Irish Fairy Tales

by Stephens, James

  And he sent lithe men with him so that they might run back in endless succession with the news.

  The messengers began to run through his tent at minute intervals calling “nothing,” “nothing,” “nothing,” as they paused and darted away.

  And the words, “nothing, nothing, nothing,” began to drowse into the brains of every person present.

  “What can we hope from that Carl?” a champion demanded savagely.

  “Nothing,” cried a messenger who stood and sped.

  “A clump!” cried a champion.

  “A hog!” said another.

  “A flat-footed,”

  “Little-winded,”

  “Big-bellied,”

  “Lazy-boned,”

  “Pork!”

  “Did you think, Fionn, that a whale could swim on land, or what did you imagine that lump could do?”

  “Nothing,” cried a messenger, and was sped as he spoke.

  Rage began to gnaw in Fionn’s soul, and a red haze danced and flickered before his eyes. His hands began to twitch and a desire crept over him to seize on champions by the neck, and to shake and worry and rage among them like a wild dog raging among sheep.

  He looked on one, and yet he seemed to look on all at once.

  “Be silent,” he growled. “Let each man be silent as a dead man.”

  And he sat forward, seeing all, seeing none, with his mouth drooping open, and such a wildness and bristle lowering from that great glum brow that the champions shivered as though already in the chill of death, and were silent.

  He rose and stalked to the tent-door.

  “Where to, O Fionn?” said a champion humbly.

  “To the hill-top,” said Fionn, and he stalked on.

  They followed him, whispering among themselves, keeping their eyes on the ground as they climbed.

  Chapter 7

  What do you see?” Fionn demanded of the watcher.

  “Nothing,” that man replied.

  “Look again,” said Fionn.

  The eagle-eyed man lifted a face, thin and sharp as though it had been carven on the wind, and he stared forward with an immobile intentness.

  “What do you see?” said Fionn.

  “Nothing,” the man replied.

  “I will look myself,” said Fionn, and his great brow bent forward and gloomed afar.

  The watcher stood beside, staring with his tense face and unwinking, lidless eye.

  “What can you see, O Fionn?” said the watcher.

  “I can see nothing,” said Fionn, and he projected again his grim, gaunt forehead. For it seemed as if the watcher stared with his whole face, aye, and with his hands; but Fionn brooded weightedly on distance with his puckered and crannied brow.

  They looked again.

  “What can you see?” said Fionn.

  “I see nothing,” said the watcher.

  “I do not know if I see or if I surmise, but something moves,” said Fionn. “There is a trample,” he said.

  The watcher became then an eye, a rigidity, an intense out-thrusting and ransacking of thin-spun distance. At last he spoke.

  “There is a dust,” he said.

  And at that the champions gazed also, straining hungrily afar, until their eyes became filled with a blue darkness and they could no longer see even the things that were close to them.

  “I,” cried Conán triumphantly, “I see a dust.”

  “And I,” cried another.

  “And I.”

  “I see a man,” said the eagle-eyed watcher.

  And again they stared, until their straining eyes grew dim with tears and winks, and they saw trees that stood up and sat down, and fields that wobbled and spun round and round in a giddily swirling world.

  “There is a man,” Conán roared.

  “A man there is,” cried another.

  “And he is carrying a man on his back,” said the watcher.

  “It is Cael of the Iron carrying the Carl on his back,” he groaned.

  “The great pork!” a man gritted.

  “The no-good!” sobbed another.

  “The lean-hearted,”

  “Thick-thighed,”

  “Ramshackle,”

  “Muddle-headed,”

  “Hog!” screamed a champion.

  And he beat his fists angrily against a tree.

  But the eagle-eyed watcher watched until his eyes narrowed and became pin-points, and he ceased to be a man and became an optic.

  “Wait,” he breathed, “wait until I screw into one other inch of sight.”

  And they waited, looking no longer on that scarcely perceptible speck in the distance, but straining upon the eye of the watcher as though they would penetrate it and look through it.

  “It is the Carl,” he said, “carrying something on his back, and behind him again there is a dust.”

  “Are you sure?” said Fionn in a voice that rumbled and vibrated like thunder.

  “It is the Carl,” said the watcher, “and the dust behind him is Cael of the Iron trying to catch him up.”

  Then the Fianna gave a roar of exultation, and each man seized his neighbour and kissed him on both cheeks; and they gripped hands about Fionn, and they danced round and round in a great circle, roaring with laughter and relief, in the ecstasy which only comes where grisly fear has been and whence that bony jowl has taken itself away.

  Chapter 8

  The Carl of the Drab Coat came bumping and stumping and clumping into the camp, and was surrounded by a multitude that adored him and hailed him with tears.

  “Meal!” he bawled, “meal for the love of the stars!”

  And he bawled, “Meal, meal!” until he bawled everybody into silence.

  Fionn addressed him.

  “What for the meal, dear heart?”

  “For the inside of my mouth,” said the Carl, “for the recesses and crannies and deep-down profundities of my stomach. Meal, meal!” he lamented.

  Meal was brought.

  The Carl put his coat on the ground, opened it carefully, and revealed a store of blackberries, squashed, crushed, mangled, democratic, ill-looking.

  “The meal!” he groaned, “the meal!”

  It was given to him.

  “What of the race, my pulse?” said Fionn.

  “Wait, wait,” cried the Carl. “I die, I die for meal and blackberries.”

  Into the centre of the mess of blackberries he discharged a barrel of meal, and be mixed the two up and through, and round and down, until the pile of white-black, red-brown slibber-slobber reached up to his shoulders. Then he commenced to paw and impel and project and cram the mixture into his mouth, and between each mouthful he sighed a contented sigh, and during every mouthful he gurgled an oozy gurgle.

  But while Fionn and the Fianna stared like lost minds upon the Carl, there came a sound of buzzing, as if a hornet or a queen of the wasps or a savage, steep-winged griffin was hovering about them, and looking away they saw Cael of the Iron charging on them with a monstrous extension and scurry of his legs. He had a sword in his hand, and there was nothing in his face but redness and ferocity.

  Fear fell like night around the Fianna, and they stood with slack knees and hanging hands waiting for death. But the Carl lifted a pawful of his oozy slop and discharged this at Cael with such a smash that the man’s head spun off his shoulders and hopped along the ground. The Carl then picked up the head and threw it at the body with such aim and force that the neck part of the head jammed into the neck part of the body and stuck there, as good a head as ever, you would have said, but that it had got twisted the wrong way round. The Carl then lashed his opponent hand and foot.

  “Now, dear heart, do you still claim tribute and lordship of Ireland?” said he.

  “Let me go home,” groaned Cael, “I want to go home.”

  “Swear by the sun and moon, if I let you go home, that you will send to Fionn, yearly and every year, the rent of the land of Thessaly.”

  “I swear that,” said Cae
l, “and I would swear anything to get home.”

  The Carl lifted him then and put him sitting into his ship. Then he raised his big boot and gave the boat a kick that drove it seven leagues out into the sea, and that was how the adventure of Cael of the Iron finished.

  “Who are you, sir?” said Fionn to the Carl.

  But before answering the Carl’s shape changed into one of splendour and delight.

  “I am ruler of the Shí of Rath Cruachan,” he said.

  Then Fionn mac Uail made a feast and a banquet for the jovial god, and with that the tale is ended of the King of Thessaly’s son and the Carl of the Drab Coat.

  The

  Enchanted

  Cave

  of Cesh

  Corran

  Chapter 1

  Fionn mac Uail was the most prudent chief of an army in the world, but he was not always prudent on his own account. Discipline sometimes irked him, and he would then take any opportunity that presented for an adventure; for he was not only a soldier, he was a poet also, that is, a man of science, and whatever was strange or unusual had an irresistible attraction for him.

  Such a soldier was he that, single-handed, he could take the Fianna out of any hole they got into, but such an inveterate poet was he that all the Fianna together could scarcely retrieve him from the abysses into which he tumbled. It took him to keep the Fianna safe, but it took all the Fianna to keep their captain out of danger. They did not complain of this, for they loved every hair of Fionn’s head more than they loved their wives and children, and that was reasonable, for there was never in the world a person more worthy of love than Fionn was.

  Goll mac Morna did not admit so much in words, but he admitted it in all his actions, for although he never lost an opportunity of killing a member of Fionn’s family (there was deadly feud between clann-Baiscne and clann-Morna), yet a call from Fionn brought Goll raging to his assistance like a lion that rages tenderly by his mate. Not even a call was necessary, for Goll felt in his heart when Fionn was threatened, and he would leave Fionn’s own brother only half-killed to fly where his arm was wanted. He was never thanked, of course, for although Fionn loved Goll he did not like him, and that was how Goll felt towards Fionn.

  Fionn, with Conán the Swearer and the dogs Bran and Sceólan, was sitting on the hunting-mound at the top of Cesh Corran. Below and around on every side the Fianna were beating the coverts in Legney and Brefny, ranging the fastnesses of Glen Dallan, creeping in the nut and beech forests of Carbury, spying among the woods of Kyle Conor, and ranging the wide plain of Moy Conal.

  The great captain was happy: his eyes were resting on the sights he liked best—the sunlight of a clear day, the waving trees, the pure sky, and the lovely movement of the earth; and his ears were filled with delectable sounds—the baying of eager dogs, the clear calling of young men, the shrill whistling that came from every side, and each sound of which told a definite thing about the hunt. There was also the plunge and scurry of the deer, the yapping of badgers, and the whirr of birds driven into reluctant flight.

  Chapter 2

  Now the king of the Shí of Cesh Corran, Conaran, son of Imidel, was also watching the hunt, but Fionn did not see him, for we cannot see the people of Faery until we enter their realm, and Fionn was not thinking of Faery at that moment. Conaran did not like Fionn, and, seeing that the great champion was alone, save for Conán and the two hounds Bran and Sceólan, he thought the time had come to get Fionn into his power. We do not know what Fionn had done to Conaran, but it must have been bad enough, for the king of the Shí of Cesh Corran was filled with joy at the sight of Fionn thus close to him, thus unprotected, thus unsuspicious.

  This Conaran had four daughters. He was fond of them and proud of them, but if one were to search the Shís of Ireland or the land of Ireland, the equal of these four would not be found for ugliness and bad humour and twisted temperaments.

  Their hair was black as ink and tough as wire: it stuck up and poked out and hung down about their heads in bushes and spikes and tangles. Their eyes were bleary and red. Their mouths were black and twisted, and in each of these mouths there was a hedge of curved yellow fangs. They had long scraggy necks that could turn all the way round like the neck of a hen. Their arms were long and skinny and muscular, and at the end of each finger they had a spiked nail that was as hard as horn and as sharp as a briar. Their bodies were covered with a bristle of hair and fur and fluff, so that they looked like dogs in some parts and like cats in others, and in other parts again they looked like chickens. They had moustaches poking under their noses and woolly wads growing out of their ears, so that when you looked at them the first time you never wanted to look at them again, and if you had to look at them a second time you were likely to die of the sight.

  They were called Caevóg, Cuillen, and Iaran. The fourth daughter, Iarnach, was not present at that moment, so nothing need be said of her yet.

  Conaran called these three to him.

  “Fionn is alone,” said he. “Fionn is alone, my treasures.”

  “Ah!” said Caevóg, and her jaw crunched upwards and stuck outwards, as was usual with her when she was satisfied.

  “When the chance comes take it,” Conaran continued, and he smiled a black, beetle-browed, unbenevolent smile.

  “It’s a good word,” quoth Cuillen, and she swung her jaw loose and made it waggle up and down, for that was the way she smiled.

  “And here is the chance,” her father added.

  “The chance is here,” Iaran echoed, with a smile that was very like her sister’s, only that it was worse, and the wen that grew on her nose joggled to and fro and did not get its balance again for a long time.

  Then they smiled a smile that was agreeable to their own eyes, but which would have been a deadly thing for anybody else to see.

  “But Fionn cannot see us,” Caevóg objected, and her brow set downwards and her chin set upwards and her mouth squeezed sidewards, so that her face looked like a badly disappointed nut.

  “And we are worth seeing,” Cuillen continued, and the disappointment that was set in her sister’s face got carved and twisted into hers, but it was worse in her case.

  “That is the truth,” said Iaran in a voice of lamentation, and her face took on a gnarl and a writhe and a solidity of ugly woe that beat the other two and made even her father marvel.

  “He cannot see us now,” Conaran replied, “but he will see us in a minute.”

  “Won’t Fionn be glad when he sees us!” said the three sisters.

  And then they joined hands and danced joyfully around their father, and they sang a song, the first line of which is:

  Fionn thinks he is safe. But who knows when the sky will fall?

  Lots of the people in the Shí learned that song by heart, and they applied it to every kind of circumstance.

  Chapter 3

  By his arts Conaran changed the sight of Fionn’s eyes, and he did the same for Conán.

  In a few minutes Fionn stood up from his place on the mound. Everything was about him as before, and he did not know that he had gone into Faery. He walked for a minute up and down the hillock. Then, as by chance, he stepped down the sloping end of the mound and stood with his mouth open, staring. He cried out:

  “Come down here, Conán, my darling.”

  Conán stepped down to him.

  “Am I dreaming?” Fionn demanded, and he stretched out his finger before him.

  “If you are dreaming,” said Conán, “I’m dreaming too. They weren’t here a minute ago,” he stammered.

  Fionn looked up at the sky and found that it was still there. He stared to one side and saw the trees of Kyle Conor waving in the distance. He bent his ear to the wind and heard the shouting of hunters, the yapping of dogs, and the clear whistles, which told how the hunt was going.

  “Well!” said Fionn to himself.

  “By my hand!” quoth Conán to his own soul.

  And the two men stared into the hillside as though wha
t they were looking at was too wonderful to be looked away from.

  “Who are they?” said Fionn.

  “What are they?” Conán gasped. And they stared again.

  For there was a great hole like a doorway in the side of the mound, and in that doorway the daughters of Conaran sat spinning. They had three crooked sticks of holly set up before the cave, and they were reeling yarn off these. But it was enchantment they were weaving.

  “One could not call them handsome,” said Conán.

  “One could,” Fionn replied, “but it would not be true.”

  “I cannot see them properly,” Fionn complained. “They are hiding behind the holly.”

  “I would be contented if I could not see them at all,” his companion grumbled.

  But the Chief insisted.

  “I want to make sure that it is whiskers they are wearing.”

  “Let them wear whiskers or not wear them,” Conán counselled. “But let us have nothing to do with them.”

  “One must not be frightened of anything,” Fionn stated.

  “I am not frightened,” Conán explained. “I only want to keep my good opinion of women, and if the three yonder are women, then I feel sure I shall begin to dislike females from this minute out.”

  “Come on, my love,” said Fionn, “for I must find out if these whiskers are true.”

  He strode resolutely into the cave. He pushed the branches of holly aside and marched up to Conaran’s daughters, with Conán behind him.

  Chapter 4

  The instant they passed the holly a strange weakness came over the heroes. Their fists seemed to grow heavy as lead, and went dingle-dangle at the ends of their arms; their legs became as light as straws and began to bend in and out; their necks became too delicate to hold anything up, so that their heads wibbled and wobbled from side to side.

  “What’s wrong at all?” said Conán, as he tumbled to the ground.

  “Everything is,” Fionn replied, and he tumbled beside him.

  The three sisters then tied the heroes with every kind of loop and twist and knot that could be thought of.