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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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