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The high deeds of Finn, and other bardic romances of ancient Ireland

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Title: The high deeds of Finn, and other bardic romances of ancient Ireland

Author: T. W. Rolleston

Author of introduction, etc.: Stopford A. Brooke

Illustrator: Stephen Reid


        
Release date: January 21, 2005 [eBook #14749]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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THE HIGH DEEDS OF FINN

AND OTHER BARDIC ROMANCES OF ANCIENT IRELAND

by

T. W. ROLLESTON

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

And with Sixteen Illustrations by Stephen Reid

New York
Thomas Y. Crowell & Company
Publishers







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





Preface


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

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

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

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

T.W. ROLLESTON

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




CONTENTS


   INTRODUCTION

      COIS NA TEINEADH


   BARDIC ROMANCES

         I. THE STORY OF THE CHILDREN OF LIR

        II. THE QUEST OF THE SONS OF TURENN

       III. THE SECRET OF LABRA

        IV. KING IUBDAN AND KING FERGUS

         V. THE CARVING OF MAC DATHO'S BOAR

        VI. THE VENGEANCE OF MESGEDRA

       VII. THE STORY OF ETAIN AND MIDIR

      VIII. HOW ETHNE QUITTED FAIRYLAND


   THE HIGH DEEDS OF FINN

        IX. THE BOYHOOD OF FINN MAC CUMHAL

         X. THE COMING OF FINN

        XI. FINN'S CHIEF MEN

       XII. THE TALE OF VIVIONN THE GIANTESS

      XIII. THE CHASE OF THE GILLA DACAR

       XIV. THE BIRTH OF OISÍN

        XV. OISÍN IN THE LAND OF YOUTH


   THE HISTORY OF KING CORMAC

       XVI. 1. THE BIRTH OF CORMAC

            2. THE JUDGMENT OF CORMAC

            3. THE MARRIAGE OF KING CORMAC

            4. THE INSTRUCTIONS OF THE KING

            5. CORMAC SETS UP THE FIRST MILL IN ERINN

            6. A PLEASANT STORY OF CORMAC'S BREHON

            7. THE JUDGMENT CONCERNING CORMAC'S SWORD

            8. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CORMAC

            9. DESCRIPTION OF CORMAC

           10. DEATH AND BURIAL OF CORMAC


   NOTES ON THE SOURCES

   PRONOUNCING INDEX




ILLUSTRATIONS


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

   "THERE SAT THE THREE MAIDENS WITH THE QUEEN"

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

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

   "THERE DWELT THE RED-HAIRED OCEAN-NYMPHS"

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

   "FERGUS GOES DOWN INTO THE LAKE"

   "A MIGHTY SHOUT OF EXULTATION AROSE FROM THE ULSTERMEN"

   "THEY ROSE UP IN THE AIR"

   "SHE HEARD HER OWN NAME CALLED AGAIN AND AGAIN"

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

   "THEY RAN HIM BY HILL AND PLAIN"

   "DERMOT TOOK THE HORN AND WOULD HAVE FILLED IT"

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

   "THEY RODE UP TO A STATELY PALACE"

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




Introduction


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

STOPFORD A. BROOKE

ST PATRICK'S DAY, 1910




COIS NA TEINEADH

(_By the Fireside._)


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




BARDIC ROMANCES

CHAPTER I

The Story of the Children of Lir


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

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

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

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

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

   [9] Pronounced Eefa.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   [12] Pronounced Mo-chweev-ogue.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   [13] See p. 133, _note_.

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





CHAPTER II

The Quest of the Sons of Turenn


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   [15] Dundalk.

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

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

"We saw him," said they.

"What is become of him?" said Brian.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Grant me a favour then," said Kian.

"We shall grant it," said Brian.

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

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

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

   [16] Blood-fine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"This it is," said Lugh.

"Three apples.

"The skin of a pig.

"A spear.

"Two steeds and a chariot.

"Seven swine.

"A whelp of a dog.

"A cooking spit.

"Three shouts on a hill."

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

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

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

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

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

"We do not," said they.

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

"We do not know," said they.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So he rose up and recited this lay:--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "A pigskin for a cloak."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   [17] The Hill of Howth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER III

The Secret of Labra


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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER IV

King Iubdan and King Fergus


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What is thy choicest treasure?" said Fergus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER V

The Carving of mac Datho's Boar


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The boar is good," said Conor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why so?" replied Ket.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER VI

The Vengeance of Mesgedra


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who art thou, woman?" said Conall.

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

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

"Who hath commanded this?" said Buan.

"Mesgedra the King," said Conall.

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

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

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

Then Conall showed her the head of her husband.

"This is my token," said he.

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Is he, then, a malefactor?"

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

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

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




CHAPTER VII

The Story of Etain and Midir


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

So Eochy bade search be made through 

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