with each other.
+
+However, a change came.
+
+One morning a great noise of voices and trampling of horses and rattle
+of armour came about the palace. Mongan looked from the window.
+
+"Who is coming?" asked Duv Laca.
+
+But he did not answer her.
+
+"The noise must announce the visit of a king," Duv Laca continued.
+
+But Mongan did not say a word. Duv Laca then went to the window.
+
+"Who is that king?" she asked.
+
+And her husband replied to her then.
+
+"That is the King of Leinster," said he mournfully.
+
+"Well," said Duv Laca surprised, "is he not welcome?"
+
+"He is welcome indeed," said Mongan lamentably.
+
+"Let us go out and welcome him properly," Duv Laca suggested.
+
+"Let us not go near him at all," said Mongan, "for he is coming to
+complete his bargain."
+
+"What bargain are you talking about?" Duv Laca asked. But Mongan would
+not answer that.
+
+"Let us go out," said he, "for we must go out."
+
+Mongan and Duv Laca went out then and welcomed the King of Leinster.
+They brought him and his chief men into the palace, and water was
+brought for their baths, and rooms were appointed for them, and
+everything was done that should be done for guests.
+
+That night there was a feast, and after the feast there was a banquet,
+and all through the feast and the banquet the King of Leinster stared
+at Duv Laca with joy, and sometimes his breast was delivered of great
+sighs, and at times he moved as though in perturbation of spirit and
+mental agony.
+
+"There is something wrong with the King of Leinster," Duv Laca
+whispered.
+
+"I don't care if there is," said Mongan.
+
+"You must ask what he wants."
+
+"But I don't want to know it," said Mongan. "Nevertheless, you musk ask
+him," she insisted.
+
+So Mongan did ask him, and it was in a melancholy voice that he asked
+it.
+
+"Do you want anything?" said he to the King of Leinster.
+
+"I do indeed," said Branduv.
+
+"If it is in Ulster I will get it for you," said Mongan mournfully.
+
+"It is in Ulster," said Branduv.
+
+Mongan did not want to say anything more then, but the King of Leinster
+was so intent and everybody else was listening and Duv Laca was nudging
+his arm, so he said: "What is it that you do want?" "I want Duv Laca."
+
+"I want her too," said Mongan.
+
+"You made your bargain," said the King of Leinster, "my cows and their
+calves for your Duv Laca, and the man that makes a bargain keeps a
+bargain."
+
+"I never before heard," said Mongan, "of a man giving away his own
+wife."
+
+"Even if you never heard of it before, you must do it now," said Duv
+Laca, "for honour is longer than life."
+
+Mongan became angry when Duv Laca said that. His face went red as a
+sunset, and the veins swelled in his neck and his forehead.
+
+"Do you say that?" he cried to Duv Laca.
+
+"I do," said Duv Laca.
+
+"Let the King of Leinster take her," said Mongan.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Duv Laca and the King of Leinster went apart then to speak together, and
+the eye of the king seemed to be as big as a plate, so fevered was
+it and so enlarged and inflamed by the look of Duv Laca. He was so
+confounded with joy also that his words got mixed up with his teeth, and
+Duv Laca did not know exactly what it was he was trying to say, and
+he did not seem to know himself. But at last he did say something
+intelligible, and this is what he said.
+
+"I am a very happy man," said he.
+
+"And I," said Duv Laca, "am the happiest woman in the world."
+
+"Why should you be happy?" the astonished king demanded.
+
+"Listen to me," she said. "If you tried to take me away from this place
+against my own wish, one half of the men of Ulster would be dead before
+you got me and the other half would be badly wounded in my defence."
+
+"A bargain is a bargain," the King of Leinster began.
+
+"But," she continued, "they will not prevent my going away, for they all
+know that I have been in love with you for ages."
+
+"What have you been in with me for ages?" said the amazed king.
+
+"In love with you," replied Duv Laca.
+
+"This is news," said the king, "and it is good news."
+
+"But, by my word," said Duv Laca, "I will not go with you unless you
+grant me a boon."
+
+"All that I have," cried Branduv, "and all that every-body has."
+
+"And you must pass your word and pledge your word that you will do what
+I ask."
+
+"I pass it and pledge it," cried the joyful king.
+
+"Then," said Duv Laca, "this is what I bind on you."
+
+"Light the yolk!" he cried.
+
+"Until one year is up and out you are not to pass the night in any house
+that I am in."
+
+"By my head and hand!" Branduv stammered.
+
+"And if you come into a house where I am during the time and term of
+that year, you are not to sit down in the chair that I am sitting in."
+
+"Heavy is my doom!" he groaned.
+
+"But," said Duv Laca, "if I am sitting in a chair or a seat you are
+to sit in a chair that is over against me and opposite to me and at a
+distance from me."
+
+"Alas!" said the king, and he smote his hands together, and then he beat
+them on his head, and then he looked at them and at everything about,
+and he could not tell what anything was or where anything was, for his
+mind was clouded and his wits had gone astray.
+
+"Why do you bind these woes on me?" he pleaded.
+
+
+"I wish to find out if you truly love me."
+
+"But I do," said the king. "I love you madly and dearly, and with all my
+faculties and members."
+
+"That is the way! love you," said Duv Laca. "We shall have a notable
+year of courtship and joy. And let us go now," she continued, "for I am
+impatient to be with you."
+
+"Alas!" said Branduv, as he followed her. "Alas, alas!" said the King of
+Leinster.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+"I think," said the Flame Lady, "that whoever lost that woman had no
+reason to be sad."
+
+Mongan took her chin in his hand and kissed her lips.
+
+"All that you say is lovely, for you are lovely," said he, "and you are
+my delight and the joy of the world."
+
+Then the attendants brought him wine, and he drank so joyously of that
+and so deeply, that those who observed him thought he would surely burst
+and drown them. But he laughed loudly and with enormous delight, until
+the vessels of gold and silver and bronze chimed mellowly to his peal
+and the rafters of the house went creaking.
+
+Said he:
+
+Mongan loved Duv Laca of the White Hand better than he loved his life,
+better than he loved his honour. The kingdoms of the world did not weigh
+with him beside the string of her shoe. He would not look at a sunset
+if he could see her. He would not listen to a harp if he could hear her
+speak, for she was the delight of ages, the gem of time, and the wonder
+of the world till Doom.
+
+She went to Leinster with the king of that country, and when she had
+gone Mongan fell grievously sick, so that it did not seem he could ever
+recover again; and he began to waste and wither, and he began to look
+like a skeleton, and a bony structure, and a misery.
+
+Now this also must be known.
+
+Duv Laca had a young attendant, who was her foster-sister as well as her
+servant, and on the day that she got married to Mongan, her attendant
+was married to mac an Da'v, who was servant and foster-brother to
+Mongan. When Duv Laca went away with the King of Leinster, her servant,
+mac an Da'v's wife, went with her, so there were two wifeless men
+in Ulster at that time, namely, Mongan the king and mac an Da'v his
+servant.
+
+One day as Mongan sat in the sun, brooding lamentably on his fate, mac
+an Da'v came to him.
+
+"How are things with you, master?" asked Mac an Da'v.
+
+"Bad," said Mongan.
+
+"It was a poor day brought you off with Mananna'n to the Land of
+Promise," said his servant.
+
+"Why should you think that?" inquired Mongan.
+
+"Because," said mac an Da'v, "you learned nothing in the Land of Promise
+except how to eat a lot of food and how to do nothing in a deal of
+time."
+
+"What business is it of yours?" said Mongan angrily.
+
+"It is my business surely," said mac an Da'v, "for my wife has gone off
+to Leinster with your wife, and she wouldn't have gone if you hadn't
+made a bet and a bargain with that accursed king."
+
+Mac an Da'v began to weep then.
+
+"I didn't make a bargain with any king," said he, "and yet my wife has
+gone away with one, and it's all because of you."
+
+"There is no one sorrier for you than I am," said Mongan.
+
+"There is indeed," said mac an Da'v, "for I am sorrier myself."
+
+Mongan roused himself then.
+
+"You have a claim on me truly," said he, "and I will not have any one
+with a claim on me that is not satisfied. Go," he said to mac an Da'v,
+"to that fairy place we both know of. You remember the baskets I left
+there with the sod from Ireland in one and the sod from Scotland in the
+other; bring me the baskets and sods."
+
+"Tell me the why of this?" said his servant.
+
+"The King of Leinster will ask his wizards what I am doing, and this is
+what I will be doing. I will get on your back with a foot in each of the
+baskets, and when Branduv asks the wizards where I am they will tell him
+that I have one leg in Ireland and one leg in Scotland, and as long as
+they tell him that he will think he need not bother himself about me,
+and we will go into Leinster that way."
+
+"No bad way either," said mac an Da'v.
+
+They set out then.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+It was a long, uneasy journey, for although mac an Da'v was of stout
+heart and goodwill, yet no man can carry another on his back from Ulster
+to Leinster and go quick. Still, if you keep on driving a pig or a story
+they will get at last to where you wish them to go, and the man who
+continues putting one foot in front of the other will leave his home
+behind, and will come at last to the edge of the sea and the end of the
+world.
+
+When they reached Leinster the feast of Moy Life' was being held, and
+they pushed on by forced marches and long stages so as to be in time,
+and thus they came to the Moy of Cell Camain, and they mixed with the
+crowd that were going to the feast.
+
+A great and joyous concourse of people streamed about them. There were
+young men and young girls, and when these were not holding each other's
+hands it was because their arms were round each other's necks. There
+were old, lusty women going by, and when these were not talking together
+it was because their mouths were mutually filled with apples and
+meat-pies. There were young warriors with mantles of green and purple
+and red flying behind them on the breeze, and when these were not
+looking disdainfully on older soldiers it was because the older soldiers
+happened at the moment to be looking at them. There were old warriors
+with yard-long beards flying behind their shoulders llke wisps of hay,
+and when these were not nursing a broken arm or a cracked skull, it was
+because they were nursing wounds in their stomachs or their legs. There
+were troops of young women who giggled as long as their breaths lasted
+and beamed when it gave out. Bands of boys who whispered mysteriously
+together and pointed with their fingers in every direction at once, and
+would suddenly begin to run like a herd of stampeded horses. There were
+men with carts full of roasted meats. Women with little vats full of
+mead, and others carrying milk and beer. Folk of both sorts with towers
+swaying on their heads, and they dripping with honey. Children having
+baskets piled with red apples, and old women who peddled shell-fish and
+boiled lobsters. There were people who sold twenty kinds of bread, with
+butter thrown in. Sellers of onions and cheese, and others who supplied
+spare bits of armour, odd scabbards, spear handles, breastplate-laces.
+People who cut your hair or told your fortune or gave you a hot bath in
+a pot. Others who put a shoe on your horse or a piece of embroidery on
+your mantle; and others, again, who took stains off your sword or dyed
+your finger-nails or sold you a hound.
+
+It was a great and joyous gathering that was going to the feast.
+
+Mongan and his servant sat against a grassy hedge by the roadside and
+watched the multitude streaming past.
+
+Just then Mongan glanced to the right whence the people were coming.
+Then he pulled the hood of his cloak over his ears and over his brow.
+
+"Alas!" said he in a deep and anguished voice.
+
+Mac an Da'v turned to him.
+
+"Is it a pain in your stomach, master?"
+
+"It is not," said Mongan. "Well, what made you make that brutal and
+belching noise?"
+
+"It was a sigh I gave," said Mongan.
+
+"Whatever it was," said mac an Da'v, "what was it?"
+
+"Look down the road on this side and tell me who is coming," said his
+master.
+
+"It is a lord with his troop."
+
+"It is the King of Leinster," said Mongan. "The man," said mac an Da'v
+in a tone of great pity, "the man that took away your wife! And," he
+roared in a voice of extraordinary savagery, "the man that took away my
+wife into the bargain, and she not in the bargain."
+
+"Hush," said Mongan, for a man who heard his shout stopped to tie a
+sandie, or to listen.
+
+"Master," said mac an Da'v as the troop drew abreast and moved past.
+
+"What is it, my good friend?"
+
+"Let me throw a little small piece of a rock at the King of Leinster."
+
+"I will not."
+
+"A little bit only, a small bit about twice the size of my head."
+
+"I will not let you," said Mongan.
+
+When the king had gone by mac an Da'v groaned a deep and dejected groan.
+
+"Oco'n!" said he. "Oco'n-i'o-go-deo'!" said he.
+
+The man who had tied his sandal said then: "Are you in pain, honest
+man?"
+
+"I am not in pain," said mac an Da'v.
+
+"Well, what was it that knocked a howl out of you like the yelp of a
+sick dog, honest man?"
+
+"Go away," said mac an Da'v, "go away, you flat-faced, nosey person."
+"There is no politeness left in this country," said the stranger, and he
+went away to a certain distance, and from thence he threw a stone at mac
+an Da'v's nose, and hit it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The road was now not so crowded as it had been. Minutes would pass and
+only a few travellers would come, and minutes more would go when nobody
+was in sight at all.
+
+Then two men came down the road: they were clerics.
+
+"I never saw that kind of uniform before," said mac an Da'v.
+
+"Even if you didn't," said Mongan, "there are plenty of them about. They
+are men that don't believe in our gods," said he.
+
+"Do they not, indeed?" said mac an Da'v. "The rascals!" said he. "What,
+what would Mananna'n say to that?"
+
+"The one in front carrying the big book is Tibraide'. He is the priest
+of Cell Camain, and he is the chief of those two."
+
+"Indeed, and indeed!" said mac an Da'v. "The one behind must be his
+servant, for he has a load on his back."
+
+The priests were reading their offices, and mac an Da'v marvelled at
+that.
+
+
+"What is it they are doing?" said he.
+
+"They are reading."
+
+"Indeed, and indeed they are," said mac an Da'v. "I can't make out a
+word of the language except that the man behind says amen, amen, every
+time the man in front puts a grunt out of him. And they don't like our
+gods at all!" said mac an Da'v.
+
+"They do not," said Mongan.
+
+"Play a trick on them, master," said mac an Da'v. Mongan agreed to play
+a trick on the priests.
+
+He looked at them hard for a minute, and then he waved his hand at them.
+
+The two priests stopped, and they stared straight in front of them, and
+then they looked at each other, and then they looked at the sky. The
+clerk began to bless himself, and then Tibraide' began to bless himself,
+and after that they didn't know what to do. For where there had been a
+road with hedges on each side and fields stretching beyond them, there
+was now no road, no hedge, no field; but there was a great broad river
+sweeping across their path; a mighty tumble of yellowy-brown waters,
+very swift, very savage; churning and billowing and jockeying among
+rough boulders and islands of stone. It was a water of villainous depth
+and of detestable wetness; of ugly hurrying and of desolate cavernous
+sound. At a little to their right there was a thin uncomely bridge that
+waggled across the torrent.
+
+Tibraide' rubbed his eyes, and then he looked again. "Do you see what I
+see?" said he to the clerk.
+
+"I don't know what you see," said the clerk, "but what I see I never did
+see before, and I wish I did not see it now."
+
+"I was born in this place," said Tibraide', "my father was born here
+before me, and my grandfather was born here before him, but until this
+day and this minute I never saw a river here before, and I never heard
+of one."
+
+"What will we do at all?" said the clerk. "What will we do at all?"
+
+"We will be sensible," said Tibraide' sternly, "and we will go about our
+business," said he. "If rivers fall out of the sky what has that to do
+with you, and if there is a river here, which there is, why, thank God,
+there is a bridge over it too."
+
+"Would you put a toe on that bridge?" said the clerk. "What is the
+bridge for?" said Tibraide' Mongan and mac an Da'v followed them.
+
+When they got to the middle of the bridge it broke under them, and they
+were precipitated into that boiling yellow flood.
+
+Mongan snatched at the book as it fell from Tibraide''s hand.
+
+"Won't you let them drown, master?" asked mac an Da'v.
+
+"No," said Mongan, "I'll send them a mile down the stream, and then they
+can come to land."
+
+Mongan then took on himself the form of Tibraide' and he turned mac an
+Da'v into the shape of the clerk.
+
+"My head has gone bald," said the servant in a whisper.
+
+"That is part of it," replied Mongan. "So long as we know," said mac an
+Da'v.
+
+They went on then to meet the King of Leinster.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+They met him near the place where the games were played.
+
+"Good my soul, Tibraide'!" cried the King of Leinster, and he gave
+Mongan a kiss. Mongan kissed him back again.
+
+"Amen, amen," said mac an Da'v.
+
+"What for?" said the King of Leinster.
+
+And then mac an Da'v began to sneeze, for he didn't know what for.
+
+"It is a long time since I saw you, Tibraide'," said the king, "but at
+this minute I am in great haste and hurry. Go you on before me to the
+fortress, and you can talk to the queen that you'll find there, she that
+used to be the King of Ulster's wife. Kevin Cochlach, my charioteer,
+will go with you, and I will follow you myself in a while."
+
+The King of Leinster went off then, and Mongan and his servant went with
+the charioteer and the people.
+
+Mongan read away out of the book, for he found it interesting, and he
+did not want to talk to the charioteer, and mac an Da'v cried amen,
+amen, every time that Mongan took his breath. The people who were going
+with them said to one another that mac an Da'v was a queer kind of
+clerk, and that they had never seen any one who had such a mouthful of
+amens.
+
+But in a while they came to the fortress, and they got into it without
+any trouble, for Kevin Cochlach, the king's charioteer, brought them in.
+Then they were led to the room where Duv Laca was, and as he went into
+that room Mongan shut his eyes, for he did not want to look at Duv Laca
+while other people might be looking at him.
+
+"Let everybody leave this room, while I am talking to the queen," said
+he; and all the attendants left the room, except one, and she wouldn't
+go, for she wouldn't leave her mistress.
+
+Then Mongan opened his eyes and he saw Duv Laca, and he made a great
+bound to her and took her in his arms, and mac an Da'v made a savage and
+vicious and terrible jump at the attendant, and took her in his arms,
+and bit her ear and kissed her neck and wept down into her back.
+
+"Go away," said the girl, "unhand me, villain," said she.
+
+"I will not," said mac an Da'v, "for I'm your own husband, I'm your own
+mac, your little mac, your macky-wac-wac." Then the attendant gave a
+little squeal, and she bit him on each ear and kissed his neck and wept
+down into his back, and said that it wasn't true and that it was.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+But they were not alone, although they thought they were. The hag that
+guarded the jewels was in the room. She sat hunched up against the wail,
+and as she looked like a bundle of rags they did not notice her. She
+began to speak then.
+
+"Terrible are the things I see," said she. "Terrible are the things I
+see."
+
+Mongan and his servant gave a jump of surprise, and their two wives
+jumped and squealed. Then Mongan puffed out his cheeks till his face
+looked like a bladder, and he blew a magic breath at the hag, so that
+she seemed to be surrounded by a fog, and when she looked through that
+breath everything seemed to be different to what she had thought. Then
+she began to beg everybody's pardon.
+
+"I had an evil vision," said she, "I saw crossways. How sad it is that I
+should begin to see the sort of things I thought I saw."
+
+"Sit in this chair, mother," said Mongan, "and tell me what you thought
+you saw," and he slipped a spike under her, and mac an Da'v pushed her
+into the seat, and she died on the spike.
+
+Just then there came a knocking at the door. Mac an Da'v opened it, and
+there was Tibraide, standing outside, and twenty-nine of his men were
+with him, and they were all laughing.
+
+"A mile was not half enough," said mac an Da'v reproachfully.
+
+The Chamberlain of the fortress pushed into the room and he stared from
+one Tibraide' to the other.
+
+"This is a fine growing year," said he. "There never was a year
+when Tibraide''s were as plentiful as they are this year. There is a
+Tibraide' outside and a Tibraide' inside, and who knows but there are
+some more of them under the bed. The place is crawling with them," said
+he.
+
+Mongan pointed at Tibraide'.
+
+"Don't you know who that is?" he cried.
+
+"I know who he says he is," said the Chamberlain.
+
+"Well, he is Mongan," said Mongan, "and these twenty-nine men are
+twenty-nine of his nobles from Ulster."
+
+At that news the men of the household picked up clubs and cudgels and
+every kind of thing that was near, and made a violent and woeful attack
+on Tibraide''s men The King of Leinster came in then, and when he was
+told Tibraide' was Mongan he attacked them as well, and it was with
+difficulty that Tibraide' got away to Cell Camain with nine of his men
+and they all wounded.
+
+The King of Leinster came back then. He went to Duv Laca's room.
+
+"Where is Tibraide'?" said he.
+
+"It wasn't Tibraide was here," said the hag who was still sitting on
+the spike, and was not half dead, "it was Mongan."
+
+"Why did you let him near you?" said the king to Duv Laca.
+
+"There is no one has a better right to be near me than Mongan has," said
+Duv Laca, "he is my own husband," said she.
+
+And then the king cried out in dismay: "I have beaten Tibraide''s
+people." He rushed from the room.
+
+"Send for Tibraide' till I apologise," he cried. "Tell him it was all a
+mistake. Tell him it was Mongan."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Mongan and his servant went home, and (for what pleasure is greater than
+that of memory exercised in conversation?) for a time the feeling of an
+adventure well accomplished kept him in some contentment. But at the
+end of a time that pleasure was worn out, and Mongan grew at first
+dispirited and then sullen, and after that as ill as he had been on the
+previous occasion. For he could not forget Duv Laca of the White Hand,
+and he could not remember her without longing and despair.
+
+It was in the illness which comes from longing and despair that he sat
+one day looking on a world that was black although the sun shone, and
+that was lean and unwholesome although autumn fruits were heavy on the
+earth and the joys of harvest were about him.
+
+"Winter is in my heart," quoth he, "and I am cold already."
+
+He thought too that some day he would die, and the thought was not
+unpleasant, for one half of his life was away in the territories of the
+King of Leinster, and the half that he kept in himself had no spice in
+it.
+
+He was thinking in this way when mac an Da'v came towards him over the
+lawn, and he noticed that mac an Da'v was walking like an old man.
+
+He took little slow steps, and he did not loosen his knees when he
+walked, so he went stiffly. One of his feet turned pitifully outwards,
+and the other turned lamentably in. His chest was pulled inwards, and
+his head was stuck outwards and hung down in the place where his chest
+should have been, and his arms were crooked in front of him with the
+hands turned wrongly, so that one palm was shown to the east of the
+world and the other one was turned to the west.
+
+"How goes it, mac an Da'v?" said the king.
+
+"Bad," said mac an Da'v.
+
+"Is that the sun I see shining, my friend?" the king asked.
+
+"It may be the sun," replied mac an Da'v, peering curiously at the
+golden radiance that dozed about them, "but maybe it's a yellow fog."
+
+"What is life at all?" said the king.
+
+"It is a weariness and a tiredness," said mac an Da'v. "It is a long
+yawn without sleepiness. It is a bee, lost at midnight and buzzing on
+a pane. It is the noise made by a tied-up dog. It is nothing worth
+dreaming about. It is nothing at all."
+
+"How well you explain my feelings about Duv Laca," said the king.
+
+"I was thinking about my own lamb," said mac an Da'v. "I was thinking
+about my own treasure, my cup of cheeriness, and the pulse of my heart."
+And with that he burst into tears.
+
+"Alas!" said the king.
+
+"But," sobbed mac an Da'v, "what right have I to complain? I am only
+the servant, and although I didn't make any bargain with the King of
+Leinster or with any king of them all, yet my wife is gone away as if
+she was the consort of a potentate the same as Duv Laca is."
+
+Mongan was sorry then for his servant, and he roused himself.
+
+"I am going to send you to Duv Laca."
+
+"Where the one is the other will be," cried mac an Da'v joyously.
+
+"Go," said Mongan, "to Rath Descirt of Bregia; you know that place?"
+
+"As well as my tongue knows my teeth."
+
+"Duv Laca is there; see her, and ask her what she wants me to do."
+
+Mac an Da'v went there and returned.
+
+"Duv Laca says that you are to come at once, for the King of Leinster is
+journeying around his territory, and Kevin Cochlach, the charioteer, is
+making bitter love to her and wants her to run away with him."
+
+Mongan set out, and in no great time, for they travelled day and night,
+they came to Bregla, and gained admittance to the fortress, but just
+as he got in he had to go out again, for the King of Leinster had been
+warned of Mongan's journey, and came back to his fortress in the nick of
+time.
+
+When the men of Ulster saw the condition into which Mongan fell they
+were in great distress, and they all got sick through compassion for
+their king. The nobles suggested to him that they should march against
+Leinster and kill that king and bring back Duv Laca, but Mongan would
+not consent to this plan.
+
+"For," said he, "the thing I lost through my own folly I shall get back
+through my own craft."
+
+And when he said that his spirits revived, and he called for mac an
+Da'v.
+
+"You know, my friend," said Mongan, "that I can't get Duv Laca back
+unless the King of Leinster asks me to take her back, for a bargain is a
+bargain."
+
+"That will happen when pigs fly," said mac an Da'v, "and," said he, "I
+did not make any bargain with any king that is in the world."
+
+"I heard you say that before," said Mongan.
+
+"I will say it till Doom," cried his servant, "for my wife has gone
+away with that pestilent king, and he has got the double of your bad
+bargain."
+
+Mongan and his servant then set out for Leinster.
+
+When they neared that country they found a great crowd going on the road
+with them, and they learned that the king was giving a feast in honour
+of his marriage to Duv Laca, for the year of waiting was nearly out, and
+the king had sworn he would delay no longer.
+
+They went on, therefore, but in low spirits, and at last they saw the
+walls of the king's castle towering before them, and a noble company
+going to and fro on the lawn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THEY sat in a place where they could watch the castle and compose
+themselves after their journey.
+
+"How are we going to get into the castle?" asked mac an Da'v.
+
+For there were hatchetmen on guard in the big gateway, and there were
+spearmen at short intervals around the walls, and men to throw hot
+porridge off the roof were standing in the right places.
+
+"If we cannot get in by hook, we will get in by crook," said Mongan.
+
+"They are both good ways," said Mac an Da'v, "and whichever of them you
+decide on I'll stick by."
+
+Just then they saw the Hag of the Mill coming out of the mill which was
+down the road a little.
+
+Now the Hag of the Mill was a bony, thin pole of a hag with odd feet.
+That is, she had one foot that was too big for her, so that when she
+lifted it up it pulled her over; and she had one foot that was too small
+for her, so that when she lifted it up she didn't know what to do with
+it. She was so long that you thought you would never see the end of her,
+and she was so thin that you thought you didn't see her at all. One of
+her eyes was set where her nose should be and there was an ear in its
+place, and her nose itself was hanging out of her chin, and she had
+whiskers round it. She was dressed in a red rag that was really a hole
+with a fringe on it, and she was singing "Oh, hush thee, my one love" to
+a cat that was yelping on her shoulder.
+
+She had a tall skinny dog behind her called Brotar. It hadn't a tooth in
+its head except one, and it had the toothache in that tooth. Every few
+steps it used to sit down on its hunkers and point its nose straight
+upwards, and make a long, sad complaint about its tooth; and after that
+it used to reach its hind leg round and try to scratch out its tooth;
+and then it used to be pulled on again by the straw rope that was round
+its neck, and which was tied at the other end to the hag's heaviest
+foot.
+
+There was an old, knock-kneed, raw-boned, one-eyed, little-winded,
+heavy-headed mare with her also. Every time it put a front leg forward
+it shivered all over the rest of its legs backwards, and when it put a
+hind leg forward it shivered all over the rest of its legs frontwards,
+and it used to give a great whistle through its nose when it was out of
+breath, and a big, thin hen was sitting on its croup. Mongan looked on
+the Hag of the Mill with delight and affection.
+
+"This time," said he to mac an Da'v, "I'll get back my wife."
+
+"You will indeed," said mac an Da'v heartily, "and you'll get mine back
+too."
+
+"Go over yonder," said Mongan, "and tell the Hag of the Mill that I want
+to talk to her."
+
+Mac an Da'v brought her over to him.
+
+"Is it true what the servant man said?" she asked.
+
+"What did he say?" said Mongan.
+
+"He said you wanted to talk to me."
+
+"It is true," said Mongan.
+
+"This is a wonderful hour and a glorious minute," said the hag, "for
+this is the first time in sixty years that any one wanted to talk to me.
+Talk on now," said she, "and I'll listen to you if I can remember how to
+do it. Talk gently," said she, "the way you won't disturb the animals,
+for they are all sick."
+
+"They are sick indeed," said mac an Da'v pityingly.
+
+"The cat has a sore tail," said she, "by reason of sitting too close to
+a part of the hob that was hot. The dog has a toothache, the horse has a
+pain in her stomach, and the hen has the pip."
+
+"Ah, it's a sad world," said mac an Da'v.
+
+"There you are!" said the hag.
+
+"Tell me," Mongan commenced, "if you got a wish, what it is you would
+wish for?"
+
+The hag took the cat off her shoulder and gave it to mac an Da'v.
+
+"Hold that for me while I think," said she.
+
+"Would you like to be a lovely young girl?" asked Mongan.
+
+"I'd sooner be that than a skinned eel," said she.
+
+"And would you like to marry me or the King of Leinster?" "I'd like to
+marry either of you, or both of you, or whichever of you came first."
+
+"Very well," said Mongan, "you shall have your wish."
+
+He touched her with his finger, and the instant he touched her all
+dilapidation and wryness and age went from her, and she became so
+beautiful that one dared scarcely look on her, and so young that she
+seemed but sixteen years of age.
+
+"You are not the Hag of the Mill any longer," said Mongan, "you are
+Ivell of the Shining Cheeks, daughter of the King of Munster."
+
+He touched the dog too, and it became a little silky lapdog that could
+nestle in your palm. Then he changed the old mare into a brisk, piebald
+palfrey. Then he changed himself so that he became the living image of
+Ae, the son of the King of Connaught, who had just been married to Ivell
+of the Shining Cheeks, and then he changed mac an Da'v into the likeness
+of Ae's attendant, and then they all set off towards the fortress,
+singing the song that begins: My wife is nicer than any one's wife, Any
+one's wife, any one's wife, My wife is nicer than any one's wife, Which
+nobody can deny.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+The doorkeeper brought word to the King of Leinster that the son of the
+King of Connaught, Ae the Beautiful, and his wife, Ivell of the Shining
+Cheeks, were at the door, that they had been banished from Connaught
+by Ae's father, and they were seeking the protection of the King of
+Leinster.
+
+Branduv came to the door himself to welcome them, and the minute he
+looked on Ivell of the Shining Cheeks it was plain that he liked looking
+at her.
+
+It was now drawing towards evening, and a feast was prepared for the
+guests with a banquet to follow it. At the feast Duv Laca sat beside the
+King of Leinster, but Mongan sat opposite him with Ivell, and Mongan put
+more and more magic into the hag, so that her cheeks shone and her eyes
+gleamed, and she was utterly bewitching to the eye; and when Branduv
+looked at her she seemed to grow more and more lovely and more and more
+desirable, and at last there was not a bone in his body as big as an
+inch that was not filled with love and longing for the girl.
+
+Every few minutes he gave a great sigh as if he had eaten too much, and
+when Duv Laca asked him if he had eaten too much he said he had but
+that he had not drunk enough, and by that he meant that he had not drunk
+enough from the eyes of the girl before him.
+
+At the banquet which was then held he looked at her again, and every
+time he took a drink he toasted Ivell across the brim of his goblet, and
+in a little while she began to toast him back across the rim of her
+cup, for he was drinking ale, but she was drinking mead. Then he sent a
+messenger to her to say that it was a far better thing to be the wife
+of the King of Leinster than to be the wife of the son of the King of
+Connaught, for a king is better than a prince, and Ivell thought that
+this was as wise a thing as anybody had ever said. And then he sent a
+message to say that he loved her so much that he would certainly burst
+of love if it did not stop.
+
+Mongan heard the whispering, and he told the hag that if she did what he
+advised she would certainly get either himself or the King of Leinster
+for a husband.
+
+"Either of you will be welcome," said the hag.
+
+"When the king says he loves you, ask him to prove it by gifts; ask for
+his drinking-horn first."
+
+She asked for that, and he sent it to her filled with good liquor; then
+she asked for his girdle, and he sent her that.
+
+His people argued with him and said it was not right that he should give
+away the treasures of Leinster to the wife of the King of Connaught's
+son; but he said that it did not matter, for when he got the girl he
+would get his treasures with her. But every time he sent anything to the
+hag, mac an Da'v snatched it out of her lap and put it in his pocket.
+
+"Now," said Mongan to the hag, "tell the servant to say that you would
+not leave your own husband for all the wealth of the world."
+
+She told the servant that, and the servant told it to the king. When
+Branduv heard it he nearly went mad with love and longing and jealousy,
+and with rage also, because of the treasure he had given her and might
+not get back. He called Mongan over to him, and spoke to him very
+threateningly and ragingly.
+
+"I am not one who takes a thing without giving a thing," said he.
+
+"Nobody could say you were," agreed Mongan.
+
+"Do you see this woman sitting beside me?" he continued, pointing to Duv
+Laca.
+
+"I do indeed," said Mongan.
+
+"Well," said Branduv, "this woman is Duv Laca of the White Hand that I
+took away from Mongan; she is just going to marry me, but if you will
+make an exchange, you can marry this Duv Laca here, and I will marry
+that Ivell of the Shining Cheeks yonder."
+
+Mongan pretended to be very angry then.
+
+"If I had come here with horses and treasure you would be in your right
+to take these from me, but you have no right to ask for what you are now
+asking."
+
+"I do ask for it," said Branduv menacingly, "and you must not refuse a
+lord."
+
+"Very well," said Mongan reluctantly, and as if in great fear; "if you
+will make the exchange I will make it, although it breaks my heart."
+
+He brought Ivell over to the king then and gave her three kisses.
+
+"The king would suspect something if I did not kiss you," said he, and
+then he gave the hag over to the king. After that they all got drunk and
+merry, and soon there was a great snoring and snorting, and very soon
+all the servants fell asleep also, so that Mongan could not get anything
+to drink. Mac an Da'v said it was a great shame, and he kicked some of
+the servants, but they did not budge, and then he slipped out to the
+stables and saddled two mares. He got on one with his wife behind him
+and Mongan got on the other with Duv Laca behind him, and they rode away
+towards Ulster like the wind, singing this song: The King of Leinster
+was married to-day, Married to-day, married to-day, The King of Leinster
+was married to-day, And every one wishes him joy.
+
+In the morning the servants came to waken the King of Leinster, and when
+they saw the face of the hag lying on the pillow beside the king, and
+her nose all covered with whiskers, and her big foot and little foot
+sticking away out at the end of the bed, they began to laugh, and poke
+one another in the stomachs and thump one another on the shoulders, so
+that the noise awakened the king, and he asked what was the matter with
+them at all. It was then he saw the hag lying beside him, and he gave a
+great screech and jumped out of the bed.
+
+"Aren't you the Hag of the Mill?" said he.
+
+"I am indeed," she replied, "and I love you dearly."
+
+"I wish I didn't see you," said Branduv.
+
+That was the end of the story, and when he had told it Mongan began to
+laugh uproariously and called for more wine. He drank this deeply, as
+though he was full of thirst and despair and a wild jollity, but when
+the Flame Lady began to weep he took her in his arms and caressed her,
+and said that she was the love of his heart and the one treasure of the
+world.
+
+After that they feasted in great contentment, and at the end of the
+feasting they went away from Faery and returned to the world of men.
+
+They came to Mongan's palace at Moy Linney, and it was not until they
+reached the palace that they found they had been away one whole year,
+for they had thought they were only away one night. They lived
+then peacefully and lovingly together, and that ends the story, but
+Bro'tiarna did not know that Mongan was Fionn.
+
+
+The abbot leaned forward.
+
+"Was Mongan Fionn?" he asked in a whisper.
+
+"He was," replied Cairide'.
+
+"Indeed, indeed!" said the abbot.
+
+After a while he continued: "There is only one part of your story that I
+do not like."
+
+"What part is that?" asked Cairide'.
+
+"It is the part where the holy man Tibraide' was ill treated by that
+rap--by that--by Mongan."
+
+Cairide' agreed that it was ill done, but to himself he said gleefully
+that whenever he was asked to tell the story of how he told the story of
+Mongan he would remember what the abbot said.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Irish Fairy Tales, by James Stephens
+
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+This etext was prepared by A Elizabeth Warren MD, Sacramento, CA
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+
+
+IRISH FAIRY TALES
+
+by JAMES STEPHENS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+THE STORY OF TUAN MAC CAIRILL
+THE BOYHOOD OF FIONN
+THE BIRTH OF BRAN
+OISI'N'S MOTHER
+THE WOOING OF BECFOLA
+THE LITTLE BRAWL AT ALLEN
+THE CARL OF THE DRAB COAT
+THE ENCHANTED CAVE OF CESH CORRAN
+BECUMA OF THE WHITE SKIN
+MONGAN'S FRENZY
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF TUAN MAC CAIRILL
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Finnian, the Abbott of Moville, went southwards and eastwards in
+great haste. News had come to him in Donegal that there were yet
+people in his own province who believed in gods that he did not
+approve of, and the gods that we do not approve of are treated
+scurvily, even by saintly men.
+
+He was told of a powerful gentleman who observed neither Saint's
+day nor Sunday.
+
+"A powerful person!" said Finnian.
+
+"All that," was the reply.
+
+"We shall try this person's power," said Finnian.
+
+"He is reputed to be a wise and hardy man," said his informant.
+
+"We shall test his wisdom and his hardihood."
+
+"He is," that gossip whispered--"he is a magician."
+
+"I will magician him," cried Finnian angrily. "Where does that
+man live?"
+
+He was informed, and he proceeded to that direction without
+delay.
+
+In no great time he came to the stronghold of the gentleman who
+followed ancient ways, and he demanded admittance in order that
+he might preach and prove the new God, and exorcise and terrify
+and banish even the memory of the old one; for to a god grown old
+Time is as ruthless as to a beggarman grown old.
+
+But the Ulster gentleman refused Finnian admittance. He
+barricaded his house, he shuttered his windows, and in a gloom of
+indignation and protest he continued the practices of ten
+thousand years, and would not hearken to Finnian calling at the
+window or to Time knocking at his door.
+
+But of those adversaries it was the first he redoubted.
+
+Finnian loomed on him as a portent and a terror; but he had no
+fear of Time. Indeed he was the foster-brother of Time, and so
+disdainful of the bitter god that he did not even disdain him; he
+leaped over the scythe, he dodged under it, and the sole
+occasions on which Time laughs is when he chances on Tuan, the
+son of Cairill, the son of Muredac Red-neck.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Now Finnian could not abide that any person should resist both
+the Gospel and himself, and he proceeded to force the stronghold
+by peaceful but powerful methods. He fasted on the gentleman, and
+he did so to such purpose that he was admitted to the house; for
+to an hospitable heart the idea that a stranger may expire on
+your doorstep from sheer famine cannot be tolerated. The
+gentleman, however, did not give in without a struggle: he
+thought that when Finnian had grown sufficiently hungry he would
+lift the siege and take himself off to some place where he might
+get food. But he did not know Finnian. The great abbot sat down
+on a spot just beyond the door, and composed himself to all that
+might follow from his action. He bent his gaze on the ground
+between his feet, and entered into a meditation from which he
+would Only be released by admission or death.
+
+The first day passed quietly.
+
+Often the gentleman would send a servitor to spy if that deserter
+of the gods was still before his door, and each time the servant
+replied that he was still there.
+
+"He will be gone in the morning," said the hopeful master.
+
+On the morrow the state of siege continued, and through that day
+the servants were sent many times to observe through spy-holes.
+
+"Go," he would say, "and find out if the worshipper of new gods
+has taken himself away."
+
+But the servants returned each time with the same information.
+
+"The new druid is still there," they said.
+
+All through that day no one could leave the stronghold. And the
+enforced seclusion wrought on the minds of the servants, while
+the cessation of all work banded them together in small groups
+that whispered and discussed and disputed. Then these groups
+would disperse to peep through the spy-hole at the patient,
+immobile figure seated before the door, wrapped in a meditation
+that was timeless and unconcerned. They took fright at the
+spectacle, and once or twice a woman screamed hysterically, and
+was bundled away with a companion's hand clapped on her mouth, so
+that the ear of their master should not be affronted.
+
+"He has his own troubles," they said. "It is a combat of the gods
+that is taking place."
+
+So much for the women; but the men also were uneasy. They prowled
+up and down, tramping from the spy-hole to the kitchen, and from
+the kitchen to the turreted roof. And from the roof they would
+look down on the motionless figure below, and speculate on many
+things, including the staunchness of man, the qualities of their
+master, and even the possibility that the new gods might be as
+powerful as the old. From these peepings and discussions they
+would return languid and discouraged.
+
+"If," said one irritable guard, "if we buzzed a spear at the
+persistent stranger, or if one slung at him with a jagged
+pebble!"
+
+"What!" his master demanded wrathfully, "is a spear to be thrown
+at an unarmed stranger? And from this house!" And he soundly
+cuffed that indelicate servant.
+
+"Be at peace all of you," he said, "for hunger has a whip, and he
+will drive the stranger away in the night."
+
+The household retired to wretched beds; but for the master of the
+house there was no sleep. He marched his halls all night, going
+often to the spy-hole to see if that shadow was still sitting in
+the shade, and pacing thence, tormented, preoccupied, refusing
+even the nose of his favourite dog as it pressed lovingly into
+his closed palm.
+
+On the morrow he gave in.
+
+The great door was swung wide, and two of his servants carried
+Finnian into the house, for the saint could no longer walk or
+stand upright by reason of the hunger and exposure to which he
+had submitted. But his frame was tough as the unconquerable
+spirit that dwelt within it, and in no long time he was ready for
+whatever might come of dispute or anathema.
+
+Being quite re-established he undertook the conversion of the
+master of the house, and the siege he laid against that notable
+intelligence was long spoken of among those who are interested in
+such things.
+
+He had beaten the disease of Mugain; he had beaten his own pupil
+the great Colm Cille; he beat Tuan also, and just as the latter's
+door had opened to the persistent stranger, so his heart opened,
+and Finnian marched there to do the will of God, and his own
+will.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+One day they were talking together about the majesty of God and
+His love, for although Tuan had now received much instruction on
+this subject he yet needed more, and he laid as close a siege on
+Finnian as Finnian had before that laid on him. But man works
+outwardly and inwardly. After rest he has energy, after energy he
+needs repose; so, when we have given instruction for a time, we
+need instruction, and must receive it or the spirit faints and
+wisdom herself grows bitter.
+
+Therefore Finnian said: "Tell me now about yourself, dear heart."
+
+But Tuan was avid of information about the True God. "No, no," he
+said, "the past has nothing more of interest for me, and I do not
+wish anything to come between my soul and its instruction;
+continue to teach me, dear friend and saintly father."
+
+"I will do that," Finnian replied, "but I must first meditate
+deeply on you, and must know you well. Tell me your past, my
+beloved, for a man is his past, and is to be known by it."
+
+But Tuan pleaded: "Let the past be content with itself, for man
+needs forgetfulness as well as memory."
+
+"My son," said Finnian, "all that has ever been done has been
+done for the glory of God, and to confess our good and evil deeds
+is part of instruction; for the soul must recall its acts and
+abide by them, or renounce them by confession and penitence. Tell
+me your genealogy first, and by what descent you occupy these
+lands and stronghold, and then I will examine your acts and your
+conscience."
+
+Tuan replied obediently: "I am known as Tuan, son of Cairill, son
+of Muredac Red-neck, and these are the hereditary lands of my
+father."
+
+The saint nodded.
+
+"I am not as well acquainted with Ulster genealogies as I should
+be, yet I know something of them. I am by blood a Leinsterman,"
+he continued.
+
+"Mine is a long pedigree," Tuan murmured.
+
+Finnian received that information with respect and interest.
+
+"I also," he said, "have an honourable record."
+
+His host continued: "I am indeed Tuan, the son of Starn, the son
+of Sera, who was brother to Partholon."
+
+"But," said Finnian in bewilderment, "there is an error here, for
+you have recited two different genealogies."
+
+"Different genealogies, indeed," replied Tuan thoughtfully, "but
+they are my genealogies."
+
+"I do not understand this," Finnian declared roundly.
+
+"I am now known as Tuan mac Cairill," the other replied, "but in
+the days of old I was known as Tuan mac Starn, mac Sera."
+
+"The brother of Partholon," the saint gasped.
+
+"That is my pedigree," Tuan said.
+
+"But," Finnian objected in bewilderment, "Partholon came to
+Ireland not long after the Flood."
+
+"I came with him," said Tuan mildly.
+
+The saint pushed his chair back hastily, and sat staring at his
+host, and as he stared the blood grew chill in his veins, and his
+hair crept along his scalp and stood on end.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+But Finnian was not one who remained long in bewilderment. He
+thought on the might of God and he became that might, and was
+tranquil.
+
+He was one who loved God and Ireland, and to the person who could
+instruct him in these great themes he gave all the interest of
+his mind and the sympathy of his heart.
+
+"It is a wonder you tell me, my beloved," he said. "And now you
+must tell me more."
+
+"What must I tell?" asked Tuan resignedly.
+
+"Tell me of the beginning of time in Ireland, and of the bearing
+of Partholon, the son of Noah's son."
+
+"I have almost forgotten him," said Tuan. "A greatly bearded,
+greatly shouldered man he was. A man of sweet deeds and sweet
+ways."
+
+"Continue, my love," said Finnian.
+
+"He came to Ireland in a ship. Twenty-four men and twenty-four
+women came with him. But before that time no man had come to
+Ireland, and in the western parts of the world no human being
+lived or moved. As we drew on Ireland from the sea the country
+seemed like an unending forest. Far as the eye could reach, and
+in whatever direction, there were trees; and from these there
+came the unceasing singing of birds. Over all that land the sun
+shone warm and beautiful, so that to our sea-weary eyes, our
+wind-tormented ears, it seemed as if we were driving on Paradise.
+
+"We landed and we heard the rumble of water going gloomily
+through the darkness of the forest. Following the water we came
+to a glade where the sun shone and where the earth was warmed,
+and there Partholon rested with his twenty-four couples, and made
+a city and a livelihood.
+
+"There were fish in the rivers of Eire', there were animals in
+her coverts. Wild and shy and monstrous creatures ranged in her
+plains and forests. Creatures that one could see through and walk
+through. Long we lived in ease, and we saw new animals grow,
+--the bear, the wolf, the badger, the deer, and the boar.
+
+"Partholon's people increased until from twenty-four couples
+there came five thousand people, who lived in amity and
+contentment although they had no wits."
+
+"They had no wits!" Finnian commented.
+
+"They had no need of wits," Tuan said.
+
+"I have heard that the first-born were mindless," said Finnian.
+"Continue your story, my beloved."
+
+"Then, sudden as a rising wind, between one night and a morning,
+there came a sickness that bloated the stomach and purpled the
+skin, and on the seventh day all of the race of Partholon were
+dead, save one man only." "There always escapes one man," said
+Finnian thoughtfully.
+
+"And I am that man," his companion affirmed.
+
+Tuan shaded his brow with his hand, and he remembered backwards
+through incredible ages to the beginning of the world and the
+first days of Eire'. And Finnian, with his blood again running
+chill and his scalp crawling uneasily, stared backwards with him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+"Tell on, my love," Finnian murmured
+
+"I was alone," said Tuan. "I was so alone that my own shadow
+frightened me. I was so alone that the sound of a bird in flight,
+or the creaking of a dew-drenched bough, whipped me to cover as a
+rabbit is scared to his burrow.
+
+"The creatures of the forest scented me and knew I was alone.
+They stole with silken pad behind my back and snarled when I
+faced them; the long, grey wolves with hanging tongues and
+staring eyes chased me to my cleft rock; there was no creature so
+weak but it might hunt me, there was no creature so timid but it
+might outface me. And so I lived for two tens of years and two
+years, until I knew all that a beast surmises and had forgotten
+all that a man had known.
+
+"I could pad as gently as any; I could run as tirelessly. I could
+be invisible and patient as a wild cat crouching among leaves; I
+could smell danger in my sleep and leap at it with wakeful claws;
+I could bark and growl and clash with my teeth and tear with
+them."
+
+"Tell on, my beloved," said Finnian, "you shall rest in God, dear
+heart."
+
+"At the end of that time," said Tuan, "Nemed the son of Agnoman
+came to Ireland with a fleet of thirty-four barques, and in each
+barque there were thirty couples of people."
+
+"I have heard it," said Finnian.
+
+"My heart leaped for joy when I saw the great fleet rounding the
+land, and I followed them along scarped cliffs, leaping from rock
+to rock like a wild goat, while the ships tacked and swung
+seeking a harbour. There I stooped to drink at a pool, and I saw
+myself in the chill water.
+
+"I saw that I was hairy and tufty and bristled as a savage boar;
+that I was lean as a stripped bush; that I was greyer than a
+badger; withered and wrinkled like an empty sack; naked as a
+fish; wretched as a starving crow in winter; and on my fingers
+and toes there were great curving claws, so that I looked like
+nothing that was known, like nothing that was animal or divine.
+And I sat by the pool weeping my loneliness and wildness and my
+stern old age; and I could do no more than cry and lament between
+the earth and the sky, while the beasts that tracked me listened
+from behind the trees, or crouched among bushes to stare at me
+from their drowsy covert.
+
+"A storm arose, and when I looked again from my tall cliff I saw
+that great fleet rolling as in a giant's hand. At times they were
+pitched against the sky and staggered aloft, spinning gustily
+there like wind-blown leaves. Then they were hurled from these
+dizzy tops to the flat, moaning gulf, to the glassy, inky horror
+that swirled and whirled between ten waves. At times a wave
+leaped howling under a ship, and with a buffet dashed it into
+air, and chased it upwards with thunder stroke on stroke, and
+followed again, close as a chasing wolf, trying with hammering on
+hammering to beat in the wide-wombed bottom and suck out the
+frightened lives through one black gape. A wave fell on a ship
+and sunk it down with a thrust, stern as though a whole sky had
+tumbled at it, and the barque did not cease to go down until it
+crashed and sank in the sand at the bottom of the sea.
+
+"The night came, and with it a thousand darknesses fell from the
+screeching sky. Not a round-eyed creature of the night might
+pierce an inch of that multiplied gloom. Not a creature dared
+creep or stand. For a great wind strode the world lashing its
+league-long whips in cracks of thunder, and singing to itself,
+now in a world-wide yell, now in an ear- dizzying hum and buzz;
+or with a long snarl and whine it hovered over the world
+searching for life to destroy.
+
+"And at times, from the moaning and yelping blackness of the sea,
+there came a sound-- thin-drawn as from millions of miles away,
+distinct as though uttered in the ear like a whisper of
+confidence--and I knew that a drowning man was calling on his God
+as he thrashed and was battered into silence, and that a
+blue-lipped woman was calling on her man as her hair whipped
+round her brows and she whirled about like a top.
+
+"Around me the trees were dragged from earth with dying groans;
+they leaped into the air and flew like birds. Great waves whizzed
+from the sea: spinning across the cliffs and hurtling to the
+earth in monstrous clots of foam; the very rocks came trundling
+and sidling and grinding among the trees; and in that rage, and
+in that horror of blackness I fell asleep, or I was beaten into
+slumber."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+"THERE I dreamed, and I saw myself changing into a stag in dream,
+and I felt in dream the beating of a new heart within me, and in
+dream I arched my neck and braced my powerful limbs.
+
+"I awoke from the dream, and I was that which I had dreamed.
+
+"I stood a while stamping upon a rock, with my bristling head
+swung high, breathing through wide nostrils all the savour of the
+world. For I had come marvellously from de-
+
+crepitude to strength. I had writhed from the bonds of age and
+was young again. I smelled the turf and knew for the first time
+how sweet that smelled. And like lightning my moving nose sniffed
+all things to my heart and separated them into knowledge.
+
+"Long I stood there, ringing my iron hoof on stone, and learning
+all things through my nose. Each breeze that came from the right
+hand or the left brought me a tale. A wind carried me the tang of
+wolf, and against that smell I stared and stamped. And on a wind
+there came the scent of my own kind, and at that I belled. Oh,
+loud and clear and sweet was the voice of the great stag. With
+what ease my lovely note went lilting. With what joy I heard the
+answering call. With what delight I bounded, bounded, bounded;
+light as a bird's plume, powerful as a storm, untiring as the
+sea.
+
+"Here now was ease in ten-yard springings, with a swinging head,
+with the rise and fall of a swallow, with the curve and flow and
+urge of an otter of the sea. What a tingle dwelt about my heart!
+What a thrill spun to the lofty points of my antlers! How the
+world was new! How the sun was new! How the wind caressed me!
+
+"With unswerving forehead and steady eye I met all that came. The
+old, lone wolf leaped sideways, snarling, and slunk away. The
+lumbering bear swung his head of hesitations and thought again;
+he trotted his small red eye away with him to a near-by brake.
+The stags of my race fled from my rocky forehead, or were pushed
+back and back until their legs broke under them and I trampled
+them to death. I was the beloved, the well known, the leader of
+the herds of Ireland.
+
+"And at times I came back from my boundings about Eire', for the
+strings of my heart were drawn to Ulster; and, standing away, my
+wide nose took the air, while I knew with joy, with terror, that
+men were blown on the wind. A proud head hung to the turf then,
+and the tears of memory rolled from a large, bright eye.
+
+"At times I drew near, delicately, standing among thick leaves or
+crouched in long grown grasses, and I stared and mourned as I
+looked on men. For Nemed and four couples had been saved from
+that fierce storm, and I saw them increase and multiply until
+four thousand couples lived and laughed and were riotous in the
+sun, for the people of Nemed had small minds but great activity.
+They were savage fighters and hunters.
+
+"But one time I came, drawn by that intolerable anguish of
+memory, and all of these people were gone: the place that knew
+them was silent: in the land where they had moved there was
+nothing of them but their bones that glinted in the sun.
+
+"Old age came on me there. Among these bones weariness crept into
+my limbs. My head grew heavy, my eyes dim, my knees jerked and
+trembled, and there the wolves dared chase me.
+
+"I went again to the cave that had been my home when I was an old
+man.
+
+"One day I stole from the cave to snatch a mouthful of grass, for
+I was closely besieged by wolves. They made their rush, and I
+barely escaped from them. They sat beyond the cave staring at me.
+
+"I knew their tongue. I knew all that they said to each other,
+and all that they said to me. But there was yet a thud left in my
+forehead, a deadly trample in my hoof. They did not dare come
+into the cave.
+
+"'To-morrow,' they said, 'we will tear out your throat, and gnaw
+on your living haunch'."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+"Then my soul rose to the height of Doom, and I intended all that
+might happen to me, and agreed to it.
+
+"'To-morrow,' I said, 'I will go out among ye, and I will die,'
+and at that the wolves howled joyfully, hungrily, impatiently.
+
+"I slept, and I saw myself changing into a boar in dream, and I
+felt in dream the beating of a new heart within me, and in dream
+I stretched my powerful neck and braced my eager limbs. I awoke
+from my dream, and I was that which I had dreamed.
+
+"The night wore away, the darkness lifted, the day came; and from
+without the cave the wolves called to me: "'Come out, O Skinny
+Stag. Come out and die.'
+
+"And I, with joyful heart, thrust a black bristle through the
+hole of the cave, and when they saw that wriggling snout, those
+curving tusks, that red fierce eye, the wolves fled yelping,
+tumbling over each other, frantic with terror; and I behind them,
+a wild cat for leaping, a giant for strength, a devil for
+ferocity; a madness and gladness of lusty, unsparing life; a
+killer, a champion, a boar who could not be defied.
+
+"I took the lordship of the boars of Ireland.
+
+"Wherever I looked among my tribes I saw love and obedience:
+whenever I appeared among the strangers they fled away. And the
+wolves feared me then, and the great, grim bear went bounding on
+heavy paws. I charged him at the head of my troop and rolled him
+over and over; but it is not easy to kill the bear, so deeply is
+his life packed under that stinking pelt. He picked himself up
+and ran, and was knocked down, and ran again blindly, butting
+into trees and stones. Not a claw did the big bear flash, not a
+tooth did he show, as he ran whimpering like a baby, or as he
+stood with my nose rammed against his mouth, snarling up into his
+nostrils.
+
+"I challenged all that moved. All creatures but one. For men had
+again come to Ireland. Semion, the son of Stariath, with his
+people, from whom the men of Domnann and the Fir Bolg and the
+Galiuin are descended. These I did not chase, and when they
+chased me I fled.
+
+"Often I would go, drawn by my memoried heart, to look at them as
+they moved among their fields; and I spoke to my mind in
+bitterness: "When the people of Partholon were gathered in
+counsel my voice was heard; it was sweet to all who heard it, and
+the words I spoke were wise. The eyes of women brightened and
+softened when they looked at me. They loved to hear him when he
+sang who now wanders in the forest with a tusky herd."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+"OLD age again overtook me. Weariness stole into my limbs, and
+anguish dozed into my mind. I went to my Ulster cave and dreamed
+my dream, and I changed into a hawk.
+
+"I left the ground. The sweet air was my kingdom, and my bright
+eye stared on a hundred miles. I soared, I swooped; I hung,
+motionless as a living stone, over the abyss; I lived in joy and
+slept in peace, and had my fill of the sweetness of life.
+
+"During that time Beothach, the son of Iarbonel the Prophet, came
+to Ireland with his people, and there was a great battle between
+his men and the children of Semion. Long I hung over that combat,
+seeing every spear that hurtled, every stone that whizzed from a
+sling, every sword that flashed up and down, and the endless
+glittering of the shields. And at the end I saw that the victory
+was with Iarbonel. And from his people the Tuatha De' and the
+Ande' came, although their origin is forgotten, and learned
+people, because of their excellent wisdom and intelligence, say
+that they came from heaven.
+
+"These are the people of Faery. All these are the gods.
+
+"For long, long years I was a hawk. I knew every hill and stream;
+every field and glen of Ireland. I knew the shape of cliffs and
+coasts, and how all places looked under the sun or moon. And I
+was still a hawk when the sons of Mil drove the Tuatha De' Danann
+under the ground, and held Ireland against arms or wizardry; and
+this was the coming of men and the beginning of genealogies.
+
+"Then I grew old, and in my Ulster cave close to the sea I
+dreamed my dream, and in it I became a salmon. The green tides of
+ocean rose over me and my dream, so that I drowned in the sea and
+did not die, for I awoke in deep waters, and I was that which I
+dreamed. "I had been a man, a stag, a boar, a bird, and now I was
+a fish. In all my changes I had joy and fulness of life. But in
+the water joy lay deeper, life pulsed deeper. For on land or air
+there is always something excessive and hindering; as arms that
+swing at the sides of a man, and which the mind must remember.
+The stag has legs to be tucked away for sleep, and untucked for
+movement; and the bird has wings that must be folded and pecked
+and cared for. But the fish has but one piece from his nose to
+his tail. He is complete, single and unencumbered. He turns in
+one turn, and goes up and down and round in one sole movement.
+
+"How I flew through the soft element: how I joyed in the country
+where there is no harshness: in the element which upholds and
+gives way; which caresses and lets go, and will not let you fall.
+For man may stumble in a furrow; the stag tumble from a cliff;
+the hawk, wing-weary and beaten, with darkness around him and the
+storm behind, may dash his brains against a tree. But the home of
+the salmon is his delight, and the sea guards all her creatures."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"I became the king of the salmon, and, with my multitudes, I
+ranged on the tides of the world. Green and purple distances were
+under me: green and gold the sunlit regions above. In these
+latitudes I moved through a world of amber, myself amber and
+gold; in those others, in a sparkle of lucent blue, I curved, lit
+like a living jewel: and in these again, through dusks of ebony
+all mazed with silver, I shot and shone, the wonder of the sea.
+
+"I saw the monsters of the uttermost ocean go heaving by; and the
+long lithe brutes that are toothed to their tails: and below,
+where gloom dipped down on gloom, vast, livid tangles that coiled
+and uncoiled, and lapsed down steeps and hells of the sea where
+even the salmon could not go.
+
+"I knew the sea. I knew the secret caves where ocean roars to
+ocean; the floods that are icy cold, from which the nose of a
+salmon leaps back as at a sting; and the warm streams in which we
+rocked and dozed and were carried forward without motion. I swam
+on the outermost rim of the great world, where nothing was but
+the sea and the sky and the salmon; where even the wind was
+silent, and the water was clear as clean grey rock.
+
+"And then, far away in the sea, I remembered Ulster, and there
+came on me an instant, uncontrollable anguish to be there. I
+turned, and through days and nights I swam tirelessly,
+jubilantly; with terror wakening in me, too, and a whisper
+through my being that I must reach Ireland or die.
+
+"I fought my way to Ulster from the sea.
+
+"Ah, how that end of the journey was hard! A sickness was racking
+in every one of my bones, a languor and weariness creeping
+through my every fibre and muscle. The waves held me back and
+held me back; the soft waters seemed to have grown hard; and it
+was as though I were urging through a rock as I strained towards
+Ulster from the sea.
+
+"So tired I was! I could have loosened my frame and been swept
+away; I could have slept and been drifted and wafted away;
+swinging on grey-green billows that had turned from the land and
+were heaving and mounting and surging to the far blue water.
+
+"Only the unconquerable heart of the salmon could brave that end
+of toil. The sound of the rivers of Ireland racing down to the
+sea came to me in the last numb effort: the love of Ireland bore
+me up: the gods of the rivers trod to me in the white-curled
+breakers, so that I left the sea at long, long last; and I lay in
+sweet water in the curve of a crannied rock, exhausted, three
+parts dead, triumphant."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"Delight and strength came to me again, and now I explored all
+the inland ways, the great lakes of Ireland, and her swift brown
+rivers.
+
+"What a joy to lie under an inch of water basking in the sun, or
+beneath a shady ledge to watch the small creatures that speed
+like lightning on the rippling top. I saw the dragon- flies flash
+and dart and turn, with a poise, with a speed that no other
+winged thing knows: I saw the hawk hover and stare and swoop: he
+fell like a falling stone, but he could not catch the king of the
+salmon: I saw the cold-eyed cat stretching along a bough level
+with the water, eager to hook and lift the creatures of the
+river. And I saw men.
+
+"They saw me also. They came to know me and look for me. They lay
+in wait at the waterfalls up which I leaped like a silver flash.
+They held out nets for me; they hid traps under leaves; they made
+cords of the colour of water, of the colour of weeds--but this
+salmon had a nose that knew how a weed felt and how a
+string--they drifted meat on a sightless string, but I knew of
+the hook; they thrust spears at me, and threw lances which they
+drew back again with a cord. "Many a wound I got from men, many a
+sorrowful scar.
+
+"Every beast pursued me in the waters and along the banks; the
+barking, black-skinned otter came after me in lust and gust and
+swirl; the wild cat fished for me; the hawk and the steep-winged,
+spear-beaked birds dived down on me, and men crept on me with
+nets the width of a river, so that I got no rest. My life became
+a ceaseless scurry and wound and escape, a burden and anguish of
+watchfulness--and then I was caught."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+"THE fisherman of Cairill, the King of Ulster, took me in his
+net. Ah, that was a happy man when he saw me! He shouted for joy
+when he saw the great salmon in his net.
+
+"I was still in the water as he hauled delicately. I was still in
+the water as he pulled me to the bank. My nose touched air and
+spun from it as from fire, and I dived with all my might against
+the bottom of the net, holding yet to the water, loving it, mad
+with terror that I must quit that loveliness. But the net held
+and I came up.
+
+"'Be quiet, King of the River,' said the fisherman, 'give in to
+Doom,' said he.
+
+"I was in air, and it was as though I were in fire. The air
+pressed on me like a fiery mountain. It beat on my scales and
+scorched them. It rushed down my throat and scalded me. It
+weighed on me and squeezed me, so that my eyes felt as though
+they must burst from my head, my head as though it would leap
+from my body, and my body as though it would swell and expand and
+fly in a thousand pieces.
+
+"The light blinded me, the heat tormented me, the dry air made me
+shrivel and gasp; and, as he lay on the grass, the great salmon
+whirled his desperate nose once more to the river, and leaped,
+leaped, leaped, even under the mountain of air. He could leap
+upwards, but not forwards, and yet he leaped, for in each rise he
+could see the twinkling waves, the rippling and curling waters.
+
+"'Be at ease, O King,' said the fisherman. 'Be at rest, my
+beloved. Let go the stream. Let the oozy marge be forgotten, and
+the sandy bed where the shades dance all in green and gloom, and
+the brown flood sings along.'
+
+"And as he carried me to the palace he sang a song of the river,
+and a song of Doom, and a song in praise of the King of the
+Waters.
+
+"When the king's wife saw me she desired me. I was put over a
+fire and roasted, and she ate me. And when time passed she gave
+birth to me, and I was her son and the son of Cairill the king. I
+remember warmth and darkness and movement and unseen sounds. All
+that happened I remember, from the time I was on the gridiron
+until the time I was born. I forget nothing of these things."
+
+"And now," said Finnian, "you will be born again, for I shall
+baptize you into the family of the Living God." -------------- 
+So far the story of Tuan, the son of Cairill.
+
+No man knows if he died in those distant ages when Finnian was
+Abbot of Moville, or if he still keeps his fort in Ulster,
+watching all things, and remembering them for the glory of God
+and the honour of Ireland.
+
+
+
+
+THE BOYHOOD OF FIONN
+
+
+
+
+He was a king, a seer and a poet. He was a lord with a manifold
+and great train. He was our magician, our knowledgable one, our
+soothsayer. All that he did was sweet with him. And, however ye
+deem my testimony of Fionn excessive, and, although ye hold my
+praising overstrained, nevertheless, and by the King that is
+above me, he was three times better than all I say.--Saint
+PATRICK.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Fionn [pronounce Fewn to rhyme with "tune"] got his first
+training among women. There is no wonder in that, for it is the
+pup's mother teaches it to fight, and women know that fighting is
+a necessary art although men pretend there are others that are
+better. These were the women druids, Bovmall and Lia Luachra.  It
+will be wondered why his own mother did not train him in the
+first natural savageries of existence, but she could not do it.
+She could not keep him with her for dread of the clann-Morna. The
+sons of Morna had been fighting and intriguing for a long time to
+oust her husband, Uail, from the captaincy of the Fianna of
+Ireland, and they had ousted him at last by killing him. It was
+the only way they could get rid of such a man; but it was not an
+easy way, for what Fionn's father did not know in arms could not
+be taught to him even by Morna. Still, the hound that can wait
+will catch a hare at last, and even Manana'nn sleeps.  Fionn's
+mother was beautiful, long-haired Muirne: so she is always
+referred to. She was the daughter of Teigue, the son of Nuada
+from Faery, and her mother was Ethlinn. That is, her brother was
+Lugh of the Long Hand himself, and with a god, and such a god,
+for brother we may marvel that she could have been in dread of
+Morna or his sons, or of any one. But women have strange loves,
+strange fears, and these are so bound up with one another that
+the thing which is presented to us is not often the thing that is
+to be seen.
+
+However it may be, when Uall died Muirne got married again to the
+King of Kerry. She gave the child to Bovmall and Lia Luachra to
+rear, and we may be sure that she gave injunctions with him, and
+many of them. The youngster was brought to the woods of Slieve
+Bloom and was nursed there in secret.
+
+It is likely the women were fond of him, for other than Fionn
+there was no life about them. He would be their life; and their
+eyes may have seemed as twin benedictions resting on the small
+fair head. He was fair-haired, and it was for his fairness that
+he was afterwards called Fionn; but at this period he was known
+as Deimne. They saw the food they put into his little frame
+reproduce itself length-ways and sideways in tough inches, and in
+springs and energies that crawled at first, and then toddled, and
+then ran. He had birds for playmates, but all the creatures that
+live in a wood must have been his comrades. There would have been
+for little Fionn long hours of lonely sunshine, when the world
+seemed just sunshine and a sky. There would have been hours as
+long, when existence passed like a shade among shadows, in the
+multitudinous tappings of rain that dripped from leaf to leaf in
+the wood, and slipped so to the ground. He would have known
+little snaky paths, narrow enough to be filled by his own small
+feet, or a goat's; and he would have wondered where they went,
+and have marvelled again to find that, wherever they went, they
+came at last, through loops and twists of the branchy wood, to
+his own door. He may have thought of his own door as the
+beginning and end of the world, whence all things went, and
+whither all things came.
+
+Perhaps he did not see the lark for a long time, but he would
+have heard him, far out of sight in the endless sky, thrilling
+and thrilling until the world seemed to have no other sound but
+that clear sweetness; and what a world it was to make that sound!
+Whistles and chirps, coos and caws and croaks, would have grown
+familiar to him. And he could at last have told which brother of
+the great brotherhood was making the noise he heard at any
+moment. The wind too: he would have listened to its thousand
+voices as it moved in all seasons and in all moods. Perhaps a
+horse would stray into the thick screen about his home, and would
+look as solemnly on Fionn as Fionn did on it. Or, coming suddenly
+on him, the horse might stare, all a-cock with eyes and ears and
+nose, one long-drawn facial extension, ere he turned and bounded
+away with manes all over him and hoofs all under him and tails
+all round him. A solemn-nosed, stern-eyed cow would amble and
+stamp in his wood to find a flyless shadow; or a strayed sheep
+would poke its gentle muzzle through leaves.
+
+"A boy," he might think, as be stared on a staring horse, "a boy
+cannot wag his tail to keep the flies off," and that lack may
+have saddened him. He may have thought that a cow can snort and
+be dignified at the one moment, and that timidity is comely in a
+sheep. He would have scolded the jackdaw, and tried to
+out-whistle the throstle, and wondered why his pipe got tired
+when the blackbird's didn't . There would be flies to be watched,
+slender atoms in yellow gauze that flew, and filmy specks that
+flittered, and sturdy, thick-ribbed brutes that pounced like cats
+and bit like dogs and flew like lightning. He may have mourned
+for the spider in bad luck who caught that fly. There would be
+much to see and remember and compare, and there would be, always,
+his two guardians. The flies change from second to second; one
+cannot tell if this bird is a visitor or an inhabitant, and a
+sheep is just sister to a sheep; but the women were as rooted as
+the house itself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Were his nurses comely or harsh-looking? Fionn would not know.
+This was the one who picked him up when he fell, and that was the
+one who patted the bruise. This one said:  "Mind you do not
+tumble in the well!"
+
+And that one: "Mind the little knees among the nettles."
+
+But he did tumble and record that the only notable thing about a
+well is that it is wet. And as for nettles, if they hit him he
+hit back. He slashed into them with a stick and brought them low.
+There was nothing in wells or nettles, only women dreaded them.
+One patronised women and instructed them and comforted them, for
+they were afraid about one.
+
+They thought that one should not climb a tree!
+
+"Next week,' they said at last, "you may climb this one," and
+"next week" lived at the end of the world!
+
+But the tree that was climbed was not worth while when it had
+been climbed twice. There was a bigger one near by. There were
+trees that no one could climb, with vast shadow on one side and
+vaster sunshine on the other. It took a long time to walk round
+them, and you could not see their tops.
+
+It was pleasant to stand on a branch that swayed and sprung, and
+it was good to stare at an impenetrable roof of leaves and then
+climb into it. How wonderful the loneliness was up there! When he
+looked down there was an undulating floor of leaves, green and
+green and greener to a very blackness of greeniness; and when he
+looked up there were leaves again, green and less green and not
+green at all, up to a very snow and blindness of greeniness; and
+above and below and around there was sway and motion, the whisper
+of leaf on leaf, and the eternal silence to which one listened
+and at which one tried to look.
+
+When he was six years of age his mother, beautiful, long-haired
+Muirne, came to see him. She came secretly, for she feared the
+sons of Morna, and she had paced through lonely places in many
+counties before she reached the hut in the wood, and the cot
+where he lay with his fists shut and sleep gripped in them.
+
+He awakened to be sure. He would have one ear that would catch an
+unusual voice, one eye that would open, however sleepy the other
+one was. She took him in her arms and kissed him, and she sang a
+sleepy song until the small boy slept again.
+
+We may be sure that the eye that could stay open stayed open that
+night as long as it could, and that the one ear listened to the
+sleepy song until the song got too low to be heard, until it was
+too tender to be felt vibrating along those soft arms, until
+Fionn was asleep again, with a new picture in his little head and
+a new notion to ponder on.
+
+The mother of himself! His own mother!
+
+But when he awakened she was gone.
+
+She was going back secretly, in dread of the sons of Morna,
+slipping through gloomy woods, keeping away from habitations,
+getting by desolate and lonely ways to her lord in Kerry.
+
+Perhaps it was he that was afraid of the sons of Morna, and
+perhaps she loved him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE women druids, his guardians, belonged to his father's people.
+Bovmall was Uail's sister, and, consequently, Fionn's aunt. Only
+such a blood-tie could have bound them to the clann-Baiscne, for
+it is not easy, having moved in the world of court and camp, to
+go hide with a baby in a wood; and to live, as they must have
+lived, in terror.
+
+What stories they would have told the child of the sons of Morna.
+Of Morna himself, the huge-shouldered, stern-eyed, violent
+Connachtman; and of his sons--young Goll Mor mac Morna in
+particular, as huge-shouldered as his father, as fierce in the
+onset, but merry-eyed when the other was grim, and bubbling with
+a laughter that made men forgive even his butcheries. Of Cona'n
+Mael mac Morna his brother, gruff as a badger, bearded like a
+boar, bald as a crow, and with a tongue that could manage an
+insult where another man would not find even a stammer. His boast
+was that when he saw an open door he went into it, and when he
+saw a closed door he went into it. When he saw a peaceful man he
+insulted him, and when he met a man who was not peaceful he
+insulted him. There was Garra Duv mac Morna, and savage Art Og,
+who cared as little for their own skins as they did for the next
+man's, and Garra must have been rough indeed to have earned in
+that clan the name of the Rough mac Morna. There were others:
+wild Connachtmen all, as untameable, as unaccountable as their
+own wonderful countryside.
+
+Fionn would have heard much of them, and it is likely that be
+practised on a nettle at taking the head off Goll, and that he
+hunted a sheep from cover in the implacable manner he intended
+later on for Cona'n the Swearer.
+
+But it is of Uail mac Baiscne he would have heard most. With what
+a dilation of spirit the ladies would have told tales of him,
+Fionn's father. How their voices would have become a chant as
+feat was added to feat, glory piled on glory. The most famous of
+men and the most beautiful; the hardest fighter; the easiest
+giver; the kingly champion; the chief of the Fianna na h-Eirinn.
+Tales of how he had been way-laid and got free; of how he had
+been generous and got free; of how he had been angry and went
+marching with the speed of an eagle and the direct onfall of a
+storm; while in front and at the sides, angled from the prow of
+his terrific advance, were fleeing multitudes who did not dare to
+wait and scarce had time to run. And of how at last, when the
+time came to quell him, nothing less than the whole might of
+Ireland was sufficient for that great downfall.
+
+We may be sure that on these adventures Fionn was with his
+father, going step for step with the long-striding hero, and
+heartening him mightily.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+He was given good training by the women in running and leaping
+and swimming.
+
+One of them would take a thorn switch in her hand, and Fionn
+would take a thorn switch in his hand, and each would try to
+strike the other running round a tree.
+
+You had to go fast to keep away from the switch behind, and a
+small boy feels a switch. Fionn would run his best to get away
+from that prickly stinger, but how he would run when it was his
+turn to deal the strokes!
+
+With reason too, for his nurses had suddenly grown implacable.
+They pursued him with a savagery which he could not distinguish
+from hatred, and they swished him well whenever they got the
+chance.
+
+Fionn learned to run. After a while he could buzz around a tree
+like a maddened fly, and oh, the joy, when he felt himself
+drawing from the switch and gaining from behind on its bearer!
+How he strained and panted to catch on that pursuing person and
+pursue her and get his own switch into action.
+
+He learned to jump by chasing hares in a bumpy field. Up went the
+hare and up went Fionn, and away with the two of them, hopping
+and popping across the field. If the hare turned while Fionn was
+after her it was switch for Fionn; so that in a while it did not
+matter to Fionn which way the hare jumped for he could jump that
+way too. Long-ways, sideways or baw-ways, Fionn hopped where the
+hare hopped, and at last he was the owner of a hop that any hare
+would give an ear for.
+
+He was taught to swim, and it may be that his heart sank when he
+fronted the lesson. The water was cold. It was deep. One could
+see the bottom, leagues below, millions of miles below. A small
+boy might shiver as he stared into that wink and blink and twink
+of brown pebbles and murder. And these implacable women threw him
+in!
+
+Perhaps he would not go in at first. He may have smiled at them,
+and coaxed, and hung back. It was a leg and an arm gripped then;
+a swing for Fionn, and out and away with him; plop and flop for
+him; down into chill deep death for him, and up with a splutter;
+with a sob; with a grasp at everything that caught nothing; with
+a wild flurry; with a raging despair; with a bubble and snort as
+he was hauled again down, and down, and down, and found as
+suddenly that he had been hauled out.
+
+Fionn learned to swim until he could pop into the water like an
+otter and slide through it like an eel.
+
+He used to try to chase a fish the way he chased hares in the
+bumpy field--but there are terrible spurts in a fish. It may be
+that a fish cannot hop, but he gets there in a flash, and he
+isn't there in another. Up or down, sideways or endways, it is
+all one to a fish. He goes and is gone. He twists this way and
+disappears the other way. He is over you when he ought to be
+under you, and he is biting your toe when you thought you were
+biting his tail.
+
+You cannot catch a fish by swimming, but you can try, and Fionn
+tried. He got a grudging commendation from the terrible women
+when he was able to slip noiselessly in the tide, swim under
+water to where a wild duck was floating and grip it by the leg.
+
+"Qu--," said the duck, and he disappeared before he had time to
+get the "-ack" out of him.
+
+So the time went, and Fionn grew long and straight and tough like
+a sapling; limber as a willow, and with the flirt and spring of a
+young bird. One of the ladies may have said, "He is shaping very
+well, my dear," and the other replied, as is the morose privilege
+of an aunt, "He will never be as good as his father," but their
+hearts must have overflowed in the night, in the silence, in the
+darkness, when they thought of the living swiftness they had
+fashioned, and that dear fair head.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ONE day his guardians were agitated: they held confabulations at
+which Fionn was not permitted to assist. A man who passed by in
+the morning had spoken to them. They fed the man, and during his
+feeding Fionn had been shooed from the door as if he were a
+chicken. When the stranger took his road the women went with him
+a short distance. As they passed the man lifted a hand and bent a
+knee to Fionn.
+
+"My soul to you, young master," he said, and as he said it, Fionn
+knew that he could have the man's soul, or his boots, or his
+feet, or anything that belonged to him.
+
+When the women returned they were mysterious and whispery. They
+chased Fionn into the house, and when they got him in they chased
+him out again. They chased each other around the house for
+another whisper. They calculated things by the shape of clouds,
+by lengths of shadows, by the flight of birds, by two flies
+racing on a flat stone, by throwing bones over their left
+shoulders, and by every kind of trick and game and chance that
+you could put a mind to.
+
+They told Fionn he must sleep in a tree that night, and they put
+him under bonds not to sing or whistle or cough or sneeze until
+the morning.
+
+Fionn did sneeze. He never sneezed so much in his life. He sat up
+in his tree and nearly sneezed himself out of it. Flies got up
+his nose, two at a time, one up each nose, and his head nearly
+fell off the way he sneezed.
+
+"You are doing that on purpose," said a savage whisper from the
+foot of the tree.
+
+But Fionn was not doing it on purpose. He tucked himself into a
+fork the way he had been taught, and he passed the crawliest,
+tickliest night he had ever known. After a while he did not want
+to sneeze, he wanted to scream: and in particular he wanted to
+come down from the tree. But he did not scream, nor did he leave
+the tree. His word was passed, and he stayed in his tree as
+silent as a mouse and as watchful, until he fell out of it.
+
+In the morning a band of travelling poets were passing, and the
+women handed Fionn over to them. This time they could not prevent
+him overhearing.
+
+"The sons of Morna!" they said.
+
+And Fionn's heart might have swelled with rage, but that it was
+already swollen with adventure. And also the expected was
+happening. Behind every hour of their day and every moment of
+their lives lay the sons of Morna. Fionn had run after them as
+deer: he jumped after them as hares: he dived after them as fish.
+They lived in the house with him: they sat at the table and ate
+his meat. One dreamed of them, and they were expected in the
+morning as the sun is. They knew only too well that the son of
+Uail was living, and they knew that their own sons would know no
+ease while that son lived; for they believed in those days that
+like breeds like, and that the son of Uail would be Uail with
+additions.
+
+His guardians knew that their hiding-place must at last be
+discovered, and that, when it was found, the sons of Morna would
+come. They had no doubt of that, and every action of their lives
+was based on that certainty. For no secret can remain secret.
+Some broken soldier tramping home to his people will find it out;
+a herd seeking his strayed cattle or a band of travelling
+musicians will get the wind of it. How many people will move
+through even the remotest wood in a year! The crows will tell a
+secret if no one else does; and under a bush, behind a clump of
+bracken, what eyes may there not be! But if your secret is legged
+like a young goat! If it is tongued like a wolf! One can hide a
+baby, but you cannot hide a boy. He will rove unless you tie him
+to a post, and he will whistle then.
+
+The sons of Morna came, but there were only two grim women living
+in a lonely hut to greet them. We may be sure they were well
+greeted. One can imagine Goll's merry stare taking in all that
+could be seen; Cona'n's grim eye raking the women's faces while
+his tongue raked them again; the Rough mac Morna shouldering here
+and there in the house and about it, with maybe a hatchet in his
+hand, and Art Og coursing further afield and vowing that if the
+cub was there he would find him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+But Fionn was gone. He was away, bound with his band of poets for
+the Galtees.
+
+It is likely they were junior poets come to the end of a year's
+training, and returning to their own province to see again the
+people at home, and to be wondered at and exclaimed at as they
+exhibited bits of the knowledge which they had brought from the
+great schools. They would know tags of rhyme and tricks about
+learning which Fionn would hear of; and now and again, as they
+rested in a glade or by the brink of a river, they might try
+their lessons over. They might even refer to the ogham wands on
+which the first words of their tasks and the opening lines of
+poems were cut; and it is likely that, being new to these things,
+they would talk of them to a youngster, and, thinking that his
+wits could be no better than their own, they might have explained
+to him how ogham was written. But it is far more likely that his
+women guardians had already started him at those lessons.
+
+Still this band of young bards would have been of infinite
+interest to Fionn, not on account of what they had learned, but
+because of what they knew. All the things that he should have
+known as by nature: the look, the movement, the feeling of
+crowds; the shouldering and intercourse of man with man; the
+clustering of houses and how people bore themselves in and about
+them; the movement of armed men, and the homecoming look of
+wounds; tales of births, and marriages and deaths; the chase with
+its multitudes of men and dogs; all the noise, the dust, the
+excitement of mere living. These, to Fionn, new come from leaves
+and shadows and the dipple and dapple of a wood, would have
+seemed wonderful; and the tales they would have told of their
+masters, their looks, fads, severities, sillinesses, would have
+been wonderful also.
+
+That band should have chattered like a rookery.
+
+They must have been young, for one time a Leinsterman came on
+them, a great robber named Fiacuil mac Cona, and he killed the
+poets. He chopped them up and chopped them down. He did not leave
+one poeteen of them all. He put them out of the world and out of
+life, so that they stopped being, and no one could tell where
+they went or what had really happened to them; and it is a wonder
+indeed that one can do that to anything let alone a band. If they
+were not youngsters, the bold Fiacuil could not have managed them
+all. Or, perhaps, he too had a band, although the record does not
+say so; but kill them he did, and they died that way.
+
+Fionn saw that deed, and his blood may have been cold enough as
+he watched the great robber coursing the poets as a wild dog
+rages in a flock. And when his turn came, when they were all
+dead, and the grim, red-handed man trod at him, Fionn may have
+shivered, but he would have shown his teeth and laid roundly on
+the monster with his hands. Perhaps he did that, and perhaps for
+that he was spared.
+
+"Who are you?" roared the staring black-mouth with the red tongue
+squirming in it like a frisky fish.
+
+"The son of Uail, son of Baiscne," quoth hardy Fionn. And at that
+the robber ceased to be a robber, the murderer disappeared, the
+black-rimmed chasm packed with red fish and precipices changed to
+something else, and the round eyes that had been popping out of
+their sockets and trying to bite, changed also. There remained a
+laughing and crying and loving servant who wanted to tie himself
+into knots if that would please the son of his great captain.
+Fionn went home on the robber's shoulder, and the robber gave
+great snorts and made great jumps and behaved like a first-rate
+horse. For this same Fiacuil was the husband of Bovmall, Fionn's
+aunt. He had taken to the wilds when clann-Baiscne was broken,
+and he was at war with a world that had dared to kill his Chief.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A new life for Fionn in the robber's den that was hidden in a
+vast cold marsh.
+
+A tricky place that would be, with sudden exits and even suddener
+entrances, and with damp, winding, spidery places to hoard
+treasure in, or to hide oneself in.
+
+If the robber was a solitary he would, for lack of someone else,
+have talked greatly to Fionn. He would have shown his weapons and
+demonstrated how he used them, and with what slash he chipped his
+victim, and with what slice he chopped him. He would have told
+why a slash was enough for this man and why that man should be
+sliced. All men are masters when one is young, and Fionn would
+have found knowledge here also. lie would have seen Fiacuil's
+great spear that had thirty rivets of Arabian gold in its socket,
+and that had to be kept wrapped up and tied down so that it would
+not kill people out of mere spitefulness. It had come from Faery,
+out of the Shi' of Aillen mac Midna, and it would be brought back
+again later on between the same man's shoulder-blades.
+
+What tales that man could tell a boy, and what questions a boy
+could ask him. He would have known a thousand tricks, and because
+our instinct is to teach, and because no man can keep a trick
+from a boy, he would show them to Fionn.
+
+There was the marsh too; a whole new life to be learned; a
+complicated, mysterious, dank, slippery, reedy, treacherous life,
+but with its own beauty and an allurement that could grow on one,
+so that you could forget the solid world and love only that which
+quaked and gurgled.
+
+In this place you may swim. By this sign and this you will know
+if it is safe to do so, said Fiacuil mac Cona; but in this place,
+with this sign on it and that, you must not venture a toe.
+
+But where Fionn would venture his toes his ears would follow.
+
+There are coiling weeds down there, the robber counselled him;
+there are thin, tough, snaky binders that will trip you and grip
+you, that will pull you and will not let you go again until you
+are drowned; until you are swaying and swinging away below, with
+outstretched arms, with outstretched legs, with a face all stares
+and smiles and jockeyings, gripped in those leathery arms, until
+there is no more to be gripped of you even by them.
+
+"Watch these and this and that," Fionn would have been told, "and
+always swim with a knife in your teeth."
+
+He lived there until his guardians found out where he was and
+came after him. Fiacuil gave him up to them, and he was brought
+home again to the woods of Slieve Bloom, but he had gathered
+great knowledge and new supplenesses.
+
+The sons of Morna left him alone for a long time. Having made
+their essay they grew careless.
+
+"Let him be," they said. "He will come to us when the time
+comes."
+
+But it is likely too that they had had their own means of getting
+information about him. How he shaped? what muscles he had? and
+did he spring clean from the mark or had he to get off with a
+push? Fionn stayed with his guardians and hunted for them. He
+could run a deer down and haul it home by the reluctant skull.
+"Come on, Goll," he would say to his stag, or, lifting it over a
+tussock with a tough grip on the snout, "Are you coming, bald
+Cona'n, or shall I kick you in the neck?"
+
+The time must have been nigh when he would think of taking the
+world itself by the nose, to haul it over tussocks and drag it
+into his pen; for he was of the breed in whom mastery is born,
+and who are good masters.
+
+But reports of his prowess were getting abroad. Clann-Morna began
+to stretch itself uneasily, and, one day, his guardians sent him
+on his travels.
+
+"It is best for you to leave us now," they said to the tall
+stripling, "for the sons of Morna are watching again to kill 
+you."
+
+The woods at that may have seemed haunted. A stone might sling at
+one from a tree-top; but from which tree of a thousand trees did
+it come? An arrow buzzing by one's ear would slide into the
+ground and quiver there silently, menacingly, hinting of the
+brothers it had left in the quiver behind; to the right? to the
+left? how many brothers? in how many quivers . . .? Fionn was a
+woodsman, but he had only two eyes to look with, one set of feet
+to carry him in one sole direction. But when he was looking to
+the front what, or how many whats, could be staring at him from
+the back? He might face in this direction, away from, or towards
+a smile on a hidden face and a finger on a string. A lance might
+slide at him from this bush or from the one yonder.. In the night
+he might have fought them; his ears against theirs; his noiseless
+feet against their lurking ones; his knowledge of the wood
+against their legion: but during the day he had no chance.
+
+Fionn went to seek his fortune, to match himself against all that
+might happen, and to carve a name for himself that will live
+while Time has an ear and knows an Irishman.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Fionn went away, and now he was alone. But he was as fitted for
+loneliness as the crane is that haunts the solitudes and bleak
+wastes of the sea; for the man with a thought has a comrade, and
+Fionn's mind worked as featly as his body did. To be alone was no
+trouble to him who, however surrounded, was to be lonely his life
+long; for this will be said of Fionn when all is said, that all
+that came to him went from him, and that happiness was never his
+companion for more than a moment.
+
+But he was not now looking for loneliness. He was seeking the
+instruction of a crowd, and therefore when he met a crowd he went
+into it. His eyes were skilled to observe in the moving dusk and
+dapple of green woods. They were trained to pick out of shadows
+birds that were themselves dun-coloured shades, and to see among
+trees the animals that are coloured like the bark of trees. The
+hare crouching in the fronds was visible to him, and the fish
+that swayed in-visibly in the sway and flicker of a green bank.
+He would see all that was to be seen, and he would see all that
+is passed by the eye that is half blind from use and wont.
+
+At Moy Life' he came on lads swimming in a pool; and, as he
+looked on them sporting in the flush tide, he thought that the
+tricks they performed were not hard for him, and that he could
+have shown them new ones.
+
+Boys must know what another boy can do, and they will match
+themselves against everything. They did their best under these
+observing eyes, and it was not long until he was invited to
+compete with them and show his mettle. Such an invitation is a
+challenge; it is almost, among boys, a declaration of war. But
+Fionn was so far beyond them in swimming that even the word
+master did not apply to that superiority.
+
+While he was swimming one remarked: "He is fair and well shaped,"
+and thereafter he was called "Fionn" or the Fair One. His name
+came from boys, and will, perhaps, be preserved by them.
+
+He stayed with these lads for some time, and it may be that they
+idolised him at first, for it is the way with boys to be
+astounded and enraptured by feats; but in the end, and that was
+inevitable, they grew jealous of the stranger. Those who had been
+the champions before he came would marshal each other, and, by
+social pressure, would muster all the others against him; so that
+in the end not a friendly eye was turned on Fionn in that
+assembly. For not only did he beat them at swimming, he beat
+their best at running and jumping, and when the sport degenerated
+into violence, as it was bound to, the roughness of Fionn would
+be ten times as rough as the roughness of the roughest rough they
+could put forward. Bravery is pride when one is young, and Fionn
+was proud.
+
+There must have been anger in his mind as he went away leaving
+that lake behind him, and those snarling and scowling boys, but
+there would have been disappointment also, for his desire at this
+time should have been towards friendliness.
+
+He went thence to Lock Le'in and took service with the King of
+Finntraigh. That kingdom may have been thus called from Fionn
+himself and would have been known by another name when he arrived
+there.
+
+He hunted for the King of Finntraigh, and it soon grew evident
+that there was no hunter in his service to equal Fionn. More,
+there was no hunter of them all who even distantly approached him
+in excellence. The others ran after deer, using the speed of
+their legs, the noses of their dogs and a thousand well-worn
+tricks to bring them within reach, and, often enough, the animal
+escaped them. But the deer that Fionn got the track of did not
+get away, and it seemed even that the animals sought him so many
+did he catch.
+
+The king marvelled at the stories that were told of this new
+hunter, but as kings are greater than other people so they are
+more curious; and, being on the plane of excellence, they must
+see all that is excellently told of.
+
+The king wished to see him, and Fionn must have wondered what the
+king thought as that gracious lord looked on him. Whatever was
+thought, what the king said was as direct in utterance as it was
+in observation.
+
+"If Uail the son of Baiscne has a son," said the king, "you would
+surely be that son."
+
+We are not told if the King of Finntraigh said anything more, but
+we know that Fionn left his service soon afterwards.
+
+He went southwards and was next in the employment of the King of
+Kerry, the same lord who had married his own mother. In that
+service he came to such consideration that we hear of him as
+playing a match of chess with the king, and by this game we know
+that he was still a boy in his mind however mightily his limbs
+were spreading. Able as he was in sports and huntings, he was yet
+too young to be politic, but he remained impolitic to the end of
+his days, for whatever he was able to do he would do, no matter
+who was offended thereat; and whatever he was not able to do he
+would do also. That was Fionn.
+
+Once, as they rested on a chase, a debate arose among the
+Fianna-Finn as to what was the finest music in the world.
+
+"Tell us that," said Fionn turning to Oisi'n [pronounced Usheen]
+
+"The cuckoo calling from the tree that is highest in the hedge,"
+cried his merry son.
+
+"A good sound," said Fionn. "And you, Oscar," he asked, "what is
+to your mind the finest of music?"
+
+"The top of music is the ring of a spear on a shield," cried the
+stout lad.
+
+"It is a good sound," said Fionn. And the other champions told
+their delight; the belling of a stag across water, the baying of
+a tuneful pack heard in the distance, the song of a lark, the
+laugh of a gleeful girl, or the whisper of a moved one.
+
+"They are good sounds all," said Fionn.
+
+"Tell us, chief," one ventured, "what you think?"
+
+"The music of what happens," said great Fionn, "that is the
+finest music in the world."
+
+He loved "what happened," and would not evade it by the swerve of
+a hair; so on this occasion what was occurring he would have
+occur, although a king was his rival and his master. It may be
+that his mother was watching the match and that he could not but
+exhibit his skill before her. He committed the enormity of
+winning seven games in succession from the king himself! ! !
+
+It is seldom indeed that a subject can beat a king at chess, and
+this monarch was properly amazed.
+
+"Who are you at all?" he cried, starting back from the chessboard
+and staring on Fionn.
+
+"I am the son of a countryman of the Luigne of Tara," said Fionn.
+
+He may have blushed as he said it, for the king, possibly for the
+first time, was really looking at him, and was looking back
+through twenty years of time as he did so. The observation of a
+king is faultless--it is proved a thousand times over in the
+tales, and this king's equipment was as royal as the next.
+
+"You are no such son," said the indignant monarch, "but you are
+the son that Muirne my wife bore to Uall mac Balscne."
+
+And at that Fionn had no more to say; but his eyes may have flown
+to his mother and stayed there.
+
+"You cannot remain here," his step-father continued. "I do not
+want you killed under my protection," he explained, or
+complained.
+
+Perhaps it was on Fionn's account he dreaded the sons of Morna,
+but no one knows what Fionn thought of him for he never
+thereafter spoke of his step-father. As for Muirne she must have
+loved her lord; or she may have been terrified in truth of the
+sons of Morna and for Fionn; but it is so also, that if a woman
+loves her second husband she can dislike all that reminds her of
+the first one. Fionn went on his travels again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+All desires save one are fleeting, but that one lasts for ever.
+Fionn, with all desires, had the lasting one, for he would go
+anywhere and forsake anything for wisdom; and it was in search of
+this that he went to the place where Finegas lived on a bank of
+the Boyne Water. But for dread of the clann-Morna he did not go
+as Fionn. He called himself Deimne on that journey.
+
+We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not
+answered we get wise, for a well-packed question carries its
+answer on its back as a snail carries its shell. Fionn asked
+every question he could think of, and his master, who was a poet,
+and so an honourable man, answered them all, not to the limit of
+his patience, for it was limitless, but to the limit of his
+ability.
+
+"Why do you live on the bank of a river?" was one of these
+questions. "Because a poem is a revelation, and it is by the
+brink of running water that poetry is revealed to the mind."
+
+"How long have you been here?" was the next query. "Seven years,"
+the poet answered.
+
+"It is a long time," said wondering Fionn.
+
+"I would wait twice as long for a poem," said the inveterate
+bard.
+
+"Have you caught good poems?" Fionn asked him.
+
+"The poems I am fit for," said the mild master. "No person can
+get more than that, for a man's readiness is his limit."
+
+"Would you have got as good poems by the Shannon or the Suir or
+by sweet Ana Life'?"
+
+"They are good rivers," was the answer. "They all belong to good
+gods."
+
+"But why did you choose this river out of all the rivers?"
+
+Finegas beamed on his pupil.
+
+"I would tell you anything," said he, "and I will tell you that."
+
+Fionn sat at the kindly man's feet, his hands absent among tall
+grasses, and listening with all his ears. "A prophecy was made to
+me," Finegas began. "A man of knowledge foretold that I should
+catch the Salmon of Knowledge in the Boyne Water."
+
+"And then?" said Fionn eagerly.
+
+"Then I would have All Knowledge."
+
+"And after that?" the boy insisted.
+
+"What should there be after that?" the poet retorted.
+
+"I mean, what would you do with All Knowledge?"
+
+"A weighty question," said Finegas smilingly. "I could answer it
+if I had All Knowledge, but not until then. What would you do, my
+dear?"
+
+"I would make a poem," Fionn cried.
+
+"I think too," said the poet, "that that is what would be done."
+
+In return for instruction Fionn had taken over the service of his
+master's hut, and as he went about the household duties, drawing
+the water, lighting the fire, and carrying rushes for the floor
+and the beds, he thought over all the poet had taught him, and
+his mind dwelt on the rules of metre, the cunningness of words,
+and the need for a clean, brave mind. But in his thousand
+thoughts he yet remembered the Salmon of Knowledge as eagerly as
+his master did. He already venerated Finegas for his great
+learning, his poetic skill, for an hundred reasons; but, looking
+on him as the ordained eater of the Salmon of Knowledge, he
+venerated him to the edge of measure. Indeed, he loved as well as
+venerated this master because of his unfailing kindness, his
+patience, his readiness to teach, and his skill in teaching.
+
+"I have learned much from you, dear master," said Fionn
+gratefully.
+
+"All that I have is yours if you can take it," the poet answered,
+"for you are entitled to all that you can take, but to no more
+than that. Take, so, with both hands."
+
+"You may catch the salmon while I am with you," the hopeful boy
+mused. "Would not that be a great happening!" and he stared in
+ecstasy across the grass at those visions which a boy's mind
+knows.
+
+"Let us pray for that," said Finegas fervently.
+
+"Here is a question," Fionn continued. "How does this salmon get
+wisdom into his flesh?"
+
+"There is a hazel bush overhanging a secret pool in a secret
+place. The Nuts of Knowledge drop from the Sacred Bush into the
+pool, and as they float, a salmon takes them in his mouth and
+eats them."
+
+"It would be almost as easy," the boy submitted, "if one were to
+set on the track of the Sacred Hazel and eat the nuts straight
+from the bush."
+
+"That would not be very easy," said the poet, "and yet it is not
+as easy as that, for the bush can only be found by its own
+knowledge, and that knowledge can only be got by eating the nuts,
+and the nuts can only be got by eating the salmon."
+
+"We must wait for the salmon," said Fionn in a rage of
+resignation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Life continued for him in a round of timeless time, wherein days
+and nights were uneventful and were yet filled with interest. As
+the day packed its load of strength into his frame, so it added
+its store of knowledge to his mind, and each night sealed the
+twain, for it is in the night that we make secure what we have
+gathered in the day.
+
+If he had told of these days he would have told of a succession
+of meals and sleeps, and of an endless conversation, from which
+his mind would now and again slip away to a solitude of its own,
+where, in large hazy atmospheres, it swung and drifted and
+reposed. Then he would be back again, and it was a pleasure for
+him to catch up on the thought that was forward and re-create for
+it all the matter he had missed. But he could not often make
+these sleepy sallies; his master was too experienced a teacher to
+allow any such bright-faced, eager-eyed abstractions, and as the
+druid women had switched his legs around a tree, so Finegas
+chased his mind, demanding sense in his questions and
+understanding in his replies.
+
+To ask questions can become the laziest and wobbliest occupation
+of a mind, but when you must yourself answer the problem that you
+have posed, you will meditate your question with care and frame
+it with precision. Fionn's mind learned to jump in a bumpier
+field than that in which he had chased rabbits. And when he had
+asked his question, and given his own answer to it, Finegas would
+take the matter up and make clear to him where the query was
+badly formed or at what point the answer had begun to go astray,
+so that Fionn came to understand by what successions a good
+question grows at last to a good answer.
+
+One day, not long after the conversation told of, Finegas came to
+the place where Fionn was. The poet had a shallow osier basket on
+his arm, and on his face there was a look that was at once
+triumphant and gloomy. He was excited certainly, but be was sad
+also, and as he stood gazing on Fionn his eyes were so kind that
+the boy was touched, and they were yet so melancholy that it
+almost made Fionn weep. "What is it, my master?" said the alarmed
+boy.
+
+The poet placed his osier basket on the grass.
+
+"Look in the basket, dear son," he said. Fionn looked.
+
+"There is a salmon in the basket."
+
+"It is The Salmon," said Finegas with a great sigh. Fionn leaped
+for delight.
+
+"l am glad for you, master," he cried. "Indeed I am glad for
+you."
+
+"And I am glad, my dear soul," the master rejoined.
+
+But, having said it, he bent his brow to his hand and for a long
+time he was silent and gathered into himself.
+
+"What should be done now?" Fionn demanded, as he stared on the
+beautiful fish.
+
+Finegas rose from where he sat by the osier basket.
+
+"I will be back in a short time," he said heavily. "While I am
+away you may roast the salmon, so that it will be ready against
+my return."
+
+"I will roast it indeed," said Fionn.
+
+The poet gazed long and earnestly on him.
+
+"You will not eat any of my salmon while I am away?" he asked.
+
+"I will not eat the littlest piece," said Fionn.
+
+"I am sure you will not," the other murmured, as he turned and
+walked slowly across the grass and behind the sheltering bushes
+on the ridge.
+
+Fionn cooked the salmon. It was beautiful and tempting and
+savoury as it smoked on a wooden platter among cool green leaves;
+and it looked all these to Finegas when he came from behind the
+fringing bushes and sat in the grass outside his door. He gazed
+on the fish with more than his eyes. He looked on it with his
+heart, with his soul in his eyes, and when he turned to look on
+Fionn the boy did not know whether the love that was in his eyes
+was for the fish or for himself. Yet he did know that a great
+moment had arrived for the poet.
+
+"So," said Finegas, "you did not eat it on me after all?" "Did I
+not promise?" Fionn replied.
+
+"And yet," his master continued, "I went away so that you might
+eat the fish if you felt you had to."
+
+"Why should I want another man's fish?" said proud Fionn.
+
+"Because young people have strong desires. I thought you might
+have tasted it, and then you would have eaten it on me."
+
+"I did taste it by chance," Fionn laughed, "for while the fish
+was roasting a great blister rose on its skin. I did not like the
+look of that blister, and I pressed it down with my thumb. That
+burned my thumb, so I popped it in my mouth to heal the smart. If
+your salmon tastes as nice as my thumb did," he laughed, "it will
+taste very nice."
+
+"What did you say your name was, dear heart?" the poet asked.
+
+"I said my name was Deimne."
+
+"Your name is not Deimne," said the mild man, "your name is
+Fionn."
+
+"That is true," the boy answered, "but I do not know how you know
+it."
+
+"Even if I have not eaten the Salmon of Knowledge I have some
+small science of my own."
+
+"It is very clever to know things as you know them," Fionn
+replied wonderingly. "What more do you know of me, dear master?"
+
+"I know that I did not tell you the truth," said the
+heavy-hearted man.
+
+"What did you tell me instead of it?"
+
+"I told you a lie."
+
+"It is not a good thing to do," Fionn admitted. "What sort of a
+lie was the lie, master?" "I told you that the Salmon of
+Knowledge was to be caught by me, according to the prophecy."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That was true indeed, and I have caught the fish. But I did not
+tell you that the salmon was not to be eaten by me, although that
+also was in the prophecy, and that omission was the lie."
+
+"It is not a great lie," said Fionn soothingly.
+
+"It must not become a greater one," the poet replied sternly.
+
+"Who was the fish given to?" his companion wondered.
+
+"It was given to you," Finegas answered. "It was given to Fionn,
+the son of Uail, the son of Baiscne, and it will be given to
+him."
+
+"You shall have a half of the fish," cried Fionn.
+
+"I will not eat a piece of its skin that is as small as the point
+of its smallest bone," said the resolute and trembling bard. "Let
+you now eat up the fish, and I shall watch you and give praise to
+the gods of the Underworld and of the Elements.''
+
+Fionn then ate the Salmon of Knowledge, and when it had
+disappeared a great jollity and tranquillity and exuberance
+returned to the poet.
+
+"Ah," said he, "I had a great combat with that fish."
+
+"Did it fight for its life?" Fionn inquired.
+
+"It did, but that was not the fight I meant."
+
+"You shall eat a Salmon of Knowledge too," Fionn assured him.
+
+"You have eaten one," cried the blithe poet, "and if you make
+such a promise it will be because you know."
+
+"I promise it and know it," said Fionn, "you shall eat a Salmon
+of Knowledge yet."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+He had received all that he could get from Finegas. His education
+was finished and the time had come to test it, and to try all
+else that he had of mind and body. He bade farewell to the gentle
+poet, and set out for Tara of the Kings.
+
+It was Samhain-tide, and the feast of Tara was being held, at
+which all that was wise or skilful or well-born in Ireland were
+gathered together.
+
+This is how Tara was when Tara was. There was the High King's
+palace with its fortification; without it was another
+fortification enclosing the four minor palaces, each of which was
+maintained by one of the four provincial kings; without that
+again was the great banqueting hall, and around it and enclosing
+all of the sacred hill in its gigantic bound ran the main outer
+ramparts of Tara. From it, the centre of Ireland, four great
+roads went, north, south, east, and west, and along these roads,
+from the top and the bottom and the two sides of Ireland, there
+moved for weeks before Samhain an endless stream of passengers.
+
+Here a gay band went carrying rich treasure to decorate the
+pavilion of a Munster lord. On another road a vat of seasoned
+yew, monstrous as a house on wheels and drawn by an hundred
+laborious oxen, came bumping and joggling the ale that thirsty
+Connaught princes would drink. On a road again the learned men of
+Leinster, each with an idea in his head that would discomfit a
+northern ollav and make a southern one gape and fidget, would be
+marching solemnly, each by a horse that was piled high on the
+back and widely at the sides with clean-peeled willow or oaken
+wands, that were carved from the top to the bottom with the ogham
+signs; the first lines of poems (for it was an offence against
+wisdom to commit more than initial lines to writing), the names
+and dates of kings, the procession of laws of Tara and of the
+sub-kingdoms, the names of places and their meanings. On the
+brown stallion ambling peacefully yonder there might go the
+warring of the gods for two or ten thousand years; this mare with
+the dainty pace and the vicious eye might be sidling under a load
+of oaken odes in honour of her owner's family, with a few bundles
+of tales of wonder added in case they might be useful; and
+perhaps the restive piebald was backing the history of Ireland
+into a ditch.
+
+On such a journey all people spoke together, for all were
+friends, and no person regarded the weapon in another man's hand
+other than as an implement to poke a reluctant cow with, or to
+pacify with loud wallops some hoof-proud colt.
+
+Into this teem and profusion of jolly humanity Fionn slipped, and
+if his mood had been as bellicose as a wounded boar he would yet
+have found no man to quarrel with, and if his eye had been as
+sharp as a jealous husband's he would have found no eye to meet
+it with calculation or menace or fear; for the Peace of Ireland
+was in being, and for six weeks man was neighbour to man, and the
+nation was the guest of the High King. Fionn went in with the
+notables.
+
+His arrival had been timed for the opening day and the great
+feast of welcome. He may have marvelled, looking on the bright
+city, with its pillars of gleaming bronze and the roofs that were
+painted in many colours, so that each house seemed to be covered
+by the spreading wings of some gigantic and gorgeous bird. And
+the palaces themselves, mellow with red oak, polished within and
+without by the wear and the care of a thousand years, and carved
+with the patient skill of unending generations of the most famous
+artists of the most artistic country of the western world, would
+have given him much to marvel at also. It must have seemed like a
+city of dream, a city to catch the heart, when, coming over the
+great plain, Fionn saw Tara of the Kings held on its hill as in a
+hand to gather all the gold of the falling sun, and to restore a
+brightness as mellow and tender as that universal largess.
+
+In the great banqueting hall everything was in order for the
+feast. The nobles of Ireland with their winsome consorts, the
+learned and artistic professions represented by the pick of their
+time were in place. The Ard-Ri, Corm of the Hundred Battles, had
+taken his place on the raised dais which commanded the whole of
+that vast hall. At his Right hand his son Art, to be afterwards
+as famous as his famous father, took his seat, and on his left
+Goll mor mac Morna, chief of the Fianna of Ireland, had the seat
+of honour. As the High King took his place he could see every
+person who was noted in the land for any reason. He would know
+every one who was present, for the fame of all men is sealed at
+Tara, and behind his chair a herald stood to tell anything the
+king might not know or had forgotten.
+
+Conn gave the signal and his guests seated themselves.
+
+The time had come for the squires to take their stations behind
+their masters and mistresses. But, for the moment, the great room
+was seated, and the doors were held to allow a moment of respect
+to pass before the servers and squires came in.
+
+Looking over his guests, Conn observed that a young man was yet
+standing.
+
+"There is a gentleman," he murmured, "for whom no seat has been
+found."
+
+We may be sure that the Master of the Banquet blushed at that.
+
+"And," the king continued, "I do not seem to know the young man."
+
+Nor did his herald, nor did the unfortunate Master, nor did
+anybody; for the eyes of all were now turned where the king's
+went.
+
+"Give me my horn," said the gracious monarch.
+
+The horn of state was put to his hand.
+
+"Young gentleman," he called to the stranger, "I wish to drink to
+your health and to welcome you to Tara."
+
+The young man came forward then, greater-shouldered than any
+mighty man of that gathering, longer and cleaner limbed, with his
+fair curls dancing about his beardless face. The king put the
+great horn into his hand.
+
+"Tell me your name," he commanded gently.
+
+"I am Fionn, the son of Uail, the son of Baiscne," said the
+youth.
+
+And at that saying a touch as of lightning went through the
+gathering so that each person quivered,  and the son of the
+great, murdered captain looked by the king's shoulder into the
+twinkling eye of Goll. But no word was uttered, no movement made
+except the movement and the utterance of the Ard-Ri'.
+
+"You are the son of a friend," said the great-hearted monarch.
+"You shall have the seat of a friend."
+
+He placed Fionn at the right hand of his own son Art.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+It is to be known that on the night of the Feast of Samhain the
+doors separating this world and the next one are opened, and the
+inhabitants of either world can leave their respective spheres
+and appear in the world of the other beings.
+
+Now there was a grandson to the Dagda Mor, the Lord of the
+Underworld, and he was named Aillen mac Midna, out of Shi'
+Finnachy, and this Aillen bore an implacable enmity to Tara and
+the Ard-Ri'.
+
+As well as being monarch of Ireland her High King was chief of
+the people learned in magic, and it is possible that at some time
+Conn had adventured into Tir na n-Og, the Land of the Young, and
+had done some deed or misdeed in Aillen's lordship or in his
+family. It must have been an ill deed in truth, for it was in a
+very rage of revenge that Aillen came yearly at the permitted
+time to ravage Tara.
+
+Nine times he had come on this mission of revenge, but it is not
+to be supposed that he could actually destroy the holy city: the
+Ard-Ri' and magicians could prevent that, but he could yet do a
+damage so considerable that it was worth Conn's while to take
+special extra precautions against him, including the precaution
+of chance.
+
+Therefore, when the feast was over and the banquet had commenced,
+the Hundred Fighter stood from his throne and looked over his
+assembled people.
+
+The Chain of Silence was shaken by the attendant whose duty and
+honour was the Silver Chain, and at that delicate chime the halt
+went silent, and a general wonder ensued as to what matter the
+High King would submit to his people.
+
+"Friends and heroes," said Conn, "Aillen, the son of Midna, will
+come to-night from Slieve Fuaid with occult, terrible fire
+against our city. Is there among you one who loves Tara and the
+king, and who will undertake our defence against that being?"
+
+He spoke in silence, and when he had finished he listened to the
+same silence, but it was now deep, ominous, agonized. Each man
+glanced uneasily on his neighbour and then stared at his wine-cup
+or his fingers. The hearts of young men went hot for a gallant
+moment and were chilled in the succeeding one, for they had all
+heard of Aillen out of Shl Finnachy in the north. The lesser
+gentlemen looked under their brows at the greater champions, and
+these peered furtively at the greatest of all. Art og mac Morna
+of the Hard Strokes fell to biting his fingers, Cona'n the
+Swearer and Garra mac Morna grumbled irritably to each other and
+at their neighbours, even Caelte, the son of Rona'n, looked down
+into his own lap, and Goll Mor sipped at his wine without any
+twinkle in his eye. A horrid embarrassment came into the great
+hall, and as the High King stood in that palpitating silence his
+noble face changed from kindly to grave and from that to a
+terrible sternness. In another moment, to the undying shame of
+every person present, he would have been compelled to lift his
+own challenge and declare himself the champion of Tara for that
+night, but the shame that was on the faces of his people would
+remain in the heart of their king. Goll's merry mind would help
+him to forget, but even his heart would be wrung by a memory that
+he would not dare to face. It was at that terrible moment that
+Fionn stood up.
+
+"What," said he, "will be given to the man who undertakes this
+defence?"
+
+"All that can be rightly asked will be royally bestowed," was the
+king's answer.
+
+"Who are the sureties?" said Fionn.
+
+"The kings of Ireland, and Red Cith with his magicians."
+
+"I will undertake the defence," said Fionn. And on that, the
+kings and magicians who were present bound themselves to the
+fulfilment of the bargain.
+
+Fionn marched from the banqueting hall, and as he went, all who
+were present of nobles and retainers and servants acclaimed him
+and wished him luck. But in their hearts they were bidding him
+good-bye, for all were assured that the lad was marching to a
+death so unescapeable that he might already be counted as a dead
+man.
+
+It is likely that Fionn looked for help to the people of the Shi'
+themselves, for, through his mother, he belonged to the tribes of
+Dana, although, on the father's side, his blood was well
+compounded with mortal clay. It may be, too, that he knew how
+events would turn, for he had eaten the Salmon of Knowledge. Yet
+it is not recorded that on this occasion he invoked any magical
+art as he did on other adventures.
+
+Fionn's way of discovering whatever was happening and hidden was
+always the same and is many times referred to. A shallow, oblong
+dish of pure, pale gold was brought to him. This dish was filled
+with clear water. Then Fionn would bend his head and stare into
+the water, and as he stared he would place his thumb in his mouth
+under his "Tooth of Knowledge," his "wisdom tooth."
+
+Knowledge, may it be said, is higher than magic and is more to be
+sought. It is quite possible to see what is happening and yet not
+know what is forward, for while seeing is believing it does not
+follow that either seeing or believing is knowing. Many a person
+can see a thing and believe a thing and know just as little about
+it as the person who does neither. But Fionn would see and know,
+or he would under-stand a decent ratio of his visions. That he
+was versed in magic is true, for he was ever known as the
+Knowledgeable man, and later he had two magicians in his
+household named Dirim and mac-Reith to do the rough work of
+knowledge for their busy master.
+
+It was not from the Shi', however, that assistance came to Fionn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+He marched through the successive fortifications until he came to
+the outer, great wall, the boundary of the city, and when he had
+passed this he was on the wide plain of Tara.
+
+Other than himself no person was abroad, for on the night of the
+Feast of Samhain none but a madman would quit the shelter of a
+house even if it were on fire; for whatever disasters might be
+within a house would be as nothing to the calamities without it.
+
+The noise of the banquet was not now audible to Fionn--it is
+possible, however, that there was a shamefaced silence in the
+great hall--and the lights of the city were hidden by the
+successive great ramparts. The sky was over him; the earth under
+him; and than these there was nothing, or there was but the
+darkness and the wind.
+
+But darkness was not a thing to terrify him, bred in the
+nightness of a wood and the very fosterling of gloom; nor could
+the wind afflict his ear or his heart. There was no note in its
+orchestra that he had not brooded on and become, which becoming
+is magic. The long-drawn moan of it; the thrilling whisper and
+hush; the shrill, sweet whistle, so thin it can scarcely be
+heard, and is taken more by the nerves than by the ear; the
+screech, sudden as a devil's yell and loud as ten thunders; the
+cry as of one who flies with backward look to the shelter of
+leaves and darkness; and the sob as of one stricken with an
+age-long misery, only at times remembered, but remembered then
+with what a pang! His ear knew by what successions they arrived,
+and by what stages they grew and diminished. Listening in the
+dark to the bundle of noises which make a noise he could
+disentangle them and assign a place and a reason to each
+gradation of sound that formed the chorus: there was the patter
+of a rabbit, and there the scurrying of a hare; a bush rustled
+yonder, but that brief rustle was a bird; that pressure was a
+wolf, and this hesitation a fox; the scraping yonder was but a
+rough leaf against bark, and the scratching beyond it was a
+ferret's claw.
+
+Fear cannot be where knowledge is, and Fionn was not fearful.
+
+His mind, quietly busy on all sides, picked up one sound and
+dwelt on it. "A man," said Fionn, and he listened in that
+direction, back towards the city.
+
+A man it was, almost as skilled in darkness as Fionn himself
+"This is no enemy," Fionn thought; "his walking is open."
+
+"Who comes?" he called.
+
+"A friend," said the newcomer.
+
+"Give a friend's name," said Fionn.
+
+"Fiacuil mac Cona," was the answer.
+
+"Ah, my pulse and heart!" cried Fionn, and he strode a few paces
+to meet the great robber who had fostered him among the marshes.
+
+"So you are not afraid," he said joyfully.
+
+"I am afraid in good truth," Fiacuil whispered, "and the minute
+my business with you is finished I will trot back as quick as
+legs will carry me. May the gods protect my going as they
+protected my coming," said the robber piously.
+
+"Amen," said Fionn, "and now, tell me what you have come for?"
+
+"Have you any plan against this lord of the Shf?" Fiacuil
+whispered.
+
+"I will attack him," said Fionn.
+
+"That is not a plan," the other groaned, "we do not plan to
+deliver an attack hut to win a victory."
+
+"Is this a very terrible person?" Fionn asked.
+
+"Terrible indeed. No one can get near him or away from him. He
+comes out of the Shi' playing sweet, low music on a timpan and a
+pipe, and all who hear this music fall asleep."
+
+"I will not fall asleep," said Fionn.
+
+"You will indeed, for everybody does."
+
+"What happens then?" Fionn asked.
+
+"When all are asleep Aillen mac Midna blows a dart of fire out of
+his mouth, and everything that is touched by that fire is
+destroyed, and he can blow his fire to an incredible distance and
+to any direction."
+
+"You are very brave to come to help me," Fionn murmured,
+"especially when you are not able to help me at all."
+
+"I can help," Fiacuil replied, "but I must be paid."
+
+"What payment?"
+
+"A third of all you earn and a seat at your council."
+
+"I grant that," said Fionn, "and now, tell me your plan?"
+
+"You remember my spear with the thirty rivets of Arabian gold in
+its socket?"
+
+"The one," Fionn queried, "that had its head wrapped in a blanket
+and was stuck in a bucket of water and was chained to a wall as
+well--the venomous Birgha?" "That one," Fiacuil replied.
+
+"It is Aillen mac Midna's own spear," he continued, "and it was
+taken out of his Shi' by your father."
+
+"Well?" said Fionn, wondering nevertheless where Fiacuil got the
+spear, but too generous to ask.
+
+"When you hear the great man of the Shi' coming, take the
+wrappings off the head of the spear and bend your face over it;
+the heat of the spear, the stench of it, all its pernicious and
+acrid qualities will prevent you from going to sleep."
+
+"Are you sure of that?" said Fionn.
+
+"You couldn't go to sleep close to that stench; nobody could,"
+Fiacuil replied decidedly.
+
+He continued: "Aillen mac Midna will be off his guard when he
+stops playing and begins to blow his fire; he will think
+everybody is asleep; then you can deliver the attack you were
+speaking of, and all good luck go with it."
+
+"I will give him back his spear," said Fionn.
+
+"Here it is," said Fiacuil, taking the Birgha from under his
+cloak. "But be as careful of it, my pulse, be as frightened of it
+as you are of the man of Dana."
+
+"I will be frightened of nothing," said Fionn, "and the only
+person I will be sorry for is that Aillen mac Midna, who is going
+to get his own spear back."
+
+"I will go away now," his companion whispered, "for it is growing
+darker where you would have thought there was no more room for
+darkness, and there is an eerie feeling abroad which I do not
+like. That man from the Shi' may come any minute, and if I catch
+one sound of his music I am done for."
+
+The robber went away and again Fionn was alone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+He listened to the retreating footsteps until they could be heard
+no more, and the one sound that came to his tense ears was the
+beating of his own heart.
+
+Even the wind had ceased, and there seemed to be nothing in the
+world but the darkness and himself. In that gigantic blackness,
+in that unseen quietude and vacancy, the mind could cease to be
+personal to itself. It could be overwhelmed and merged in space,
+so that consciousness would be transferred or dissipated, and one
+might sleep standing; for the mind fears loneliness more than all
+else, and will escape to the moon rather than be driven inwards
+on its own being.
+
+But Fionn was not lonely, and he was not afraid when the son of
+Midna came.
+
+A long stretch of the silent night had gone by, minute following
+minute in a slow sequence, wherein as there was no change there
+was no time; wherein there was no past and no future, but a
+stupefying, endless present which is almost the annihilation of
+consciousness. A change came then, for the clouds had also been
+moving and the moon at last was sensed behind them--not as a
+radiance, but as a percolation of light, a gleam that was
+strained through matter after matter and was less than the very
+wraith or remembrance of itself; a thing seen so narrowly, so
+sparsely, that the eye could doubt if it was or was not seeing,
+and might conceive that its own memory was re-creating that which
+was still absent.
+
+But Fionn's eye was the eye of a wild creature that spies on
+darkness and moves there wittingly. He saw, then, not a thing but
+a movement; something that was darker than the darkness it loomed
+on; not a being but a presence, and, as it were, impending
+pressure. And in a little he heard the deliberate pace of that
+great being.
+
+Fionn bent to his spear and unloosed its coverings.
+
+Then from the darkness there came another sound; a low, sweet
+sound; thrillingly joyous, thrillingly low; so low the ear could
+scarcely note it, so sweet the ear wished to catch nothing else
+and would strive to hear it rather than all sounds that may be
+heard by man: the music of another world! the unearthly, dear
+melody of the Shi'! So sweet it was that the sense strained to
+it, and having reached must follow drowsily in its wake, and
+would merge in it, and could not return again to its own place
+until that strange harmony was finished and the ear restored to
+freedom.
+
+But Fionn had taken the covering from his spear, and with his
+brow pressed close to it he kept his mind and all his senses
+engaged on that sizzling, murderous point.
+
+The music ceased and Aillen hissed a fierce blue flame from his
+mouth, and it was as though he hissed lightning.
+
+Here it would seem that Fionn used magic, for spreading out his
+fringed mantle he caught the flame. Rather he stopped it, for it
+slid from the mantle and sped down into the earth to the depth of
+twenty-six spans; from which that slope is still called the Glen
+of the Mantle, and the rise on which Aillen stood is known as the
+Ard of Fire.
+
+One can imagine the surprise of Aillen mac Midna, seeing his fire
+caught and quenched by an invisible hand. And one can imagine
+that at this check he might be frightened, for who would be more
+terrified than a magician who sees his magic fail, and who,
+knowing of power, will guess at powers of which he has no
+conception and may well dread.
+
+Everything had been done by him as it should be done. His pipe
+had been played and his timpan, all who heard that music should
+be asleep, and yet his fire was caught in full course and was
+quenched.
+
+Aillen, with all the terrific strength of which he was master,
+blew again, and the great jet of blue flame came roaring and
+whistling from him and was caught and disappeared.
+
+Panic swirled into the man from Faery; he turned from that
+terrible spot and fled, not knowing what might be behind, but
+dreading it as he had never before dreaded anything, and the
+unknown pursued him; that terrible defence became offence and
+hung to his heel as a wolf pads by the flank of a bull.
+
+And Aillen was not in his own world! He was in the world of men,
+where movement is not easy and the very air a burden. In his own
+sphere, in his own element, he might have outrun Fionn, but this
+was Fionn's world, Fionn's element, and the flying god was not
+gross enough to outstrip him. Yet what a race he gave, for it was
+but at the entrance to his own Shi' that the pursuer got close
+enough. Fionn put a finger into the thong of the great spear, and
+at that cast night fell on Aillen mac Midna. His eyes went black,
+his mind whirled and ceased, there came nothingness where he had
+been, and as the Birgha whistled into his shoulder-blades he
+withered away, he tumbled emptily and was dead. Fionn took his
+lovely head from its shoulders and went back through the night to
+Tara.
+
+Triumphant Fionn, who had dealt death to a god, and to whom death
+would be dealt, and who is now dead!
+
+He reached the palace at sunrise.
+
+On that morning all were astir early. They wished to see what
+destruction had been wrought by the great being, but it was young
+Fionn they saw and that redoubtable head swinging by its hair.
+"What is your demand?" said the Ard-Ri'. "The thing that it is
+right I should ask," said Fionn: "the command of the Fianna of
+Ireland."
+
+"Make your choice," said Conn to Goll Mor; "you will leave
+Ireland, or you will place your hand in the hand of this champion
+and be his man."
+
+Goll could do a thing that would be hard for another person, and
+he could do it so beautifully that he was not diminished by any
+action.
+
+"Here is my hand," said Goll.
+
+And he twinkled at the stern, young eyes that gazed on  him as he
+made his submission.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRTH OF BRAN
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+There are people who do not like dogs a bit--they are usually
+women--but in this story there is a man who did not like dogs. In
+fact, he hated them. When he saw one he used to go black in the
+face, and he threw rocks at it until it got out of sight. But the
+Power that protects all creatures had put a squint into this
+man's eye, so that he always threw crooked.
+
+This gentleman's name was Fergus Fionnliath, and his stronghold
+was near the harbour of Galway. Whenever a dog barked he would
+leap out of his seat, and he would throw everything that he owned
+out of the window in the direction of the bark. He gave prizes to
+servants who disliked dogs, and when he heard that a man had
+drowned a litter of pups he used to visit that person and try to
+marry his daughter.
+
+Now Fionn, the son of Uail, was the reverse of Fergus Fionnliath
+in this matter, for he delighted in dogs, and he knew everything
+about them from the setting of the first little white tooth to
+the rocking of the last long yellow one. He knew the affections
+and antipathies which are proper in a dog; the degree of
+obedience to which dogs may be trained without losing their
+honourable qualities or becoming servile and suspicious; he knew
+the hopes that animate them, the apprehensions which tingle in
+their blood, and all that is to be demanded from, or forgiven in,
+a paw, an ear, a nose, an eye, or a tooth; and he understood
+these things because he loved dogs, for it is by love alone that
+we understand anything.
+
+Among the three hundred dogs which Fionn owned there were two to
+whom he gave an especial tenderness, and who were his daily and
+nightly companions. These two were Bran and Sceo'lan, but if a
+person were to guess for twenty years he would not find out why
+Fionn loved these two dogs and why he would never be separated
+from them.
+
+Fionn's mother, Muirne, went to wide Allen of Leinster to visit
+her son, and she brought her young sister Tuiren with her. The
+mother and aunt of the great captain were well treated among the
+Fianna, first, because they were parents to Fionn, and second,
+because they were beautiful and noble women.
+
+No words can describe how delightful Muirne was--she took the
+branch; and as to Tuiren, a man could not look at her without
+becoming angry or dejected. Her face was fresh as a spring
+morning; her voice more cheerful than the cuckoo calling from the
+branch that is highest in the hedge; and her form swayed like a
+reed and flowed like a river, so that each person thought she
+would surely flow to him.
+
+Men who had wives of their own grew moody and downcast because
+they could not hope to marry her, while the bachelors of the
+Fianna stared at each other with truculent, bloodshot eyes, and
+then they gazed on Tuiren so gently that she may have imagined
+she was being beamed on by the mild eyes of the dawn.
+
+It was to an Ulster gentleman, Iollan Eachtach, that she gave her
+love, and this chief stated his rights and qualities and asked
+for her in marriage.
+
+Now Fionn did not dislike the man of Ulster, but either he did
+not know them well or else he knew them too well, for he made a
+curious stipulation before consenting to the marriage. He bound
+Iollan to return the lady if there should be occasion to think
+her unhappy, and Iollan agreed to do so. The sureties to this
+bargain were Caelte mac Ronan, Goll mac Morna, and Lugaidh.
+Lugaidh himself gave the bride away, but it was not a pleasant
+ceremony for him, because he also was in love with the lady, and
+he would have preferred keeping her to giving her away. When she
+had gone he made a poem about her, beginning:
+       "There is no more light in the sky--"
+
+And hundreds of sad people learned the poem by heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+When Iollan and Tuiren were married they went to Ulster, and they
+lived together very happily. But the law of life is change;
+nothing continues in the same way for any length of time;
+happiness must become unhappiness, and will be succeeded again by
+the joy it had displaced. The past also must be reckoned with; it
+is seldom as far behind us as we could wish: it is more often in
+front, blocking the way, and the future trips over it just when
+we think that the road is clear and joy our own.
+
+Iollan had a past. He was not ashamed of it; he merely thought it
+was finished, although in truth it was only beginning, for it is
+that perpetual beginning of the past that we call the future.
+
+Before he joined the Fianna he had been in love with a lady of
+the Shi', named Uct Dealv (Fair Breast), and they had been
+sweethearts for years. How often he had visited his sweetheart in
+Faery! With what eagerness and anticipation he had gone there;
+the lover's whistle that he used to give was known to every
+person in that Shi', and he had been discussed by more than one
+of the delicate sweet ladies of Faery. "That is your whistle,
+Fair Breast," her sister of the Shi' would say.
+
+And Uct Dealv would reply: "Yes, that is my mortal, my lover, my
+pulse, and my one treasure."
+
+She laid her spinning aside, or her embroidery if she was at
+that, or if she were baking a cake of fine wheaten bread mixed
+with honey she would leave the cake to bake itself and fly to
+Iollan. Then they went hand in hand in the country that smells of
+apple-blossom and honey, looking on heavy-boughed trees and on
+dancing and beaming clouds. Or they stood dreaming together,
+locked in a clasping of arms and eyes, gazing up and down on each
+other, Iollan staring down into sweet grey wells that peeped and
+flickered under thin brows, and Uct Dealv looking up into great
+black ones that went dreamy and went hot in endless alternation.
+
+Then Iollan would go back to the world of men, and Uct Dealv
+would return to her occupations in the Land of the Ever Young.
+
+"What did he say?" her sister of the Shi' would ask.
+
+"He said I was the Berry of the Mountain, the Star of Knowledge,
+and the Blossom of the Raspberry."
+
+"They always say the same thing," her sister pouted.
+
+"But they look other things," Uct Dealv insisted. "They feel
+other things," she murmured; and an endless conversation
+recommenced.
+
+Then for some time Iollan did not come to Faery, and Uct Dealv
+marvelled at that, while her sister made an hundred surmises,
+each one worse than the last.
+
+"He is not dead or he would be here," she said. "He has forgotten
+you, my darling."
+
+News was brought to Tlr na n-Og of the marriage of  Iollan and
+Tuiren, and when Uct Dealv heard that news her heart ceased to
+beat for a moment, and she closed her eyes.
+
+"Now!" said her sister of the Shi'. "That is how long the love of
+a mortal lasts," she added, in the voice of sad triumph which is
+proper to sisters.
+
+But on Uct Dealv there came a rage of jealousy and despair such
+as no person in the Shi' had ever heard of, and from that moment
+she became capable of every ill deed; for there are two things
+not easily controlled, and they are hunger and jealousy. She
+determined that the woman who had supplanted her in Iollan's
+affections should rue the day she did it. She pondered and
+brooded revenge in her heart, sitting in thoughtful solitude and
+bitter collectedness until at last she had a plan.
+
+She understood the arts of magic and shape-changing, so she
+changed her shape into that of Fionn's female runner, the
+best-known woman in Ireland; then she set out from Faery and
+appeared in the world. She travelled in the direction of Iollan's
+stronghold.
+
+Iollan knew the appearance of Fionn's messenger, but he was
+surprised to see her.
+
+She saluted him.
+
+"Health and long life, my master.".
+
+"Health and good days," he replied. "What brings you here, dear
+heart?"
+
+"I come from Fionn."
+
+"And your message?" said he.
+
+"The royal captain intends to visit you."
+
+"He will be welcome," said Iollan. "We shall give him an Ulster
+feast."
+
+"The world knows what that is," said the messenger courteously.
+"And now," she continued, "I have messages for your queen."
+
+Tuiren then walked from the house with the messenger, but when
+they had gone a short distance Uct Dealv drew a hazel rod from
+beneath her cloak and struck it on the queen's shoulder, and on
+the instant Tuiren's figure trembled and quivered, and it began
+to whirl inwards and downwards, and she changed into the
+appearance of a hound.
+
+It was sad to see the beautiful, slender dog standing shivering
+and astonished, and sad to see the lovely eyes that looked out
+pitifully in terror and amazement. But Uct Dealv did not feel
+sad. She clasped a chain about the hound's neck, and they set off
+westward towards the house of Fergus Fionnliath, who was reputed
+to be the unfriendliest man in the world to a dog. It was because
+of his reputation that Uct Dealv was bringing the hound to him.
+She did not want a good home for this dog: she wanted the worst
+home that could be found in the world, and she thought that
+Fergus would revenge for her the rage and jealousy which she felt
+towards Tuiren.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+As they paced along Uct Dealv railed bitterly against the hound,
+and shook and jerked her chain. Many a sharp cry the hound gave
+in that journey, many a mild lament.
+
+"Ah, supplanter! Ah, taker of another girl's sweetheart!" said
+Uct Dealv fiercely. "How would your lover take it if he could see
+you now? How would he look if he saw your pointy ears, your long
+thin snout, your shivering, skinny legs, and your long grey tail.
+He would not love you now, bad girl!"
+
+"Have you heard of Fergus Fionnliath," she said again, "the man
+who does not like dogs?"
+
+Tuiren had indeed heard of him.
+
+"It is to Fergus I shall bring you," cried Uct Dealv. "He will
+throw stones at you. You have never had a stone thrown at you.
+Ah, bad girl! You do not know how a stone sounds as it nips the
+ear with a whirling buzz, nor how jagged and heavy it feels as it
+thumps against a skinny leg. Robber! Mortal! Bad girl! You have
+never been whipped, but you will be whipped now. You shall hear
+the song of a lash as it curls forward and bites inward and drags
+backward. You shall dig up old bones stealthily at night, and
+chew them against famine. You shall whine and squeal at the moon,
+and shiver in the cold, and you will never take another girl's
+sweetheart again."
+
+And it was in those terms and in that tone that she spoke to
+Tuiren as they journeyed forward, so that the hound trembled and
+shrank, and whined pitifully and in despair.
+
+They came to Fergus Fionnliath's stronghold, and Uct Dealv
+demanded admittance.
+
+"Leave that dog outside," said the servant.
+
+"I will not do so," said the pretended messenger.
+
+"You can come in without the dog, or you can stay out with the
+dog," said the surly guardian.
+
+"By my hand," cried Uct Dealv, "I will come in with this dog, or
+your master shall answer for it to Fionn."
+
+At the name of Fionn the servant almost fell out of his standing.
+He flew to acquaint his master, and Fergus himself came to the
+great door of the stronghold.
+
+"By my faith," he cried in amazement, "it is a dog."
+
+"A dog it is," growled the glum servant.
+
+"Go you away," said Fergus to Uct Dealv, "and when you have
+killed the dog come back to me and I will give you a present."
+
+"Life and health, my good master, from Fionn, the son of Uail,
+the son of Baiscne," said she to Fergus.
+
+"Life and health back to Fionn," he replied. "Come into the house
+and give your message, but leave the dog outside, for I don't
+like dogs."
+
+"The dog comes in," the messenger replied.
+
+"How is that?" cried Fergus angrily.
+
+"Fionn sends you this hound to take care of until he comes for
+her," said the messenger.
+
+"I wonder at that," Fergus growled, "for Fionn knows well that
+there is not a man in the world has less of a liking for dogs
+than I have."
+
+"However that may be, master, I have given Fionn's message, and
+here at my heel is the dog. Do you take her or refuse her?"
+
+"If I could refuse anything to Fionn it would be a dog," said
+Fergus, "but I could not refuse anything to Fionn, so give me the
+hound."
+
+Uct Dealv put the chain in his hand.
+
+"Ah, bad dog!" said she.
+
+And then she went away well satisfied with her revenge, and
+returned to her own people in the Shi.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+On the following day Fergus called his servant.
+
+"Has that dog stopped shivering yet?" he asked.
+
+"It has not, sir," said the servant.
+
+"Bring the beast here," said his master, "for whoever else is
+dissatisfied Fionn must be satisfied."
+
+The dog was brought, and he examined it with a jaundiced and
+bitter eye.
+
+"It has the shivers indeed," he said.
+
+"The shivers it has," said the servant.
+
+"How do you cure the shivers?" his master demanded, for he
+thought that if the animal's legs dropped off Fionn would not be
+satisfied.
+
+"There is a way," said the servant doubtfully.
+
+"If there is a way, tell it to me," cried his master angrily.
+
+"If you were to take the beast up in your arms and hug it and
+kiss it, the shivers would stop," said the man.
+
+"Do you mean--?" his master thundered, and he stretched his hand
+for a club.
+
+"I heard that," said the servant humbly.
+
+"Take that dog up," Fergus commanded, "and hug it and kiss it,
+and if I find a single shiver left in the beast I'll break your
+head."
+
+The man bent to the hound, but it snapped a piece out of his
+hand, and nearly bit his nose off as well.
+
+"That dog doesn't like me," said the man.
+
+"Nor do I," roared Fergus; "get out of my sight."
+
+The man went away and Fergus was left alone with the hound, but
+the poor creature was so terrified that it began to tremble ten
+times worse than before.
+
+"Its legs will drop off," said Fergus. "Fionn will blame me," he
+cried in despair.
+
+He walked to the hound.
+
+"If you snap at my nose, or if you put as much as the start of a
+tooth into the beginning of a finger!" he growled.
+
+He picked up the dog, but it did not snap, it only trembled. He
+held it gingerly for a few moments.
+
+"If it has to be hugged," he said, "I'll hug it. I'd do more than
+that for Fionn."
+
+He tucked and tightened the animal into his breast, and marched
+moodily up and down the room. The dog's nose lay along his breast
+under his chin, and as he gave it dutiful hugs, one hug to every
+five paces, the dog put out its tongue and licked him timidly
+under the chin.
+
+"Stop," roared Fergus, "stop that forever," and he grew very red
+in the face, and stared truculently down along his nose. A soft
+brown eye looked up at him and the shy tongue touched again on
+his chin.
+
+"If it has to be kissed," said Fergus gloomily, "I'll kiss it;
+I'd do more than that for Fionn," he groaned.
+
+He bent his head, shut his eyes, and brought the dog's jaw
+against his lips. And at that the dog gave little wriggles in his
+arms, and little barks, and little licks, so that he could
+scarcely hold her. He put the hound down at last.
+
+"There is not a single shiver left in her," he said.
+
+And that was true.
+
+Everywhere he walked the dog followed him, giving little prances
+and little pats against him, and keeping her eyes fixed on his
+with such eagerness and intelligence that he marvelled.
+
+"That dog likes me," he murmured in amazement.
+
+"By my hand," he cried next day, "I like that dog."
+
+The day after that he was calling her "My One Treasure, My Little
+Branch." And within a week he could not bear her to be out of his
+sight for an instant.
+
+He was tormented by the idea that some evil person might throw a
+stone at the hound, so he assembled his servants and retainers
+and addressed them.
+
+He told them that the hound was the Queen of Creatures, the Pulse
+of his Heart, and the Apple of his Eye, and he warned them that
+the person who as much as looked sideways on her, or knocked one
+shiver out of her, would answer for the deed with pains and
+indignities. He recited a list of calamities which would befall
+such a miscreant, and these woes began with flaying and ended
+with dismemberment, and had inside bits of such complicated and
+ingenious torment that the blood of the men who heard it ran
+chill in their veins, and the women of the household fainted
+where they stood.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+In course of time the news came to Fionn that his mother's sister
+was not living with Iollan. He at once sent a messenger calling
+for fulfilment of the pledge that had been given to the Fianna,
+and demanding the instant return of Tuiren. Iollan was in a sad
+condition when this demand was made. He guessed that Uct Dealv
+had a hand in the disappearance of his queen, and he begged that
+time should be given him in which to find the lost girl. He
+promised if he could not discover her within a certain period
+that he would deliver his body into Fionn's hands, and would
+abide by whatever judgement Fionn might pronounce. The great
+captain agreed to that.
+
+"Tell the wife-loser that I will have the girl or I will have his
+head," said Fionn.
+
+Iollan set out then for Faery. He knew the way, and in no great
+time he came to the hill where Uct Dealv was.
+
+It was hard to get Uct Dealv to meet him, but at last she
+consented, and they met under the apple boughs of Faery.
+
+"Well!" said Uct Dealv. "Ah! Breaker of Vows and Traitor to
+Love," said she.
+
+"Hail and a blessing," said Iollan humbly.
+
+"By my hand," she cried, "I will give you no blessing, for it was
+no blessing you left with me when we parted."
+
+"I am in danger," said Iollan.
+
+"What is that to me?" she replied fiercely.
+
+"Fionn may claim my head," he murmured.
+
+"Let him claim what he can take," said she.
+
+"No," said Iollan proudly, "he will claim what I can give."
+
+"Tell me your tale," said she coldly.
+
+Iollan told his story then, and, he concluded, "I am certain that
+you have hidden the girl."
+
+"If I save your head from Fionn," the woman of the Shi' replied,
+"then your head will belong to me."
+
+"That is true," said Iollan.
+
+"And if your head is mine, the body that goes under it is mine.
+Do you agree to that?"
+
+"I do," said Iollan.
+
+"Give me your pledge," said Uct Dealv, "that if I save you from
+this danger you will keep me as your sweetheart until the end of
+life and time."
+
+"I give that pledge," said Iollan.
+
+Uct Dealv went then to the house of Fergus Fionnliath, and she
+broke the enchantment that was on the hound, so that Tuiren's own
+shape came back to her; but in the matter of two small whelps, to
+which the hound had given birth, the enchantment could not be
+broken, so they had to remain as they were. These two whelps were
+Bran and Sceo'lan. They were sent to Fionn, and he loved them for
+ever after, for they were loyal and affectionate, as only dogs
+can be, and they were as intelligent as human beings. Besides
+that, they were Fionn's own cousins.
+
+Tuiren was then asked in marriage by Lugaidh who had loved her so
+long. He had to prove to her that he was not any other woman's
+sweetheart, and when he proved that they were married, and they
+lived happily ever after, which is the proper way to live. He
+wrote a poem beginning:
+     "Lovely the day. Dear is the eye of the dawn--"
+
+And a thousand merry people learned it after him.
+
+But as to Fergus Fionnliath, he took to his bed, and he stayed
+there for a year and a day suffering from blighted affection, and
+he would have died in the bed only that Fionn sent him a special
+pup, and in a week that young hound became the Star of Fortune
+and the very Pulse of his Heart, so that he got well again, and
+he also lived happily ever after.
+
+
+
+
+OISIN'S MOTHER
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+EVENING was drawing nigh, and the Fianna-Finn had decided to hunt
+no more that day. The hounds were whistled to heel, and a sober,
+homeward march began. For men will walk soberly in the evening,
+however they go in the day, and dogs will take the mood from
+their masters. They were pacing so, through the golden-shafted,
+tender-coloured eve, when a fawn leaped suddenly from covert,
+and, with that leap, all quietness vanished: the men shouted, the
+dogs gave tongue, and a furious chase commenced.
+
+Fionn loved a chase at any hour, and, with Bran and Sceo'lan, he
+outstripped the men and dogs of his troop, until nothing remained
+in the limpid world but Fionn, the two hounds, and the nimble,
+beautiful fawn. These, and the occasional boulders, round which
+they raced, or over which they scrambled; the solitary tree which
+dozed aloof and beautiful in the path, the occasional clump of
+trees that hived sweet shadow as a hive hoards honey, and the
+rustling grass that stretched to infinity, and that moved and
+crept and swung under the breeze in endless, rhythmic billowings.
+
+In his wildest moment Fionn was thoughtful, and now, although
+running hard, he was thoughtful. There was no movement of his
+beloved hounds that he did not know; not a twitch or fling of the
+head, not a cock of the ears or tail that was not significant to
+him. But on this chase whatever signs the dogs gave were not
+understood by their master.
+
+He had never seen them in such eager flight. They were almost
+utterly absorbed in it, but they did not whine with eagerness,
+nor did they cast any glance towards him for the encouraging word
+which he never failed to give when they sought it.
+
+They did look at him, but it was a look which he could not
+comprehend. There was a question and a statement in those deep
+eyes, and he could not understand what that question might be,
+nor what it was they sought to convey. Now and again one of the
+dogs turned a head in full flight, and stared, not at Fionn, but
+distantly backwards, over the spreading and swelling plain where
+their companions of the hunt had disappeared. "They are looking
+for the other hounds," said Fionn.
+
+"And yet they do not give tongue! Tongue it, a Vran!" he shouted,
+"Bell it out, a Heo'lan!"
+
+It was then they looked at him, the look which he could not
+understand and had never seen on a chase. They did not tongue it,
+nor bell it, but they added silence to silence and speed to
+speed, until the lean grey bodies were one pucker and lashing of
+movement.
+
+Fionn marvelled. "They do not want the other dogs to hear or to
+come on this chase," he murmured, and he wondered what might be
+passing within those slender heads.
+
+"The fawn runs well," his thought continued. "What is it, a Vran,
+my heart? After her, a Heo'lan! Hist and away, my loves !"
+
+"There is going and to spare in that beast yet," his mind went
+on. "She is not stretched to the full, nor half stretched. She
+may outrun even Bran," he thought ragingly.
+
+They were racing through a smooth valley in a steady, beautiful,
+speedy flight when, suddenly, the fawn stopped and lay on the
+grass, and it lay with the calm of an animal that has no fear,
+and the leisure of one that is not pressed.
+
+"Here is a change," said Fionn, staring in astonishment.
+
+"She is not winded," he said. "What is she lying down for?" But
+Bran and Sceo'lan did not stop; they added another inch to their
+long-stretched easy bodies, and came up on the fawn.
+
+"It is an easy kill," said Fionn regretfully. "They have her," he
+cried.
+
+But he was again astonished, for the dogs did not kill. They
+leaped and played about the fawn, licking its face, and rubbing
+delighted noses against its neck.
+
+Fionn came up then. His long spear was lowered in his fist at the
+thrust, and his sharp knife was in its sheath, but he did not use
+them, for the fawn and the two hounds began to play round him,
+and the fawn was as affectionate towards him as the hounds were;
+so that when a velvet nose was thrust in his palm, it was as
+often a fawn's muzzle as a hound's.
+
+In that joyous company he came to wide Allen of Leinster, where
+the people were surprised to see the hounds and the fawn and the
+Chief and none other of the hunters that had set out with them.
+
+When the others reached home, the Chief told of his chase, and it
+was agreed that such a fawn must not be killed, but that it
+should be kept and well treated, and that it should be the pet
+fawn of the Fianna. But some of those who remembered Brah's
+parentage thought that as Bran herself had come from the Shi so
+this fawn might have come out of the Shi also.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Late that night, when he was preparing for rest, the door of
+Fionn's chamber opened gently and a young woman came into the
+room. The captain stared at her, as he well might, for he had
+never seen or imagined to see a woman so beautiful as this was.
+Indeed, she was not a woman, but a young girl, and her bearing
+was so gently noble, her look so modestly high, that the champion
+dared scarcely look at her, although he could not by any means
+have looked away.
+
+As she stood within the doorway, smiling, and shy as a flower,
+beautifully timid as a fawn, the Chief communed with his heart.
+
+"She is the Sky-woman of the Dawn," he said. "She is the light on
+the foam. She is white and odorous as an apple-blossom. She
+smells of spice and honey. She is my beloved beyond the women of
+the world. She shall never be taken from me."
+
+And that thought was delight and anguish to him: delight because
+of such sweet prospect, anguish because it was not yet realised,
+and might not be.
+
+As the dogs had looked at him on the chase with a look that he
+did not understand, so she looked at him, and in her regard there
+was a question that baffled him and a statement which he could
+not follow.
+
+He spoke to her then, mastering his heart to do it.
+
+"I do not seem to know you," he said.
+
+"You do not know me indeed," she replied.
+
+"It is the more wonderful," he continued gently, "for I should
+know every person that is here. What do you require from me?"
+
+"I beg your protection, royal captain."
+
+"I give that to all," he answered. "Against whom do you desire
+protection?"
+
+"I am in terror of the Fear Doirche."
+
+"The Dark Man of the Shi?"
+
+"He is my enemy," she said.
+
+"He is mine now," said Fionn. "Tell me your story."
+
+"My name is Saeve, and I am a woman of Faery," she commenced. "In
+the Shi' many men gave me their love, but I gave my love to no
+man of my country."
+
+"That was not reasonable," the other chided with a blithe heart.
+
+"I was contented," she replied, "and what we do not want we do
+not lack. But if my love went anywhere it went to a mortal, a man
+of the men of Ireland."
+
+"By my hand," said Fionn in mortal distress, "I marvel who that
+man can be!"
+
+"He is known to you," she murmured. "I lived thus in the peace of
+Faery, hearing often of my mortal champion, for the rumour of his
+great deeds had gone through the Shi', until a day came when the
+Black Magician of the Men of God put his eye on me, and, after
+that day, in whatever direction I looked I saw his eye."
+
+She stopped at that, and the terror that was in her heart was on
+her face.  "He is everywhere," she whispered. "He is in the bushes, and on
+the hill. He looked up at me from the water, and he stared down
+on me from the sky. His voice commands out of the spaces, and it
+demands secretly in the heart. He is not here or there, he is in
+all places at all times. I cannot escape from him," she said,
+"and I am afraid," and at that she wept noiselessly and stared on
+Fionn.
+
+"He is my enemy," Fionn growled. "I name him as my enemy."
+
+"You will protect me," she implored.
+
+"Where I am let him not come," said Fionn. "I also have
+knowledge. I am Fionn, the son of Uail, the son of Baiscne, a man
+among men and a god where the gods are."
+
+"He asked me in marriage," she continued, "but my mind was full
+of my own dear hero, and I refused the Dark Man."
+
+"That was your right, and I swear by my hand that if the man you
+desire is alive and unmarried he shall marry you or he will
+answer to me for the refusal."
+
+"He is not married," said Saeve, "and you have small control over
+him." The Chief frowned thoughtfully. "Except the High King and
+the kings I have authority in this land."
+
+"What man has authority over himself?" said Saeve.
+
+"Do you mean that I am the man you seek?" said Fionn.
+
+"It is to yourself I gave my love," she replied. "This is good
+news," Fionn cried joyfully, "for the moment you came through the
+door I loved and desired you, and the thought that you wished for
+another man went into my heart like a sword." Indeed, Fionn loved Saeve as he had not loved a woman before and
+would never love one again. He loved her as he had never loved
+anything before. He could not bear to be away from her. When he
+saw her he did not see the world, and when he saw the world
+without her it was as though he saw nothing, or as if he looked
+on a prospect that was bleak and depressing. The belling of a
+stag had been music to Fionn, but when Saeve spoke that was sound
+enough for him. He had loved to hear the cuckoo calling in the
+spring from the tree that is highest in the hedge, or the
+blackbird's jolly whistle in an autumn bush, or the thin, sweet
+enchantment that comes to the mind when a lark thrills out of
+sight in the air and the hushed fields listen to the song. But
+his wife's voice was sweeter to Fionn than the singing of a lark.
+She filled him with wonder and surmise. There was magic in the
+tips of her fingers. Her thin palm ravished him. Her slender foot
+set his heart beating; and whatever way her head moved there came
+a new shape of beauty to her face.
+
+"She is always new," said Fionn. "She is always better than any
+other woman; she is always better than herself."
+
+He attended no more to the Fianna. He ceased to hunt. He did not
+listen to the songs of poets or the curious sayings of magicians,
+for all of these were in his wife, and something that was beyond
+these was in her also.
+
+"She is this world and the next one; she is completion," said
+Fionn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+It happened that the men of Lochlann came on an expedition
+against Ireland. A monstrous fleet rounded the bluffs of Ben
+Edair, and the Danes landed there, to prepare an attack which
+would render them masters of the country. Fionn and the
+Fianna-Finn marched against them. He did not like the men of
+Lochlann at any time, but this time he moved against them in
+wrath, for not only were they attacking Ireland, but they had
+come between him and the deepest joy his life had known.
+
+It was a hard fight, but a short one. The Lochlannachs were
+driven back to their ships, and within a week the only Danes
+remaining in Ireland were those that had been buried there.
+
+That finished, he left the victorious Fianna and returned swiftly
+to the plain of Allen, for he could not bear to be one
+unnecessary day parted from Saeve.
+
+"You are not leaving us!" exclaimed Goll mac Morna.
+
+"I must go," Fionn replied.
+
+"You will not desert the victory feast," Conan reproached him.
+
+"Stay with us, Chief," Caelte begged.
+
+"What is a feast without Fionn?" they complained.
+
+But he would not stay.
+
+"By my hand," he cried, "I must go. She will be looking for me
+from the window."
+
+"That will happen indeed," Goll admitted.
+
+"That will happen," cried Fionn. "And when she sees me far out on
+the plain, she will run through the great gate to meet me."
+
+"It would be the queer wife would neglect that run," Cona'n
+growled.
+
+"I shall hold her hand again," Fionn entrusted to Caelte's ear.
+
+"You will do that, surely."
+
+"I shall look into her face," his lord insisted. But he saw that
+not even beloved Caelte understood the meaning of that, and he
+knew sadly and yet proudly that what he meant could not be
+explained by any one and could not be comprehended by any one.
+
+"You are in love, dear heart," said Caelte.
+
+"In love he is," Cona'n grumbled. "A cordial for women, a disease
+for men, a state of wretchedness."
+
+"Wretched in truth," the Chief murmured. "Love makes us poor We
+have not eyes enough to see all that is to be seen, nor hands
+enough to seize the tenth of all we want. When I look in her eyes
+I am tormented because I am not looking at her lips, and when I
+see her lips my soul cries out, 'Look at her eyes, look at her
+eyes.'"
+
+"That is how it happens," said Goll rememberingly.
+
+"That way and no other," Caelte agreed.
+
+And the champions looked backwards in time on these lips and
+those, and knew their Chief would go.
+
+When Fionn came in sight of the great keep his blood and his feet
+quickened, and now and again he waved a spear in the air.
+
+"She does not see me yet," he thought mournfully.
+
+"She cannot see me yet," he amended, reproaching himself.
+
+But his mind was troubled, for he thought also, or he felt
+without thinking, that had the positions been changed he would
+have seen her at twice the distance.
+
+"She thinks I have been unable to get away from the battle, or
+that I was forced to remain for the feast."
+
+And, without thinking it, he thought that had the positions been
+changed he would have known that nothing could retain the one
+that was absent.
+
+"Women," he said, "are shamefaced, they do not like to appear
+eager when others are observing them."
+
+But he knew that he would not have known if others were observing
+him, and that he would not have cared about it if he had known.
+And he knew that his Saeve would not have seen, and would not
+have cared for any eyes than his.
+
+He gripped his spear on that reflection, and ran as he had not
+run in his life, so that it was a panting, dishevelled man that
+raced heavily through the gates of the great Dun.
+
+Within the Dun there was disorder. Servants were shouting to one
+another, and women were running to and fro aimlessly, wringing
+their hands and screaming; and, when they saw the Champion, those
+nearest to him ran away, and there was a general effort on the
+part of every person to get behind every other person. But Fionn
+caught the eye of his butler, Gariv Crona'n, the Rough Buzzer,
+and held it.
+
+"Come you here," he said.
+
+And the Rough Buzzer came to him without a single buzz in his
+body.
+
+"Where is the Flower of Allen?" his master demanded.
+
+"I do not know, master," the terrified servant replied.
+
+"You do not know!" said Fionn. "Tell what you do know."
+
+And the man told him this story.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"When you had been away for a day the guards were surprised. They
+were looking from the heights of the Dun, and the Flower of Allen
+was with them. She, for she had a quest's eye, called out that
+the master of the Fianna was coming over the ridges to the Dun,
+and she ran from the keep to meet you."
+
+"It was not I," said Fionn.
+
+"It bore your shape," replied Gariv Cronan. "It had your armour
+and your face, and the dogs, Bran and Sceo'lan, were with it."
+
+"They were with me," said Fionn.
+
+"They seemed to be with it," said the servant humbly
+
+"Tell us this tale," cried Fionn.
+
+"We were distrustful," the servant continued. "We had never known
+Fionn to return from a combat before it had been fought, and we
+knew you could not have reached Ben Edar or encountered the
+Lochlannachs. So we urged our lady to let us go out to meet you,
+but to remain herself in the Dun."
+
+"It was good urging," Fionn assented.
+
+"She would not be advised," the servant wailed.   "She      cried
+to us, 'Let me go to meet my love'."
+
+"Alas!" said Fionn.
+
+"She cried on us, 'Let me go to meet my husband, the father of
+the child that is not born.'"
+
+"Alas!" groaned deep-wounded Fionn. "She ran towards your
+appearance that had your arms stretched out to her."
+
+At that wise Fionn put his hand before his eyes, seeing all that
+happened.
+
+"Tell on your tale," said he.
+
+"She ran to those arms, and when she reached them the figure
+lifted its hand. It touched her with a hazel rod, and, while we
+looked, she disappeared, and where she had been there was a fawn
+standing and shivering. The fawn turned and bounded towards the
+gate of the Dun, but the hounds that were by flew after her."
+
+Fionn stared on him like a lost man.
+
+"They took her by the throat--"the shivering servant whispered.
+
+"Ah!" cried Fionn in a terrible voice.
+
+"And they dragged her back to the figure that seemed to be Fionn.
+Three times she broke away and came bounding to us, and three
+times the dogs took her by the throat and dragged her back."
+
+"You stood to look!" the Chief snarled.
+
+"No, master, we ran, but she vanished as we got to her; the great
+hounds vanished away, and that being that seemed to be Fionn
+disappeared with them. We were left in the rough grass, staring
+about us and at each other, and listening to the moan of the wind
+and the terror of our hearts."
+
+"Forgive us, dear master," the servant cried. But the great
+captain made him no answer. He stood as though he were dumb and
+blind, and now and again he beat terribly on his breast with his
+closed fist, as though he would kill that within him which should
+be dead and could not die. He went so, beating on his breast, to
+his inner room in the Dun, and he was not seen again for the rest
+of that day, nor until the sun rose over Moy Life' in the
+morning.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+For many years after that time, when he was not fighting against
+the enemies of Ireland, Fionn was searching and hunting through
+the length and breadth of the country in the hope that he might
+again chance on his lovely lady from the Shi'. Through all that
+time he slept in misery each night and he rose each day to grief.
+Whenever he hunted he brought only the hounds that he trusted,
+Bran and Sceo'lan, Lomaire, Brod, and Lomlu; for if a fawn was
+chased each of these five great dogs would know if that was a
+fawn to be killed or one to be protected, and so there was small
+danger to Saeve and a small hope of finding her.
+
+Once, when seven years had passed in fruitless search, Fionn and
+the chief nobles of the Fianna were hunting Ben Gulbain. All the
+hounds of the Fianna were out, for Fionn had now given up hope of
+encountering the Flower of Allen. As the hunt swept along the
+sides of the hill there arose a great outcry of hounds from a
+narrow place high on the slope and, over all that uproar there
+came the savage baying of Fionn's own dogs.
+
+"What is this for?" said Fionn, and with his companions he
+pressed to the spot whence the noise came.
+
+"They are fighting all the hounds of the Fianna," cried a
+champion.
+
+And they were. The five wise hounds were in a circle and were
+giving battle to an hundred dogs at once. They were bristling and
+terrible, and each bite from those great, keen jaws was woe to
+the beast that received it. Nor did they fight in silence as was
+their custom and training, but between each onslaught the great
+heads were uplifted, and they pealed loudly, mournfully,
+urgently, for their master.
+
+"They are calling on me," he roared.
+
+And with that he ran, as he had only once before run, and the men
+who were nigh to him went racing as they would not have run for
+their lives. They came to the narrow place on the slope of the
+mountain, and they saw the five great hounds in a circle keeping
+off the other dogs, and in the middle of the ring a little boy
+was standing. He had long, beautiful hair, and he was naked. He
+was not daunted by the terrible combat and clamour of the hounds.
+He did not look at the hounds, but he stared like a young prince
+at Fionn and the champions as they rushed towards him scattering
+the pack with the butts of their spears. When the fight was over,
+Bran and Sceo'lan ran whining to the little boy and licked his
+hands.
+
+"They do that to no one," said a bystander. "What new master is
+this they have found?"
+
+Fionn bent to the boy. "Tell me, my little prince and pulse, what
+your name is, and how you have come into the middle of a
+hunting-pack, and why you are naked?"
+
+But the boy did not understand the language of the men of
+Ireland. He put bis hand into Fionn's, and the Chief felt as if
+that little hand had been put into his heart. He lifted the lad
+to his great shoulder.
+
+"We have caught something on this hunt," said he to Caelte mac
+Rongn. "We must bring this treasure home. You shall be one of the
+Fianna-Finn, my darling," he called upwards.
+
+The boy looked down on him, and in the noble trust and
+fearlessness of that regard Fionn's heart melted away.
+
+"My little fawn!" he said.
+
+And he remembered that other fawn. He set the boy between his
+knees and stared at him earnestly and long.
+
+"There is surely the same look," he said to his wakening heart;
+"that is the very eye of Saeve."
+
+The grief flooded out of his heart as at a stroke, and joy foamed
+into it in one great tide. He marched back singing to the
+encampment, and men saw once more the merry Chief they had almost
+forgotten.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Just as at one time he could not be parted from Saeve, so now he
+could not be separated from this boy. He had a thousand names for
+him, each one more tender than the last: "My Fawn, My Pulse, My
+Secret Little Treasure," or he would call him "My Music, My
+Blossoming Branch, My Store in the Heart, My Soul." And the dogs
+were as wild for the boy as Fionn was. He could sit in safety
+among a pack that would have torn any man to pieces, and the
+reason was that Bran and Sceo'lan, with their three whelps,
+followed him about like shadows. When he was with the pack these
+five were with him, and woeful indeed was the eye they turned on
+their comrades when these pushed too closely or were not properly
+humble. They thrashed the pack severally and collectively until
+every hound in Fionn's kennels knew that the little lad was their
+master, and that there was nothing in the world so sacred as he
+was.
+
+In no long time the five wise hounds could have given over their
+guardianship, so complete was the recognition of their young
+lord. But they did not so give over, for it was not love they
+gave the lad but adoration.
+
+Fionn even may have been embarrassed by their too close
+attendance. If he had been able to do so he might have spoken
+harshly to his dogs, but he could not; it was unthinkable that he
+should; and the boy might have spoken harshly to him if he had
+dared to do it. For this was the order of Fionn's affection:
+first there was the boy; next, Bran and Sceo'lan with their three
+whelps; then Caelte mac Rona'n, and from him down through the
+champions. He loved them all, but it was along that precedence
+his affections ran. The thorn that went into Bran's foot ran into
+Fionn's also. The world knew it, and there was not a champion but
+admitted sorrowfully that there was reason for his love.
+
+Little by little the boy came to understand their speech and to
+speak it himself, and at last he was able to tell his story to
+Fionn.
+
+There were many blanks in the tale, for a young child does not
+remember very well. Deeds grow old in a day and are buried in a
+night. New memories come crowding on old ones, and one must learn
+to forget as well as to remember. A whole new life had come on
+this boy, a life that was instant and memorable, so that his
+present memories blended into and obscured the past, and he could
+not be quite sure if that which he told of had happened in this
+world or in the world he had left.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+"I used to live," he said, "in a wide, beautiful place. There
+were hills and valleys there, and woods and streams, but in
+whatever direction I went I came always to a cliff, so tall it
+seemed to lean against the sky, and so straight that even a goat
+would not have imagined to climb it."
+
+"I do not know of any such place," Fionn mused.
+
+"There is no such place in Ireland," said Caelte, "but in the
+Shi' there is such a place."
+
+"There is in truth," said Fionn.
+
+"I used to eat fruits and roots in the summer," the boy
+continued, "but in the winter food was left for me in a cave."
+
+"Was there no one with you?" Fionn asked.
+
+"No one but a deer that loved me, and that I loved."
+
+"Ah me!" cried Fionn in anguish, "tell me your tale, my son."
+
+"A dark stern man came often after us, and he used to speak with
+the deer. Sometimes he talked gently and softly and coaxingly,
+but at times again he would shout loudly and in a harsh, angry
+voice. But whatever way he talked the deer would draw away from
+him in dread, and he always left her at last furiously."
+
+"It is the Dark Magician of the Men of God," cried Fionn
+despairingly.
+
+"It is indeed, my soul," said Caelte.
+
+"The last time I saw the deer," the child continued, "the dark
+man was speaking to her. He spoke for a long time. He spoke
+gently and angrily, and gently and angrily, so that I thought he
+would never stop talking, but in the end he struck her with a
+hazel rod, so that she was forced to follow him when he went
+away. She was looking back at me all the time and she was crying
+so bitterly that any one would pity her. I tried to follow her
+also, but I could not move, and I cried after her too, with rage
+and grief, until I could see her no more and hear her no more.
+Then I fell on the grass, my senses went away from me, and when I
+awoke I was on the hill in the middle of the hounds where you
+found me."
+
+That was the boy whom the Fianna called Oisi'n, or the Little
+Fawn. He grew to be a great fighter afterwards, and he was the
+chief maker of poems in the world. But he was not yet finished
+with the Shi. He was to go back into Faery when the time came,
+and to come thence again to tell these tales, for it was by him
+these tales were told.
+
+
+
+
+THE WOOING OF BECFOLA
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+We do not know where Becfola came from. Nor do we know for
+certain where she went to. We do not even know her real name, for
+the name Becfola, "Dowerless" or "Small-dowered," was given to
+her as a nickname. This only is certain, that she disappeared
+from the world we know of, and that she went to a realm where
+even conjecture may not follow her.
+
+It happened in the days when Dermod, son of the famous Ae of
+Slane, was monarch of all Ireland. He was unmarried, but he had
+many foster-sons, princes from the Four Provinces, who were sent
+by their fathers as tokens of loyalty and affection to the
+Ard-Ri, and his duties as a foster-father were righteously
+acquitted. Among the young princes of his household there was
+one, Crimthann, son of Ae, King of Leinster, whom the High King
+preferred to the others over whom he held fatherly sway. Nor was
+this wonderful, for the lad loved him also, and was as eager and
+intelligent and modest as becomes a prince.
+
+The High King and Crimthann would often set out from Tara to hunt
+and hawk, sometimes unaccompanied even by a servant; and on these
+excursions the king imparted to his foster-son his own wide
+knowledge of forest craft, and advised him generally as to the
+bearing and duties of a prince, the conduct of a court, and the
+care of a people.
+
+Dermod mac Ae delighted in these solitary adventures, and when he
+could steal a day from policy and affairs he would send word
+privily to Crimthann. The boy, having donned his hunting gear,
+would join the king at a place arranged between them, and then
+they ranged abroad as chance might direct.
+
+On one of these adventures, as they searched a flooded river to
+find the ford, they saw a solitary woman in a chariot driving
+from the west.
+
+"I wonder what that means?" the king exclaimed thoughtfully.
+
+"Why should you wonder at a woman in a chariot?" his companion
+inquired, for Crimthann loved and would have knowledge.
+
+"Good, my Treasure," Dermod answered, "our minds are astonished
+when we see a woman able to drive a cow to pasture, for it has
+always seemed to us that they do not drive well."
+
+Crimthann absorbed instruction like a sponge and digested it as
+rapidly.
+
+"I think that is justly said," he agreed.
+
+"But," Dermod continued, "when we see a woman driving a chariot
+of two horses, then we are amazed indeed."
+
+When the machinery of anything is explained to us we grow
+interested, and Crimthann became, by instruction, as astonished
+as the king was.
+
+"In good truth," said he, "the woman is driving two horses."
+
+"Had you not observed it before?" his master asked with kindly
+malice.
+
+"I had observed but not noticed," the young man admitted.
+
+"Further," said the king, "surmise is aroused in us when we
+discover a woman far from a house; for you will have both
+observed and noticed that women are home-dwellers, and that a
+house without a woman or a woman without a house are imperfect
+objects, and although they be but half observed, they are noticed
+on the double."
+
+"There is no doubting it," the prince answered from a knitted and
+thought-tormented brow.
+
+"We shall ask this woman for information about herself," said the
+king decidedly.
+
+"Let us do so," his ward agreed
+
+"The king's majesty uses the words 'we' and 'us' when referring
+to the king's majesty," said Dermod, "but princes who do not yet
+rule territories must use another form of speech when referring
+to themselves."
+
+"I am very thoughtless, said Crimthann humbly.
+
+The king kissed him on both cheeks.
+
+"Indeed, my dear heart and my son, we are not scolding you, but
+you must try not to look so terribly thoughtful when you think.
+It is part of the art of a ruler."
+
+"I shall never master that hard art," lamented his fosterling.
+
+"We must all master it," Dermod replied. "We may think with our
+minds and with our tongues, but we should never think with our
+noses and with our eyebrows,"
+
+The woman in the chariot had drawn nigh to the ford by which they
+were standing, and, without pause, she swung her steeds into the
+shallows and came across the river in a tumult of foam and spray.
+
+"Does she not drive well?" cried Crimthann admiringly.
+
+"When you are older," the king counselled him, "you will admire
+that which is truly admirable, for although the driving is good
+the lady is better."
+
+He continued with enthusiasm.
+
+"She is in truth a wonder of the world and an endless delight to
+the eye."
+
+She was all that and more, and, as she took the horses through
+the river and lifted them up the bank, her flying hair and parted
+lips and all the young strength and grace of her body went into
+the king's eye and could not easily come out again.
+
+Nevertheless, it was upon his ward that the lady's gaze rested,
+and if the king could scarcely look away from her, she could, but
+only with an equal effort, look away from Crimthann.
+
+"Halt there!" cried the king.
+
+"Who should I halt for?" the lady demanded, halting all the same,
+as is the manner of women, who rebel against command and yet
+receive it.
+
+"Halt for Dermod!"
+
+"There are Dermods and Dermods in this world," she quoted.
+
+"There is yet but one Ard-Ri'," the monarch answered.
+
+She then descended from the chariot and made her reverence.
+
+"I wish to know your name?" said he.
+
+But at this demand the lady frowned and answered decidedly:
+
+"I do not wish to tell it."
+
+"I wish to know also where you come from and to what place you
+are going?"
+
+"I do not wish to tell any of these things."
+
+"Not to the king!"
+
+"I do not wish to tell them to any one."
+
+Crimthann was scandalised.
+
+"Lady," he pleaded, "you will surely not withhold information
+from the Ard-Ri'?"
+
+But the lady stared as royally on the High King as the High King
+did on her, and, whatever it was he saw in those lovely eyes, the
+king did not insist.
+
+He drew Crimthann apart, for he withheld no instruction from that
+lad.
+
+"My heart," he said, "we must always try to act wisely, and we
+should only insist on receiving answers to questions in which we
+are personally concerned."
+
+Crimthann imbibed all the justice of that remark.
+
+"Thus I do not really require to know this lady's name, nor do I
+care from what direction she comes."
+
+"You do not?" Crimthann asked.
+
+"No, but what I do wish to know is, Will she marry me?"
+
+"By my hand that is a notable question," his companion stammered.
+
+"It is a question that must be answered," the king cried
+triumphantly. "But," he continued, "to learn what woman she is,
+or where she comes from, might bring us torment as well as
+information. Who knows in what adventures the past has engaged
+her!"
+
+And he stared for a profound moment on disturbing, sinister
+horizons, and Crimthann meditated there with him."
+
+"The past is hers," he concluded, "but the future is ours, and we
+shall only demand that which is pertinent to the future."
+
+He returned to the lady.
+
+"We wish you to be our wife," he said. And he gazed on her
+benevolently and firmly and carefully when he said that, so that
+her regard could not stray otherwhere. Yet, even as he looked, a
+tear did well into those lovely eyes, and behind her brow a
+thought moved of the beautiful boy who was looking at her from
+the king's side.
+
+But when the High King of Ireland asks us to marry him we do not
+refuse, for it is not a thing that we shall be asked to do every
+day in the week, and there is no woman in the world but would
+love to rule it in Tara.
+
+No second tear crept on the lady's lashes, and, with her hand in
+the king's hand, they paced together towards the palace, while
+behind them, in melancholy mood, Crimthann mac Ae led the horses
+and the chariot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+They were married in a haste which equalled the king's desire;
+and as he did not again ask her name, and as she did not
+volunteer to give it, and as she brought no dowry to her husband
+and received none from him, she was called Becfola, the
+Dowerless.
+
+Time passed, and the king's happiness was as great as his
+expectation of it had promised. But on the part of Becfola no
+similar tidings can be given.
+
+There are those whose happiness lies in ambition and station, and
+to such a one the fact of being queen to the High King of Ireland
+is a satisfaction at which desire is sated. But the mind of
+Becfola was not of this temperate quality, and, lacking
+Crimthann, it seemed to her that she possessed nothing.
+
+For to her mind he was the sunlight in the sun, the brightness in
+the moonbeam; he was the savour in fruit and the taste in honey;
+and when she looked from Crimthann to the king she could not but
+consider that the right man was in the wrong place. She thought
+that crowned only with his curls Crlmthann mac Ae was more nobly
+diademed than are the masters of the world, and she told him so.
+
+His terror on hearing this unexpected news was so great that he
+meditated immediate flight from Tara; but when a thing has been
+uttered once it is easier said the second time and on the third
+repetition it is patiently listened to.
+
+After no great delay Crimthann mac Ae agreed and arranged that he
+and Becfola should fly from Tara, and it was part of their
+understanding that they should live happily ever after.
+
+One morning, when not even a bird was astir, the king felt that
+his dear companion was rising. He looked with one eye at the
+light that stole greyly through the window, and recognised that
+it could not in justice be called light.
+
+"There is not even a bird up," he murmured.
+
+And then to Becfola.
+
+"What is the early rising for, dear heart?"
+
+"An engagement I have," she replied.
+
+"This is not a time for engagements," said the calm monarch.
+
+"Let it be so," she replied, and she dressed rapidly.
+
+"And what is the engagement?" he pursued.
+
+"Raiment that I left at a certain place and must have. Eight
+silken smocks embroidered with gold, eight precious brooches of
+beaten gold, three diadems of pure gold."
+
+"At this hour," said the patient king, "the bed is better than
+the road."
+
+"Let it be so," said she.
+
+"And moreover," he continued, "a Sunday journey brings bad luck."
+
+"Let the luck come that will come," she answered.
+
+"To keep a cat from cream or a woman from her gear is not work
+for a king," said the monarch severely.
+
+The Ard-Ri' could look on all things with composure, and regard
+all beings with a tranquil eye; but it should be known that there
+was one deed entirely hateful to him, and he would punish its
+commission with the very last rigour--this was, a transgression
+of the Sunday. During six days of the week all that could happen
+might happen, so far as Dermod was concerned, but on the seventh
+day nothing should happen at all if the High King could restrain
+it. Had it been possible he would have tethered the birds to
+their own green branches on that day, and forbidden the clouds to
+pack the upper world with stir and colour. These the king
+permitted, with a tight lip, perhaps, but all else that came
+under his hand felt his control.
+
+It was hls custom when he arose on the morn of Sunday to climb to
+the most elevated point of Tara, and gaze thence on every side,
+so that he might see if any fairies or people of the Shi' were
+disporting themselves in his lordship; for he absolutely
+prohibited the usage of the earth to these beings on the Sunday,
+and woe's worth was it for the sweet being he discovered breaking
+his law.
+
+We do not know what ill he could do to the fairies, but during
+Dermod's reign the world said its prayers on Sunday and the Shi'
+folk stayed in their hills.
+
+It may be imagined, therefore, with what wrath he saw his wife's
+preparations for her journey, but, although a king can do
+everything, what can a husband do . . .? He rearranged himself
+for slumber.
+
+"I am no party to this untimely journey," he said angrily.
+
+"Let it be so," said Becfola.
+
+She left the palace with one maid, and as she crossed the doorway
+something happened to her, but by what means it happened would be
+hard to tell; for in the one pace she passed out of the palace
+and out of the world, and the second step she trod was in Faery,
+but she did not know this.
+
+Her intention was to go to Cluain da chaillech to meet Crimthann,
+but when she left the palace she did not remember Crimthann any
+more.
+
+To her eye and to the eye of her maid the world was as it always
+had been, and the landmarks they knew were about them. But the
+object for which they were travelling was different, although
+unknown, and the people they passed on the roads were unknown,
+and were yet people that they knew.
+
+They set out southwards from Tara into the Duffry of Leinster,
+and after some time they came into wild country and went astray.
+At last Becfola halted, saying:
+
+"I do not know where we are."
+
+The maid replied that she also did not know.
+
+"Yet," said Becfola, "if we continue to walk straight on we shall
+arrive somewhere."
+
+They went on, and the maid watered the road with her tears.
+
+Night drew on them; a grey chill, a grey silence, and they were
+enveloped in that chill and silence; and they began to go in
+expectation and terror, for they both knew and did not know that
+which they were bound for.
+
+As they toiled desolately up the rustling and whispering side of
+a low hill the maid chanced to look back, and when she looked
+back she screamed and pointed, and clung to Becfola's arm.
+Becfola followed the pointing finger, and saw below a large black
+mass that moved jerkily forward.
+
+"Wolves!" cried the maid. "Run to the trees yonder," her mistress
+ordered. "We will climb them and sit among the branches."
+
+They ran then, the maid moaning and lamenting all the while.
+
+"I cannot climb a tree," she sobbed, "I shall be eaten by the
+wolves."
+
+And that was true.
+
+But her mistress climbed a tree, and drew by a hand's breadth
+from the rap and snap and slaver of those steel jaws. Then,
+sitting on a branch, she looked with angry woe at the straining
+and snarling horde below, seeing many a white fang in those
+grinning jowls, and the smouldering, red blink of those leaping
+and prowling eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+But after some time the moon arose and the wolves went away, for
+their leader, a sagacious and crafty chief, declared that as long
+as they remained where they were, the lady would remain where she
+was; and so, with a hearty curse on trees, the troop departed.
+Becfola had pains in her legs from the way she had wrapped them
+about the branch, but there was no part of her that did not ache,
+for a lady does not sit with any ease upon a tree.
+
+For some time she did not care to come down from the branch. 
+"Those wolves may return," she said, "for their chief is crafty
+and sagacious, and it is certain, from the look I caught in his
+eye as he departed, that he would rather taste of me than cat any
+woman he has met."
+
+She looked carefully in every direction to see if ane might
+discover them in hiding; she looked closely and lingeringly at
+the shadows under distant trees to see if these shadows moved;
+and she listened on every wind to try if she could distinguish a
+yap or a yawn or a sneeze. But she saw or heard nothing; and
+little by little tranquillity crept into her mind, and she began
+to consider that a danger which is past is a danger that may be
+neglected.
+
+Yet ere she descended she looked again on the world of jet and
+silver that dozed about her, and she spied a red glimmer among
+distant trees.
+
+"There is no danger where there is light," she said, and she
+thereupon came from the tree and ran in the direction that she
+had noted.
+
+In a spot between three great oaks she came upon a man who was
+roasting a wild boar over a fire. She saluted this youth and sat
+beside him. But after the first glance and greeting he did not
+look at her again, nor did he speak.
+
+When the boar was cooked he ate of it and she had her share. Then
+he arose from the fire and walked away among the trees. Becfola
+followed, feeling ruefully that something new to her experience
+had arrived; "for," she thought, "it is usual that young men
+should not speak to me now that I am the mate of a king, but it
+is very unusual that young men should not look at me."
+
+But if the young man did not look at her she looked well at him,
+and what she saw pleased her so much that she had no time for
+further cogitation. For if Crimthann had been beautiful, this
+youth was ten times more beautiful. The curls on Crimthann's head
+had been indeed as a benediction to the queen's eye, so that she
+had eaten the better and slept the sounder for seeing him. But
+the sight of this youth left her without the desire to eat, and,
+as for sleep, she dreaded it, for if she closed an eye she would
+be robbed of the one delight in time, which was to look at this
+young man, and not to cease looking at him while her eye could
+peer or her head could remain upright.
+
+They came to an inlet of the sea all sweet and calm under the
+round, silver-flooding moon, and the young man, with Becfola
+treading on his heel, stepped into a boat and rowed to a
+high-jutting, pleasant island. There they went inland towards a
+vast palace, in which there was no person but themselves alone,
+and there the young man went to sleep, while Becfola sat staring
+at him until the unavoidable peace pressed down her eyelids and
+she too slumbered.
+
+She was awakened in the morning by a great shout.
+
+"Come out, Flann, come out, my heart!"
+
+The young man leaped from his couch, girded on his harness, and
+strode out. Three young men met him, each in battle harness, and
+these four advanced to meet four other men who awaited them at a
+little distance on the lawn. Then these two sets of four fought
+togethor with every warlike courtesy but with every warlike
+severity, and at the end of that combat there was but one man
+standing, and the other seven lay tossed in death.
+
+Becfola spoke to the youth.
+
+"Your combat has indeed been gallant," she said.
+
+"Alas," he replied, "if it has been a gallant deed it has not
+been a good one, for my three brothers are dead and my four
+nephews are dead."
+
+"Ah me!" cried Becfola, "why did you fight that fight?"
+
+"For the lordship of this island, the Isle of Fedach, son of
+Dali."
+
+But, although Becfola was moved and horrified by this battle, it
+was in another direction that her interest lay; therefore she
+soon asked the question which lay next her heart:
+
+"Why would you not speak to me or look at me?"
+
+"Until I have won the kingship of this land from all claimants, I
+am no match for the mate of the High King of Ireland," he
+replied.
+
+And that reply was llke balm to the heart of Becfola.
+
+"What shall I do?" she inquired radiantly. "Return to your home,"
+he counselled. "I will escort you there with your maid, for she
+is not really dead, and when I have won my lordship I will go
+seek you in Tara."
+
+"You will surely come," she insisted.
+
+"By my hand," quoth he, "I will come."
+
+These three returned then, and at the end of a day and night they
+saw far off the mighty roofs of Tara massed in the morning haze.
+The young man left them, and with many a backward look and with
+dragging, reluctant feet, Becfola crossed the threshold of the
+palace, wondering what she should say to Dermod and how she could
+account for an absence of three days' duration.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IT was so early that not even a bird was yet awake, and the dull
+grey light that came from the atmosphere enlarged and made
+indistinct all that one looked at, and swathed all things in a
+cold and livid gloom.
+
+As she trod cautiously through dim corridors Becfola was glad
+that, saving the guards, no creature was astir, and that for some
+time yet she need account to no person for her movements. She was
+glad also of a respite which would enable her to settle into her
+home and draw about her the composure which women feel when they
+are surrounded by the walls of their houses, and can see about
+them the possessions which, by the fact of ownership, have become
+almost a part of their personality. Sundered from her belongings,
+no woman is tranquil, her heart is not truly at ease, however her
+mind may function, so that under the broad sky or in the house of
+another she is not the competent, precise individual which she
+becomes when she sees again her household in order and her
+domestic requirements at her hand.
+
+Becfola pushed the door of the king's sleeping chamber and
+entered noiselessly. Then she sat quietly in a seat gazing on the
+recumbent monarch, and prepared to consider how she should
+advance to him when he awakened, and with what information she
+might stay his inquiries or reproaches.
+
+"I will reproach him," she thought. "I will call him a bad
+husband and astonish him, and he will forget everything but his
+own alarm and indignation."
+
+But at that moment the king lifted his head from the pillow and
+looked kindly at her. Her heart gave a great throb, and she
+prepared to speak at once and in great volume before he could
+formulate any question. But the king spoke first, and what he
+said so astonished her that the explanation and reproach with
+which her tongue was thrilling fled from it at a stroke, and she
+could only sit staring and bewildered and tongue-tied.
+
+"Well, my dear heart," said the king, "have you decided not to
+keep that engagement?"
+
+"I--I-- !" Becfola stammered.
+
+"It is truly not an hour for engagements," Dermod insisted, "for
+not a bird of the birds has left his tree; and," he continued
+maliciously, "the light is such that you could not see an
+engagement even if you met one."
+
+"I," Becfola gasped. "I---!"
+
+"A Sunday journey," he went on, "is a notorious bad journey. No
+good can come from it. You can get your smocks and diadems
+to-morrow. But at this hour a wise person leaves engagements to
+the bats and the staring owls and the round-eyed creatures that
+prowl and sniff in the dark. Come back to the warm bed, sweet
+woman, and set on your journey in the morning."
+
+Such a load of apprehension was lifted from Becfola's heart that
+she instantly did as she had been commanded, and such a
+bewilderment had yet possession of her faculties that she could
+not think or utter a word on any subject.
+
+Yet the thought did come into her head as she stretched in the
+warm gloom that Crimthann the son of Ae must be now attending her
+at Cluain da chaillech, and she thought of that young man as of
+something wonderful and very ridiculous, and the fact that he was
+waiting for her troubled her no more than if a sheep had been
+waiting for her or a roadside bush.
+
+She fell asleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+In the morning as they sat at breakfast four clerics were
+announced, and when they entered the king looked on them with
+stern disapproval.
+
+"What is the meaning of this journey on Sunday?" he demanded.
+
+A lank-jawed, thin-browed brother, with uneasy, intertwining
+fingers, and a deep-set, venomous eye, was the spokesman of those
+four.
+
+"Indeed," he said, and the fingers of his right hand strangled
+and did to death the fingers of his left hand, "indeed, we have
+transgressed by order."
+
+"Explain that."
+
+"We have been sent to you hurriedly by our master, Molasius of
+Devenish."
+
+"A pious, a saintly man," the king interrupted, "and one who does
+not countenance transgressions of the Sunday."
+
+"We were ordered to tell you as follows," said the grim cleric,
+and he buried the fingers of his right hand in his left fist, so
+that one could not hope to see them resurrected again. "It was
+the duty of one of the Brothers of Devenish," he continued, "to
+turn out the cattle this morning before the dawn of day, and that
+Brother, while in his duty, saw eight comely young men who fought
+together."
+
+"On the morning of Sunday," Dermod exploded.
+
+The cleric nodded with savage emphasis.
+
+"On the morning of this self-same and instant sacred day."
+
+"Tell on," said the king wrathfully.
+
+But terror gripped with sudden fingers at Becfola's heart.
+
+"Do not tell horrid stories on the Sunday," she pleaded. "No good
+can come to any one from such a tale."
+
+"Nay, this must be told, sweet lady," said the king. But the
+cleric stared at her glumly, forbiddingly, and resumed his story
+at a gesture.
+
+"Of these eight men, seven were killed."
+
+"They are in hell," the king said gloomily.
+
+"In hell they are," the cleric replied with enthusiasm.
+
+"And the one that was not killed?"
+
+"He is alive," that cleric responded.
+
+"He would be," the monarch assented. "Tell your tale."
+
+"Molasius had those seven miscreants buried, and he took from
+their unhallowed necks and from their lewd arms and from their
+unblessed weapons the load of two men in gold and silver
+treasure."
+
+"Two men's load!" said Dermod thoughtfully.
+
+"That much," said the lean cleric. "No more, no less. And he has
+sent us to find out what part of that hellish treasure belongs to
+the Brothers of Devenish and how much is the property of the
+king."
+
+Becfola again broke in, speaking graciously, regally, hastily:
+"Let those Brothers have the entire of the treasure, for it is
+Sunday treasure, and as such it will bring no luck to any one."
+
+The cleric again looked at her coldly, with a harsh-lidded,
+small-set, grey-eyed glare, and waited for the king's reply.
+
+Dermod pondered, shaking his head as to an argument on his left
+side, and then nodding it again as to an argument on his right.
+
+"It shall be done as this sweet queen advises. Let a reliquary be
+formed with cunning workmanship of that gold and silver, dated
+with my date and signed with my name, to be in memory of my
+grandmother who gave birth to a lamb, to a salmon, and then to my
+father, the Ard-Ri'. And, as to the treasure that remains over, a
+pastoral staff may be beaten from it in honour of Molasius, the
+pious man."
+
+"The story is not ended," said that glum, spike-chinned cleric.
+
+The king moved with jovial impatience.
+
+"If you continue it," he said, "it will surely come to an end
+some time. A stone on a stone makes a house, dear heart, and a
+word on a word tells a tale."
+
+The cleric wrapped himself into himself, and became lean and
+menacing. He whispered: "Besides the young man, named Flann, who
+was not slain, there was another person present at the scene and
+the combat and the transgression of Sunday."
+
+"Who was that person?" said the alarmed monarch.
+
+The cleric spiked forward his chin, and then butted forward his
+brow.
+
+"It was the wife of the king," he shouted. "It was the woman
+called Becfola. It was that woman," he roared, and he extended a
+lean, inflexible, unending first finger at the queen.
+
+"Dog!" the king stammered, starting up.
+
+"If that be in truth a woman," the cleric screamed.
+
+"What do you mean?" the king demanded in wrath and terror.
+
+"Either she is a woman of this world to he punished, or she is a
+woman of the Shi' to be banished, but this holy morning she was
+in the Shi', and her arms were about the neck of Flann."
+
+The king sank back in his chair stupefied, gazing from one to the
+other, and then turned an unseeing, fear-dimmed eye towards
+Becfola.
+
+"Is this true, my pulse?" he murmured.
+
+"It is true," Becfola replied, and she became suddenly to the
+king's eye a whiteness and a stare. He pointed to the door.
+
+"Go to your engagement," he stammered. "Go to that Flann."
+
+"He is waiting for me," said Becfola with proud shame, "and the
+thought that he should wait wrings my heart."
+
+She went out from the palace then. She went away from Tara: and
+in all Ireland and in the world of living men she was not seen
+again, and she was never heard of again.
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE BRAWL AT ALLEN
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"I think," said Cairell Whiteskin, "that although judgement was
+given against Fionn, it was Fionn had the rights of it."
+
+"He had eleven hundred killed," said Cona'n amiably, "and you may
+call that the rights of it if you like."
+
+"All the same-- " Cairell began argumentatively.
+
+"And it was you that commenced it," Cona'n continued.
+
+"Ho! Ho!" Cairell cried. "Why, you are as much to blame as I am."
+
+"No," said Cona'n, "for you hit me first."
+
+"And if we had not been separated-- "the other growled.
+
+"Separated!" said Cona'n, with a grin that made his beard poke
+all around his face.
+
+"Yes, separated. If they had not come between us I still
+think-- "
+
+"Don't think out loud, dear heart, for you and I are at peace by
+law."
+
+"That is true," said Cairell, "and a man must stick by a
+judgement. Come with me, my dear, and let us see how the
+youngsters are shaping in the school. One of them has rather a
+way with him as a swordsman."
+
+"No youngster is any good with a sword," Conan replied.
+
+"You are right there," said Cairell. "It takes a good ripe man
+for that weapon."
+
+"Boys are good enough with slings," Confro continued, "but except
+for eating their fill and running away from a fight, you can't
+count on boys."
+
+The two bulky men turned towards the school of the Fianna.
+
+It happened that Fionn mac Uail had summoned the gentlemen of the
+Fianna and their wives to a banquet. Everybody came, for a
+banquet given by Fionn was not a thing to be missed. There was
+Goll mor mac Morna and his people; Fionn's son Oisi'n and his
+grandson Oscar. There was Dermod of the Gay Face, Caelte mac
+Ronan--but indeed there were too many to be told of, for all the
+pillars of war and battle-torches of the Gael were there.
+
+The banquet began.
+
+Fionn sat in the Chief Captain's seat in the middle of the fort;
+and facing him, in the place of honour, he placed the mirthful
+Goll mac Morna; and from these, ranging on either side, the
+nobles of the Fianna took each the place that fitted his degree
+and patrimony.
+
+After good eating, good conversation; and after good
+conversation, sleep--that is the order of a banquet: so when each
+person had been served with food to the limit of desire the
+butlers carried in shining, and jewelled drinking-horns, each
+having its tide of smooth, heady liquor. Then the young heroes
+grew merry and audacious, the ladies became gentle and kind, and
+the poets became wonders of knowledge and prophecy. Every eye
+beamed in that assembly, and on Fionn every eye was turned
+continually in the hope of a glance from the great, mild hero.
+
+Goll spoke to him across the table enthusiastically.
+
+"There is nothing wanting to this banquet, O Chief," said he.
+
+And Fionn smiled back into that eye which seemed a well of
+tenderness and friendship.
+
+"Nothing is wanting," he replied, "but a well-shaped poem." A
+crier stood up then, holding in one hand a length of coarse iron
+links and in the other a chain of delicate, antique silver. He
+shook the iron chain so that the servants and followers of the
+household should be silent, and he shook the silver one so that
+the nobles and poets should hearken also.
+
+Fergus, called True-Lips, the poet of the Fianna-Finn, then sang
+of Fionn and his ancestors and their deeds. When he had finished
+Fionn and Oisi'n and Oscar and mac Lugac of the Terrible Hand
+gave him rare and costly presents, so that every person wondered
+at their munificence, and even the poet, accustomed to the
+liberality of kings and princes, was astonished at his gifts.
+
+Fergus then turned to the side of Goll mac Morna, and he sang of
+the Forts, the Destructions, the Raids, and the Wooings of
+clann-Morna; and as the poems succeeded each other, Goll grew
+more and more jovial and contented. When the songs were finished
+Goll turned in his seat.
+
+"Where is my runner?" he cried.
+
+He had a woman runner, a marvel for swiftness and trust. She
+stepped forward.
+
+"I am here, royal captain."
+
+"Have you collected my tribute from Denmark?"
+
+"It is here."
+
+And, with help, she laid beside him the load of three men of
+doubly refined gold. Out of this treasure, and from the treasure
+of rings and bracelets and torques that were with him, Goll mac
+Morna paid Fergus for his songs, and, much as Fionn had given,
+Goll gave twice as much.
+
+But, as the banquet proceeded, Goll gave, whether it was to
+harpers or prophets or jugglers, more than any one else gave, so
+that Fionn became displeased, and as the banquet proceeded he
+grew stern and silent.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+[This version of the death of Uail is not correct. Also Cnocha is
+not in Lochlann but in Ireland.]
+
+
+The wonderful gift-giving of Goll continued, and an uneasiness
+and embarrassment began to creep through the great banqueting
+hall.
+
+Gentlemen looked at each other questioningly, and then spoke
+again on indifferent matters, but only with half of their minds.
+The singers, the harpers, and jugglers submitted to that
+constraint, so that every person felt awkward and no one knew
+what should be done or what would happen, and from that doubt
+dulness came, with silence following on its heels.
+
+There is nothing more terrible than silence. Shame grows in that
+blank, or anger gathers there, and we must choose which of these
+is to be our master.
+
+That choice lay before Fionn, who never knew shame.
+
+"Goll," said he, "how long have you been taking tribute from the
+people of Lochlann?"
+
+"A long time now," said Goll.
+
+And he looked into an eye that was stern and unfriendly.
+
+"I thought that my rent was the only one those people had to
+pay," Fionn continued.
+
+"Your memory is at fault," said Goll.
+
+"Let it be so," said Fionn. "How did your tribute arise?"
+
+"Long ago, Fionn, in the days when your father forced war on me."
+
+"Ah!" said Fionn.
+
+"When he raised the High King against me and banished me from
+Ireland."
+
+"Continue," said Fionn, and he held Goll's eye under the great
+beetle of his brow.
+
+"I went into Britain," said Goll, "and your father followed me
+there. I went into White Lochlann (Norway) and took it. Your
+father banished me thence also."
+
+"I know it," said Fionn.
+
+"I went into the land of the Saxons and your father chased me out
+of that land. And then, in Lochlann, at the battle of Cnocha your
+father and I met at last, foot to foot, eye to eye, and there,
+Fionn!"
+
+"And there, Goll?"
+
+"And there I killed your father."
+
+Fionn sat rigid and unmoving, his face stony and terrible as the
+face of a monument carved on the side of a cliff.
+
+"Tell all your tale," said he.
+
+"At that battle I beat the Lochlannachs. I penetrated to the hold
+of the Danish king, and I took out of his dungeon the men who had
+lain there for a year and were awaiting their deaths. I liberated
+fifteen prisoners, and one of them was Fionn."
+
+"It is true," said Fionn.
+
+Goll's anger fled at the word.
+
+"Do not be jealous of me, dear heart, for if I had twice the
+tribute I would give it to you and to Ireland."
+
+But at the word jealous the Chief's anger revived.
+
+"It is an impertinence," he cried, "to boast at this table that
+you killed my father."
+
+"By my hand," Goll replied, "if Fionn were to treat me as his
+father did I would treat Fionn the way I treated Fionn's father."
+
+Fionn closed his eyes and beat away the anger that was rising
+within him. He smiled grimly.
+
+"If I were so minded, I would not let that last word go with you,
+Goll, for I have here an hundred men for every man of yours."
+
+Goll laughed aloud.
+
+"So had your father," he said.
+
+Fionn's brother, Cairell Whiteskin, broke into the conversation
+with a harsh laugh.
+
+"How many of Fionn's household has the wonderful Goll put down?"
+he cried.
+
+But Goll's brother, bald Cona'n the Swearer, turned a savage eye
+on Cairell.
+
+"By my weapons," said he, "there were never less than an
+hundred-and-one men with Goll, and the least of them could have
+put you down easily enough."
+
+"Ah?' cried Cairell. "And are you one of the hundred-and-one, old
+scaldhead?"
+
+"One indeed, my thick-witted, thin-livered Cairell, and I
+undertake to prove on your hide that what my brother said was
+true and that what your brother said was false."
+
+"You undertake that," growled Cairell, and on the word he loosed
+a furious buffet at Con'an, which Cona'n returned with a fist so
+big that every part of Cairell's face was hit with the one blow.
+The two then fell into grips, and went lurching and punching
+about the great hall. Two of Oscar's sons could not bear to see
+their uncle being worsted, and they leaped at Cona'n, and two of
+Goll's sons rushed at them. Then Oscar himself leaped up, and
+with a hammer in either hand he went battering into the melee.
+
+"I thank the gods," said Cona'n, "for the chance of killing
+yourself, Oscar."
+
+These two encountered then, and Oscar knocked a groan of distress
+out of Cona'n. He looked appealingly at his brother Art og mac
+Morna, and that powerful champion flew to his aid and wounded
+Oscar. Oisi'n, Oscar's father, could not abide that; he dashed in
+and quelled Art Og. Then Rough Hair mac Morna wounded Oisin and
+was himself tumbled by mac Lugac, who was again wounded by Gara
+mac Morna.
+
+The banqueting hall was in tumult. In every part of it men were
+giving and taking blows. Here two champions with their arms round
+each other's necks were stamping round and round in a slow, sad
+dance. Here were two crouching against each other, looking for a
+soft place to hit. Yonder a big-shouldered person lifted another
+man in his arms and threw him at a small group that charged him.
+In a retired corner a gentleman stood in a thoughtful attitude
+while he tried to pull out a tooth that had been knocked loose.
+
+"You can't fight," he mumbled, "with a loose shoe or a loose
+tooth."
+
+"Hurry up with that tooth," the man in front of him grum-bled,
+"for I want to knock out another one."
+
+Pressed against the wall was a bevy of ladies, some of whom were
+screaming and some laughing and all of whom were calling on the
+men to go back to their seats.
+
+Only two people remained seated in the hall.
+
+Goll sat twisted round watching the progress of the brawl
+critically, and Fionn, sitting opposite, watched Goll.
+
+Just then Faelan, another of Fionn's sons, stormed the hall with
+three hundred of the Fianna, and by this force all Goll's people
+were put out of doors, where the fight continued.
+
+Goll looked then calmly on Fionn.
+
+"Your people are using their weapons," said he.
+
+"Are they?" Fionn inquired as calmly, and as though addressing
+the air.
+
+"In the matter of weapons--!" said Goll.
+
+And the hard-fighting pillar of battle turned to where his arms
+hung on the wall behind him. He took his solid, well-balanced
+sword in his fist, over his left arm his ample, bossy shield,
+and, with another side-look at Fionn, he left the hall and
+charged irresistibly into the fray.
+
+Fionn then arose. He took his accoutrements from the wall also
+and strode out. Then he raised the triumphant Fenian shout and
+went into the combat.
+
+That was no place for a sick person to be. It was not the corner
+which a slender-fingered woman would choose to do up her hair;
+nor was it the spot an ancient man would select to think quietly
+in, for the tumult of sword on sword, of axe on shield, the roar
+of the contending parties, the crying of wounded men, and the
+screaming of frightened women destroyed peace, and over all was
+the rallying cry of Goll mac Morna and the great shout of Fionn.
+
+Then Fergus True-Lips gathered about him all the poets of the
+Fianna, and they surrounded the combatants. They began to chant
+and intone long, heavy rhymes and incantations, until the
+rhythmic beating of their voices covered even the noise of war,
+so that the men stopped hacking and hewing, and let their weapons
+drop from their hands. These were picked up by the poets and a
+reconciliation was effected between the two parties.
+
+But Fionn affirmed that he would make no peace with clann-Morna
+until the matter had been judged by the king, Cormac mac Art, and
+by his daughter Ailve, and by his son Cairbre of Ana Life' and by
+Fintan the chief poet. Goll agreed that the affair should be
+submitted to that court, and a day was appointed, a fortnight
+from that date, to meet at Tara of the Kings for judgement. Then
+the hall was cleansed and the banquet recommenced.
+
+Of Fionn's people eleven hundred of men and women were dead,
+while of Goll's people eleven men and fifty women were dead. But
+it was through fright the women died, for not one of them had a
+wound or a bruise or a mark.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+AT the end of a fortnight Fionn and Goll and the chief men of the
+Fianna attended at Tara. The king, his son and daughter, with
+Flahri, Feehal, and Fintan mac Bocna sat in the place of
+judgement, and Cormac called on the witnesses for evidence.
+
+Fionn stood up, but the moment he did so Goll mac Morna arose
+also.
+
+"I object to Fionn giving evidence," said he.
+
+"Why so?" the king asked.
+
+"Because in any matter that concerned me Fionn would turn a lie
+into truth and the truth into a lie."
+
+"I do not think that is so," said Fionn.
+
+"You see, he has already commenced it," cried Goll.
+
+"If you object to the testimony of the chief person present, in
+what way are we to obtain evidence?" the king demanded.
+
+"I," said Goll, "will trust to the evidence of Fergus True-Lips.
+He is Fionn's poet, and will tell no lie against his master; he
+is a poet, and will tell no lie against any one."
+
+"I agree to that," said Fionn.
+
+"I require, nevertheless," Goll continued, "that Fergus should
+swear before the Court, by his gods, that he will do justice
+between us."
+
+Fergus was accordingly sworn, and gave his evidence. He stated
+that Fionn's brother Cairell struck Cona'n mac Morna, that Goll's
+two sons came to help Cona'n, that Oscar went to help Cairell,
+and with that Fionn's people and the clann-Morna rose at each
+other, and what had started as a brawl ended as a battle with
+eleven hundred of Fionn's people and sixty-one of Goll's people
+dead.
+
+"I marvel," said the king in a discontented voice, "that,
+considering the numbers against them, the losses of clann-Morna
+should be so small."
+
+Fionn blushed when he heard that.
+
+Fergus replied:
+
+"Goll mac Morna covered his people with his shield. All that
+slaughter was done by him."
+
+"The press was too great," Fionn grumbled. "I could not get at
+him in time or---"
+
+"Or what?" said Goll with a great laugh.
+
+Fionn shook his head sternly and said no more.
+
+"What is your judgement?" Cormac demanded of his fellow-judges.
+
+Flahri pronounced first.
+
+"I give damages to clann-Morna."
+
+"Why?" said Cormac.
+
+"Because they were attacked first."
+
+Cormac looked at him stubbornly.
+
+"I do not agree with your judgement," he said.
+
+"What is there faulty in it?" Flahri asked.
+
+"You have not considered," the king replied, "that a soldier owes
+obedience to his captain, and that, given the time and the place,
+Fionn was the captain and Goll was only a simple soldier."
+
+Flahri considered the king's suggestion.
+
+"That," he said, "would hold good for the white-striking or blows
+of fists, but not for the red-striking or sword-strokes."
+
+"What is your judgement?" the king asked Feehal. Feehal then
+pronounced:
+
+"I hold that clann-Morna were attacked first, and that they are
+to be free from payment of damages."
+
+"And as regards Fionn?" said Cormac.
+
+"I hold that on account of his great losses Fionn is to be exempt
+from payment of damages, and that his losses are to be considered
+as damages."
+
+"I agree in that judgement," said Fintan.
+
+The king and his son also agreed, and the decision was imparted
+to the Fianna.
+
+"One must abide by a judgement," said Fionn.
+
+"Do you abide by it?" Goll demanded.
+
+"I do," said Fionn.
+
+Goll and Fionn then kissed each other, and thus peace was made.
+For, notwithstanding the endless bicker of these two heroes, they
+loved each other well.
+
+
+Yet, now that the years have gone by, I think the fault lay with
+Goll and not with Fionn, and that the judgement given did not
+consider everything. For at that table Goll should not have given
+greater gifts than his master and host did. And it was not right
+of Goll to take by force the position of greatest gift-giver of
+the Fianna, for there was never in the world one greater at
+giving gifts, or giving battle, or making poems than Fionn was.
+
+That side of the affair was not brought before the Court. But
+perhaps it was suppressed out of delicacy for Fionn, for if Goll
+could be accused of ostentation, Fionn was open to the uglier
+charge of jealousy. It was, nevertheless, Goll's forward and
+impish temper which commenced the brawl, and the verdict of time
+must be to exonerate Fionn and to let the blame go where it is
+merited.
+
+There is, however, this to be added and remembered, that whenever
+Fionn was in a tight corner it was Goll that plucked him out of
+it; and, later on, when time did his worst on them all and the
+Fianna were sent to hell as unbelievers, it was Goll mac Morna
+who assaulted hell, with a chain in his great fist and three iron
+balls swinging from it, and it was he who attacked the hosts of
+great devils and brought Fionn and the Fianna-Finn out with him.
+
+
+
+
+THE CARL OF THE DRAB COAT
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+One day something happened to Fionn, the son of Uail; that is, he
+departed from the world of men, and was set wandering in great
+distress of mind through Faery. He had days and nights there and
+adventures there, and was able to bring back the memory of these.
+
+That, by itself, is wonderful, for there are few people who
+remember that they have been to Faery or aught of all that
+happened to them in that state.
+
+In truth we do not go to Faery, we become Faery, and in the
+beating of a pulse we may live for a year or a thousand years.
+But when we return the memory is quickly clouded, and we seem to
+have had a dream or seen a vision, although we have verily been
+in Faery.
+
+It was wonderful, then, that Fionn should have remembered all
+that happened to him in that wide-spun moment, but in this tale
+there is yet more to marvel at; for not only did Fionn go to
+Faery, but the great army which he had  marshalled to Ben Edair
+[The Hill of Howth] were translated also, and neither he nor they
+were aware that they had departed from the world until they came
+back to it.
+
+Fourteen battles, seven of the reserve and seven of the regular
+Fianna, had been taken by the Chief on a great march and
+manoeuvre. When they reached Ben Edair it was decided to pitch
+camp so that the troops might rest in view of the warlike plan
+which Fionn had imagined for the morrow. The camp was chosen, and
+each squadron and company of the host were lodged into an
+appropriate place, so there was no overcrowding and no halt or
+interruption of the march; for where a company halted that was
+its place of rest, and in that place it hindered no other
+company, and was at its own ease.
+
+When this was accomplished the leaders of battalions gathered on
+a level, grassy plateau overlooking the sea, where a consultation
+began as to the next day's manoeuvres, and during this discussion
+they looked often on the wide water that lay wrinkling and
+twinkling below them.
+
+A roomy ship under great press of sall was bearing on Ben Edair
+from the east.
+
+Now and again, in a lull of the discussion, a champion would look
+and remark on the hurrying vessel; and it may have been during
+one of these moments that the adventure happened to Fionn and the
+Fianna.
+
+"I wonder where that ship comes from?" said Cona'n idly.
+
+But no person could surmise anything about it beyond that it was
+a vessel well equipped for war.
+
+As the ship drew by the shore the watchers observed a tall man
+swing from the side by means of his spear shafts, and in a little
+while this gentleman was announced to Fionn, and was brought into
+his presence.
+
+A sturdy, bellicose, forthright personage he was indeed. He was
+equipped in a wonderful solidity of armour, with a hard, carven
+helmet on his head, a splendid red-bossed shield swinging on his
+shoulder, a wide-grooved, straight sword clashing along his
+thigh. On his shoulders under the shield he carried a splendid
+scarlet mantle; over his breast was a great brooch of burnt gold,
+and in his fist he gripped a pair of thick-shafted, unburnished
+spears.
+
+Fionn and the champions looked on this gentleman, and they
+admired exceedingly his bearing and equipment.
+
+"Of what blood are you, young gentleman?" Fionn demanded, "and
+from which of the four corners of the world do you come?"
+
+"My name is Cael of the Iron," the stranger answered, "and I am
+son to the King of Thessaly."
+
+"What errand has brought you here?"
+
+"I do not go on errands," the man replied sternly, "but on the
+affairs that please me."
+
+"Be it so. What is the pleasing affair which brings you to this
+land?"
+
+"Since I left my own country I have not gone from a land or an
+island until it paid tribute to me and acknowledged my lordship."
+
+"And you have come to this realm "cried Fionn, doubting his ears.
+
+"For tribute and sovereignty," growled that other, and he struck
+the haft of his spear violently on the ground.
+
+"By my hand," said Cona'n, "we have never heard of a warrior,
+however great, but his peer was found in Ireland, and the funeral
+songs of all such have been chanted by the women of this land."
+
+"By my hand and word," said the harsh stranger, "your talk makes
+me think of a small boy or of an idiot."
+
+"Take heed, sir," said Fionn, "for the champions and great
+dragons of the Gael are standing by you, and around us there are
+fourteen battles of the Fianna of Ireland."
+
+"If all the Fianna who have died in the last seven years were
+added to all that are now here," the stranger asserted, "I would
+treat all of these and those grievously, and would curtail their
+limbs and their lives."
+
+"It is no small boast," Cona'n murmured, staring at him.
+
+"It is no boast at all," said Cael, "and, to show my quality and
+standing, I will propose a deed to you."
+
+"Give out your deed," Fionn commanded.
+
+"Thus," said Cael with cold savagery. "If you can find a man
+among your fourteen battalions who can outrun or outwrestle or
+outfight me, I will take myself off to my own country, and will
+trouble you no more."
+
+And so harshly did he speak, and with such a belligerent eye did
+he stare, that dismay began to seize on the champions, and even
+Fionn felt that his breath had halted.
+
+"It is spoken like a hero," he admitted after a moment, "and if
+you cannot be matched on those terms it will not be from a dearth
+of applicants."
+
+"In running alone," Fionn continued thoughtfully, "we have a
+notable champion, Caelte mac Rona'n."
+
+"This son of Rona'n will not long be notable," the stranger
+asserted.
+
+"He can outstrip the red deer," said Cona'n.
+
+"He can outrun the wind," cried Fionn.
+
+"He will not be asked to outrun the red deer or the wind," the
+stranger sneered. "He will be asked to outrun me," he thundered.
+"Produce this runner, and we shall discover if he keeps as great
+heart in his feet as he has made you think."
+
+"He is not with us," Cona'n lamented.
+
+"These notable warriors are never with us when the call is made,"
+said the grim stranger.
+
+"By my hand," cried Fionn, "he shall be here in no great time,
+for I will fetch him myself."
+
+"Be it so," said Cael. "And during my absence," Fionn continued,
+"I leave this as a compact, that you make friends with the Fianna
+here present, and that you observe all the conditions and
+ceremonies of friendship."
+
+Cael agreed to that.
+
+"I will not hurt any of these people until you return," he said.
+
+Fionn then set out towards Tara of the Kings, for he thought
+Caelte mac Romin would surely be there; "and if he is not there,"
+said the champion to himself, "then I shall find him at Cesh
+Corran of the Fianna."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+He had not gone a great distance from Ben Edair when he came to
+an intricate, gloomy wood, where the trees grew so thickly and
+the undergrowth was such a sprout and tangle that one could
+scarcely pass through it. He remembered that a path had once been
+hacked through the wood, and he sought for this. It was a deeply
+scooped, hollow way, and it ran or wriggled through the entire
+length of the wood.
+
+Into this gloomy drain Fionn descended and made progress, but
+when he had penetrated deeply in the dank forest he heard a sound
+of thumping and squelching footsteps, and he saw coming towards
+him a horrible, evil-visaged being; a wild, monstrous,
+yellow-skinned, big-boned giant, dressed in nothing but an
+ill-made, mud-plastered, drab-coloured coat, which swaggled and
+clapped against the calves of his big bare legs. On his stamping
+feet there were great brogues of boots that were shaped like, but
+were bigger than, a boat, and each time he put a foot down it
+squashed and squirted a barrelful of mud from the sunk road.
+
+Fionn had never seen the like of this vast person, and he stood
+gazing on him, lost in a stare of astonishment.
+
+The great man saluted him.
+
+"All alone, Fionn?' he cried. "How does it happen that not one
+Fenian of the Fianna is at the side of his captain?" At this
+inquiry Fionn got back his wits.
+
+"That is too long a story and it is too intricate and pressing to
+be told, also I have no time to spare now."
+
+"Yet tell it now," the monstrous man insisted.
+
+Fionn, thus pressed, told of the coming of Cael of the Iron, of
+the challenge the latter had issued, and that he, Fionn, was off
+to Tara of the Kings to find Caelte mac Rona'n.
+
+"I know that foreigner well," the big man commented.
+
+"Is he the champion he makes himself out to be?" Fionn inquired.
+
+"He can do twice as much as he said he would do," the monster
+replied.
+
+"He won't outrun Caelte mac Rona'n," Fionn asserted. The big man
+jeered.
+
+"Say that he won't outrun a hedgehog, dear heart. This Cael will
+end the course by the time your Caelte begins to think of
+starting."
+
+"Then," said Fionn, "I no longer know where to turn, or how to
+protect the honour of Ireland."
+
+"I know how to do these things," the other man commented with a
+slow nod of the head.
+
+"If you do," Fionn pleaded, "tell it to me upon your honour."
+
+"I will do that," the man replied.
+
+"Do not look any further for the rusty-kneed, slow-trotting son
+of Rona'n," he continued, "but ask me to run your race, and, by
+this hand, I will be first at the post."
+
+At this the Chief began to laugh.
+
+"My good friend, you have work enough to carry the two tons of
+mud that are plastered on each of your coat-tails, to say nothing
+of your weighty boots."
+
+"By my hand," the man cried, "there is no person in Ireland but
+myself can win that race. I claim a chance."
+
+Fionn agreed then. "Be it so," said he. "And now, tell me your
+name?"
+
+"I am known as the Carl of the Drab Coat."
+
+"All names are names," Fionn responded, "and that also is a
+name."
+
+They returned then to Ben Edair.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+When they came among the host the men of Ireland gathered about
+the vast stranger; and there were some who hid their faces in
+their mantles so that they should not be seen to laugh, and there
+were some who rolled along the ground in merriment, and there
+were others who could only hold their mouths open and crook their
+knees and hang their arms and stare dumbfoundedly upon the
+stranger, as though they were utterly dazed.
+
+Cael of the Iron came also on the scene, and he examined the
+stranger with close and particular attention.
+
+"What in the name of the devil is this thing?" he asked of Fionn.
+
+"Dear heart," said Fionn, "this is the champion I am putting
+against you in the race."
+
+Cael of the Iron grew purple in the face, and he almost swallowed
+his tongue through wrath.
+
+"Until the end of eternity," he roared, "and until the very last
+moment of doom I will not move one foot in a race with this
+greasy, big-hoofed, ill-assembled resemblance of a beggarman."
+
+But at this the Carl burst into a roar of laughter, so that the
+eardrums of the warriors present almost burst inside of their
+heads.
+
+"Be reassured, my darling, I am no beggarman, and my quality is
+not more gross than is the blood of the most delicate prince in
+this assembly. You will not evade your challenge in that way, my
+love, and you shall run with me or you shall run to your ship
+with me behind you. What length of course do you propose, dear
+heart?"
+
+"I never run less than sixty miles," Cael replied sullenly.
+
+"It is a small run," said the Carl, "but it will do. From this
+place to the Hill of the Rushes, Slieve Luachra of Munster, is
+exactly sixty miles. Will that suit you?"
+
+"I don't care how it is done," Cael answered.
+
+"Then," said the Carl, "we may go off to Slieve Luachra now, and
+in the morning we can start our race there to here."
+
+"Let it be done that way," said Cael.
+
+These two set out then for Munster, and as the sun was setting
+they reached Slieve Luachra and prepared to spend the night
+there. 
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"Cael, my pulse," said the Carl, "we had better build a house or
+a hut to pass the night in."
+
+"I'Il build nothing," Cael replied, looking on the Carl with
+great disfavour.
+
+"No!"
+
+"I won't build house or hut for the sake of passing one night
+here, for I hope never to see this place again."
+
+"I'Il build a house myself," said the Carl, "and the man who does
+not help in the building can stay outside of the house."
+
+The Carl stumped to a near-by wood, and he never rested until he
+had felled and tied together twenty-four couples of big timber.
+He thrust these under one arm and under the other he tucked a
+bundle of rushes for his bed, and with that one load he rushed up
+a house, well thatched and snug, and with the timber that
+remained over he made a bonfire on the floor of the house.
+
+His companion sat at a distance regarding the work with rage and
+aversion.
+
+"Now Cael, my darling," said the Carl, "if you are a man help me
+to look for something to eat, for there is game here."
+
+"Help yourself," roared Cael, "for all that I want is not to be
+near you."
+
+"The tooth that does not help gets no helping," the other
+replied.
+
+In a short time the Carl returned with a wild boar which he had
+run down. He cooked the beast over his bonfire and ate one half
+of it, leaving the other half for his breakfast. Then be lay down
+on the rushes, and in two turns he fell asleep.
+
+But Cael lay out on the side of the hill, and if he went to sleep
+that night he slept fasting. It was he, however, who awakened the
+Carl in the morning.
+
+"Get up, beggarman, if you are going to run against me."
+
+The Carl rubbed his eyes.
+
+"I never get up until I have had my fill of sleep, and there is
+another hour of it due to me. But if you are in a hurry, my
+delight, you can start running now with a blessing. I will trot
+on your track when I waken up."
+
+Cael began to race then, and he was glad of the start, for his
+antagonist made so little account of him that he did not know
+what to expect when the Carl would begin to run.
+
+"Yet," said Cael to himself, "with an hour's start the beggarman
+will have to move his bones if he wants to catch on me," and he
+settled down to a good, pelting race. 
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+At the end of an hour the Carl awoke. He ate the second half of
+the boar, and he tied the unpicked bones in the tail of his coat.
+Then with a great rattling of the boar's bones he started.
+
+It is hard to tell how he ran or at what speed he ran, but he
+went forward in great two-legged jumps, and at times he moved in
+immense one-legged, mud-spattering hops, and at times again, with
+wide-stretched, far-flung, terrible-tramping, space-destroying
+legs he ran.
+
+He left the swallows behind as if they were asleep. He caught up
+on a red deer, jumped over it, and left it standing. The wind was
+always behind him, for he outran it every time; and he caught up
+in jumps and bounces on Cael of the Iron, although Cael was
+running well, with his fists up and his head back and his two
+legs flying in and out so vigorously that you could not see them
+because of that speedy movement.
+
+Trotting by the side of Cael, the Carl thrust a hand into the
+tail of his coat and pulled out a fistfull of red bones.
+
+"Here, my heart, is a meaty bone," said he, "for you fasted all
+night, poor friend, and if you pick a bit off the bone your
+stomach will get a rest."
+
+"Keep your filth, beggarman," the other replied, "for I would
+rather be hanged than gnaw on a bone that you have browsed."
+
+"Why don't you run, my pulse?" said the Carl earnestly; "why
+don't you try to win the race?"
+
+Cael then began to move his limbs as if they were the wings of a
+fly, or the fins of a little fish, or as if they were the six
+legs of a terrified spider.
+
+"I am running," he gasped.
+
+"But try and run like this," the Carl admonished, and he gave a
+wriggling bound and a sudden outstretching and scurrying of
+shanks, and he disappeared from Cael's sight in one wild spatter
+of big boots.
+
+Despair fell on Cael of the Iron, but he had a great heart.  "I
+will run until I burst," he shrieked, "and when I burst, may I
+burst to a great distance, and may I trip that beggar-man up with
+my burstings and make him break his leg."
+
+He settled then to a determined, savage, implacable trot. He
+caught up on the Carl at last, for the latter had stopped to eat
+blackberries from the bushes on the road, and when he drew nigh,
+Cael began to jeer and sneer angrily at the Carl.
+
+"Who lost the tails of his coat?" he roared.
+
+"Don't ask riddles of a man that's eating blackberries," the Carl
+rebuked him.
+
+"The dog without a tall and the coat without a tail," cried Cael.
+
+"I give it up," the Carl mumbled.
+
+"It's yourself, beggarman," jeered Cael.
+
+"I am myself," the Carl gurgled through a mouthful of
+blackberries, "and as I am myself, how can it be myself? That is
+a silly riddle," he burbled.
+
+"Look at your coat, tub of grease?'
+
+The Carl did so.
+
+"My faith," said he, "where are the two tails of my coat?"  "I
+could smell one of them and it wrapped around a little tree
+thirty miles back," said Cael, "and the other one was
+dishonouring a bush ten miles behind that."
+
+"It is bad luck to be separated from the tails of your own coat,"
+the Carl grumbled. "I'll have to go back for them. Wait here,
+beloved, and eat blackberries until I come back, and we'll both
+start fair."
+
+"Not half a second will I wait," Cael replied, and he began to
+run towards Ben Edair as a lover runs to his maiden or as a bee
+flies to his hive.
+
+"I haven't had half my share of blackberries either," the Carl
+lamented as he started to run backwards for his coat-tails.
+
+He ran determinedly on that backward journey, and as the path he
+had travelled was beaten out as if it had been trampled by an
+hundred bulls yoked neck to neck, he was able to find the two
+bushes and the two coat-tails. He sewed them on his coat.
+
+Then he sprang up, and he took to a fit and a vortex and an
+exasperation of running for which no description may be found.
+The thumping of his big boots grew as con-tinuous as the
+pattering of hailstones on a roof, and the wind of his passage
+blew trees down. The beasts that were ranging beside his path
+dropped dead from concussion, and the steam that snored from his
+nose blew birds into bits and made great lumps of cloud fall out
+of the sky.
+
+He again caught up on Cael, who was running with his head down
+and his toes up.
+
+"If you won't try to run, my treasure," said the Carl, "you will
+never get your tribute."
+
+And with that he incensed and exploded himself into an
+eye-blinding, continuous, waggle and complexity of boots that
+left Cael behind him in a flash.
+
+"I will run until I burst," sobbed Cael, and he screwed agitation
+and despair into his legs until he hummed and buzzed like a
+blue-bottle on a window.
+
+Five miles from Ben Edair the Carl stopped, for he had again come
+among blackberries.
+
+He ate of these until he was no more than a sack of juice, and
+when he heard the humming and buzzing of Cael of the Iron he
+mourned and lamented that he could not wait to eat his fill He
+took off his coat, stuffed it full of blackberries, swung it on
+his shoulders, and went bounding stoutly and nimbly for Ben
+Edair.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+It would be hard to tell of the terror that was in Fionn's breast
+and in the hearts of the Fianna while they attended the
+conclusion of that race.
+
+They discussed it unendingly, and at some moment of the day a man
+upbraided Fionn because he had not found Caelte the son of Rona'n
+as had been agreed on.
+
+"There is no one can run like Caelte," one man averred.
+
+"He covers the ground," said another.
+
+"He is light as a feather."
+
+"Swift as a stag." "Lunged like a bull."
+
+"Legged like a wolf."
+
+"He runs!"
+
+These things were said to Fionn, and Fionn said these things to
+himself.
+
+With every passing minute a drop of lead thumped down into every
+heart, and a pang of despair stabbed up to every brain.
+
+"Go," said Fionn to a hawk-eyed man, "go to the top of this hill
+and watch for the coming of the racers."
+
+And he sent lithe men with him so that they might run back in
+endless succession with the news.
+
+The messengers began to run through his tent at minute intervals
+calling "nothing," "nothing," "nothing," as they paused and
+darted away.
+
+And the words, "nothing, nothing, nothing," began to drowse into
+the brains of every person present.
+
+"What can we hope from that Carl?" a champion demanded savagely.
+
+"Nothing," cried a messenger who stood and sped.
+
+"A clump!" cried a champion.
+
+"A hog!" said another.
+
+"A flat-footed,"
+
+"Little-wlnded,"
+
+"Big-bellied,"
+
+"Lazy-boned,"
+
+"Pork!"
+
+"Did you think, Fionn, that a whale could swim on land, or what
+did you imagine that lump could do?"
+
+"Nothing," cried a messenger, and was sped as he spoke.
+
+Rage began to gnaw in Fionn's soul, and a red haze danced and
+flickered before his eyes. His hands began to twitch and a desire
+crept over him to seize on champions by the neck, and to shake
+and worry and rage among them like a wild dog raging among sheep.
+
+He looked on one, and yet he seemed to look on all at once.
+
+"Be silent," he growled. "Let each man be silent as a dead man."
+
+And he sat forward, seeing all, seeing none, with his mouth
+drooping open, and such a wildness and bristle lowering from that
+great glum brow that the champions shivered as though already in
+the chill of death, and were silent.
+
+He rose and stalked to the tent-door.
+
+"Where to, O Fionn?" said a champion humbly.
+
+"To the hill-top," said Fionn, and he stalked on.
+
+They followed him, whispering among themselves, keeping their
+eyes on the ground as they climbed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+"What do you see?" Fionn demanded of the watcher.
+
+"Nothing," that man replied.
+
+"Look again," said Fionn.
+
+The eagle-eyed man lifted a face, thin and sharp as though it had
+been carven on the wind, and he stared forward with an immobile
+intentness.
+
+"What do you see?" said Fionn.
+
+"Nothing," the man replied.
+
+"I will look myself," said Fionn, and his great brow bent forward
+and gloomed afar.
+
+The watcher stood beside, staring with his tense face and
+unwinking, lidless eye.
+
+"What can you see, O Fionn?" said the watcher.
+
+"I can see nothing," said Fionn, and he projected again his grim,
+gaunt forehead. For it seemed as if the watcher stared with his
+whole face, aye, and with his hands; but Fionn brooded weightedly
+on distance with his puckered and crannied brow.
+
+They looked again.
+
+"What can you see?" said Fionn.
+
+"I see nothing," said the watcher.
+
+"I do not know if I see or if I surmise, but something moves,"
+said Fionn. "There is a trample," he said.
+
+The watcher became then an eye, a rigidity, an intense
+out-thrusting and ransacking of thin-spun distance. At last he
+spoke.
+
+"There is a dust," he said.
+
+And at that the champions gazed also, straining hungrily afar,
+until their eyes became filled with a blue darkness and they
+could no longer see even the things that were close to them.
+
+"I," cried Cona'n triumphantly, "I see a dust."
+
+"And I," cried another.
+
+"And I."
+
+"I see a man," said the eagle-eyed watcher.
+
+And again they stared, until their straining eyes grew dim with
+tears and winks, and they saw trees that stood up and sat down,
+and fields that wobbled and spun round and round in a giddily
+swirling world.
+
+"There is a man," Cona'n roared.
+
+
+"A man there is," cried another.
+
+"And he is carrying a man on his back," said the watcher.
+
+"It is Cael of the Iron carrying the Carl on his back," he
+groaned.
+
+"The great pork!" a man gritted.
+
+"The no-good!" sobbed another.
+
+"The lean-hearted,"
+
+"Thick-thighed,"
+
+"Ramshackle,"
+
+"Muddle-headed,"
+
+"Hog!" screamed a champion.
+
+And he beat his fists angrily against a tree.
+
+But the eagle-eyed watcher watched until his eyes narrowed and
+became pin-points, and he ceased to be a man and became an optic.
+
+"Wait," he breathed, "wait until I screw into one other inch of
+sight."
+
+And they waited, looking no longer on that scarcely perceptible
+speck in the distance, but straining upon the eye of the watcher
+as though they would penetrate it and look through it.
+
+"It is the Carl," he said, "carrying something on his back, and
+behind him again there is a dust."
+
+"Are you sure?" said Fionn in a voice that rumbled and vibrated
+like thunder.
+
+"It is the Carl," said the watcher, "and the dust behind him is
+Cael of the Iron trying to catch him up."
+
+Then the Fianna gave a roar of exultation, and each man seized
+his neighbour and kissed him on both cheeks; and they gripped
+hands about Fionn, and they danced round and round in a great
+circle, roaring with laughter and relief, in the ecstasy which
+only comes where grisly fear has been and whence that bony jowl
+has taken itself away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The Carl of the Drab Coat came bumping and stumping and clumping
+into the camp, and was surrounded by a multitude that adored him
+and hailed him with tears.
+
+"Meal!" he bawled, "meal for the love of the stars!"
+
+And he bawled, "Meal, meal!" until he bawled everybody into
+silence.
+
+Fionn addressed him.
+
+"What for the meal, dear heart?"
+
+"For the inside of my mouth," said the Carl, "for the recesses
+and crannies and deep-down profundities of my stomach. Meal,
+meal!" he lamented.
+
+Meal was brought.
+
+The Carl put his coat on the ground, opened it carefully, and
+revealed a store of blackberries, squashed, crushed, mangled,
+democratic, ill-looking.
+
+"The meal!" he groaned, "the meal!"
+
+It was given to him.
+
+"What of the race, my pulse?" said Fionn.
+
+"Wait, wait," cried the Carl. "I die, I die for meal and
+blackberries."
+
+Into the centre of the mess of blackberries he discharged a
+barrel of meal, and be mixed the two up and through, and round
+and down, until the pile of white-black, red-brown
+slibber-slobber reached up to his shoulders. Then he commenced to
+paw and impel and project and cram the mixture into his mouth,
+and between each mouthful he sighed a contented sigh, and during
+every mouthful he gurgled an oozy gurgle.
+
+But while Fionn and the Fianna stared like lost minds upon the
+Carl, there came a sound of buzzing, as if a hornet or a queen of
+the wasps or a savage, steep-winged griffin was hovering about
+them, and looking away they saw Cael of the Iron charging on them
+with a monstrous extension and scurry of bis legs. He had a sword
+in his hand, and there was nothing in his face but redness and
+ferocity.
+
+Fear fell llke night around the Fianna, and they stood with slack
+knees and hanging hands waiting for death. But the Carl lifted a
+pawful of his oozy slop and discharged this at Cael with such a
+smash that the man's head spun off his shoulders and hopped along
+the ground. The Carl then picked up the head and threw it at the
+body with such aim and force that the neck part of the head
+jammed into the neck part of the body and stuck there, as good a
+head as ever, you would have said, but that it bad got twisted
+the wrong way round. The Carl then lashed his opponent hand and
+foot.
+
+"Now, dear heart, do you still claim tribute and lordship of
+Ireland?" said he.
+
+"Let me go home," groaned Cael, "I want to go home."
+
+"Swear by the sun and moon, if I let you go home, that you will
+send to Fionn, yearly and every year, the rent of the land of
+Thessaly."
+
+"I swear that," said Cael, "and I would swear anything to get
+home."
+
+The Carl lifted him then and put him sitting into his ship. Then
+he raised his big boot and gave the boat a kick that drove it
+seven leagues out into the sea, and that was how the adventure of
+Cael of the Iron finished.
+
+"Who are you, sir?" said Fionn to the Carl.
+
+But before answering the Carl's shape changed into one of
+splendour and delight.
+
+"I am ruler of the Shi' of Rath Cruachan," he said.
+
+Then Fionn mac Uail made a feast and a banquet for the jovial
+god, and with that the tale is ended of the King of Thessaly's
+son and the Carl of the Drab Coat.
+
+
+
+
+THE ENCHANTED CAVE OF CESH CORRAN
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Fionn mac Uail was the most prudent chief of an army in the
+world, but he was not always prudent on his own account.
+Discipline sometimes irked him, and he would then take any
+opportunity that presented for an adventure; for he was not only
+a soldier, he was a poet also, that is, a man of science, and
+whatever was strange or unusual had an irresistible at-traction
+for him.                                Such a soldier was he
+that, single-handed, he could take the Fianna out of any hole
+they got into, but such an inveterate poet was he that all the
+Fianna together could scarcely retrieve him from the abysses into
+which he tumbled. It took him to keep the Fianna safe, but it
+took all the Fianna to keep their captain out of danger. They did
+not complain of this, for they loved every hair of Fionn's head
+more than they loved their wives and children, and that was
+reasonable for there was never in the world a person more worthy
+of love than Fionn was.
+
+Goll mac Morna did not admit so much in words, but he admitted it
+in all his actions, for although he never lost an opportunity of
+killing a member of Fionn's family (there was deadly feud between
+clann-Baiscne and clann-Morna), yet a call from Fionn brought
+Goll raging to his assistance like a lion that rages tenderly by
+his mate. Not even a call was necessary, for Goll felt in his
+heart when Fionn was threatened, and he would leave Fionn's own
+brother only half-killed to fly where his arm was wanted. He was
+never thanked, of course, for although Fionn loved Goll he did
+not like him, and that was how Goll felt towards Fionn.
+
+Fionn, with Cona'n the Swearer and the dogs Bran and Sceo'lan,
+was sitting on the hunting-mound at the top of Cesh Corran. Below
+and around on every side the Fianna were beating the coverts in
+Legney and Brefny, ranging the fastnesses of Glen Dallan,
+creeping in the nut and beech forests of Carbury, spying among
+the woods of Kyle Conor, and ranging the wide plain of Moy Conal.
+
+The great captain was happy: his eyes were resting on the sights
+he liked best--the sunlight of a clear day, the waving trees, the
+pure sky, and the lovely movement of the earth; and his ears were
+filled with delectable sounds--the baying of eager dogs, the
+clear calling of young men, the shrill whistling that came from
+every side, and each sound of which told a definite thing about
+the hunt. There was also the plunge and scurry of the deer, the
+yapping of badgers, and the whirr of birds driven into reluctant
+flight.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Now the king of the Shi' of Cesh Corran, Conaran, son of Imidel,
+was also watching the hunt, but Fionn did not see him, for we
+cannot see the people of Faery until we enter their realm, and
+Fionn was not thinking of Faery at that moment. Conaran did not
+like Fionn, and, seeing that the great champion was alone, save
+for Cona'n and the two hounds Bran and Sceo'lan, he thought the
+time had come to get Fionn into his power. We do not know what
+Fionn had done to Conaran, but it must have been bad enough, for
+the king of the Shi' of Cesh Cotran was filled with joy at the
+sight of Fionn thus close to him, thus unprotected, thus
+unsuspicious.
+
+This Conaran had four daughters. He was fond of them and proud of
+them, but if one were to search the Shi's of Ireland or the land
+of Ireland, the equal of these four would not be found for
+ugliness and bad humour and twisted temperaments.
+
+Their hair was black as ink and tough as wire: it stuck up and
+poked out and hung down about their heads in bushes and spikes
+and tangles. Their eyes were bleary and red. Their mouths were
+black and twisted, and in each of these mouths there was a hedge
+of curved yellow fangs. They had long scraggy necks that could
+turn all the way round like the neck of a hen. Their arms were
+long and skinny and muscular, and at the end of each finger they
+had a spiked nail that was as hard as horn and as sharp as a
+briar. Their bodies were covered with a bristle of hair and fur
+and fluff, so that they looked like dogs in some parts and like
+cats in others, and in other parts again they looked like
+chickens. They had moustaches poking under their noses and woolly
+wads growing out of their ears, so that when you looked at them
+the first time you never wanted to look at them again, and if you
+had to look at them a second time you were likely to die of the
+sight.
+
+They were called Caevo'g, Cuillen, and Iaran. The fourth
+daughter, Iarnach, was not present at that moment, so nothing
+need be said of her yet.
+
+Conaran called these three to him.
+
+"Fionn is alone," said he. "Fionn is alone, my treasures."
+
+"Ah!" said Caevo'g, and her jaw crunched upwards and stuck
+outwards, as was usual with her when she was satisfied.
+
+"When the chance comes take it," Conaran continued, and he smiled
+a black, beetle-browed, unbenevolent smile.
+
+"It's a good word," quoth Cuillen, and she swung her jaw loose
+and made it waggle up and down, for that was the way she smiled.
+
+"And here is the chance," her father added.
+
+"The chance is here," Iaran echoed, with a smile that was very
+like her sister's, only that it was worse, and the wen that grew
+on her nose joggled to and fro and did not get its balance again
+for a long time.
+
+Then they smiled a smile that was agreeable to their own eyes,
+but which would have been a deadly thing for anybody else to see.
+
+"But Fionn cannot see us," Caevo'g objected, and her brow set
+downwards and her chin set upwards and her mouth squeezed
+sidewards, so that her face looked like a badly disappointed nut.
+
+"And we are worth seeing," Cuillen continued, and the
+disappointment that was set in her sister's face got carved and
+twisted into hers, but it was worse in her case.
+
+"That is the truth," said Iaran in a voice of lamentation, and
+her face took on a gnarl and a writhe and a solidity of ugly woe
+that beat the other two and. made even her father marvel.
+
+"He cannot see us now," Conaran replied, "but he will see us in a
+minute."
+
+"Won't Fionn be glad when he sees us!" said the three sisters.
+
+And then they joined hands and danced joyfully around their
+father, and they sang a song, the first line of which is:
+      "Fionn thinks he is safe. But who knows when the sky will   
+   fall?"
+
+Lots of the people in the Shi' learned that song by heart, and
+they applied it to every kind of circumstance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BY his arts Conaran changed the sight of Fionn's eyes, and he did
+the same for Cona'n.
+
+In a few minutes Fionn stood up from his place on the mound.
+Everything was about him as before, and he did not know that he
+had gone into Faery. He walked for a minute up and down the
+hillock. Then, as by chance, he stepped down the sloping end of
+the mound and stood with his mouth open, staring. He cried out:
+
+"Come down here, Cona'n, my darling."
+
+Cona'n stepped down to him.
+
+"Am I dreaming?" Fionn demanded, and he stretched out his finger
+before him.
+
+"If you are dreaming," said Congn, "I'm dreaming too. They
+weren't here a minute ago," he stammered.
+
+Fionn looked up at the sky and found that it was still there. He
+stared to one side and saw the trees of Kyle Conor waving in the
+distance. He bent his ear to the wind and heard the shouting of
+hunters, the yapping of dogs, and the clear whistles, which told
+how the hunt was going.
+
+"Well!" said Fionn to himself.
+
+"By my hand!" quoth Cona'n to his own soul.
+
+And the two men stared into the hillside as though what they were
+looking at was too wonderful to be looked away from.
+
+"Who are they?" said Fionn.
+
+"What are they?" Cona'n gasped. And they stared again.
+
+For there was a great hole like a doorway in the side of the
+mound, and in that doorway the daughters of Conaran sat spinning.
+They had three crooked sticks of holly set up before the cave,
+and they were reeling yarn off these. But it was enchantment they
+were weaving.
+
+"One could not call them handsome," said Cona'n.
+
+"One could," Fionn replied, "but it would not be true."
+
+"I cannot see them properly," Fionn complained. "They are hiding
+behind the holly."
+
+"I would he contented if I could not see them at all," his
+companion grumbled.
+
+But the Chief insisted.
+
+"I want to make sure that it is whiskers they are wearing."
+
+"Let them wear whiskers or not wear them," Cona'n counselled.
+"But let us have nothing to do with them."
+
+"One must not be frightened of anything," Fionn stated.
+
+"I am not frightened," Cona'n explained. "I only want to keep my
+good opinion of women, and if the three yonder are women, then I
+feel sure I shall begin to dislike females from this minute out."
+
+"Come on, my love," said Fionn, "for I must find out if these
+whiskers are true."
+
+He strode resolutely into the cave. He pushed the branches of
+holly aside and marched up to Conaran's daughters, with Cona'n
+behind him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The instant they passed the holly a strange weakness came over
+the heroes. Their fists seemed to grow heavy as lead, and went
+dingle-dangle at the ends of their arms; their legs became as
+light as straws and began to bend in and out; their necks became
+too delicate to hold anything up, so that their heads wibbled and
+wobbled from side to side.
+
+"What's wrong at all?" said Cona'n, as he tumbled to the ground.
+
+"Everything is," Fionn replied, and he tumbled beside him.
+
+The three sisters then tied the heroes with every kind of loop
+and twist and knot that could be thought of.
+
+"Those are whiskers!" said Fionn.
+
+"Alas!" said Conan.
+
+"What a place you must hunt whiskers in?' he mumbled savagely.
+"Who wants whiskers?" he groaned.
+
+But Fionn was thinking of other things.
+
+"If there was any way of warning the Fianna not to come here,"
+Fionn murmured.
+
+"There is no way, my darling," said Caevo'g, and she smiled a
+smile that would have killed Fionn, only that he shut his eyes in
+time.
+
+After a moment he murmured again:
+
+"Cona'n, my dear love, give the warning whistle so that the
+Fianna will keep out of this place."
+
+A little whoof, like the sound that would be made by a baby and
+it asleep, came from Cona'n.
+
+"Fionn," said he, "there isn't a whistle in me. We are done for,"
+said he.
+
+"You are done for, indeed," said Cuillen, and she smiled a hairy
+and twisty and fangy smile that almost finished Cona'n.
+
+By that time some of the Fianna had returned to the mound to see
+why Bran and Sceo'lan were barking so outrageously. They saw the
+cave and went into it, but no sooner had they passed the holly
+branches than their strength went from them, and they were seized
+and bound by the vicious hags. Little by little all the members
+of the Fianna returned to the hill, and each of them was drawn
+into the cave, and each was bound by the sisters.
+
+Oisi'n and Oscar and mac Lugac came, with the nobles of
+clann-Baiscne, and with those of clann-Corcoran and clann-Smo'l;
+they all came, and they were all bound.
+
+It was a wonderful sight and a great deed this binding of the
+Fianna, and the three sisters laughed with a joy that was
+terrible to hear and was almost death to see. As the men were
+captured they were carried by the hags into dark mysterious holes
+and black perplexing labyrinths.
+
+"Here is another one," cried Caevo'g as she bundled a trussed
+champion along.
+
+"This one is fat," said Cuillen, and she rolled a bulky Fenian
+along like a wheel.
+
+"Here," said Iaran, "is a love of a man. One could eat this kind
+of man," she murmured, and she licked a lip that had whiskers
+growing inside as well as out.
+
+And the corded champion whimpered in her arms, for he did not
+know but eating might indeed be his fate, and he would have
+preferred to be coffined anywhere in the world rather than to be
+coffined inside of that face. So far for them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Within the cave there was silence except for the voices of the
+hags and the scarcely audible moaning of the Fianna-Finn, but
+without there was a dreadful uproar, for as each man returned
+from the chase his dogs came with him, and although the men went
+into the cave the dogs did not.
+
+They were too wise.
+
+They stood outside, filled with savagery and terror, for they
+could scent their masters and their masters' danger, and perhaps
+they could get from the cave smells till then unknown and full of
+alarm.
+
+From the troop of dogs there arose a baying and barking, a
+snarling and howling and growling, a yelping and squealing and
+bawling for which no words can be found. Now and again a dog
+nosed among a thousand smells and scented his master; the ruff of
+his neck stood up like a hog's bristles and a netty ridge
+prickled along his spine. Then with red eyes, with bared fangs,
+with a hoarse, deep snort and growl he rushed at the cave, and
+then he halted and sneaked back again with all his ruffles
+smoothed, his tail between his legs, his eyes screwed sideways in
+miserable apology and alarm, and a long thin whine of woe
+dribbling out of his nose.
+
+The three sisters took their wide-channelled, hard-tempered
+swords in their hands, and prepared to slay the Fianna, but
+before doing so they gave one more look from the door of the cave
+to see if there might be a straggler of the Fianna who was
+escaping death by straggling, and they saw one coming towards
+them with Bran and Sceo'lan leaping beside him, while all the
+other dogs began to burst their throats with barks and split
+their noses with snorts and wag their tails off at sight of the
+tall, valiant, white-toothed champion, Goll mor mac Morna. "We
+will kill that one first," said Caevo'g.
+
+"There is only one of him," said Cuillen.
+
+"And each of us three is the match for an hundred," said Iaran.
+
+The uncanny, misbehaved, and outrageous harridans advanced then
+to meet the son of Morna, and when he saw these three Goll
+whipped the sword from his thigh, swung his buckler round, and
+got to them in ten great leaps.
+
+Silence fell on the world during that conflict. The wind went
+down; the clouds stood still; the old hill itself held its
+breath; the warriors within ceased to be men and became each an
+ear; and the dogs sat in a vast circle round the combatants, with
+their heads all to one side, their noses poked forward, their
+mouths half open, and their tails forgotten. Now and again a dog
+whined in a whisper and snapped a little snap on the air, but
+except for that there was neither sound nor movement.
+
+It was a long fight. It was a hard and a tricky fight, and Goll
+won it by bravery and strategy and great good luck; for with one
+shrewd slice of his blade he carved two of these mighty
+termagants into equal halves, so that there were noses and
+whiskers to his right hand and knees and toes to his left: and
+that stroke was known afterwards as one of the three great
+sword-strokes of Ireland. The third hag, however, had managed to
+get behind Goll, and she leaped on to his back with the bound of
+a panther, and hung here with the skilful, many-legged,
+tight-twisted clutching of a spider. But the great champion gave
+a twist of his hips and a swing of his shoulders that whirled her
+around him like a sack. He got her on the ground and tied her
+hands with the straps of a shield, and he was going to give her
+the last blow when she appealed to his honour and bravery.
+
+"I put my life under your protection," said she. "And if you let
+me go free I will lift the enchantment from the Fianna-Finn and
+will give them all back to you again."
+
+"I agree to that," said Goll, and he untied her straps. The
+harridan did as she had promised, and in a short time Fionn and
+Oisi'n and Oscar and Cona'n were released, and after that all the
+Fianna were released.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+As each man came out of the cave he gave a jump and a shout; the
+courage of the world went into him and he felt that he could
+fight twenty. But while they were talking over the adventure and
+explaining how it had happened, a vast figure strode over the
+side of the hill and descended among them. It was Conaran's
+fourth daughter.
+
+If the other three had been terrible to look on, this one was
+more terrible than the three together. She was clad in iron
+plate, and she had a wicked sword by her side and a knobby club
+in her hand She halted by the bodies of her sisters, and bitter
+tears streamed down into her beard.
+
+"Alas, my sweet ones," said she, "I am too late."
+
+And then she stared fiercely at Fionn.
+
+"I demand a combat," she roared.
+
+"It is your right," said Fionn. He turned to his son.
+
+"Oisi'n, my heart, kill me this honourable hag." But for the only
+time in his life Oisi'n shrank from a combat.
+
+"I cannot do it" he said, "I feel too weak."
+
+Fionn was astounded. "Oscar," he said, "will you kill me this
+great hag?"
+
+Oscar stammered miserably. "I would not be able to," he said.
+
+Cona'n also refused, and so did Caelte mac Rona'n and mac Lugac,
+for there was no man there but was terrified by the sight of that
+mighty and valiant harridan.
+
+Fionn rose to his feet. "I will take this combat myself," he said
+sternly.
+
+And he swung his buckler forward and stretched his right hand to
+the sword. But at that terrible sight Goll mae Morna blushed
+deeply and leaped from the ground.
+
+"No, no," he cried; "no, my soul, Fionn, this would not be a
+proper combat for you. I take this fight."
+
+"You have done your share, Goll," said the captain.
+
+"I should finish the fight I began," Goll continued, "for it was
+I who killed the two sisters of this valiant hag, and it is
+against me the feud lies."
+
+"That will do for me," said the horrible daughter of Conaran. "I
+will kill Goll mor mac Morna first, and after that I will kill
+Fionn, and after that I will kill every Fenian of the
+Fianna-Finn."
+
+"You may begin, Goll," said Fionn, "and I give you my blessing."
+
+Goll then strode forward to the fight, and the hag moved against
+him with equal alacrity. In a moment the heavens rang to the
+clash of swords on bucklers. It was hard to with-stand the
+terrific blows of that mighty female, for her sword played with
+the quickness of lightning and smote like the heavy crashing of a
+storm. But into that din and encirclement Goll pressed and
+ventured, steady as a rock in water, agile as a creature of the
+sea, and when one of the combatants retreated it was the hag that
+gave backwards. As her foot moved a great shout of joy rose from
+the Fianna. A snarl went over the huge face of the monster and
+she leaped forward again, but she met Goll's point in the road;
+it went through her, and in another moment Goll took her head
+from its shoulders and swung it on high before Fionn.
+
+As the Fianna turned homewards Fionn spoke to his great champion
+and enemy.
+
+"Goll," he said, "I have a daughter."
+
+"A lovely girl, a blossom of the dawn," said Goll.
+
+"Would she please you as a wife?" the chief demanded.
+
+"She would please me," said Goll.
+
+"She is your wife," said Fionn.
+
+
+But that did not prevent Goll from killing Fionn's brother
+Cairell later on, nor did it prevent Fionn from killing Goll
+later on again, and the last did not prevent Goll from rescuing
+Fionn out of hell when the Fianna-Finn were sent there under the
+new God. Nor is there any reason to complain or to be astonished
+at these things, for it is a mutual world we llve in, a
+give-and-take world, and there is no great harm in it.
+
+
+
+
+BECUMA OF THE WHITE SKIN
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+There are more worlds than one, and in many ways they are unlike
+each other. But joy and sorrow, or, in other words, good and
+evil, are not absent in their degree from any of the worlds, for
+wherever there is life there is action, and action is but the
+expression of one or other of these qualities.
+
+After this Earth there is the world of the Shi'. Beyond it again
+lies the Many-Coloured Land. Next comes the Land of Wonder, and
+after that the Land of Promise awaits us. You will cross clay to
+get into the Shi'; you will cross water to attain the
+Many-Coloured Land; fire must be passed ere the Land of Wonder is
+attained, hut we do not know what will be crossed for the fourth
+world.
+
+This adventure of Conn the Hundred Fighter and his son Art was by
+the way of water, and therefore he was more advanced in magic
+than Fionn was, all of whose adventures were by the path of clay
+and into Faery only, but Conn was the High King and so the
+arch-magician of Ireland.
+
+A council had been called in the Many-Coloured Land to discuss
+the case of a lady named Becuma Cneisgel, that is, Becuma of the
+White Skin, the daughter of Eogan Inver. She had run away from
+her husband Labraid and had taken refuge with Gadiar, one of the
+sons of Mananna'n mac Lir, the god of the sea, and the ruler,
+therefore, of that sphere.
+
+It seems, then, that there is marriage in two other spheres. In
+the Shi' matrimony is recorded as being parallel in every respect
+with earth-marriage, and the desire which urges to it seems to he
+as violent and inconstant as it is with us; but in the
+Many-Coloured Land marriage is but a contemplation of beauty, a
+brooding and meditation wherein all grosser desire is unknown and
+children are born to sinless parents.
+
+In the Shi' the crime of Becuma would have been lightly
+considered, and would have received none or but a nominal
+punishment, but in the second world a horrid gravity attaches to
+such a lapse, and the retribution meted is implacable and grim.
+It may be dissolution by fire, and that can note a destruction
+too final for the mind to contemplate; or it may be banishment
+from that sphere to a lower and worse one.
+
+This was the fate of Becuma of the White Skin.
+
+One may wonder how, having attained to that sphere, she could
+have carried with her so strong a memory of the earth. It is
+certain that she was not a fit person to exist in the
+Many-Coloured Land, and it is to be feared that she was organised
+too grossly even for life in the Shi'.
+
+She was an earth-woman, and she was banished to the earth.
+
+Word was sent to the Shi's of Ireland that this lady should not
+be permitted to enter any of them; from which it would seem that
+the ordinances of the Shi come from the higher world, and, it
+might follow, that the conduct of earth lies in the Shi'.
+
+In that way, the gates of her own world and the innumerable doors
+of Faery being closed against her, Becuma was forced to appear in
+the world of men.
+
+It is pleasant, however, notwithstanding her terrible crime and
+her woeful punishment, to think how courageous she was. When she
+was told her sentence, nay, her doom, she made no outcry, nor did
+she waste any time in sorrow. She went home and put on her nicest
+clothes.
+
+She wore a red satin smock, and, over this, a cloak of green silk
+out of which long fringes of gold swung and sparkled, and she had
+light sandals of white bronze on her thin, shapely feet. She had
+long soft hair that was yellow as gold, and soft as the curling
+foam of the sea. Her eyes were wide and clear as water and were
+grey as a dove's breast. Her teeth were white as snow and of an
+evenness to marvel at. Her lips were thin and beautifully curved:
+red lips in truth, red as winter berries and tempting as the
+fruits of summer. The people who superintended her departure said
+mournfully that when she was gone there would be no more beauty
+left in their world.
+
+She stepped into a coracle, it was pushed on the enchanted
+waters, and it went forward, world within world, until land
+appeared, and her boat swung in low tide against a rock at the
+foot of Ben Edair.
+
+So far for her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Conn the Hundred Fighter, Ard-Ri' of Ireland, was in the lowest
+spirits that can be imagined, for his wife was dead. He had been
+Ard-Ri for nine years, and during his term the corn used to be
+reaped three times in each year, and there was full and plenty of
+everything. There are few kings who can boast of more kingly
+results than he can, but there was sore trouble in store for him.
+
+He had been married to Eithne, the daughter of Brisland Binn,
+King of Norway, and, next to his subjects, he loved his wife more
+than all that was lovable in the world. But the term of man and
+woman, of king or queen, is set in the stars, and there is no
+escaping Doom for any one; so, when her time came, Eithne died.
+
+Now there were three great burying-places in Ireland--the Brugh
+of the Boyne in Ulster, over which Angus Og is chief and god; the
+Shi' mound of Cruachan Ahi, where Ethal Anbual presides over the
+underworld of Connacht, and Tailltin, in Royal Meath. It was in
+this last, the sacred place of his own lordship, that Conn laid
+his wife to rest.
+
+Her funeral games were played during nine days. Her keen was sung
+by poets and harpers, and a cairn ten acres wide was heaved over
+her clay. Then the keening ceased and the games drew to an end;
+the princes of the Five Prov-inces returned by horse or by
+chariot to their own places; the concourse of mourners melted
+away, and there was nothing left by the great cairn but the sun
+that dozed upon it in the daytime, the heavy clouds that brooded
+on it in the night, and the desolate, memoried king.
+
+For the dead queen had been so lovely that Conn could not forget
+her; she had been so kind at every moment that he could not but
+miss her at every moment; but it was in the Council Chamber and
+the Judgement Hall that he most pondered her memory. For she had
+also been wise, and lack-ing her guidance, all grave affairs
+seemed graver, shadowing each day and going with him to the
+pillow at night.
+
+The trouble of the king becomes the trouble of the subject, for
+how shall we live if judgement is withheld, or if faulty
+decisions are promulgated? Therefore, with the sorrow of the
+king, all Ireland was in grief, and it was the wish of every
+person that he should marry again.
+
+Such an idea, however, did not occur to him, for he could not
+conceive how any woman should fill the place his queen had
+vacated. He grew more and more despondent, and less and less
+fitted to cope with affairs of state, and one day he instructed
+his son Art to take the rule during his absence, and he set out
+for Ben Edair.
+
+For a great wish had come upon him to walk beside the sea; to
+listen to the roll and boom of long, grey breakers; to gaze on an
+unfruitful, desolate wilderness of waters; and to forget in those
+sights all that he could forget, and if he could not forget then
+to remember all that he should remember.
+
+He was thus gazing and brooding when one day he observed a
+coracle drawing to the shore. A young girl stepped from it and
+walked to him among black boulders and patches of yellow sand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Being a king he had authority to ask questions. Conn asked her,
+therefore, all the questions that he could think of, for it is
+not every day that a lady drives from the sea, and she wearing a
+golden-fringed cloak of green silk through which a red satin
+smock peeped at the openings. She replied to his questions, but
+she did not tell him all the truth; for, indeed, she could not
+afford to.
+
+She knew who he was, for she retained some of the powers proper
+to the worlds she had left, and as he looked on her soft yellow
+hair and on her thin red lips, Conn recognised, as all men do,
+that one who is lovely must also be good, and so he did not frame
+any inquiry on that count; for everything is forgotten in the
+presence of a pretty woman, and a magician can be bewitched also.
+
+She told Conn that the fame of his son Art had reached even the
+Many-Coloured Land, and that she had fallen in love with the boy.
+This did not seem unreasonable to one who had himself ventured
+much in Faery, and who had known so many of the people of that
+world leave their own land for the love of a mortal.
+
+"What is your name, my sweet lady?" said the king.
+
+"I am called Delvcaem (Fair Shape) and I am the daughter of
+Morgan," she replied.
+
+"I have heard much of Morgan," said the king. "He is a very great
+magician."
+
+During this conversation Conn had been regarding her with the
+minute freedom which is right only in a king. At what precise
+instant he forgot his dead consort we do not know, but it is
+certain that at this moment his mind was no longer burdened with
+that dear and lovely memory. His voice was melancholy when he
+spoke again.
+
+"You love my son!"
+
+"Who could avoid loving him?" she murmured.
+
+"When a woman speaks to a man about the love she feels for
+another man she is not liked. And," he continued, "when she
+speaks to a man who has no wife of his own about her love for
+another man then she is disliked."
+
+"I would not be disliked by you," Becuma murmured.
+
+"Nevertheless," said he regally, "I will not come between a woman
+and her choice."
+
+"I did not know you lacked a wife," said Becuma, but indeed she
+did.
+
+"You know it now," the king replied sternly.
+
+"What shall I do?" she inquired, "am I to wed you or your son?"
+
+"You must choose," Conn answered.
+
+"If you allow me to choose it means that you do not want me very
+badly," said she with a smile.
+
+"Then I will not allow you to choose," cried the king, "and it is
+with myself you shall marry."
+
+He took her hand in his and kissed it.
+
+"Lovely is this pale thin hand. Lovely is the slender foot that I
+see in a small bronze shoe," said the king.
+
+After a suitable time she continued:
+
+"I should not like your son to be at Tara when I am there, or for
+a year afterwards, for I do not wish to meet him  until I have
+forgotten him and have come to know you well."
+
+"I do not wish to banish my son," the king protested.
+
+"It would not really be a banishment," she said. "A prince's duty
+could be set him, and in such an absence he would improve his
+knowledge both of Ireland and of men. Further," she continued
+with downcast eyes, "when you remember the reason that brought me
+here you will see that his presence would be an embarrassment to
+us both, and my presence would be unpleasant to him if he
+remembers his mother."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Conn stubbornly, "I do not wish to banish my
+son; it is awkward and unnecessary."
+
+"For a year only," she pleaded.
+
+"It is yet," he continued thoughtfully, "a reasonable reason that
+you give and I will do what you ask, but by my hand and word I
+don't like doing it."
+
+They set out then briskly and joyfully on the homeward journey,
+and in due time they reached Tara of the Kings.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+It is part of the education of a prince to be a good chess
+player, and to continually exercise his mind in view of the
+judgements that he will be called upon to give and the knotty,
+tortuous, and perplexing matters which will obscure the issues
+which he must judge. Art, the son of Conn, was sitting at chess
+with Cromdes, his father's magician.
+
+"Be very careful about the move you are going to make," said
+Cromdes.
+
+"CAN I be careful?" Art inquired. "Is the move that you are
+thinking of in my power?"
+
+"It is not," the other admitted.
+
+"Then I need not be more careful than usual," Art replied, and he
+made his move.
+
+"It is a move of banishment," said Cromdes.
+
+"As I will not banish myself, I suppose my father will do it, but
+I do not know why he should."
+
+"Your father will not banish you."
+
+"Who then?" "Your mother."
+
+"My mother is dead."
+
+"You have a new one," said the magician.
+
+"Here is news," said Art. "I think I shall not love my new
+mother."
+
+"You will yet love her better than she loves you," said Cromdes,
+meaning thereby that they would hate each other.
+
+While they spoke the king and Becuma entered the palace.
+
+"I had better go to greet my father," said the young man.
+
+"You had better wait until he sends for you," his companion
+advised, and they returned to their game.
+
+In due time a messenger came from the king directing Art to leave
+Tara instantly, and to leave Ireland for one full year.
+
+He left Tara that night, and for the space of a year he was not
+seen again in Ireland. But during that period things did not go
+well with the king nor with Ireland. Every year before that time
+three crops of corn used to be lifted off the land, but during
+Art's absence there was no corn in Ireland and there was no milk.
+The whole land went hungry.
+
+Lean people were in every house, lean cattle in every field; the
+bushes did not swing out their timely berries or seasonable nuts;
+the bees went abroad as busily as ever, but each night they
+returned languidly, with empty pouches, and there was no honey in
+their hives when the honey season came. People began to look at
+each other questioningly, meaningly, and dark remarks passed
+between them, for they knew that a bad harvest means, somehow, a
+bad king, and, although this belief can be combated, it is too
+firmly rooted in wisdom to be dismissed.
+
+The poets and magicians met to consider why this disaster should
+have befallen the country and by their arts they discovered the
+truth about the king's wife, and that she was Becuma of the White
+Skin, and they discovered also the cause of her banishment from
+the Many-Coloured Land that is beyond the sea, which is beyond
+even the grave.
+
+They told the truth to the king, but he could not bear to be
+parted from that slender-handed, gold-haired, thin-lipped, blithe
+enchantress, and he required them to discover some means whereby
+he might retain his wife and his crown. There was a way and the
+magicians told him of it.
+
+"If the son of a sinless couple can be found and if his blood be
+mixed with the soll of Tara the blight and ruin will depart from
+Ireland," said the magicians.
+
+"If there is such a boy I will find him," cried the Hundred
+Fighter.
+
+At the end of a year Art returned to Tara. His father delivered
+to him the sceptre of Ireland, and he set out on a journey to
+find the son of a sinless couple such as he had been told of.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The High King did not know where exactly he should look for such
+a saviour, but he was well educated and knew how to look for
+whatever was lacking. This knowledge will he useful to those upon
+whom a similar duty should ever devolve.
+
+He went to Ben Edair. He stepped into a coracle and pushed out to
+the deep, and he permitted the coracle to go as the winds and the
+waves directed it.
+
+In such a way he voyaged among the small islands of the sea until
+he lost all knowledge of his course and was adrift far out in
+ocean. He was under the guidance of the stars and the great
+luminaries.
+
+He saw black seals that stared and barked and dived dancingly,
+with the round turn of a bow and the forward onset of an arrow.
+Great whales came heaving from the green-hued void, blowing a
+wave of the sea high into the air from their noses and smacking
+their wide flat tails thunder-ously on the water. Porpoises went
+snorting past in bands and clans. Small fish came sliding and
+flickering, and all the outlandish creatures of the deep rose by
+his bobbing craft and swirled and sped away.
+
+Wild storms howled by him so that the boat climbed painfully to
+the sky on a mile-high wave, balanced for a tense moment on its
+level top, and sped down the glassy side as a stone goes
+furiously from a sling.
+
+Or, again, caught in the chop of a broken sea, it stayed
+shuddering and backing, while above his head there was only a low
+sad sky, and around him the lap and wash of grey waves that were
+never the same and were never different.
+
+After long staring on the hungry nothingness of air and water he
+would stare on the skin-stretched fabric of his boat as on a
+strangeness, or he would examine his hands and the texture of his
+skin and the stiff black hairs that grew behind his knuckles and
+sprouted around his ring, and he found in these things newness
+and wonder.
+
+Then, when days of storm had passed, the low grey clouds shivered
+and cracked in a thousand places, each grim islet went scudding
+to the horizon as though terrified by some great breadth, and
+when they had passed he stared into vast after vast of blue
+infinity, in the depths of which his eyes stayed and could not
+pierce, and wherefrom they could scarcely be withdrawn. A sun
+beamed thence that filled the air with sparkle and the sea with a
+thousand lights, and looking on these he was reminded of his home
+at Tara: of the columns of white and yellow bronze that blazed
+out sunnily on the sun, and the red and white and yellow painted
+roofs that beamed at and astonished the eye.
+
+Sailing thus, lost in a succession of days and nights, of winds
+and calms, he came at last to an island.
+
+His back was turned to it, and long before he saw it he smelled
+it and wondered; for he had been sitting as in a daze, musing on
+a change that had seemed to come in his changeless world; and for
+a long time he could not tell what that was which made a
+difference on the salt-whipped wind or why he should be excited.
+For suddenly he had become excited and his heart leaped in
+violent expectation.
+
+"It is an October smell," he said.
+
+"It is apples that I smell."
+
+He turned then and saw the island, fragrant with apple trees,
+sweet with wells of wine; and, hearkening towards the shore, his
+ears, dulled yet with the unending rhythms of the sea,
+distinguished and were filled with song; for the isle was, as it
+were, a nest of birds, and they sang joyously, sweetly,
+triumphantly.
+
+He landed on that lovely island, and went forward under the
+darting birds, under the apple boughs, skirting fragrant lakes
+about which were woods of the sacred hazel and into which the
+nuts of knowledge fell and swam; and he blessed the gods of his
+people because of the ground that did not shiver and because of
+the deeply rooted trees that could not gad or budge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Having gone some distance by these pleasant ways he saw a shapely
+house dozing in the sunlight.
+
+It was thatched with the wings of birds, blue wings and yellow
+and white wings, and in the centre of the house there was a door
+of crystal set in posts of bronze.
+
+The queen of this island lived there, Rigru (Large-eyed), the
+daughter of Lodan, and wife of Daire Degamra. She was seated on a
+crystal throne with her son Segda by her side, and they welcomed
+the High King courteously.
+
+There were no servants in this palace; nor was there need for
+them. The High King found that his hands had washed themselves,
+and when later on he noticed that food had been placed before him
+he noticed also that it had come without the assistance of
+servile hands. A cloak was laid gently about his shoulders, and
+he was glad of it, for his own was soiled by exposure to sun and
+wind and water, and was not worthy of a lady's eye.
+
+Then he was invited to eat.
+
+He noticed, however, that food had been set for no one but
+himself, and this did not please him, for to eat alone was
+contrary to the hospitable usage of a king, and was contrary also
+to his contract with the gods.
+
+"Good, my hosts," he remonstrated, "it is geasa (taboo) for me to
+eat alone."
+
+"But we never eat together," the queen replied.
+
+"I cannot violate my geasa," said the High King.
+
+"I will eat with you," said Segda (Sweet Speech), "and thus,
+while you are our guest you will not do violence to your vows."
+
+"Indeed," said Conn, "that will be a great satisfaction, for I
+have already all the trouble that I can cope with and have no
+wish to add to it by offending the gods."
+
+"What is your trouble?" the gentle queen asked. "During a year,"
+Conn replied, "there has been neither corn nor milk in Ireland.
+The land is parched, the trees are withered, the birds do not
+sing in Ireland, and the bees do not make honey."
+
+"You are certainly in trouble," the queen assented.
+
+"But," she continued, "for what purpose have you come to our
+island?"
+
+"I have come to ask for the loan of your son."
+
+"A loan of my son!"
+
+"I have been informed," Conn explained, "that if the son of a
+sinless couple is brought to Tara and is bathed in the waters of
+Ireland the land will be delivered from those ills."
+
+The king of this island, Daire, had not hitherto spoken, but he
+now did so with astonishment and emphasis.
+
+"We would not lend our son to any one, not even to gain the
+kingship of the world," said he.
+
+But Segda, observing that the guest's countenance was
+discomposed, broke in:
+
+"It is not kind to refuse a thing that the Ard-Ri' of Ireland
+asks for, and I will go with him."
+
+"Do not go, my pulse," his father advised.
+
+"Do not go, my one treasure," his mother pleaded.
+
+"I must go indeed," the boy replied, "for it is to do good I am
+required, and no person may shirk such a requirement."
+
+"Go then," said his father, "but I will place you under the
+protection of the High King and of the Four Provincial Kings of
+Ireland, and under the protection of Art, the son of Conn, and of
+Fionn, the son of Uail, and under the protection of the magicians
+and poets and the men of art in Ireland." And he thereupon bound
+these protections and safeguards on the Ard-Ri' with an oath.
+
+"I will answer for these protections," said Conn.
+
+He departed then from the island with Segda and in three days
+they reached Ireland, and in due time they arrived at Tara.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+On reaching the palace Conn called his magicians and poets to a
+council and informed them that he had found the boy they
+sought--the son of a virgin. These learned people consulted
+together, and they stated that the young man must be killed, and
+that his blood should be mixed with the earth of Tara and
+sprinkled under the withered trees.
+
+When Segda heard this he was astonished and defiant; then, seeing
+that he was alone and without prospect of succour, he grew
+downcast and was in great fear for his life. But remembering the
+safeguards under which he had been placed, he enumerated these to
+the assembly, and called on the High King to grant him the
+protections that were his due.
+
+Conn was greatly perturbed, but, as in duty bound, he placed the
+boy under the various protections that were in his oath, and,
+with the courage of one who has no more to gain or lose, he
+placed Segda, furthermore, under the protection of all the men of
+Ireland.
+
+But the men of Ireland refused to accept that bond, saying that
+although the Ard-Ri' was acting justly towards the boy he was not
+acting justly towards Ireland.
+
+"We do not wish to slay this prince for our pleasure," they
+argued, "but for the safety of Ireland he must be killed."
+
+Angry parties were formed. Art, and Fionn the son of Uail, and
+the princes of the land were outraged at the idea that one who
+had been placed under their protection should be hurt by any
+hand. But the men of Ireland and the magicians stated that the
+king had gone to Faery for a special purpose, and that his acts
+outside or contrary to that purpose were illegal, and committed
+no person to obedience.
+
+There were debates in the Council Hall, in the market-place, in
+the streets of Tara, some holding that national honour dissolved
+and absolved all personal honour, and others protesting that no
+man had aught but his personal honour, and that above it not the
+gods, not even Ireland, could be placed--for it is to be known
+that Ireland is a god.
+
+Such a debate was in course, and Segda, to whom both sides
+addressed gentle and courteous arguments, grew more and more
+disconsolate.
+
+"You shall die for Ireland, dear heart," said one of them, and he
+gave Segda three kisses on each cheek.
+
+"Indeed," said Segda, returning those kisses, "indeed I had not
+bargained to die for Ireland, but only to bathe in her waters and
+to remove her pestilence."
+
+"But dear child and prince," said another, kissing him likewise,
+"if any one of us could save Ireland by dying for her how
+cheerfully we would die."
+
+And Segda, returning his three kisses, agreed that the death was
+noble, but that it was not in his undertaking.
+
+Then, observing the stricken countenances about him, and the
+faces of men and women hewn thin by hunger, his resolution melted
+away, and he said:
+
+"I think I must die for you," and then he said:
+
+"I will die for you"
+
+And when he had said that, all the people present touched his
+cheek with their lips, and the love and peace of Ireland entered
+into his soul, so that he was tranquil and proud and happy.
+
+The executioner drew his wide, thin blade and all those present
+covered their eyes with their cloaks, when a wailing voice called
+on the executioner to delay yet a moment. The High King uncovered
+his eyes and saw that a woman had approached driving a cow before
+her.
+
+"Why are you killing the boy?" she demanded.
+
+The reason for this slaying was explained to her.
+
+"Are you sure," she asked, "that the poets and magicians really
+know everything?"
+
+"Do they not?" the king inquired.
+
+"Do they?" she insisted.
+
+And then turning to the magicians:
+
+"Let one magician of the magicians tell me what is hidden in the
+bags that are lying across the back of my cow."
+
+But no magician could tell it, nor did they try to.
+
+"Questions are not answered thus," they said. "There is formulae,
+and the calling up of spirits, and lengthy complicated
+preparations in our art."
+
+"I am not badly learned in these arts," said the woman, "and I
+say that if you slay this cow the effect will be the same as if
+you had killed the boy."
+
+"We would prefer to kill a cow or a thousand cows rather than
+harm this young prince," said Conn, "but if we spare the boy will
+these evils return?"
+
+"They will not be banished until you have banished their cause."
+
+"And what is their cause?"
+
+"Becuma is the cause, and she must be banished."
+
+"If you must tell me what to do," said Conn, "tell me at least to
+do something that I can do."
+
+"I will tell you certainly. You can keep Becuma and your ills as
+long as you want to. It does not matter to me. Come, my son," she
+said to Segda, for it was Segda's mother who had come to save
+him; and then that sinless queen and her son went back to their
+home of enchantment, leaving the king and Fionn and the magicians
+and nobles of Ireland astonished and ashamed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+There are good and evil people in this and in every other world,
+and the person who goes hence will go to the good or the evil
+that is native to him, while those who return come as surely to
+their due. The trouble which had fallen on Becuma did not leave
+her repentant, and the sweet lady began to do wrong as instantly
+and innocently as a flower begins to grow. It was she who was
+responsible for the ills which had come on Ireland, and we may
+wonder why she brought these plagues and droughts to what was now
+her own country.
+
+Under all wrong-doing lies personal vanity or the feeling that we
+are endowed and privileged beyond our fellows. It is probable
+that, however courageously she had accepted fate, Becuma had been
+sharply stricken in her pride; in the sense of personal strength,
+aloofness, and identity, in which the mind likens itself to god
+and will resist every domination but its own. She had been
+punished, that is, she had submitted to control, and her sense of
+freedom, of privilege, of very being, was outraged. The mind
+flinches even from the control of natural law, and how much more
+from the despotism of its own separated likenesses, for if
+another can control me that other has usurped me, has become me,
+and how terribly I seem diminished by the seeming addition!
+
+This sense of separateness is vanity, and is the bed of all
+wrong-doing. For we are not freedom, we are control, and we must
+submit to our own function ere we can exercise it. Even
+unconsciously we accept the rights of others to all that we have,
+and if we will not share our good with them, it is because we
+cannot, having none; but we will yet give what we have, although
+that be evil. To insist on other people sharing in our personal
+torment is the first step towards insisting that they shall share
+in our joy, as we shall insist when we get it.
+
+Becuma considered that if she must suffer all else she met should
+suffer also. She raged, therefore, against Ireland, and in
+particular she raged against young Art, her husband's son, and
+she left undone nothing that could afflict Ireland or the prince.
+She may have felt that she could not make them suffer, and that
+is a maddening thought to any woman. Or perhaps she had really
+desired the son instead of the father, and her thwarted desire
+had perpetuated itself as hate. But it is true that Art regarded
+his mother's successor with intense dislike, and it is true that
+she actively returned it.
+
+One day Becuma came on the lawn before the palace, and seeing
+that Art was at chess with Cromdes she walked to the table on
+which the match was being played and for some time regarded the
+game. But the young prince did not take any notice of her while
+she stood by the board, for he knew that this girl was the enemy
+of Ireland, and he could not bring himself even to look at her.
+
+Becuma, looking down on his beautiful head, smiled as much in
+rage as in disdain.
+
+"O son of a king," said she, "I demand a game with you for
+stakes."
+
+Art then raised his head and stood up courteously, but he did not
+look at her.
+
+"Whatever the queen demands I will do," said he.
+
+"Am I not your mother also?" she replied mockingly, as she took
+the seat which the chief magician leaped from.
+
+The game was set then, and her play was so skilful that Art was
+hard put to counter her moves. But at a point of the game Becuma
+grew thoughtful, and, as by a lapse of memory, she made a move
+which gave the victory to her opponent. But she had intended
+that. She sat then, biting on her lip with her white small teeth
+and staring angrily at Art.
+
+"What do you demand from me?" she asked.
+
+"I bind you to eat no food in Ireland until you find the wand of
+Curoi, son of Dare'."
+
+Becuma then put a cloak about her and she went from Tara
+northward and eastward until she came to the dewy, sparkling
+Brugh of Angus mac an Og in Ulster, but she was not admitted
+there. She went thence to the Shi' ruled over by Eogabal, and
+although this lord would not admit her, his daughter Aine', who
+was her foster-sister, let her into Faery.
+
+She made inquiries and was informed where the dun of Curoi mac
+Dare' was, and when she had received this intelligence she set
+out for Sliev Mis. By what arts she coaxed Curoi to give up his
+wand it matters not, enough that she was able to return in
+triumph to Tara. When she handed the wand to Art, she said:
+
+"I claim my game of revenge."
+
+"It is due to you," said Art, and they sat on the lawn before the
+palace and played.
+
+A hard game that was, and at times each of the combatants sat for
+an hour staring on the board before the next move was made, and
+at times they looked from the board and for hours stared on the
+sky seeking as though in heaven for advice. But Becuma's
+foster-sister, Aine', came from the Shi', and, unseen by any, she
+interfered with Art's play, so that, suddenly, when he looked
+again on the board, his face went pale, for he saw that the game
+was lost.
+
+"I didn't move that piece," said he sternly.
+
+"Nor did I," Becuma replied, and she called on the onlookers to
+confirm that statement.
+
+She was smiling to herself secretly, for she had seen what the
+mortal eyes around could not see.
+
+"I think the game is mine," she insisted softly.
+
+"I think that your friends in Faery have cheated," he replied,
+"but the game is yours if you are content to win it that way."
+
+"I bind you," said Becuma, "to eat no food in Ireland until you
+have found Delvcaem, the daughter of Morgan."
+
+"Where do I look for her?" said Art in despair.
+
+"She is in one of the islands of the sea," Becuma replied, "that
+is all I will tell you," and she looked at him maliciously,
+joyously, contentedly, for she thought he would never return from
+that journey, and that Morgan would see to it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Art, as his father had done before him, set out for the
+Many-Coloured Land, but it was from Inver Colpa he embarked and
+not from Ben Edair.
+
+At a certain time he passed from the rough green ridges of the
+sea to enchanted waters, and he roamed from island to island
+asking all people how he might come to Delvcaem, the daughter of
+Morgan. But he got no news from any one, until he reached an
+island that was fragrant with wild apples, gay with flowers, and
+joyous with the song of birds and the deep mellow drumming of the
+bees. In this island he was met by a lady, Crede', the Truly
+Beautiful, and when they had exchanged kisses, he told her who he
+was and on what errand he was bent.
+
+"We have been expecting you," said Crede', "but alas, poor soul,
+it is a hard, and a long, bad way that you must go; for there is
+sea and land, danger and difficulty between you and the daughter
+of Morgan."
+
+"Yet I must go there," he answered.
+
+"There is a wild dark ocean to be crossed. There is a dense wood
+where every thorn on every tree is sharp as a spear-point and is
+curved and clutching. There is a deep gulf to be gone through,"
+she said, "a place of silence and terror, full of dumb, venomous
+monsters. There is an immense oak forest--dark, dense, thorny, a
+place to be strayed in, a place to be utterly bewildered and lost
+in. There is a vast dark wilderness, and therein is a dark house,
+lonely and full of echoes, and in it there are seven gloomy hags,
+who are warned already of your coming and are waiting to plunge
+you in a bath of molten lead."
+
+"It is not a choice journey," said Art, "but I have no choice and
+must go."
+
+"Should you pass those hags," she continued, "and no one has yet
+passed them, you must meet Ailill of the Black Teeth, the son of
+Mongan Tender Blossom, and who could pass that gigantic and
+terrible fighter?"
+
+"It is not easy to find the daughter of Morgan," said Art in a
+melancholy voice.
+
+"It is not easy," Crede' replied eagerly, "and if you will take
+my advice-- "
+
+"Advise me," he broke in, "for in truth there is no man standing
+in such need of counsel as I do."
+
+"I would advise you," said Crede' in a low voice, "to seek no
+more for the sweet daughter of Morgan, but to stay in this place
+where all that is lovely is at your service."
+
+"But, but-- "cried Art in astonishment.
+
+"Am I not as sweet as the daughter of Morgan?" she demanded, and
+she stood before him queenly and pleadingly, and her eyes took
+his with imperious tenderness.
+
+"By my hand," he answered, "you are sweeter and lovelier than any
+being under the sun, but-- "
+
+"And with me," she said, "you will forget Ireland."
+
+"I am under bonds," cried Art, "I have passed my word, and I
+would not forget Ireland or cut myself from it for all the
+kingdoms of the Many-Coloured Land."
+
+Crede' urged no more at that time, but as they were parting she
+whispered, "There are two girls, sisters of my own, in Morgan's
+palace. They will come to you with a cup in either hand; one cup
+will be filled with wine and one with poison. Drink from the
+right-hand cup, O my dear."
+
+Art stepped into his coracle, and then, wringing her hands, she
+made yet an attempt to dissuade him from that drear journey.
+
+"Do not leave me," she urged. "Do not affront these dangers.
+Around the palace of Morgan there is a palisade of copper spikes,
+and on the top of each spike the head of a man grins and
+shrivels. There is one spike only which bears no head, and it is
+for your head that spike is waiting. Do not go there, my love."
+
+"I must go indeed," said. Art earnestly.
+
+"There is yet a danger," she called. "Beware of Delvcaem's
+mother, Dog Head, daughter of the King of the Dog Heads. Beware
+of her."
+
+"Indeed," said Art to himself, "there is so much to beware of
+that I will beware of nothing. I will go about my business," he
+said to the waves, "and I will let those beings and monsters and
+the people of the Dog Heads go about their business."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+He went forward in his light bark, and at some moment found that
+he had parted from those seas and was adrift on vaster and more
+turbulent billows. From those dark-green surges there gaped at
+him monstrous and cavernous jaws; and round, wicked, red-rimmed,
+bulging eyes stared fixedly at the boat. A ridge of inky water
+rushed foaming mountainously on his board, and behind that ridge
+came a vast warty head that gurgled and groaned. But at these
+vile creatures he thrust with his lengthy spear or stabbed at
+closer reach with a dagger.
+
+He was not spared one of the terrors which had been foretold.
+Thus, in the dark thick oak forest he slew the seven hags and
+buried them in the molten lead which they had heated for him. He
+climbed an icy mountain, the cold breath of which seemed to slip
+into his body and chip off inside of his bones, and there, until
+he mastered the sort of climbing on ice, for each step that he
+took upwards he slipped back ten steps. Almost his heart gave way
+before he learned to climb that venomous hill. In a forked glen
+into which he slipped at night-fall he was surrounded by giant
+toads, who spat poison, and were icy as the land they lived in,
+and were cold and foul and savage. At Sliav Saev he encountered
+the long-maned lions who lie in wait for the beasts of the 
+world, growling woefully as they squat above their prey and
+crunch those terrified bones. He came on Ailill of the Black
+Teeth sitting on the bridge that spanned a torrent, and the grim
+giant was grinding his teeth on a pillar stone. Art drew nigh
+unobserved and brought him low.
+
+It was not for nothing that these difficulties and dangers were
+in his path. These things and creatures were the invention of Dog
+Head, the wife of Morgan, for it had become known to her that she
+would die on the day her daughter was wooed. Therefore none of
+the dangers encountered by Art were real, but were magical
+chimeras conjured against him by the great witch.
+
+Affronting all, conquering all, he came in time to Morgan's dun,
+a place so lovely that after the miseries through which he had
+struggled he almost wept to see beauty again.
+
+Delvcaem knew that he was coming. She was waiting for him,
+yearning for him. To her mind Art was not only love, he was
+freedom, for the poor girl was a captive in her father's home. A
+great pillar an hundred feet high had been built on the roof of
+Morgan's palace, and on the top of this pillar a tiny room had
+been constructed, and in this room Delvcaem was a prisoner.
+
+She was lovelier in shape than any other princess of the
+Many-Coloured Land. She was wiser than all the other women of
+that land, and she was skilful in music, embroidery, and
+chastity, and in all else that pertained to the knowledge of a
+queen.
+
+Although Delvcaem's mother wished nothing but ill to Art, she yet
+treated him with the courtesy proper in a queen on the one hand
+and fitting towards the son of the King of Ireland on the other.
+Therefore, when Art entered the palace he was met and kissed, and
+he was bathed and clothed and fed. Two young girls came to him
+then, having a cup in each of their hands, and presented him with
+the kingly drink, but, remembering the warning which Credl had
+given him, he drank only from the right-hand cup and escaped the
+poison. Next he was visited by Delvcaem's mother, Dog Head,
+daughter of the King of the Dog Heads, and Morgan's queen. She
+was dressed in full armour, and she challenged Art to fight with
+her.
+
+It was a woeful combat, for there was no craft or sagacity
+unknown to her, and Art would infallibly have perished by her
+hand but that her days were numbered, her star was out, and her
+time had come. It was her head that rolled on the ground when the
+combat was over, and it was her head that grinned and shrivelled
+on the vacant spike which she had reserved for Art's.
+
+Then Art liberated Delvcaem from her prison at the top of the
+pillar and they were affianced together. But the ceremony had
+scarcely been completed when the tread of a single man caused the
+palace to quake and seemed to jar the world.
+
+It was Morgan returning to the palace.
+
+The gloomy king challenged him to combat also, and in his honour
+Art put on the battle harness which he had brought from Ireland.
+He wore a breastplate and helmet of gold, a mantle of blue satin
+swung from his shoulders, his left hand was thrust into the grips
+of a purple shield, deeply bossed with silver, and in the other
+hand he held the wide-grooved, blue hilted sword which had rung
+so often into fights and combats, and joyous feats and exercises.
+
+Up to this time the trials through which he had passed had seemed
+so great that they could not easily be added to. But if all those
+trials had been gathered into one vast calamity they would not
+equal one half of the rage and catastrophe of his war with
+Morgan.
+
+For what he could not effect by arms Morgan would endeavour by
+guile, so that while Art drove at him or parried a crafty blow,
+the shape of Morgan changed before his eyes, and the monstrous
+king was having at him in another form, and from a new direction.
+
+It was well for the son of the Ard-Ri' that he had been beloved
+by the poets and magicians of his land, and that they had taught
+him all that was known of shape-changing and words of power.
+
+He had need of all these.
+
+At times, for the weapon must change with the enemy, they fought
+with their foreheads as two giant stags, and the crash of their
+monstrous onslaught rolled and lingered on the air long after
+their skulls had parted. Then as two lions, long-clawed,
+deep-mouthed, snarling, with rigid mane, with red-eyed glare,
+with flashing, sharp-white fangs, they prowled lithely about each
+other seeking for an opening. And then as two green-ridged,
+white-topped, broad-swung, overwhelming, vehement billows of the
+deep, they met and crashed and sunk into and rolled away from
+each other; and the noise of these two waves was as the roar of
+all ocean when the howl of the tempest is drowned in the
+league-long fury of the surge.
+
+But when the wife's time has come the husband is doomed. He is
+required elsewhere by his beloved, and Morgan went to rejoin his
+queen in the world that comes after the Many-Coloured Land, and
+his victor shore that knowledgeable head away from its giant
+shoulders.
+
+He did not tarry in the Many-Coloured Land, for he had nothing
+further to seek there. He gathered the things which pleased him
+best from among the treasures of its grisly king, and with
+Delvcaem by his side they stepped into the coracle.
+
+Then, setting their minds on Ireland, they went there as it were
+in a flash.
+
+The waves of all the world seemed to whirl past them in one huge,
+green cataract. The sound of all these oceans boomed in their
+ears for one eternal instant. Nothing was for that moment but a
+vast roar and pour of waters. Thence they swung into a silence
+equally vast, and so sudden that it was as thunderous in the
+comparison as was the elemental rage they quitted. For a time
+they sat panting, staring at each other, holding each other, lest
+not only their lives but their very souls should be swirled away
+in the gusty passage of world within world; and then, looking
+abroad, they saw the small bright waves creaming by the rocks of
+Ben Edair, and they blessed the power that had guided and
+protected them, and they blessed the comely land of Ir.
+
+On reaching Tara, Delvcaem, who was more powerful in art and
+magic than Becuma, ordered the latter to go away, and she did so.
+
+She left the king's side. She came from the midst of the
+counsellors and magicians. She did not bid farewell to any one.
+She did not say good-bye to the king as she set out for Ben
+Edair.
+
+Where she could go to no man knew, for she had been ban-ished
+from the Many-Coloured Land and could not return there. She was
+forbidden entry to the Shi' by Angus Og, and she could not remain
+in Ireland. She went to Sasana and she became a queen in that
+country, and it was she who fostered the rage against the Holy
+Land which has not ceased to this day.
+
+
+
+
+MONGAN'S FRENZY
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The abbot of the Monastery of Moville sent word to the
+story-tellers of Ireland that when they were in his neighbourhood
+they should call at the monastery, for he wished to collect and
+write down the stories which were in danger of being forgotten.
+
+"These things also must he told," said he.
+
+In particular he wished to gather tales which told of the deeds
+that had been done before the Gospel came to Ireland.
+
+"For," said he, "there are very good tales among those ones, and
+it would be a pity if the people who come after us should be
+ignorant of what happened long ago, and of the deeds of their
+fathers."
+
+So, whenever a story-teller chanced in that neighbourhood he was
+directed to the monastery, and there he received a welcome and
+his fill of all that is good for man.
+
+The abbot's manuscript boxes began to fill up, and he used to
+regard that growing store with pride and joy. In the evenings,
+when the days grew short and the light went early, he would call
+for some one of these manuscripts and have it read to him by
+candle-light, in order that he might satisfy himself that it was
+as good as he had judged it to be on the previous hearing.
+
+One day a story-teller came to the monastery, and, like all the
+others, he was heartily welcomed and given a great deal more than
+his need.
+
+He said that his name was Cairide', and that he had a story to
+tell which could not be bettered among the stories of Ireland.
+
+The abbot's eyes glistened when he heard that.    He rubbed his
+hands together and smiled on his guest.
+
+"What is the name of your story?" he asked.
+
+"It is called 'Mongan's Frenzy.'"
+
+"I never heard of it before," cried the abbot joyfully.
+
+"I am the only man that knows it," Cairide' replied.
+
+"But how does that come about?" the abbot inquired.
+
+"Because it belongs to my family," the story-teller answered.
+"There was a Cairide' of my nation with Mongan when he went into
+Faery. This Cairide' listened to the story when it was first
+told. Then he told it to his son, and his son told it to his son,
+and that son's great-great-grandson's son told it to his son's
+son, and he told it to my father, and my father told it to me."
+
+"And you shall tell it to me," cried the abbot triumphantly.
+
+"I will indeed," said Cairide'. Vellum was then brought and
+quills. The copyists sat at their tables. Ale was placed beside
+the story-teller, and he told this tale to the abbot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Said Cairide':
+
+Mongan's wife at that time was Bro'tiarna, the Flame Lady. She
+was passionate and fierce, and because the blood would flood
+suddenly to her cheek, so that she who had seemed a lily became,
+while you looked upon her, a rose, she was called Flame Lady. She
+loved Mongan with ecstasy and  abandon, and for that also he
+called her Flame Lady.
+
+But there may have been something of calculation even in her
+wildest moment, for if she was delighted in her affection she was
+tormented in it also, as are all those who love the great ones of
+life and strive to equal themselves where equality is not
+possible.
+
+For her husband was at once more than himself and less than
+himself. He was less than himself because he was now Mongan. He
+was more than himself because he was one who had long disappeared
+from the world of men. His lament had been sung and his funeral
+games played many, many years before, and Bro'tiarna sensed in
+him secrets, experiences, knowledges in which she could have no
+part, and for which she was greedily envious.
+
+So she was continually asking him little, simple questions a'
+propos of every kind of thing.
+
+She weighed all that he said on whatever subject, and when he
+talked in his sleep she listened to his dream.
+
+The knowledge that she gleaned from those listenings tormented
+her far more than it satisfied her, for the names of other women
+were continually on his lips, sometimes in terms of dear
+affection, sometimes in accents of anger or despair, and in his
+sleep he spoke familiarly of people whom the story-tellers told
+of, but who had been dead for centuries. Therefore she was
+perplexed, and became filled with a very rage of curiosity.
+
+Among the names which her husband mentioned there was one which,
+because of the frequency with which it appeared, and because of
+the tone of anguish and love and longing in which it was uttered,
+she thought of oftener than the others: this name was Duv Laca.
+Although she questioned and cross-questioned Cairide', her
+story-teller, she could discover nothing about a lady who had
+been known as the Black Duck. But one night when Mongan seemed to
+speak with Duv Laca he mentioned her father as Fiachna Duv mac
+Demain, and the story-teller said that king had been dead for a
+vast number of years.
+
+She asked her husband then, boldly, to tell her the story of Duv
+Laca, and under the influence of their mutual love he promised to
+tell it to her some time, but each time she reminded him of his
+promise he became confused, and said that he would tell it some
+other time.
+
+As time went on the poor Flame Lady grew more and more jealous of
+Duv Laca, and more and more certain that, if only she could know
+what had happened, she would get some ease to her tormented heart
+and some assuagement of her perfectly natural curiosity.
+Therefore she lost no opportunity of reminding Mongan of his
+promise, and on each occasion he renewed the promise and put it
+back to another time.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+In the year when Ciaran the son of the Carpenter died, the same
+year when Tuathal Maelgariv was killed and the year when Diarmait
+the son of Cerrbel became king of all Ireland, the year 538 of
+our era in short, it happened that there was a great gathering of
+the men of Ireland at the Hill of Uisneach in Royal Meath.
+
+In addition to the Council which was being held, there were games
+and tournaments and brilliant deployments of troops, and
+universal feastings and enjoyments. The gathering lasted for a
+week, and on the last day of the week Mongan was moving through
+the crowd with seven guards, his story-teller Cairide', and his
+wife.
+
+It had been a beautiful day, with brilliant sunshine and great
+sport, but suddenly clouds began to gather in the sky to the
+west, and others came rushing blackly from the east. When these
+clouds met the world went dark for a space, and there fell from
+the sky a shower of hailstones, so large that each man wondered
+at their size, and so swift and heavy that the women and young
+people of the host screamed from the pain of the blows they
+received.
+
+Mongan's men made a roof of their shields, and the hailstones
+battered on the shields so terribly that even under them they
+were afraid. They began to move away from the host looking for
+shelter, and when they had gone apart a little way they turned
+the edge of a small hill and a knoll of trees, and in the
+twinkling of an eye they were in fair weather.
+
+One minute they heard the clashing and bashing of the hailstones,
+the howling of the venomous wind, the screams of women and the
+uproar of the crowd on the Hill of Uisneach, and the next minute
+they heard nothing more of those sounds and saw nothing more of
+these sights, for they had been permitted to go at one step out
+of the world of men and into the world of Faery.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+There is a difference between this world and the world of Faery,
+but it is not immediately perceptible. Everything that is here is
+there, but the things that are there are better than those that
+are here. All things that are bright are there brighter. There is
+more gold in the sun and more silver in the moon of that land.
+There is more scent in the flowers, more savour in the fruit.
+There is more comeliness in the men and more tenderness in the
+women. Everything in Faery is better by this one wonderful
+degree, and it is by this betterness you will know that you are
+there if you should ever happen to get there.
+
+Mongan and his companions stepped from the world of storm into
+sunshine and a scented world. The instant they stepped they
+stood, bewildered, looking at each other silently, questioningly,
+and then with one accord they turned to look back whence they had
+come.
+
+There was no storm behind them. The sunlight drowsed there as it
+did in front, a peaceful flooding of living gold. They saw the
+shapes of the country to which their eyes were accustomed, and
+recognised the well-known landmarks, but it seemed that the
+distant hills were a trifle higher, and the grass which clothed
+them and stretched between was greener, was more velvety: that
+the trees were better clothed and had more of peace as they hung
+over the quiet ground.
+
+But Mongan knew what had happened, and he smiled with glee as he
+watched his astonished companions, and he sniffed that balmy air
+as one whose nostrils remembered it.
+
+"You had better come with me," he said.
+
+"Where are we?" his wife asked. "Why, we are here," cried Mongan;
+"where else should we be?"
+
+He set off then, and the others followed, staring about them
+cautiously, and each man keeping a hand on the hilt of his sword.
+
+"Are we in Faery?" the Flame Lady asked.
+
+"We are," said Mongan.
+
+When they had gone a little distance they came to a grove of
+ancient trees. Mightily tail and well grown these trees were, and
+the trunk of each could not have been spanned by ten broad men.
+As they went among these quiet giants into the dappled obscurity
+and silence, their thoughts became grave, and all the motions of
+their minds elevated as though they must equal in greatness and
+dignity those ancient and glorious trees. When they passed
+through the grove they saw a lovely house before them, built of
+mellow wood and with a roof of bronze--it was like the dwelling
+of a king, and over the windows of the Sunny Room there was a
+balcony. There were ladies on this balcony, and when they saw the
+travellers approaching they sent messengers to welcome them.
+
+Mongan and his companions were then brought into the house, and
+all was done for them that could be done for honoured guests.
+Everything within the house was as excellent as all without, and
+it was inhabited by seven men and seven women, and it was evident
+that Mongan and these people were well acquainted.
+
+In the evening a feast was prepared, and when they had eaten well
+there was a banquet. There were seven vats of wine, and as Mongan
+loved wine he was very happy, and he drank more on that occasion
+than any one had ever noticed him to drink before.
+
+It was while he was in this condition of glee and expansion that
+the Flame Lady put her arms about his neck and begged he would
+tell her the story of Duv Laca, and, being boisterous then and
+full of good spirits, he agreed to her request, and he prepared
+to tell the tale.
+
+The seven men and seven women of tile Fairy Palace then took
+their places about him in a half-circle; his own seven guards sat
+behind them; his wife, the Flame Lady, sat by his side; and at
+the back of all Cairid~ his story-teller sat, listening with all
+his ears, and remembering every word that was uttered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Said Mongan:
+
+In the days of long ago and the times that have disappeared for
+ever, there was one Fiachna Finn the son of Baltan, the son of
+Murchertach, the son of Muredach, the son of Eogan, the son of
+Neill. He went from his own country when he was young, for he
+wished to see the land of Lochlann, and he knew that he would be
+welcomed by the king of that country, for Fiachna's father and
+Eolgarg's father had done deeds in common and were obliged to
+each other.
+
+He was welcomed, and he stayed at the Court of Lochlann in great
+ease and in the midst of pleasures.
+
+It then happened that Eolgarg Mor fell sick and the doctors could
+not cure him. They sent for other doctors, but they could not
+cure him, nor could any one say what he was suffering from,
+beyond that he was wasting visibly before their eyes, and would
+certainly become a shadow and disappear in air unless he was
+healed and fattened and made visible.
+
+They sent for more distant doctors, and then for others more
+distant still, and at last they found a man who claimed that he
+could make a cure if the king were supplied with the medicine
+which he would order.
+
+"What medicine is that?" said they all.
+
+"This is the medicine," said the doctor. "Find a per-fectly white
+cow with red ears, and boil it down in the lump, and if the king
+drinks that rendering he will recover."
+
+Before he had well said it messengers were going from the palace
+in all directions looking for such a cow. They found lots of cows
+which were nearly like what they wanted, but it was only by
+chance they came on the cow which would do the work, and that
+beast belonged to the most notorious and malicious and
+cantankerous female in Lochlann, the Black Hag. Now the Black Hag
+was not only those things that have been said; she was also
+whiskered and warty and one-eyed and obstreperous, and she was
+notorious and ill-favoured in many other ways also.
+
+They offered her a cow in the place of her own cow, but she
+refused to give it. Then they offered a cow for each leg of her
+cow, but she would not accept that offer unless Fiachna went bail
+for the payment. He agreed to do so, and they drove the beast
+away.
+
+On the return journey he was met by messengers who brought news
+from Ireland. They said that the King of Ulster was dead, and
+that he, Fiachna Finn, had been elected king in the dead king's
+place. He at once took ship for Ireland, and found that all he
+had been told was true, and he took up the government of Ulster.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A year passed, and one day as he was sitting at judgement there
+came a great noise from without, and this noise was so persistent
+that the people and suitors were scandalised, and Fiachna at last
+ordered that the noisy person should be brought before him to be
+judged.
+
+It was done, and to his surprise the person turned out to be the
+Black Hag.
+
+She blamed him in the court before his people, and complained
+that he had taken away her cow, and that she had not been paid
+the four cows he had gone bail for, and she demanded judgement
+from him and justice.
+
+"If you will consider it to be justice, I will give you twenty
+cows myself," said Fiachna.
+
+"I would not take all the cows in Ulster," she screamed.
+
+"Pronounce judgement yourself," said the king, "and if I can do
+what you demand I will do it." For he did not like to be in the
+wrong, and he did not wish that any person should have an
+unsatisfied claim upon him.
+
+The Black Hag then pronounced judgement, and the king had to
+fulfil it.
+
+"I have come," said she, "from the east to the west; you must
+come from the west to the east and make war for me, and revenge
+me on the King of Lochlann."
+
+Fiachna had to do as she demanded, and, although it was with a
+heavy heart, he set out in three days' time for Lochlann, and he
+brought with him ten battalions.
+
+He sent messengers before him to Big Eolgarg warning him of his
+coming, of his intention, and of the number of troops he was
+bringing; and when he landed Eolgarg met him with an equal force,
+and they fought together.
+
+In the first battle three hundred of the men of Lochlann were
+killed, but in the next battle Eolgarg Mor did not fight fair,
+for he let some venomous sheep out of a tent, and these attacked
+the men of Ulster and killed nine hundred of them.
+
+So vast was the slaughter made by these sheep and so great the
+terror they caused, that no one could stand before them, but by
+great good luck there was a wood at hand, and the men of Ulster,
+warriors and princes and charioteers, were forced to climb up the
+trees, and they roosted among the branches like great birds,
+while the venomous sheep ranged below bleating terribly and
+tearing up the ground.
+
+Fiachna Fi,m was also sitting in a tree, very high up, and he was
+disconsolate.
+
+"We are disgraced{" said he.
+
+"It is very lucky," said the man in the branch below, "that a
+sheep cannot climb a tree."
+
+"We are disgraced for ever{" said the King of Ulster.
+
+"If those sheep learn how to climb, we are undone surely," said
+the man below.
+
+"I will go down and fight the sheep," said Fiachna. But the
+others would not let the king go.
+
+"It is not right," they said, "that you should fight sheep."
+
+"Some one must fight them," said Fiachna Finn, "but no more of my
+men shall die until I fight myself; for if I am fated to die, I
+will die and I cannot escape it, and if it is the sheep's fate to
+die, then die they will; for there is no man can avoid destiny,
+and there is no sheep can dodge it either."
+
+"Praise be to god!" said the warrior that was higher up.
+
+"Amen!' said the man who was higher than he, and the rest of the
+warriors wished good luck to the king.
+
+He started then to climb down the tree with a heavy heart, but
+while he hung from the last branch and was about to let go, he
+noticed a tall warrior walking towards him. The king pulled
+himself up on the branch again and sat dangle-legged on it to see
+what the warrior would do.
+
+The stranger was a very tall man, dressed in a green cloak with a
+silver brooch at the shoulder. He had a golden band about his
+hair and golden sandals on his feet, and he was laughing heartily
+at the plight of the men of Ireland.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+"It is not nice of you to laugh at us," said Fiachna Finn.
+
+"Who could help laughing at a king hunkering on a branch and his
+army roosting around him like hens?" said the stranger.
+
+"Nevertheless," the king replied, "it would be courteous of you
+not to laugh at misfortune."
+
+"We laugh when we can," commented the stranger, "and are thankful
+for the chance."
+
+"You may come up into the tree," said Fiachna, "for I perceive
+that you are a mannerly person, and I see that some of the
+venomous sheep are charging in this direction. I would rather
+protect you," he continued, "than see you killed; for," said he
+lamentably, "I am getting down now to fight the sheep."
+
+"They will not hurt me," said the stranger. "Who are you?" the
+king asked.
+
+"I am Mananna'n, the son of Lir."
+
+Fiachna knew then that the stranger could not be hurt.
+
+"What will you give me if I deliver you from the sheep?" asked
+Manann,Sn.
+
+"I will give you anything you ask, if I have that thing."
+
+"I ask the rights of your crown and of your household for one
+day."
+
+Fiachna's breath was taken away by that request, and he took a
+little time to compose himself, then he said mildly:
+
+"I will not have one man of Ireland killed if I can save him. All
+that I have they give me, all that I have I give to them, and if
+I must give this also, then I will give this, although it would
+be easier for me to give my life." "That is agreed," said
+Mannana'n.
+
+He had something wrapped in a fold of his cloak, and he unwrapped
+and produced this thing.
+
+It was a dog.
+
+Now if the sheep were venomous, this dog was more venomous still,
+for it was fearful to look at. In body it was not large, but its
+head was of a great size, and the mouth that was shaped in that
+head was able to open like the lid of a pot. It was not teeth
+which were in that head, but hooks and fangs and prongs. Dreadful
+was that mouth to look at, terrible to look into, woeful to think
+about; and from it, or from the broad, loose nose that waggled
+above it, there came a sound which no word of man could describe,
+for it was not a snarl, nor was it a howl, although it was both
+of these. It was neither a growl nor a grunt, although it was
+both of these; it was not a yowl nor a groan, although it was
+both of these: for it was one sound made up of these sounds, and
+there was in it, too, a whine and a yelp, and a long-drawn
+snoring noise, and a deep purring noise, and a noise that was
+like the squeal of a rusty hinge, and there were other noises in
+it also.
+
+"The gods be praised!" said the man who was in the branch above
+the king.
+
+"What for this time?" said the king.
+
+"Because that dog cannot climb a tree," said the man.
+
+And the man on a branch yet above him groaned out "Amen !"
+
+"There is nothing to frighten sheep like a dog," said Mananna'n,
+"and there is nothing to frighten these sheep like this dog."
+
+He put the dog on the ground then.
+
+"Little dogeen, little treasure," said he, "go and kill the
+sheep."
+
+And when he said that the dog put an addition and an addendum on
+to the noise he had been making before, so that the men of
+Ireland stuck their fingers into their ears and turned the whites
+of their eyes upwards, and nearly fell off their branches with
+the fear and the fright which that sound put into them.
+
+It did not take the dog long to do what he had been ordered. He
+went forward, at first, with a slow waddle, and as the venomous
+sheep came to meet him in bounces, he then went to meet them in
+wriggles; so that in a while he went so fast that you could see
+nothing of him but a head and a wriggle. He dealt with the sheep
+in this way, a jump and a chop for each, and he never missed his
+jump and he never missed his chop. When he got his grip he swung
+round on it as if it was a hinge. The swing began with the chop,
+and it ended with the bit loose and the sheep giving its last
+kick. At the end of ten minutes all the sheep were lying on the
+ground, and the same bit was out of every sheep, and every sheep
+was dead.
+
+"You can come down now," said Mananna'n.
+
+"That dog can't climb a tree," said the man in the branch above
+the king warningly.
+
+"Praise be to the gods!" said the man who was above him.
+
+"Amen!" said the warrior who was higher up than that. And the man
+in the next tree said:
+
+"Don't move a hand or a foot until the dog chokes himself to
+death on the dead meat."
+
+The dog, however, did not eat a bit of the meat. He trotted to
+his master, and Mananna'n took him up and wrapped him in his
+cloak.
+
+"Now you can come down," said he.
+
+"I wish that dog was dead!" said the king.
+
+But he swung himself out of the tree all the same, for he did not
+wish to seem frightened before Mananna'n . "You can go now and
+beat the men of Lochlann," said Mananna'n. "You will be King of
+Lochlann before nightfall."
+
+"I wouldn't mind that," said theking. "It's no threat," said
+Mananna'n.
+
+The son of Lir turned then and went away in the direction of
+Ireland to take up his one-day rights, and Fiachna continued his
+battle with the Lochlannachs.
+
+He beat them before nightfall, and by that victory he became King
+of Lochlann and King of the Saxons and the Britons.
+
+He gave the Black Hag seven castles with their territories, and
+he gave her one hundred of every sort of cattle that he had
+captured. She was satisfied.
+
+Then he went back to Ireland, and after he had been there for
+some time his wife gave birth to a son.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+"You have not told me one word about Duv Laca," said the Flame
+Lady reproachfully.
+
+"I am coming to that," replied Mongan.
+
+He motioned towards one of the great vats, and wine was brought
+to him, of which he drank so joyously and so deeply that all
+people wondered at his thirst, his capacity, and his jovial
+spirits.
+
+"Now, I will begin again."
+
+
+Said Mongan: There was an attendant in Fiachna Finn's palace who
+was called An Da'v, and the same night that Fiachna's wife bore a
+son, the wife of An Da'v gave birth to a son also. This latter
+child was called mac an Da'v, but the son of Fiachna's wife was
+named Mongan.
+
+"Ah!" murmured the Flame Lady.
+
+The queen was angry. She said it was unjust and presumptuous that
+the servant should get a child at the same time that she got one
+herself, but there was no help for it, because the child was
+there and could not be obliterated.
+
+Now this also must be told.
+
+There was a neighbouring prince called Fiachna Duv, and he was
+the ruler of the Dal Fiatach. For a long time he had been at
+enmity and spiteful warfare with Fiachna Finn; and to this
+Fiachna Duv there was born in the same night a daughter, and this
+girl was named Duv Laca of the White Hand.
+
+"Ah!" cried the Flame Lady.
+
+"You see!" said Mongan, and he drank anew and joyously of the
+fairy wine.
+
+In order to end the trouble between Fiachna Finn and Fiachna Duv
+the babies were affianced to each other in the cradle on the day
+after they were born, and the men of Ireland rejoiced at that
+deed and at that news. But soon there came dismay and sorrow in
+the land, for when the little Mongan was three days old his real
+father, Mananna'n the son of Lir, appeared in the middle of the
+palace. He wrapped Mongan in his green cloak and took him away to
+rear and train in the Land of Promise, which is beyond the sea
+that is at the other side of the grave.
+
+When Fiachna Duv heard that Mongan, who was affianced to his
+daughter Duv Laca, had disappeared, he considered that his
+compact of peace was at an end, and one day he came by surprise
+and attacked the palace. He killed Fiachna Finn in that battle,
+and be crowned himself King of Ulster.
+
+The men of Ulster disliked him, and they petitioned Mananna'n to
+bring Mongan back, but Mananna'n would not do this until the boy
+was sixteen years of age and well reared in the wisdom of the
+Land of Promise. Then he did bring Mongan back, and by his means
+peace was made between Mongan and Fiachna Duv, and Mongan was
+married to his cradle-bride, the young Duv Laca.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+One day Mongan and Duv Laca were playing chess in their palace.
+Mongan had just made a move of skill, and he looked up from the
+board to see if Duv Laca seemed as discontented as she had a
+right to be. He saw then over Duv Laca's shoulder a little
+black-faced, tufty-headed cleric leaning against the door-post
+inside the room.
+
+"What are you doing there?" said Mongan.
+
+"What are you doing there yourself?" said the little black-faced
+cleric.
+
+"Indeed, I have a right to be in my own house," said Mongan.
+
+"Indeed I do not agree with you," said the cleric.
+
+"Where ought I be, then?" said Mongan.
+
+"You ought to be at Dun Fiathac avenging the murder of your
+father," replied the cleric, "and you ought to be ashamed of
+yourself for not having done it long ago. You can play chess with
+your wife when you have won the right to leisure."
+
+"But how can I kill my wife's father?" Mongan exclaimed. "By
+starting about it at once," said the cleric. "Here is a way of
+talking!" said Mongan.
+
+"I know," the cleric continued, "that Duv Laca will not agree
+with a word I say on this subject, and that she will  try to
+prevent you from doing what you have a right to do, for that is a
+wife's business, but a man's business is to do what I have just
+told you; so come with me now and do not wait to think about it,
+and do not wait to play any more chess. Fiachna Duv has only a
+small force with him at this moment, and we can burn his palace
+as he burned your father's palace, and kill himself as he killed
+your father, and crown you King of Ulster rightfully the way he
+crowned himself wrongfully as a king."
+
+"I begin to think that you own a lucky tongue, my black-faced
+friend," said Mongan, "and I will go with you."
+
+He collected his forces then, and he burned Fiachna Duv's
+fortress, and he killed Fiachna Duv, and he was crowned King of
+Ulster.
+
+Then for the first time he felt secure and at liberty to play
+chess. But he did not know until afterwards that the black-faced,
+tufty-headed person was his father Mananna'n, although that was
+the fact.
+
+There are some who say, however, that Fiachna the Black was
+killed in the year 624 by the lord of the Scot's Dal Riada,
+Condad Cerr, at the battle of Ard Carainn; but the people who say
+this do not know what they are talking about, and they do not
+care greatly what it is they say.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"There is nothing to marvel about in this Duv Laca," said the
+Flame Lady scornfully. "She has got married, and she has been
+beaten at chess. It has happened before."
+
+"Let us keep to the story," said Mongan, and, having taken some
+few dozen deep draughts of the wine, he became even more jovial
+than before. Then he recommenced his tale:
+
+It happened on a day that Mongan had need of treasure. He had
+many presents to make, and he had not as much gold and silver and
+cattle as was proper for a king. He called his nobles together
+and discussed what was the best thing to be done, and it was
+arranged that he should visit the provincial kings and ask boons
+from them.
+
+He set out at once on his round of visits, and the first province
+he went to was Leinster.
+
+The King of Leinster at that time was Branduv, the son of Echach.
+He welcomed Mongan and treated him well, and that night Mongan
+slept in his palace.
+
+When he awoke in the morning he looked out of a lofty window, and
+he saw on the sunny lawn before the palace a herd of cows. There
+were fifty cows in all, for he counted them, and each cow had a
+calf beside her, and each cow and calf was pure white in colour,
+and each of them had red ears.
+
+When Mongan saw these cows, he fell in love with them as he had
+never fallen in love with anything before.
+
+He came down from the window and walked on the sunny lawn among
+the cows, looking at each of them and speaking words of affection
+and endearment to them all; and while he was thus walking and
+talking and looking and loving, he noticed that some one was
+moving beside him. He looked from the cows then, and saw that the
+King of Leinster was at his side.
+
+"Are you in love with the cows?" Branduv asked him.
+
+"I am," said Mongan.
+
+"Everybody is," said the King of Leinster.
+
+"I never saw anything like them," said Mongan.
+
+"Nobody has," said the King of Leinster.
+
+"I never saw anything I would rather have than these cows," said
+Mongan.
+
+"These," said the King of Leinster, "are the most beautiful cows
+in Ireland, and," he continued thoughtfully, "Duv Laca is the
+most beautiful woman in Ireland."
+
+"There is no lie in what you say," said Mongan.
+
+"Is it not a queer thing," said the King of Leinster, "that I
+should have what you want with all your soul, and you should have
+what I want with all my heart?"
+
+"Queer indeed," said Mongan, "but what is it that you do want?"
+
+"Duv Laca, of course," said the King of Leinster.
+
+"Do you mean," said Mongan, "that you would exchange this herd of
+fifty pure white cows having red ears-- "
+
+"And their fifty calves," said the King of Leinster--
+
+"For Duv Laca, or for any woman in the world?"
+
+"I would," cried the King of Leinster, and he thumped his knee as
+he said it.
+
+"Done," roared Mongan, and the two kings shook hands on the
+bargain.
+
+Mongan then called some of his own people, and before any more
+words could be said and before any alteration could be made, he
+set his men behind the cows and marched home with them to Ulster.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Duv Laca wanted to know where the cows came from, and Mongan told
+her that the King of Leinster had given them to him. She fell in
+love with them as Mongan had done, but there was nobody in the
+world could have avoided loving those cows: such cows they were!
+such wonders! Mongan and Duv Laca used to play chess together,
+and then they would go out together to look at the cows, and then
+they would go in together and would talk to each other about the
+cows. Everything they did they did together, for they loved to be
+with each other.
+
+However, a change came.
+
+One morning a great noise of voices and trampling of horses and
+rattle of armour came about the palace. Mongan looked from the
+window.
+
+"Who is coming?" asked Duv Laca.
+
+But he did not answer her.
+
+"The noise must announce the visit of a king," Duv Laca
+continued.
+
+But Mongan did not say a word. Duv Laca then went to the window.
+
+"Who is that king?" she asked.
+
+And her husband replied to her then.
+
+"That is the King of Leinster," said he mournfully.
+
+"Well," said Duv Laca surprised, "is he not welcome?"
+
+"He is welcome indeed," said Mongan lamentably.
+
+"Let us go out and welcome him properly," Duv Laca suggested.
+
+"Let us not go near him at all," said Mongan, "for he is coming
+to complete his bargain."
+
+"What bargain are you talking about?" Duv Laca asked. But Mongan
+would not answer that.
+
+"Let us go out," said he, "for we must go out."
+
+Mongan and Duv Laca went out then and welcomed the King of
+Leinster. They brought him and his chief men into the palace, and
+water was brought for their baths, and rooms were appointed for
+them, and everything was done that should be done for guests.
+
+That night there was a feast, and after the feast there was a
+banquet, and all through the feast and the banquet the King of
+Leinster stared at Duv Laca with joy, and sometimes his breast
+was delivered of great sighs, and at times he moved as though in
+perturbation of spirit and mental agony.
+
+"There is something wrong with the King of Leinster," Duv Laca
+whispered.
+
+"I don't care if there is," said Mongan.
+
+"You must ask what he wants."
+
+"But I don't want to know it," said Mongan. "Nevertheless, you
+musk ask him," she insisted.
+
+So Mongan did ask him, and it was in a melancholy voice that he
+asked it.
+
+"Do you want anything?" said he to the King of Leinster.
+
+"I do indeed," said Branduv.
+
+"If it is in Ulster I will get it for you," said Mongan
+mournfully.
+
+"It is in Ulster," said Branduv.
+
+Mongan did not want to say anything more then, but the King of
+Leinster was so intent and everybody else was listening and Duv
+Laca was nudging his arm, so he said:  "What is it that you do
+want?" "I want Duv Laca."
+
+"I want her too," said Mongan.
+
+"You made your bargain," said the King of Leinster, "my cows and
+their calves for your Duv Laca, and the man that makes a bargain
+keeps a bargain."
+
+"I never before heard," said Mongan, "of a man giving away his
+own wife."
+
+"Even if you never heard of it before, you must do it now," said
+Duv Laca, "for honour is longer than life."
+
+Mongan became angry when Duv Laca said that. His face went red as
+a sunset, and the veins swelled in his neck and his forehead.
+
+"Do you say that?" he cried to Duv Laca.
+
+"I do," said Duv Laca.
+
+"Let the King of Leinster take her," said Mongan.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Duv Laca and the King of Leinster went apart then to speak
+together, and the eye of the king seemed to be as big as a plate,
+so fevered was it and so enlarged and inflamed by the look of Duv
+Laca. He was so confounded with joy also that his words got mixed
+up with his teeth, and Duv Laca did not know exactly what it was
+he was trying to say, and he did not seem to know himself. But at
+last he did say something intelligible, and this is what he said.
+
+"I am a very happy man," said he.
+
+"And I," said Duv Laca, "am the happiest woman in the world."
+
+"Why should you be happy?" the astonished king demanded.
+
+"Listen to me," she said. "If you tried to take me away from this
+place against my own wish, one half of the men of Ulster would be
+dead before you got me and the other half would be badly wounded
+in my defence."
+
+"A bargain is a bargain," the King of Leinster began.
+
+"But," she continued, "they will not prevent my going away, for
+they all know that I have been in love with you for ages."
+
+"What have you been in with me for ages?" said the amazed king.
+
+"In love with you," replied Duv Laca.
+
+"This is news," said the king, "and it is good news."
+
+"But, by my word," said Duv Laca, "I will not go with you unless
+you grant me a boon."
+
+"All that I have," cried Branduv, "and all that every-body has."
+
+"And you must pass your word and pledge your word that you will
+do what I ask."
+
+"I pass it and pledge it," cried the joyful king.
+
+"Then," said Duv Laca, "this is what I bind on you."
+
+"Light the yolk!" he cried.
+
+"Until one year is up and out you are not to pass the night in
+any house that I am in."
+
+"By my head and hand!" Branduv stammered.
+
+"And if you come into a house where I am during the time and term
+of that year, you are not to sit down in the chair that I am
+sitting in."
+
+"Heavy is my doom!" he groaned.
+
+"But," said Duv Laca, "if I am sitting in a chair or a seat you
+are to sit in a chair that is over against me and opposite to me
+and at a distance from me."
+
+"Alas!" said the king, and he smote his hands together, and then
+he beat them on his head, and then he looked at them and at
+everything about, and he could not tell what anything was or
+where anything was, for his mind was clouded and his wits had
+gone astray.
+
+"Why do you bind these woes on me?" he pleaded.
+
+
+"I wish to find out if you truly love me."
+
+"But I do," said the king. "I love you madly and dearly, and with
+all my faculties and members."
+
+"That is the way ! love you," said Duv Laca. "We shall have a
+notable year of courtship and joy. And let us go now," she
+continued, "for I am impatient to be with you."
+
+"Alas!" said Branduv, as he followed her. "Alas, alas!" said the
+King of Leinster.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+"I think," said the Flame Lady, "that whoever lost that woman had
+no reason to be sad."
+
+Mongan took her chin in his hand and kissed her lips.
+
+"All that you say is lovely, for you are lovely," said he, "and
+you are my delight and the joy of the world."
+
+Then the attendants brought him wine, and he drank so joyously of
+that and so deeply, that those who observed him thought he would
+surely burst and drown them. But he laughed loudly and with
+enormous delight, until the vessels of gold and silver and bronze
+chimed mellowly to his peal and the rafters of the house went
+creaking.
+
+Said he:
+
+Mongan loved Duv Laca of the White Hand better than he loved his
+life, better than he loved his honour. The kingdoms of the world
+did not weigh with him beside the string of her shoe. He would
+not look at a sunset if he could see her. He would not listen to
+a harp if he could hear her speak, for she was the delight of
+ages, the gem of time, and the wonder of the world till Doom.
+
+She went to Leinster with the king of that country, and when she
+had gone Mongan fell grievously sick, so that it did not seem he
+could ever recover again; and he began to waste and wither, and
+he began to look like a skeleton, and a bony structure, and a
+misery.
+
+Now this also must be known.
+
+Duv Laca had a young attendant, who was her foster-sister as well
+as her servant, and on the day that she got married to Mongan,
+her attendant was married to mac an Da'v, who was servant and
+foster-brother to Mongan. When Duv Laca went away with the King
+of Leinster, her servant, mac an Da'v's wife, went with her, so
+there were two wifeless men in Ulster at that time, namely,
+Mongan the king and mac an Da'v his servant.
+
+One day as Mongan sat in the sun, brooding lamentably on his
+fate, mac an Da'v came to him.
+
+"How are things with you, master?" asked Mac an Da'v.
+
+"Bad," said Mongan.
+
+"It was a poor day brought you off with Mananna'n to the Land of
+Promise," said his servant.
+
+"Why should you think that?" inquired Mongan.
+
+"Because," said mac an Da'v, "you learned nothing in the Land of
+Promise except how to eat a lot of food and how to do nothing in
+a deal of time."
+
+"What business is it of yours?" said Mongan angrily.
+
+"It is my business surely," said mac an Da'v, "for my wife has
+gone off to Leinster with your wife, and she wouldn't have gone
+if you hadn't made a bet and a bargain with that accursed king."
+
+Mac an Da'v began to weep then.
+
+"I didn't make a bargain with any king," said he, "and yet my
+wife has gone away with one, and it's all because of you."
+
+"There is no one sorrier for you than I am," said Mongan.
+
+"There is indeed," said mac an Da'v, "for I am sorrier myself."
+
+Mongan roused himself then.
+
+"You have a claim on me truly," said he, "and I will not have any
+one with a claim on me that is not satisfied. Go," he said to mac
+an Da'v, "to that fairy place we both know of. You remember the
+baskets I left there with the sod from Ireland in one and the sod
+from Scotland in the other; bring me the baskets and sods."
+
+"Tell me the why of this?" said his servant.
+
+"The King of Leinster will ask his wizards what I am doing, and
+this is what I will be doing. I will get on your back with a foot
+in each of the baskets, and when Branduv asks the wizards where I
+am they will tell him that I have one leg in Ireland and one leg
+in Scotland, and as long as they tell him that he will think he
+need not bother himself about me, and we will go into Leinster
+that way."
+
+"No bad way either," said mac an Da'v.
+
+They set out then.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+It was a long, uneasy journey, for although mac an Da'v was of
+stout heart and goodwill, yet no man can carry another on his
+back from Ulster to Leinster and go quick. Still, if you keep on
+driving a pig or a story they will get at last to where you wish
+them to go, and the man who continues putting one foot in front
+of the other will leave his home behind, and will come at last to
+the edge of the sea and the end of the world.
+
+When they reached Leinster the feast of Moy Life' was being held,
+and they pushed on by forced marches and long stages so as to be
+in time, and thus they came to the Moy of Cell Camain, and they
+mixed with the crowd that were going to the feast.
+
+A great and joyous concourse of people streamed about them. There
+were young men and young girls, and when these were not holding
+each other's hands it was because their arms were round each
+other's necks. There were old, lusty women going by, and when
+these were not talking together it was because their mouths were
+mutually filled with apples and meat-pies. There were young
+warriors with mantles of green and purple and red flying behind
+them on the breeze, and when these were not looking disdainfully
+on older soldiers it was because the older soldiers happened at
+the moment to be looking at them. There were old warriors with
+yard-long beards flying behind their shoulders llke wisps of hay,
+and when these were not nursing a broken arm or a cracked skull,
+it was because they were nursing wounds in their stomachs or
+their legs. There were troops of young women who giggled as long
+as their breaths lasted and beamed when it gave out. Bands of
+boys who whispered mysteriously together and pointed with their
+fingers in every direction at once, and would suddenly begin to
+run like a herd of stampeded horses. There were men with carts
+full of roasted meats. Women with little vats full of mead, and
+others carrying milk and beer. Folk of both sorts with towers
+swaying on their heads, and they dripping with honey. Children
+having baskets piled with red apples, and old women who peddled
+shell-fish and boiled lobsters. There were people who sold twenty
+kinds of bread, with butter thrown in. Sellers of onions and
+cheese, and others who supplied spare bits of armour, odd
+scabbards, spear handles, breastplate-laces. People who cut your
+hair or told your fortune or gave you a hot bath in a pot. Others
+who put a shoe on your horse or a piece of embroidery on your
+mantle; and others, again, who took stains off your sword or dyed
+your finger-nails or sold you a hound.
+
+It was a great and joyous gathering that was going to the feast.
+
+Mongan and his servant sat against a grassy hedge by the roadside
+and watched the multitude streaming past.
+
+Just then Mongan glanced to the right whence the people were
+coming. Then he pulled the hood of his cloak over his ears and
+over his brow.
+
+"Alas!" said he in a deep and anguished voice.
+
+Mac an Da'v turned to him.
+
+"Is it a pain in your stomach, master?"
+
+"It is not," said Mongan. "Well, what made you make that brutal
+and belching noise?"
+
+"It was a sigh I gave," said Mongan.
+
+"Whatever it was," said mac an Da'v, "what was it?"
+
+"Look down the road on this side and tell me who is coming," said
+his master.
+
+"It is a lord with his troop."
+
+"It is the King of Leinster," said Mongan. "The man," said mac an
+Da'v in a tone of great pity, "the man that took away your wife!
+And," he roared in a voice of extraordinary savagery, "the man
+that took away my wife into the bargain, and she not in the
+bargain."
+
+"Hush," said Mongan, for a man who heard his shout stopped to tie
+a sandie, or to listen.
+
+"Master," said mac an Da'v as the troop drew abreast and moved
+past.
+
+"What is it, my good friend?"
+
+"Let me throw a little, small piece of a rock at the King of
+Leinster."
+
+"I will not."
+
+"A little bit only, a small bit about twice the size of my head"
+
+"I will not let you," said Mongan.
+
+When the king had gone by mac an Da'v groaned a deep and dejected
+groan.
+
+"Oco'n!" said he. "Oco'n-i'o-go-deo'!" said he.
+
+The man who had tied his sandal said then: "Are you in pain,
+honest man?"
+
+"I am not in pain," said mac an Da'v.
+
+"Well, what was it that knocked a howl out of you like the yelp
+of a sick dog, honest man?"
+
+"Go away," said mac an Da'v, "go away, you flat-faced, nosey
+person." "There is no politeness left in this country," said the
+stranger, and he went away to a certain distance, and from thence
+he threw a stone at mac an Da'v's nose, and hit it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The road was now not so crowded as it had been. Minutes would
+pass and only a few travellers would come, and minutes more would
+go when nobody was in sight at all.
+
+Then two men came down the road: they were clerics.
+
+"I never saw that kind of uniform before," said mac an Da'v.
+
+"Even if you didn't," said Mongan, "there are plenty of them
+about. They are men that don't believe in our gods," said he.
+
+"Do they not, indeed?" said mac an Da'v. "The rascals!" said he.
+"What, what would Mananna'n say to that?"
+
+"The one in front carrying the big book is Tibraide'. He is the
+priest of Cell Camain, and he is the chief of those two."
+
+"Indeed, and indeed!" said mac an Da'v. "The one behind must be
+his servant, for he has a load on his back."
+
+The priests were reading their offices, and mac an Da'v marvelled
+at that.
+
+
+"What is it they are doing?" said he.
+
+"They are reading."
+
+"Indeed, and indeed they are," said mac an Da'v. "I can't make
+out a word of the language except that the man behind says amen,
+amen, every time the man in front puts a grunt out of him. And
+they don't like our gods at all!" said mac an Da'v.
+
+"They do not," said Mongan.
+
+"Play a trick on them, master," said mac an Da'v. Mongan agreed
+to play a trick on the priests.
+
+He looked at them hard for a minute, and then he waved his hand
+at them.
+
+The two priests stopped, and they stared straight in front of
+them, and then they looked at each other, and then they looked at
+the sky. The clerk began to bless himself, and then Tibraide'
+began to bless himself, and after that they didn't know what to
+do. For where there had been a road with hedges on each side and
+fields stretching beyond them, there was now no road, no hedge,
+no field; but there was a great broad river sweeping across their
+path; a mighty tumble of yellowy-brown waters, very swift, very
+savage; churning and billowing and jockeying among rough boulders
+and islands of stone. It was a water of villainous depth and of
+detestable wetness; of ugly hurrying and of desolate cavernous
+sound. At a little to their right there was a thin uncomely
+bridge that waggled across the torrent.
+
+Tibraide' rubbed his eyes, and then he looked again. "Do you see
+what I see?" said he to the clerk.
+
+"I don't know what you see," said the clerk, "but what I see I
+never did see before, and I wish I did not see it now."
+
+"I was born in this place," said Tibraide', "my father was born
+here before me, and my grandfather was born here before him, but
+until this day and this minute I never saw a river here before,
+and I never heard of one."
+
+"What will we do at all?" said the clerk. "What will we do at
+all?"
+
+"We will be sensible," said Tibraide' sternly, "and we will go
+about our business," said he. "If rivers fall out of the sky what
+has that to do with you, and if there is a river here, which
+there is, why, thank God, there is a bridge over it too."
+
+"Would you put a toe on that bridge?" said the clerk. "What is
+the bridge for?" said Tibraide' Mongan and mac an Da'v followed
+them.
+
+When they got to the middle of the bridge it broke under them,
+and they were precipitated into that boiling yellow flood.
+
+Mongan snatched at the book as it fell from Tibraide''s hand.
+
+"Won't you let them drown, master?" asked mac an Da'v.
+
+"No," said Mongan, "I'll send them a mile down the stream,  and
+then they can come to land."
+
+Mongan then took on himself the form of Tibraide' and he turned
+mac an Da'v into the shape of the clerk.
+
+"My head has gone bald," said the servant in a whisper.
+
+"That is part of it," replied Mongan. "So long as we know?' said
+mac an Da'v.
+
+They went on then to meet the King of Leinster.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+They met him near the place where the games were played.
+
+"Good my soul, Tibraide'!" cried the King of Leinster, and he
+gave Mongan a kiss. Mongan kissed him back again.
+
+"Amen, amen," said mac an Da'v.
+
+"What for?" said the King of Leinster.
+
+And then mac an Da'v began to sneeze, for he didn't know what
+for.
+
+"It is a long time since I saw you, Tibraide'," said the king,
+"but at this minute I am in great haste and hurry. Go you on
+before me to the fortress, and you can talk to the queen that
+you'll find there, she that used to be the King of Ulster's wife.
+Kevin Cochlach, my charioteer, will go with you, and I will
+follow you myself in a while."
+
+The King of Leinster went off then, and Mongan and his servant
+went with the charioteer and the people.
+
+Mongan read away out of the book, for he found it interesting,
+and he did not want to talk to the charioteer, and mac an Da'v
+cried amen, amen, every time that Mongan took his breath. The
+people who were going with them said to one another that mac an
+Da'v was a queer kind of clerk, and that they had never seen any
+one who had such a mouthful of amens.
+
+But in a while they came to the fortress, and they got into it
+without any trouble, for Kevin Cochlach, the king's charioteer,
+brought them in. Then they were led to the room where Duv Laca
+was, and as he went into that room Mongan shut his eyes, for he
+did not want to look at Duv Laca while other people might be
+looking at him.
+
+"Let everybody leave this room, while I am talking to the queen,"
+said he; and all the attendants left the room, except one, and
+she wouldn't go, for she wouldn't leave her mistress.
+
+Then Mongan opened his eyes and he saw Duv Laca, and he made a
+great bound to her and took her in his arms, and mac an Da'v made
+a savage and vicious and terrible jump at the attendant, and took
+her in his arms, and bit her ear and kissed her neck and wept
+down into her back.
+
+"Go away," said the girl, "unhand me, villain," said she.
+
+"I will not," said mac an Da'v, "for I'm your own husband, I'm
+your own mac, your little mac, your macky-wac-wac." Then the
+attendant gave a little squeal, and she bit him on each ear and
+kissed his neck and wept down into his back, and said that it
+wasn't true and that it was.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+But they were not alone, although they thought they were. The hag
+that guarded the jewels was in the room. She sat hunched up
+against the wail, and as she looked like a bundle of rags they
+did not notice her. She began to speak then.
+
+"Terrible are the things I see," said she. "Terrible are the
+things I see."
+
+Mongan and his servant gave a jump of surprise, and their two
+wives jumped and squealed. Then Mongan puffed out his cheeks till
+his face looked like a bladder, and he blew a magic breath at the
+hag, so that she seemed to be surrounded by a fog, and when she
+looked through that breath everything seemed to be different to
+what she had thought. Then she began to beg everybody's pardon.
+
+"I had an evil vision," said she, "I saw crossways. How sad it is
+that I should begin to see the sort of things I thought I saw."
+
+"Sit in this chair, mother," said Mongan, "and tell me what you
+thought you saw," and he slipped a spike under her, and mac an
+Da'v pushed her into the seat, and she died on the spike.
+
+Just then there came a knocking at the door. Mac an Da'v opened
+it, and there was Tibraid~ standing outside, and twenty-nine of
+his men were with him, and they were all laughing.
+
+"A mile was not half enough," said mac an Da'v reproachfully.
+
+The Chamberlain of the fortress pushed into the room and he
+stared from one Tibraide' to the other.
+
+"This is a fine growing year," said he. "There never was a year
+when Tibraide''s were as plentiful as they are this year. There
+is a Tibraide' outside and a Tibraide' inside, and who knows but
+there are some more of them under the bed. The place is crawling
+with them," said he.
+
+Mongan pointed at Tibraide'.
+
+"Don't you know who that is?" he cried.
+
+"I know who he says he is," said the Chamberlain.
+
+"Well, he is Mongan," said Mongan, "and these twenty-nine men are
+twenty-nine of his nobles from Ulster."
+
+At that news the men of the household picked up clubs and cudgels
+and every kind of thing that was near, and made a violent and
+woeful attack on Tibraide''s men The King of Leinster came in
+then, and when he was told Tibraide' was Mongan he attacked them
+as well, and it was with difficulty that Tibraide' got away to
+Cell Camain with nine of his men and they all wounded.
+
+The King of Leinster came back then. He went to Duv Laca's room.
+
+"Where is Tibraide'?" said he.
+
+"It wasn't Tibraide' was here," said the hag who was still
+sitting on the spike, and was not half dead, "it was Mongan."
+
+"Why did you let him near you?" said the king to Duv Laca.
+
+"There is no one has a better right to be near me than Mongan
+has," said Duv Laca, "he is my own husband," said she.
+
+And then the king cried out in dismay: "I have beaten Tibraide''s
+people." He rushed from the room.
+
+"Send for Tibraide' till I apologise," he cried. "Tell him it was
+all a mistake. Tell him it was Mongan."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Mongan and his servant went home, and (for what pleasure is
+greater than that of memory exercised in conversation?) for a
+time the feeling of an adventure well accomplished kept him in
+some contentment. But at the end of a time that pleasure was worn
+out, and Mongan grew at first dispirited and then sullen, and
+after that as ill as he had been on the previous occasion. For he
+could not forget Duv Laca of the White Hand, and he could not
+remember her without longing and despair.
+
+It was in the illness which comes from longing and despair that
+he sat one day looking on a world that was black although the sun
+shone, and that was lean and unwholesome although autumn fruits
+were heavy on the earth and the joys of harvest were about him.
+
+"Winter is in my heart," quoth he, "and I am cold already."
+
+He thought too that some day he would die, and the thought was
+not unpleasant, for one half of his life was away in the
+territories of the King of Leinster, and the half that he kept in
+himself had no spice in it.
+
+He was thinking in this way when mac an Da'v came towards him
+over the lawn, and he noticed that mac an Da'v was walking like
+an old man.
+
+He took little slow steps, and he did not loosen his knees when
+he walked, so he went stiffly. One of his feet turned pitifully
+outwards, and the other turned lamentably in. His chest was
+pulled inwards, and his head was stuck outwards and hung down in
+the place where his chest should have been, and his arms were
+crooked in front of him with the hands turned wrongly, so that
+one palm was shown to the east of the world and the other one was
+turned to the west.
+
+"How goes it, mac an Da'v?" said the king.
+
+"Bad," said mac an Da'v.
+
+"Is that the sun I see shining, my friend?" the king asked.
+
+"It may be the sun," replied mac an Da'v, peering curiously at
+the golden radiance that dozed about them, "but maybe it's a
+yellow fog."
+
+"What is life at all?" said the king.
+
+"It is a weariness and a tiredness," said mac an Da'v. "It is a
+long yawn without sleepiness. It is a bee, lost at midnight and
+buzzing on a pane. It is the noise made by a tied-up dog. It is
+nothing worth dreaming about. It is nothing at all."
+
+"How well you explain my feelings about Duv Laca," said the king.
+
+"I was thinking about my own lamb," said mac an Da'v. "I was
+thinking about my own treasure, my cup of cheeriness, and the
+pulse of my heart." And with that he burst into tears.
+
+"Alas!" said the king.
+
+"But," sobbed mac an Da'v, "what right have I to complain? I am
+only the servant, and although I didn't make any bargain with the
+King of Leinster or with any king of them all, yet my wife is
+gone away as if she was the consort of a potentate the same as
+Duv Laca is."
+
+Mongan was sorry then for his servant, and he roused himself.
+
+"I am going to send you to Duv Laca."
+
+"Where the one is the other will be," cried mac an Da'v joyously.
+
+"Go," said Mongan, "to Rath Descirt of Bregia; you know that
+place?"
+
+"As well as my tongue knows my teeth."
+
+"Duv Laca is there; see her, and ask her what she wants me to
+do."
+
+Mac an Da'v went there and returned.
+
+"Duv Laca says that you are to come at once, for the King of
+Leinster is journeying around his territory, and Kevin Cochlach,
+the charioteer, is making bitter love to her and wants her to run
+away with him."
+
+Mongan set out, and in no great time, for they travelled day and
+night, they came to Bregla, and gained admittance to the
+fortress, but just as he got in he had to go out again, for the
+King of Leinster had been warned of Mongan's journey, and came
+back to his fortress in the nick of time.
+
+When the men of Ulster saw the condition into which Mongan fell
+they were in great distress, and they all got sick through
+compassion for their king. The nobles suggested to him that they
+should march against Leinster and kill that king and bring back
+Duv Laca, but Mongan would not consent to this plan.
+
+"For," said he, "the thing I lost through my own folly I shall
+get back through my own craft."
+
+And when he said that his spirits revived, and he called for mac
+an Da'v.
+
+"You know, my friend," said Mongan, "that I can't get Duv Laca
+back unless the King of Leinster asks me to take her back, for a
+bargain is a bargain."
+
+"That will happen when pigs fly," said mac an Da'v, "and," said
+he, "I did not make any bargain with any king that is in the
+world."
+
+"I heard you say that before," said Mongan.
+
+"I will say it till Doom," cried his servant, "for my wife has
+gone away with that pestilent king, and he has got the double of
+your bad bargain."
+
+Mongan and his servant then set out for Leinster.
+
+When they neared that country they found a great crowd going on
+the road with them, and they learned that the king was giving a
+feast in honour of his marriage to Duv Laca, for the year of
+waiting was nearly out, and the king had sworn he would delay no
+longer.
+
+They went on, therefore, but in low spirits, and at last they saw
+the walls of the king's castle towering before them. and a noble
+company going to and fro on the lawn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THEY sat in a place where they could watch the castle and compose
+themselves after their journey.
+
+"How are we going to get into the castle?" asked mac an Da'v.
+
+For there were hatchetmen on guard in the big gateway, and there
+were spearmen at short intervals around the walls, and men to
+throw hot porridge off the roof were standing in the right
+places.
+
+"If we cannot get in by hook, we will get in by crook," said
+Mongan.
+
+"They are both good ways," said Mac an Da'v, "and whichever of
+them you decide on I'll stick by."
+
+Just then they saw the Hag of the Mill coming out of the mill
+which was down the road a little.
+
+Now the Hag of the Mill was a bony, thin pole of a hag with odd
+feet. That is, she had one foot that was too big for her, so that
+when she lifted it up it pulled her over; and she had one foot
+that was too small for her, so that when she lifted it up she
+didn't know what to do with it. She was so long that you thought
+you would never see the end of her, and she was so thin that you
+thought you didn't see her at all. One of her eyes was set where
+her nose should be and there was an ear in its place, and her
+nose itself was hanging out of her chin, and she had whiskers
+round it. She was dressed in a red rag that was really a hole
+with a fringe on it, and she was singing "Oh, hush thee, my one
+love" to a cat that was yelping on her shoulder.
+
+She had a tall skinny dog behind her called Brotar. It hadn't a
+tooth in its head except one, and it had the toothache in that
+tooth. Every few steps it used to sit down on its hunkers and
+point its nose straight upwards, and make a long, sad complaint
+about its tooth; and after that it used to reach its hind leg
+round and try to scratch out its tooth; and then it used to be
+pulled on again by the straw rope that was round its neck, and
+which was tied at the other end to the hag's heaviest foot.
+
+There was an old, knock-kneed, raw-boned, one-eyed,
+little-winded, heavy-headed mare with her also. Every time it put
+a front leg forward it shivered all over the rest of its legs
+backwards, and when it put a hind leg forward it shivered all
+over the rest of its legs frontwards, and it used to give a great
+whistle through its nose when it was out of breath, and a big,
+thin hen was sitting on its croup. Mongan looked on the Hag of
+the Mill with delight and affection.
+
+"This time," said he to mac an Da'v, "I'll get back my wife."
+
+"You will indeed," said mac an Da'v heartily, "and you'll get
+mine back too."
+
+"Go over yonder," said Mongan, "and tell the Hag of the Mill that
+I want to talk to her."
+
+Mac an Da'v brought her over to him.
+
+"Is it true what the servant man said?" she asked.
+
+"What did he say?" said Mongan.
+
+"He said you wanted to talk to me."
+
+"It is true," said Mongan.
+
+"This is a wonderful hour and a glorious minute," said the hag,
+"for this is the first time in sixty years that any one wanted to
+talk to me. Talk on now," said she, "and I'll listen to you if I
+can remember how to do it. Talk gently," said she, "the way you
+won't disturb the animals, for they are all sick."
+
+"They are sick indeed," said mac an Da'v pityingly.
+
+"The cat has a sore tail," said she, "by reason of sitting too
+close to a part of the hob that was hot. The dog has a toothache,
+the horse has a pain in her stomach, and the hen has the pip."
+
+"Ah, it's a sad world," said mac an Da'v.
+
+"There you are!" said the hag.
+
+"Tell me," Mongan commenced, "if you got a wish, what it is you
+would wish for?"
+
+The hag took the cat off her shoulder and gave it to mac an Da'v.
+
+"Hold that for me while I think," said she.
+
+"Would you like to be a lovely young girl?" asked Mongan.
+
+"I'd sooner be that than a skinned eel," said she.
+
+"And would you like to marry me or the King of Leinster?" "I'd
+like to marry either of you, or both of you, or whichever of you
+came first."
+
+"Very well," said Mongan, "you shall have your wish."
+
+He touched her with his finger, and the instant he touched her
+all dilapidation and wryness and age went from her, and she
+became so beautiful that one dared scarcely look on her, and so
+young that she seemed but sixteen years of age.
+
+"You are not the Hag of the Mill any longer," said Mongan, "you
+are Ivell of the Shining Cheeks, daughter of the King of
+Munster."
+
+He touched the dog too, and it became a little silky lapdog that
+could nestle in your palm. Then he changed the old mare into a
+brisk, piebald palfrey. Then he changed himself so that he became
+the living image of Ae, the son of the King of Connaught, who had
+just been married to Ivell of the Shining Cheeks, and then he
+changed mac an Da'v into the likeness of Ae's attendant, and then
+they all set off towards the fortress, singing the song that
+begins:    My wife is nicer than any one's wife,    Any one's
+wife, any one's wife,    My wife is nicer than any one's wife,   
+Which nobody can deny.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+The doorkeeper brought word to the King of Leinster that the son
+of the King of Connaught, Ae the Beautiful, and his wife, Ivell
+of the Shining Cheeks, were at the door, that they had been
+banished from Connaught by Ae's father, and they were seeking the
+protection of the King of Leinster.
+
+Branduv came to the door himself to welcome them, and the minute
+he looked on Ivell of the Shining Cheeks it was plain that he
+liked looking at her.
+
+It was now drawing towards evening, and a feast was prepared for
+the guests with a banquet to follow it. At the feast Duv Laca sat
+beside the King of Leinster, but Mongan sat opposite him with
+Ivell, and Mongan put more and more magic into the hag, so that
+her cheeks shone and her eyes gleamed, and she was utterly
+bewitching to the eye; and when Branduv looked at her she seemed
+to grow more and more lovely and more and more desirable, and at
+last there was not a bone in his body as big as an inch that was
+not filled with love and longing for the girl.
+
+Every few minutes he gave a great sigh as if he had eaten too
+much, and when Duv Laca asked him if he had eaten too much he
+said he had hut that he had not drunk enough, and by that he
+meant that he had not drunk enough from the eyes of the girl
+before him.
+
+At the banquet which was then held he looked at her again, and
+every time he took a drink he toasted Ivell across the brim of
+his goblet, and in a little while she began to toast him back
+across the rim of her cup, for he was drinking ale, but she was
+drinking mead. Then he sent a messenger to her to say that it was
+a far better thing to be the wife of the King of Leinster than to
+be the wife of the son of the King of Connaught, for a king is
+better than a prince, and Ivell thought that this was as wise a
+thing as anybody had ever said. And then he sent a message to say
+that he loved her so much that he would certainly burst of love
+if it did not stop.
+
+Mongan heard the whispering, and he told the hag that if she did
+what he advised she would certainly get either himself or the
+King of Leinster for a husband.
+
+"Either of you will be welcome," said the hag.
+
+"When the king says he loves you, ask him to prove it by gifts;
+ask for his drinking-horn first."
+
+She asked for that, and he sent it to her filled with good
+liquor; then she asked for his girdle, and he sent her that.
+
+His people argued with him and said it was not right that he
+should give away the treasures of Leinster to the wife of the
+King of Connaught's son; but he said that it did not matter, for
+when he got the girl he would get his treasures with her. But
+every time he sent anything to the hag, mac an Da'v snatched it
+out of her lap and put it in his pocket.
+
+"Now," said Mongan to the hag, "tell the servant to say that you
+would not leave your own husband for all the wealth of the
+world."
+
+She told the servant that, and the servant told it to the king.
+When Branduv heard it he nearly went mad with love and longing
+and jealousy, and with rage also, because of the treasure he had
+given her and might not get back. He called Mongan over to him,
+and spoke to him very threateningly and ragingly.
+
+"I am not one who takes a thing without giving a thing," said he.
+
+"Nobody could say you were," agreed Mongan.
+
+"Do you see this woman sitting beside me?" he continued, pointing
+to Duv Laca.
+
+"I do indeed," said Mongan.
+
+"Well," said Branduv, "this woman is Duv Laca of the White Hand
+that I took away from Mongan; she is just going to marry me, but
+if you will make an exchange, you can marry this Duv Laca here,
+and I will marry that Ivell of the Shining Cheeks yonder."
+
+Mongan pretended to be very angry then.
+
+"If I had come here with horses and treasure you would be in your
+right to take these from me, but you have no right to ask for
+what you are now asking."
+
+"I do ask for it," said Branduv menacingly, "and you must not
+refuse a lord."
+
+"Very well," said Mongan reluctantly, and as if in great fear;
+"if you will make the exchange I will make it, although it breaks
+my heart."
+
+He brought Ivell over to the king then and gave her three kisses.
+
+"The king would suspect something if I did not kiss you," said
+he, and then he gave the hag over to the king. After that they
+all got drunk and merry, and soon there was a great snoring and
+snorting, and very soon all the servants fell asleep also, so
+that Mongan could not get anything to drink. Mac an Da'v said it
+was a great shame, and he kicked some of the servants, but they
+did not budge, and then he slipped out to the stables and saddled
+two mares. He got on one with his wife behind him and Mongan got
+on the other with Duv Laca behind him, and they rode away towards
+Ulster like the wind, singing this song:    The King of Leinster
+was married to-day,    Married to-day, married to-day,    The
+King of Leinster was married to-day,    And every one wishes him
+joy.
+
+In the morning the servants came to waken the King of Leinster,
+and when they saw the face of the hag lying on the pillow beside
+the king, and her nose all covered with whiskers, and her big
+foot and little foot sticking away out at the end of the bed,
+they began to laugh, and poke one another in the stomachs and
+thump one another on the shoulders, so that the noise awakened
+the king, and he asked what was the matter with them at all. It
+was then he saw the hag lying beside him, and he gave a great
+screech and jumped out of the bed.
+
+"Aren't you the Hag of the Mill?" said he.
+
+"I am indeed," she replied, "and I love you dearly."
+
+"I wish I didn't see you," said Branduv.
+
+That was the end of the story, and when he had told it Mongan
+began to laugh uproariously and called for more wine. He drank
+this deeply, as though he was full of thirst and despair and a
+wild jollity, but when the Flame Lady began to weep he took her
+in his arms and caressed her, and said that she was the love of
+his heart and the one treasure of the world.
+
+After that they feasted in great contentment, and at the end of
+the feasting they went away from Faery and returned to the world
+of men.
+
+They came to Mongan's palace at Moy Linney, and it was not until
+they reached the palace that they found they had been away one
+whole year, for they had thought they were only away one night.
+They lived then peacefully and lovingly together, and that ends
+the story, but Bro'tiarna did not know that Mongan was Fionn.
+
+
+The abbot leaned forward.
+
+"Was Mongan Fionn?" he asked in a whisper.
+
+"He was," replied Cairide'.
+
+"Indeed, indeed!" said the abbot.
+
+After a while he continued: "There is only one part of your story
+that I do not like."
+
+"What part is that?" asked Cairide'.
+
+"It is the part where the holy man Tibraide' was ill treated by
+that rap--by that--by Mongan."
+
+Cairide' agreed that it was ill done, but to himself he said
+gleefully that whenever he was asked to tell the story of how he
+told the story of Mongan he would remember what the abbot said.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Irish Fairy Tales, by James Stephens
+
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