Irish Fairy Tales

NYPL RESEARCH LIBRARIES
illiiliaiiiliiliUlililllli! i I
3 3433 07954592 1
HWAMluSvSTEH-IENS
To THE >\E.ÔRY OF
LiEUT.-CoL. John 5il\w Billentcs
7^.D..D.C.L..LL.D.
First Director of
The New York Public Library
WHO BY HIS foresight ENERGY' AND
^VD.ÛN'ISTKATIVK ABILITY
>VADE EFFECT INT.
ITS FAR-REACHING INFLUENCE
'He 15 NOT DEAD WHO CIVETH LIFE TO K-NOVI.EDGE"
John Shaw Billings Me.horial Fund

FovNDED BY Anna P.u,.nKK Draper
^^î^^"^™^^J.'?s/^S/<V.-^.^<>,^41s.AN-Arf^S.'&vAwVw'WN^'5s^^rf^*>"JF^™î^"-^^^"^
From the Library of Edmund Lester Pearson

"D
IRISH FAIRY TALES
BY
JAMES STEPHENS
Insurrections
The Demi-Gods
Reincarnations
Here are Ladies
Green Branches
The Hill of Vision
The Crock of Gold
Songs From the Clay
The Insurrection in Dublin
The Rocky Road to Dublin
:>. h\
THE MACniLLAN COMPAN'f
98iii-55A
COPITJIGHT, 1920,
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. rublished November, 1920.

TO
SEUMAS AND IRIS

AND TO
HELEN ERASER
CONTENTS
PAGE
The Story of Tuan mac Cairill 4
The Boyhood of Fionn 35
The Birth of Bran 91
Oisin's Mother 109
The Wooing of Becfola 133
The Little Brawl at Allen . . . . . . . . 157
The Carl of the Drab Coat 173
The Enchanted Cave of Cesh Corran 201
Becuma of the White Skin 219
Mongan's Frenzy 257

ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
.....
Frontispiece
In a forked glen into which he slipped at night-fall he was surrounded by
giant toads (page 250) f.vce page
"Wild and shy and monstrous creatures ranged in her plains and forests" 12
"My life became a ceaseless scurry and wound and escape, a burden and
anguish of watchfulness" .28
......
.
He might think, as he stared on a staring horse, "a boy cannot wag his tail
to keep the flies off" 40

How
her and get his
A man who
own
did not like dogs.

switch into action ....
he strained and panted to catch on that pursuing person and pursue
In fact, he hated them. When he saw one

46
he used to go black in the face, and he threw rocks at it until it got

out of sight . . . . .
.94
Then they went hand in hand in the country that smells of apple-blossom
and honey . .
.96
The door of Fionn's chamber opened gently and a young woman came into
the room . . . . . . I16
The banqueting hall was in tumult .....

She looked with angry woe at the straining and snarling horde below . 144
166
IRISH FAIRY TALES
FACE PAGK
The thumping of his big boots grew as continuous as the pattering of hail-
stones on a roof, and the wind of his passage blew trees down . igo
"This one is fat," said Guillen, and she rolled a bulky Fenian along like a
wheel .210
They stood outside, filled with savagery and terror .214
.......
.
The waves of all the worlds seemed to whirl past them in one huge, green
cataract 254
They offered a cow for each leg of her cow, but she would not accept that
offer unless Fiachna went bail for the payment .270
The Hag of the Mill was a bony, thin pole of a hag with odd feet . ".310
IRISH FAIRY TALES
THE STORY OF
TUAN MAC CAIRILL
THE STORY
OF TUAN MAC CAIRILL
CHAPTER I
FiNNiAN, the Abbott of Moville, went southwards and east-

wards 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.
*'A11 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 hishardihood."
"He is," that gossip whispered
— "he a magician."
is
"I will magician him," cried Finnian angrily. "Where

does that man live?"
IRISH FAIRY TALES 5
He was informed, and he proceeded to that direction

without delay.
In no great time he came to the stronghold of the gentle-
man who followed ancient ways, and hedemanded admit-
tance 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 windows,
his
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 com-
posed himself to all that might follow from his action. He
bent his gaze on the ground between his and entered
feet,
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
6
THE STORY OF TUAN MAC CAIRILL 7
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 strong-
hold. 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 afi^ronted.
"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 staunch-
ness 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
8 IRISH FAIRY TALES
!"
persistent stranger, or one slung at him with a jagged pebble
if
"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 forget-
fulness as well as memory."
9
10 IRISH FAIRY TALES
"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 amnot 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 thought-
fully, "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 bewilder-

ment. 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 hismind 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,
12
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 we were driving on Paradise.
as if
"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 until from twenty-four
increased
couples there came thousand people, who lived in amity
five
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 thought-
fully.
"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
"Iwas 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; therewas 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.
15
"I could pad as gently as any; I could run as tirelessly.
I could be invisible and patient as a wild cat crouching
gmong leaves; I could smell danger in my sleep and leap at
it with wakeful claws; I could bark and growl and clash with
my teethand 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 cliff^s,
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 bufiêt 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 Hke 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
indream, and I felt in dream the beating of a new heart within

me, and in dream I arched my neck and braced my powerful
limbs.
"I awoke from the dream, and I was that which I had
dreamed.
"I stood a while stamping upon a rock, with my bristling
head swung high, breathing through wide nostrils all the
savour of the world. For I had come marvellously from de-
crepitude to strength. I had writhed from the bonds of
age and was young again. I smelled the turf and knew for
the first time how sweet that smelled. And like lightning
my moving nose sniffed all things to my heart and separated
them into knowledge.
"Long I stood there, ringing my iron hoof on stone, and
learning all things through my nose. Each breeze that
came from the right hand or the left brought me a tale. A
wind carried me the tang of wolf, and against that smell I
stared and stamped. And on a wind there came the scent
of my own kind, and at that I belled. Oh, loud and clear
and sweet was the voice of the great stag. With what ease
my lovely note went lilting. With what joy I heard the
answering call. With what delight I bounded, bounded,
19
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
and thought again; he trotted his small red eye
hesitations
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 go out among ye, and I

will
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
22
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 it was sweet to all who heard it, and
was heard;
the words spoke were wise. The eyes of women brightened
I
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 Weariness stole into my

again overtook me.
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 larbonel 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 larbonel.
And from his people the Tuatha De and the Ande came,
although their origin is and learned people, because
forgotten,
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
24
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 com-
ing of men and the beginning of genealogies.
"Then I old, and in my Ulster cave close to the sea
grew
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 dis-
tances 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 a living jewel: and In these
like
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 colled 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 for-
ward 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,
26
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 ex-
plored all the inland ways, the great lakes of Ireland, and her
swift brown rivers.
"What a joy tounder an inch of water basking in the
lie
sun, or beneath a shady ledge to watch the small creatures

that speed like lightning on the rippling top. I saw the dra-
gon-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.
28
"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.

'T 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
30
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 remem-
ber, 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.
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.
33
THE BOYHOOD OF FIONN
35
CHAPTER I
FioNN^ 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 Mananann sleeps.
Fionn's mother was beautiful, long-haired Muirne: so
she is always referred to. She was the daughter of Teigue,
1 Pronounce Fewn. to rhyme with "tune."
37
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 Uail 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 falr-halred, and it
was for his fairness that he was afterwards called Fionn;
but at this period he was known as Delmne. 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, nar-
THE BOYHOOD OF FIONN 39
row 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
hisown 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, cooes and caws and croaks,
would have grown familiar to him. Arid 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.

xms
:f
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
41
took a long time to walk round them, and you could not see
their tops.
Itwas 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 loneli-
ness 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 sonsof Morna,
slipping through gloomy woods, keeping away from habita-
tions, 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, butmerry-eyed when the other was
grim, and bubbling with a laughter that made men forgive
even his butcheries. Of Conan 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
44
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 Conan 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
sufl^cient 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 them would take a thorn switch in her hand, and
of
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 im-
placable. 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
46
s^
u
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 boy might shiver as he
small
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 confabula-
tions 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.
49 E
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 him-
self into a fork the way he had been taught, and he passed
the crav/liest, 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 morning as the sun is. They
in the
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; Condn'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
and returning to their own province to see
year's training,
again the people at home, and to be wondered at and ex-
claimed 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.
52
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 won-

derful 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 alone a band.

let 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 roundly on the monster with his
laid
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 murderer
at that the robber ceased to be a robber, the
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 wâs the husband of Bovmall, Fionn's aunt.
He had taken when clann-Baiscne was broken,
to the wilds
and he was at war with a world that had dared to kill his
Chief.
CHAPTER VII
A NEW life Fionn

for 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.
was a solitary he would, for lack of someone

If the robber
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 Allien 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
55
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 Conan, 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, menac-
ingly, 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 bush or from the one yonder.
this ... 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
was to be seen, and he would see all that is passed
see all that
by the eye that is half blind from use and wont.
At Moy Life he came on lads swimming in a pool; and,
59
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

time should have been towards friendliness.
his desire at this
He went thence to Lock Lein 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 must have won-

to see him, and Fionn
dered 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.
*Tf 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 Oisin.^
"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
^ Pronounced Usheen.
and that he could not but exhibit his skill before her. He com-
mitted 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 observa-
tion of a king is faultless — it isproved 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 Uail mac
Baiscne."
at that Fionn had no more to say; but his eyes may
And
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 in-
veterate bard.
64 F
"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
ee IRISH FAIRY TALES
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 remem-
bered the Salmon of Knowledge as eagerly as his master did.
He already venerated Finegas for his great learning, his poetic
skill, an hundred reasons; but, looking on him as the
for
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 suc-
cession of meals and sleeps, and of an endless conversation,
from which mind would now and again slip away to a
his
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
68
to jump in a field than that in which he had chased

bumpier
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 cer-
tainly, 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.
*T will not eat the littlest piece," said Fionn.
'T am sure you murmured, as he turned
will not," the other
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
fishwas 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 thumb, so I popped it in my mouth to heal

my
the smart. your salmon tastes as nice as my thumb did,"
If
he laughed, "it will taste very nice."
"What did you say your name was, dear heart?" the poet
asked.
'T 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 you tell me instead of it?"
did
"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 tell you that the salmon was not to be eaten by me,
did not
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 fishgiven 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 Ele-
ments."
Fionn then ate the Salmon of Knowledge, and when it
had disappeared a great jollity and tranquillity and exuber-
ance ret urned 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 mind and body. He bade

that he had of
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
73
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 south-
ern 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, Conn of the Hundred
Battles, had taken on the raised dais which com-
his place
manded 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 GoU 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.
!(, IRISH FAIRY TALES
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
and to welcome you to Tara."
to drink to your health
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 went through
at that saying a touch as of lightning
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 mon-
arch. "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 Allien mac Midna, out of
Shi Finnachy, and this Allien 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 Allien 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: theArd-Rl 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.
78
when the feast was over and the banquet had
Therefore,
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 hall 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 and when he had finished he listened
silence,
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 Allien out of Shi 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, Conan the Swearer and Garra mac Morna
grumbled irritably to each other and at their neighbours, even
Caelte, the son of Ronan, looked down into his own lap, and
GoU 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 but the shame that was on the faces of
for that night,
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 under-
takes 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 Cithwith 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 Fionn looked for help to the people of the
likely that
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 was brought

shallow, oblong dish of pure, pale gold
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 happen-
ing and yet not know what is fonvard, 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 about it as the person who does
just as little
neither. But Fionn would and know, or he would under-
see
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 however, that there was a shamefaced silence
possible,
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
82
shelter of leaves and darkness; and the sob as of one stricken

with an age-long misery, only at times remembered, but re-
membered 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 scur-
:
rying 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 name," said Fionn.
friend's
"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 good truth," Fiacuil whispered, "and
afraid in
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 yoQ any plan against this lord of the Shi?" Fiacuil
whispered.
"I will attack him," said Fionn.
"That not a plan," the other groaned, "we do not plan
is
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 Allien mac Midna blows a dart of
fire out of his mouth, and everjrthing 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 mur-
mured, "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 Allien mac Midna's own spear," he continued, "and
it was taken out ofhis 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
guard off his
when he stops playing and begins to blow his he will fire;
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,"
companion whispered, "for it
his
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 trans-

ferred 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 fol-
lowing 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
86
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 loomed on; not a being but a presence, and, as it
it
were, impending pressure. And in a little he heard the de-

liberate 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 un-
earthly, 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 Allien 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
Allien 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
world in the
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 swing-
ing 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
hand in
leave Ireland, or you will place your 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
91
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 he hated them. When he saw one he used to
fact,
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
93
Fionnliath in this matter, for he deHghted in dogs, and he
knew everything about them from the setting of the first
Httle 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 any-
thing.
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 Sceolan, 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
-l^J»:^^^^^l3^1&^M2Ba^3^3l^^
I i
^-.
THE BIRTH OF BRAN 95
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, lollan 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 lollan to return the lady if there should
be occasion to think her unhappy, and lollan 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 lollanand 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 overit just when we think that the road is
clearand joy our own.

lollan had a past. He was not ashamed of it; he merely
thought it was finished, although in truth it was only begin-
ning, 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 dis-
cussed by more than one of the delicate sweet ladies of Faery.
"That is your whistle, Fair Breast," her sister of the
Shi would say.
96
•<^
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 lollan. 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, lollan
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 lollan 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 conversa-
tion recommenced.
Then for some time lollan 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 Tir na n-Og of the marriage of
u
lollan 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
became capable of every ill deed; for
she
there are two things not easily controlled, and they are
hunger and jealousy. She determined that the woman who
had supplanted her in lollan'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
lollan's stronghold.
lollan 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 lollan. "We shall give him
an Ulster feast."
"The world knows what that is," said the messenger

courteously. "And now," she continued, "I have messages
foryour 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.
98G155A
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
100
to Tulren 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.
'T 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, *T 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 Fergus growled, "for Fionn knows
at that,"
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."
103
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.
"Ifhas to be hugged," he said,

it "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
littleprances 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 side-
ways 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 tor-
ment 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 lollan. 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.
lollanwas 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 judge-
ment 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.
lollan 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 lollan humbly.
106
"By my hand," she cried, *T will give you no blessing,

for it was no blessing you left with me when we parted."
'T am in danger," said lollan.
"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 lollan proudly, "he will claim what I can
give."
"Tell me your tale," said she coldly.
lollan told his story then, and, he concluded, "I am
certain that yoii 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 lollan.
"And if your head is mine, the body that goes under
it is mine. Do you agree to that?"
"I do," said lollan.
"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 lollan.
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 Sceolan,
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 inmarriage 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 Hved 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
and he would have died in the bed only that Fionn
affection,
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
109
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.
Ill
Fionn loved a chase at any hour, and, with Bran and
Sceolan, 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.
OISIN'S MOTHER 113
"And yet they do not give tongue! Tongue it, a Vran!"
he shouted, "Bell it out, a Heolan!"
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 Heolan 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 Sceolan 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.
I
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 Bran'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 stattment
which he could not follow.
He spoke to her then, mastering his heart to do it.
115
"I do not seem to know you," he said.
"You do not know me indeed," she replied.
"Itthe more wonderful," he continued gently, "for I
is
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 my
enemy," she said.
is
"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.
was contented," she replied, "and what we do not
"I
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.
OISIN'S MOTHER 117
"He everywhere," she whispered. "He is in the bushes,

is
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 1 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 I gave my love," she replied.
to yourself
"This good news," Fionn cried joyfully, "for the moment
is
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 had been
belling of a stag
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 enchant-
ment 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 expedi-
tion 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 at-
tacking 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 he left the victorious Fianna and returned
finished,
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.
119
"By my hand," he cried, "I must go. She will be looking
for me from the window."
"That will happen indeed," Goll admitted.
"That happen," cried Fionn. "And when she sees
will
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,"
Conan 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," Conan 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
OISIN'S MOTHER 121
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 posi-
tions 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 Cronan, 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 sur-
prised. 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 Sceolan,
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.
123
"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. touched her with a hazel rod, and,
It
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.
" the shivering servant
"They took her by the throat
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."
"Youstood 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, staringabout 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
OISIN'S MOTHER 125
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 Sceolan, 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'
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
126
OISIN'S MOTHER 127
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 moun-
tain, 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 Sceolan 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 Ronan. "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.
he remembered that other fawn. He set the boy

And
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 one time he could not be parted from Saeve, so

as at
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 And the dogs were as wild
Soul."
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 Sceolan, 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
129 K
spoken harshly to his dogs, but he could not; it was unthink-
able 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
Sceolan with their three whelps; then Caelte mac Ronan, 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 sorrow-
was reason for his love.
fully that there
Little by the boy came to understand their speech
little
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.
131
"It is indeed, my soul," said Caelte.
"The time I saw the deer," the child continued, "the
last
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 any one would pity her. I tried to
so bitterly that
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 Oisln, 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
133
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.
happened in the days when Dermod, son of the famous
It
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
135
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 thought-
fully.
"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."
THE WOOING OF BECFOLA 137
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 ad-
mitted.
"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 de-
light 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 ward that the lady's gaze
was upon his
rested, and if the king could scarcely look away from her, she
could, but only with an equal effôrt, look away from Crim-
thann.
"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 com-

mand and yet receive it.
"Halt Dermod!"
for
"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 rever-
ence.
"I wish to know your name?" said he.
But at this demand the lady frowned and answered de-
cidedly:
"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 in-
formation 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 a question that must be answered," the king cried
is
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 care-
fully 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 lead 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 bright-
ness in the moonbeam; he was the savour in fruit and the
taste in honey; and when she looked from Crimthann to the
141
king she could not but consider that the right man was in
the wrong place. She thought that crowned only with his
curls Crimthann 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 ar-
ranged 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
feltthat 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 mon-
arch.
"Let itbe 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 maybe 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 and whispering

rustling
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 with any ease upon a tree.
sit
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 eat any woman he has met."
She looked carefully in every direction to see if she might
discover them in hiding; she looked closely and lingeringly at
the shadows under distant trees to seeif 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 tran-
quillity 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
146
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 had arrived; "for," she thought, "it is
to her experience
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 the young man did not look at her she looked well
if
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
There they went inland
to a high-jutting, pleasant island.
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 together 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 Dall."
But, although Becfola was moved and horrified by this
battle, it was
another direction that her interest lay;
in
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 claim-
ants, I am no match for the mate of the High King of Ireland,"

he repHed.
And that reply was like 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 posses-
sions 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 in-
dividual 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.
150
"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 and," he continued
left his tree;
maliciously, "the light is such that you could not see an en-
gagement 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, inter-
twining fingers, and a deep-set, venomous eye, was the spokes-
man 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.
153
"On the morning of this self-same and instant sacred day."
"Tell on," said the king wrathfuUy.
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 they are," the cleric replied with enthusiasm.
hell
"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 again looked at her coldly, with a harsh-lidded,
cleric
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 for-
ward 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 from
in his chair stupefied, gazing
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 waiting for me," said Becfola with proud shame,
is
"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
157
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 Conan 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," Conan continued.

"Ho! Ho!" Cairell cried. "Why, you are as much to
blame as I am."
"No," said Conan, "for you hit me first."
"And if we had not been separated " the other growled.
"Separated!" said Conan, with a grin that made his beard
poke all around his face.
"Yes, separated. If they had not come between us I still
"
think
159
"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
away 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," Conan 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. Every-
body came, for a banquet given by Fionn was not a thing
to be missed. There was GoU mor mac Morna and his
people; Fionn's son Oisin 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 con-
—
versation, sleep that is the order of a banquet: so when
each person had been served with food to the limit of
THE LITTLE BRAWL AT ALLEN 161
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 as-
sembly, 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 Oisin 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 loadof three men
of doubly refined gold. Out of this treasure, and from the
treasure of rings and bracelets and torques that were with
him, GoU 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 IV
The wonderful gift-giving of GoU continued, and an uneasiness
and embarrassment began to creep through the great ban-
queting 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 sub-
mitted 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.
'T thought that my rent was the only one those people
had to pay," Fionn continued.
"Your memory is at fault," said Goll.
1 This version of the death of Uail is not correct. Also Cnocha is not in Lochlann but
in Ireland.
163
"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.
"Donot 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," GoU 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 were so minded, I would not let that last word go
I
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 con-
versation with a harsh laugh.
"How many of Fionn's household has the wonderful Goll
put down?" he cried.
But Goll's brother, bald Conan 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 and
thick-witted, thin-livered Cairell,
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 Conan, which Conan 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 Conan, 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 Conan, "for the chance of killing
yourself, Oscar."
These two encountered then, and Oscar knocked a groan
of distress out of Conan. He looked appealingly at his
brother Art og mac Morna, and that powerful champion flew
to his aid and wounded Oscar. Oisin, 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 ad-
dressing 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 incanta-
tions, 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 GoU 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 GoU mac
Morna arose also.
*T 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 he has already commenced it," cried Goll.
see,
"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."
169
Fergus was accordingly sworn, and gave his evidence.
He stated that Fionn's brother Cairell struck Conan mac
Morna, that Goll's two sons came to help Conan, 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:
"GoU 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
soldierowes 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 "would hold good for the white-striking
said,
or blows of but not for the red-striking or sword-strokes."
fists,
"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?" GoU 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 posi-
tion of greatest gift-giver of the Fianna, for there was never
in theworld one greater at giving gifts, or giving battle, or
making poems than Fionn was.
That side of the afiâir was not brought before the Court.
But perhaps it was suppressed out of delicacy for Fionn,
for if Goll could be accused of ostentation, Flonn 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
173
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 remem-
bered 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' were translated also, and neither
iTheHillofHowth.
175
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;
forwhere 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 sail 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.
'T wonder where that ship comes from?" said Conan 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,
THE CARL OF THE DRAB COAT 177
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 Cael of the Iron," the stranger answered,
is
"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 Conan, "we have never heard of a
warrior, howeverbut his peer was found in Ireland,
great,
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 no small boast," Conan murmured, staring at him.
is
"It no boast at all," said Gael, "and, to show my quality

is
and standing, I will propose a deed to you."

"Give out your deed," Fionn commanded.
"Thus," said Gael 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, Gaelte mac Ronan."
"This son of Ronan will not long be notable," the stranger
asserted.
"He can outstrip the red deer," said Conan.

"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," Conan 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 Ronan 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 prog-
ress, 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.
180
"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 Ronan.
"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 Ronan," 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 com-
mented 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 look any further for the rusty-kneed, slow-
not
trotting son of Ronan," 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 theDrab 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 put-
ting 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.
183
"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
"Gael, my pulse," said the Carl, "we had better build a

house or a hut to pass the night in."
"I'll 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'll build a house myself," said the Carl, "and the man
who does not help in the building can stay outside of the
house."
185
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 Gael, 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 account of him that he did not

little
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 ratthng of the boar's bones
he started.
hard to tell how he ran or at what speed he ran,
It is
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 Gael of the
Iron, although Gael 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 Gael, the Garl thrust a hand into
the tail of his coat and pulled out a fistfull of red bones.
188
"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 beggarman," the other replied, "for I
filth,
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?"
Gael 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 tail and the coat without a tail," cried
Cael.
"I give it up," the Can mumbled.
'"*^-
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 was no more than a sack of juice,
ate of these until he
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, stufiêd 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 Ronan 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 Hke 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
192
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 de-
manded savagely.
"Nothing," cried a messenger who stood and sped.
"A clump!" cried a champion.
"A hog!" said another.
"A flat-footed,"
"Little-winded,"
"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, and
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.
195
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 champions gazed also, straining hungrily
at that the
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 Conan 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," Conan 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 nar-
rowed 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 per-
ceptible 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 multi-
tude 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 every-
body into silence.
Fionn addressed him.
"What for the meal, dear heart?"
"For the inside of my mouth," said the Carl, "for the
recessesand 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 .f*" 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 he mixed the two up and through, and
round and down, until the pile of white-black, red-brown
198
slibber-slobber reachedup to his shoulders. Then he com-

menced to paw and impel and project and cram the mixture
into his mouth, and between each mouthful he sighed a con-
tented 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 like 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 had 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 and put him sitting into his
him then
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 Gael 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
201
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 re-
trieve 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 Flonn 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-Balscne and clann-Morna),
yet a call from Flonn brought Goll raging to his assistance
like a lion that rages tenderly by his mate. Not even a call
203
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 Conan the Swearer and the dogs Bran and
Sceolan, was on the hunting-mound at the top of
sitting
Cesh Corran. Below and around on every side the Fianna
were beating the coverts in Legney and Brefny, ranging the
fastnesses of Glen Dalian, 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 with delectable sounds the
were filled —
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 watching the hunt, but Fionn did not see
also
him, for see the people of Faery until we enter
we cannot
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 Conan and the two hounds
Bran and Sceolan, 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 Corran 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 Shis 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
205
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 3ôu had to look at them a second time you
were likely to die of the sight.
They were called Caevog, Guillen, and laran. The fourth
daughter, larnach, 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 Caevog, 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," laran echoed, with a smile that
was very like her sister's, was worse, and the
only that it
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.
ENCHANTED CAVE OF CESH CORRAN 207
"But Fionn cannot see us," Caevog 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 laran 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 Conan.
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, Conan, my darling."
Conan stepped down to him.
"Am I dreaming?" Fionn demanded, and he stretched
out his finger before him.
"If you are dreaming," said Conan, "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 Conan to his own soul.
And the two men stared into the hillside as though what
208
they were looking at was too wonderful to be looked away

from.
"Who are they?" said Fionn.
"What are they?" Conan 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 Conan.

"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," Conan
counselled. "But let us have nothing to do with them."
"One must not be frightened of anything," Fionn stated.
"I am not frightened," Conan 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
Conan 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 Conan, 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 Caevog, and she
smiled a smile that would have killed Fionn, only that he
shut his eyes in time.
210
1/
v/
After a moment he murmured again:

"Conan, 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 Conan.
"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 Conan.
By that time some of the Fianna had returned to the
mound to see why Bran and Sceolan were barking so out-
rageously. 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.
Oisin and Oscar and mac Lugac came, with the nobles
of clann-Baiscne, and with those of clann-Corcoran and clann-
Smol; 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 mys-
terious holes and black perplexing labyrinths.
"Here is another one," cried Caevog 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 laran, "is a love of a man. One could eat
thiskind 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 Flanna-
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, with savagery and terror, for
filled
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 and barking,
arose a baying
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 sisterstook their wide-channelled,
hard-tem-
pered swords in their hands, and prepared to slay the Flanna,
213
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 Sceolan 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 Caevog.
"There is only one of him," said Guillen.
"And each of us three is the match for an hundred,"

said laran.
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 com-
batants, 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 Oisin and Oscar and Conan 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 your right," said Fionn.
is
He turned to his son.

"Oisin, my heart, kill me this honourable hag."
But for the only time in his life Oisin shrank from a
combat
"1 cannot do it," he said, "I feel too weak."
Fionn was astounded.
"Oscar," he said, 'will you kill me this great hag?"
216
Oscar stammered miserably. "I would not be able to,"
he said.
Conan and so did Caelte mac Ronan and mac
also refused,
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 mac
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 Iwho killed the two sisters of this valiant hag, and it
is against me the feud lies."
"That will me," said the horrible daughter of Con-
do for
aran. "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 terrifi.c 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 rosefrom 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 live
in, a give-and-take world, and there is no great harm in it.
BECUMA OF THE WHITE SKIN
219
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
willbe 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 ad-
vanced in magic than Fionn was, all of whose adventures
221
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 Manannan mac Lit, 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 de-
sire 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 Shis of Ireland that this lady should
BECUMA OF THE WHITE SKIN 223
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, tKe gates of her own world and the innumer-
able 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 can be imagined, for his
spirits that 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 DoOiH 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;
225
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 de-
cisions 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.
thus gazing and brooding when one day he observed
He was
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 1 am the daughter
of Morgan," she replied.
227
"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 woman speaks to a man about the love she feels
a
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 m 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 m.y 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."
230
"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.
'T 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 Ire-
land 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 dis-
covered 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 soil 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 and knew how
well educated
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 pain-
fully to the sky on a mile-high wave, balanced for a tense
233
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 hishome 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
BECUMA OF THE V/HITE SKIN 235
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."
236
"But we never eat together," the queen replied.
'T 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 brought to Tara and is bathed in the
is
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-Rl 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 and no person may shirk such a requirement."
required,
"Go I will place you under the
then," said his father, "but
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 These learned people
son of a virgin.
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."
239
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 some holding that national
streets of Tara,
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
any one of us could save Ireland by dying for her
likewise, "if
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 resolu-
tion melted away, and he said:
"I think I must die for you," and then he said:
"I will die for you "
And whenhe 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 com-
plicated 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 you had killed the boy."
if
"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?"
R
"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 you certainly. You can keep Becuma and your
tell
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 endowed and privileged beyond our fellows. It
are
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!

243
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 first step towards
is the
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 undone nothing that could afflict Ireland or
left
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.
*T didn't move that piece," said he sternly.
"Nor did I,"Becuma replied, and she called on the onlook-
ers 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 re-
plied, "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
iDe gone through," she said, "a place of silence and terror,
full of dumb, venomous monsters. There is an immense oak

247
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 and shrivels. There is one spike only which bears
grins
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 fore-
told. 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
250
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 in-
vention 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 Ire-
land 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 Crede 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 Delvcaem from her prison at the top
liberated
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
hiked 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 endea-
vour 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 be-
loved 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, overwhelm-
ing, 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 She came from the midst of the

the king's side.
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 and it was she who fostered
in that country,
the rage against the Holy Land which has not ceased to this
day.
MONGAN'S FRENZY
257
CHAPTER I
The abbot of the Monastery of Moville sent word to the story-

tellers of Ireland that when they were
neighbourhood
in his
they should call wished to collect
at the monastery, for he
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.
259
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 eyes glistened when he heard that.
abbot's He
rubbed hands
his 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 Brotiarna, 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.
261 s
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 Brotiarna 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. There-
fore 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.
MONGAN'S FRENZY 263
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 re-
minding 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 Claran 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 gather-
ing 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 hail-
stones battered on the shields so terribly that even under
them they were afraid. They began to move away from
264
MONGAN'S FRENZY 265
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 per-
mitted 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 companions stepped from the world of
his
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 landm.arks,
but it seemed that the distant hills were a trifle higher, and
the grass which clothed them and stretched between was
266
MONGAN'S FRENZY 267
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 theycame to a
grove of ancient trees. Mightily tall 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 Cairide 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 dis-
appeared 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.
269
"What medicine is that?" said they all.
"This is the medicine," said the doctor. "Find a per-

fectly white cow with red ears, and boil it down in the lump,
and if the king drinks that rendering he will recover."
Before he had well said messengers were going from
it
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 Then they offered a cow for each
it.
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.
=1
<^
¥
(^f*i./-?W»»<»<v^
CHAPTER VI
A \£AR ppssed, 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 scandaHsed,
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 com-
plained 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."
271
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 Plun 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."
MONGAN'S FRENZY 273
"Some one must fight them," said Fiachna Finn, "but

no more ofmy men shall die until I fight myself; for if I am
fated to die, I will die and
cannot escape it, and if it is the
I
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 man, dressed in a green cloak
tall
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 not nice of you to laugh at us," said Fiachna Finn.
is
"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 Manannan, the son of Lir."
Fiachna knew then that the stranger could not be hurt.
274
MONGAN'S FRENZY 275
"What will you give me if I deliver you from the sheep?"
asked Manannan.
"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
itwould be easier for me to give my life."
"That is agreed," said Mannanan.

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, was fearful to look at. In body it was
for it
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
nothing to frighten sheep like a dog," said
is
Manannan, "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 whenhe 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
MONGAN'S FRENZY 277
lyingon the ground, and the same bit was out of every sheep,
and every sheep was dead.
"You can come down now," said Manannan.
"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 him-
self todeath on the dead meat."
The dog, however, did not eat a bit of the meat. He
trotted to his master, and Manannan 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 Manannan.
"You can go now and beat the men of Lochlann," said
Manannan. "You will be King of Lochlann before nightfall.''
"I wouldn't mind that," said theking.
"It's no threat," said Manannan.
The son of Lir turned then and went away in the direc-
tion 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 be-
came King of Lochlann and Kingof the Saxons and the Britons.
He gave the Black Hag seven castles vith 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 Dav, and the same night that Fiachna's wife
bore a son, the wife of An Dav gave birth to a son also. This
latter child was called mac an Dav, 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 pre-
sumptuous 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
278
MONGAN'S FRENZY 279
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 they were born, and the men of Ireland
after
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, Manannan 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 af-
fianced to his daughter Duv Laca, had disappeared, he con-
sidered 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 he crowned himself King
of Ulster.
The men of Ulster disliked him, and they petitioned
Manannan to bring Mongan back, but Manannan 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 dis-
contented 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 areyou 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 do not agree with you," said the cleric.
I
"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
280
MONGAN'S FRENZY 281
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 have just told you; so come with me now and do not
I
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 him-
self wrongfully as a king."
"I begin to think that you own a lucky tongue, my black-
faced friend," said Mongan, "and go with you."
I will
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 time he felt secure and at liberty to
for the first
play chess. But he did not know until afterwards that the
black-faced, tufty-headed person was his father Manannan,
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 isnothing 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
282
MONGAN'S FRENZY 283
and calf was pure white in colour, and each of them had
red ears.
When Mongan saw with them
these cows, he fell in love
as he had never with anything before.
fallen in love
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 beau-
tiful 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 theKing 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.
285
Duv Laca surprised, "is he not welcome?"
"Well," said
"He welcome indeed," said Mongan lamentably.
is
"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.
MONGAN'S FRENZY 287
"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 de-
manded.
"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 1 have been in love with you
ior ages."
'What have you been in with me for ages?" said the
anidzed king.
288
MONGAN'S FRENZY 289
"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 you come into a house where I
if 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 is over against me and opposite
a chair that
tome and from me."
at a distance
"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."
u
"That is the way I 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.
you say is lovely, for you are lovely," said

"All that
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
291
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
Dav, who was servant and foster-brother to Mongan. When
Duv Laca went away with the King of Leinster, her servant,
mac an Dav's wife, went with her, so there were two wifeless
men in Ulster at that time, namely, Mongan the king and
mac an Dav his servant.
One day as Mongan sat in the sun, brooding lamentably
on his fate, mac an Dav came to him.
"How are things with you, master?" asked Mac an Dav.
"Bad," Mongan.
said
"It was a poor day brought you off with Manannan to
the Land of Promise," said his servant.
"Why
should you think that?" inquired Mongan.
"Because," said mac an Dav, "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 Dav, "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 Div 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.
MONGAN'S FRENZY 293
"There Is indeed," said mac an Dav, "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 Dav, "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 what I am
of Leinster will ask his wizards
doing, and this is what I will on your
be doing. I will get
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 Dav.
They set out then.
CHAPTER XIV
It was a long, uneasy journey, for although mac an Dav
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
294
MONGAN'S FRENZY 295
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 like wisps
of hay, and when these were not nursing a broken arm or a
cracked skull, was because they were nursing wounds in
it
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 Dav turned to him.
"Is it a pain in your stomach, master?"
"It is Mongan.
not," said
"Well, what made you make that brutal and belching
noise?"
"It was a sigh I gave," said Mongan.
"Whatever it was," said mac an Dav, "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 Dav 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 sandle, or to listen.
"Master," said mac an Dav 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.
MONGAN'S FRENZY 297
When the king had gone by mac an Dav groaned a deep
and dejected groan.
"Ocon!" said he. "Oc6n-io-go-de6!" said he.
The man who had tied his sandle said then:
"Are you in pain, honest man?"
"I am not in pain," said mac an Dav.
"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 Dav, "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 Dav'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.
'T never saw that kind of uniform before," said mac
an Dav.
"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 Dav. "The rascals!"
said he. "What, what would Manannan 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 Dav. "The one
behind must be his servant, for he has a load on his back."
The priests were reading their offices, and mac an Dav
marvelled at that.
"What is it they are doing?" said he.
"They are reading."
"Indeed, and indeed they are," said mac an Ddv. "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
298
MONGAN'S FRENZY 299
a grunt out of him. And they don't Hke our gods at all!"
said mac an Dav.
"They do not," said Mongan.
"Play a trick on them, master," said mac an Dav.
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 seewhat 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 Dav 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 Dav.
"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 Ddv 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 Dav.
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 theKing of Leinster,
and he gave Mongan a kiss. Mongan kissed him back
again.
"Amen, amen," said mac an Dav.
"What for?" said the King of Leinster.
And then mac an Dav began to sneeze, for he didn't
know what for.
"It is a long time sincesaw you, Tibraide," said the
I
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 in-
teresting, to talk to the charioteer, and

and he did not want
mac an Dav amen, amen, every time that Mongan
cried
took his breath. The people who were going with them
said to one another that mac an Ddv was a queer kind of
clerk, and that they had never seen any one who had such a
mouthful of amens.
301
Butin a while they came to the fortress, and they got
into without
it 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 Dav 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 Dav, "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 wall, 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 Dav pushed her into the seat, and she died
on the spike.
Just then there came a knocking at the door. Mac an
303
Ddv 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 Dav reproach-
fully.
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 he cried. is.?"
"I know who he the Chamberlain.

says he is," said
"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."
MONGAN'S FRENZY 305
"Why did you let him near you?" said the king to Duv
Laca.
"There no one has a better right to be near me than
is
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 feeUng 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 and
sullen, after that as as he had been on the
ill
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 Dav came
towards him over the lawn, and he noticed that mac an
Dav was walking like an old man.
306
MONGAN'S FRENZY 307
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 Dav?" said the king.
"Bad," said mac an Div.
"Is that the sunI see shining, my friend?" the king asked.
"It may
be the sun," replied mac an Dav, 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 Ddv.
"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 Iamb," said mac an Ddv.
"Iwas 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 Ddv, "what right have I to com-
plain? 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 gone away as if she was the consort
wife is
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 Div
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 Dav 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 Bregia, 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 con-
sent to this plan.
"For," said he, "the thing I lost through my own folly
I shall get back through my own craft."
MONGAN'S FRENZY 309
And when he said that his spirits revived, and he called

for mac an Dav.
"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 D^v.
"and," said he, "I did not make any bargain with any king
thatis 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 then set out for Leinster.
his servant
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 Dav.
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 Dav, "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
310
MONGAN'S FRENZY 311
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 w'hen 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 Dav, "I'll get back my
wife."
"You will indeed," said mac an Dav 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 Dav 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 Dav 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 Dav.
"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 Dav.
"Hold that for me while I think," said she.
"Would you be a lovely young girl ?" asked Mongan.
like to
"I'd sooner be that than a skinned eel," said she.
"And would you like to marry me or the King of Leinster?"
marry either of you, or both of you, or which-
"I'd like to
ever 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.
MONGAN'S FRENZY 313
"You are not the Hag of the Mill any longer," said Mon-
gan, "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 Dav
into the likeness of Ac's attendant, and then they all set off
towards the fortress, singing the song that begins:

My wife is any one's wife.
nicer than
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 pre-
pared 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 and Mongan put more and more
Ivell,
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.
314
MONGAN'S FRENZY 315
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 Con-
naught, 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 Dav 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
inyour 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
MONGAN'S FRENZY 317
servants fell asleep also, so that Mongan could not get any-
thing to drink. Mac an Ddv 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, though he was full of thirst and
as
despair and a wild but when the Flame Lady began
jollity,
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 re-
turned to the world of men.
They came to Mongan's palace at Moy Linney,
was and it
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 Brotiarna 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."
it was ill done, but to himself he said
Cairide agreed that
whenever he was asked to tell the story of how
gleefully that
he told the story of Mongan he would remember what the
abbot said.
n
aadvad )IhwtV(J vssv ah nausMiij
iviMowav soNinia .nvii}>- sHop
(iN.ij
„3oa3'i.«io.srM ox ajn hi'amo oii.«\ nvaa ion ci a}|.
aoNS.njNi ovihdv:j>i-n\.:I sxi
•a.\ix;)jijja aaw
Axniav a.MXVHxsMNiwnv
cixv.VDM'Jsa Lnoisaao.! sih ah on.v\
A>ivMHri :)riH.i<j mmoa-h^X :iiij.
An >ioi:):4>H([ xmii.j
(iTi iDQ av
.vo\Tnij{ .^\^Î§' xiiof '£()3-x.i:irj
A() A>I()W3W :iiix OJ^
w '0>
li K Hi!

Irish Fairy Tales

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Irish Fairy Tales

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Irish Fairy Tales

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

NYPL RESEARCH LIBRARIES

John Shaw Billings Me.horial Fund

From the Library of Edmund Lester Pearson

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. rublished November, 1920.

SEUMAS AND IRIS

The Boyhood of Fionn 35

The Birth of Bran 91

Oisin's Mother 109

The Wooing of Becfola 133

The Little Brawl at Allen . . . . . . . . 157

The Carl of the Drab Coat 173

The Enchanted Cave of Cesh Corran 201

Becuma of the White Skin 219

Mongan's Frenzy 257

giant toads (page 250) f.vce page

to keep the flies off" 40

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

The banqueting hall was in tumult .....

FiNNiAN, the Abbott of Moville, went southwards and east-

"I will magician him," cried Finnian angrily. "Where

He was informed, and he proceeded to that direction

Often the gentleman would send a servitor to spy if

that day the servants were sent many times to observe

"What!" his master demanded wrathfully, "is a spear

On the morrow he gave in.

time he was ready for whatever might come of dispute or

One day they were talking together about the majesty

But Tuan pleaded:

and penitence. Tell me your genealogy first, and by what

will examine your acts and your conscience."

"That is my pedigree," Tuan said.

But Finnian was not one who remained long in bewilder-

"We landed and we heard the rumble of water going

animal or divine. And I sat by the pool weeping my loneliness

"There I dreamed, and I saw myself changing into a stag

indream, and I felt in dream the beating of a new heart within

had small minds but great activity. They were savage

was an old man.

"Then my soul rose to the height of Doom, and I intended

" 'To-morrow,' I said, 'I go out among ye, and I

"I took the lordship of the boars of Ireland.

obedience: whenever I appeared among the strangers they

that stinking pelt. He picked himself up and ran, and was

and softened when they looked at me. They loved to hear

"Old age Weariness stole into my

and stream; every field and glen of Ireland. I knew the

and there came on me an instant, uncontrollable anguish to

last; and I lay in sweet water in the curve of a crannied rock,

sun, or beneath a shady ledge to watch the small creatures

"Every beast pursued me in the waters and along the

"The fisherman of Cairill, the King of Ulster, took me in his

for joy when he saw the great salmon in his net.

all my might against the bottom of the net, holding yet to

scalded me. It weighed on me and squeezed me, so that

green and gloom, and the brown flood sings along.'

shall baptize you into the family of the Living God."

So far the story of Tuan, the son of Cairill.