“What is your name, my sweet lady?” said the king.
“I am called Delvcaem (Fair Shape) and I am the daughter of Morgan,” she replied.
“I have heard much of Morgan,” said the king. “He is a very great magician.”
During this conversation Conn had been regarding her with the minute freedom which is right only in a king. At what precise instant he forgot his dead consort we do not know, but it is certain that at this moment his mind was no longer burdened with that dear and lovely memory. His voice was melancholy when he spoke again.
“You love my son!”
“Who could avoid loving him?” she murmured.
“When a woman speaks to a man about the love she feels for another man she is not liked. And,” he continued, “when she speaks to a man who has no wife of his own about her love for another man then she is disliked.”
“I would not be disliked by you,” Becuma murmured.
“Nevertheless,” said he regally, “I will not come between a woman and her choice.”
“I did not know you lacked a wife,” said Becuma, but indeed she did.
“You know it now,” the king replied sternly.
“What shall I do?” she inquired, “am I to wed you or your son?”
“You must choose,” Conn answered.
“If you allow me to choose it means that you do not want me very badly,” said she with a smile.
“Then I will not allow you to choose,” cried the king, “and it is with myself you shall marry.”
He took her hand in his and kissed it.
“Lovely is this pale thin hand. Lovely is the slender foot that I see in a small bronze shoe,” said the king.
After a suitable time she continued:
“I should not like your son to be at Tara when I am there, or for a year afterwards, for I do not wish to meet him until I have forgotten him and have come to know you well.”
“I do not wish to banish my son,” the king protested.
“It would not really be a banishment,” she said. “A prince’s duty could be set him, and in such an absence he would improve his knowledge both of Ireland and of men. Further,” she continued with downcast eyes, “when you remember the reason that brought me here you will see that his presence would be an embarrassment to us both, and my presence would be unpleasant to him if he remembers his mother.”
“Nevertheless,” said Conn stubbornly, “I do not wish to banish my son; it is awkward and unnecessary.”
“For a year only,” she pleaded.
“It is yet,” he continued thoughtfully, “a reasonable reason that you give and I will do what you ask, but by my hand and word I don’t like doing it.”
They set out then briskly and joyfully on the homeward journey, and in due time they reached Tara of the Kings.
Chapter 4
It is part of the education of a prince to be a good chess player, and to continually exercise his mind in view of the judgements that he will be called upon to give and the knotty, tortuous, and perplexing matters which will obscure the issues which he must judge. Art, the son of Conn, was sitting at chess with Cromdes, his father’s magician.
“Be very careful about the move you are going to make,” said Cromdes.
“Can I be careful?” Art inquired. “Is the move that you are thinking of in my power?”
“It is not,” the other admitted.
“Then I need not be more careful than usual,” Art replied, and he made his move.
“It is a move of banishment,” said Cromdes.
“As I will not banish myself, I suppose my father will do it, but I do not know why he should.”
“Your father will not banish you.”
“Who then?”
“Your mother.”
“My mother is dead.”
“You have a new one,” said the magician.
“Here is news,” said Art. “I think I shall not love my new mother.”
“You will yet love her better than she loves you,” said Cromdes, meaning thereby that they would hate each other.
While they spoke the king and Becuma entered the palace.
“I had better go to greet my father,” said the young man.
“You had better wait until he sends for you,” his companion advised, and they returned to their game.
In due time a messenger came from the king directing Art to leave Tara instantly, and to leave Ireland for one full year.
He left Tara that night, and for the space of a year he was not seen again in Ireland. But during that period things did not go well with the king nor with Ireland. Every year before that time three crops of corn used to be lifted off the land, but during Art’s absence there was no corn in Ireland and there was no milk. The whole land went hungry.
Lean people were in every house, lean cattle in every field; the bushes did not swing out their timely berries or seasonable nuts; the bees went abroad as busily as ever, but each night they returned languidly, with empty pouches, and there was no honey in their hives when the honey season came. People began to look at each other questioningly, meaningly, and dark remarks passed between them, for they knew that a bad harvest means, somehow, a bad king, and, although this belief can be combated, it is too firmly rooted in wisdom to be dismissed.
The poets and magicians met to consider why this disaster should have befallen the country and by their arts they discovered the truth about the king’s wife, and that she was Becuma of the White Skin, and they discovered also the cause of her banishment from the Many-Coloured Land that is beyond the sea, which is beyond even the grave.
They told the truth to the king, but he could not bear to be parted from that slender-handed, gold-haired, thin-lipped, blithe enchantress, and he required them to discover some means whereby he might retain his wife and his crown. There was a way and the magicians told him of it.
“If the son of a sinless couple can be found and if his blood be mixed with the soil of Tara the blight and ruin will depart from Ireland,” said the magicians.
“If there is such a boy I will find him,” cried the Hundred Fighter.
At the end of a year Art returned to Tara. His father delivered to him the sceptre of Ireland, and he set out on a journey to find the son of a sinless couple such as he had been told of.
Chapter 5
The High King did not know where exactly he should look for such a saviour, but he was well educated and knew how to look for whatever was lacking. This knowledge will be useful to those upon whom a similar duty should ever devolve.
He went to Ben Edair. He stepped into a coracle and pushed out to the deep, and he permitted the coracle to go as the winds and the waves directed it.
In such a way he voyaged among the small islands of the sea until he lost all knowledge of his course and was adrift far out in ocean. He was under the guidance of the stars and the great luminaries.
He saw black seals that stared and barked and dived dancingly, with the round turn of a bow and the forward onset of an arrow. Great whales came heaving from the green-hued void, blowing a wave of the sea high into the air from their noses and smacking their wide flat tails thunderously on the water. Porpoises went snorting past in bands and clans. Small fish came sliding and flickering, and all the outlandish creatures of the deep rose by his bobbing craft and swirled and sped away.
Wild storms howled by him so that the boat climbed painfully to the sky on a mile-high wave, balanced for a tense moment on its level top, and sped down the glassy side as a stone goes furiously from a sling.
Or, again, caught in the chop of a broken sea, it stayed shuddering and backing, while above his head there was only a low sad sky, and around him the lap and wash of grey waves that were never the same and were never different.
After long staring on the hungry nothingness of air and water he would stare on the skin-stretched fabric of his boat as on a strangeness, or he would examine his hands and the texture of his skin and the stiff black hairs that grew be
hind his knuckles and sprouted around his ring, and he found in these things newness and wonder.
Then, when days of storm had passed, the low grey clouds shivered and cracked in a thousand places, each grim islet went scudding to the horizon as though terrified by some great breadth, and when they had passed he stared into vast after vast of blue infinity, in the depths of which his eyes stayed and could not pierce, and wherefrom they could scarcely be withdrawn. A sun beamed thence that filled the air with sparkle and the sea with a thousand lights, and looking on these he was reminded of his home at Tara: of the columns of white and yellow bronze that blazed out sunnily on the sun, and the red and white and yellow painted roofs that beamed at and astonished the eye.
Sailing thus, lost in a succession of days and nights, of winds and calms, he came at last to an island.
His back was turned to it, and long before he saw it he smelled it and wondered; for he had been sitting as in a daze, musing on a change that had seemed to come in his changeless world; and for a long time he could not tell what that was which made a difference on the salt-whipped wind or why he should be excited. For suddenly he had become excited and his heart leaped in violent expectation.
“It is an October smell,” he said.
“It is apples that I smell.”
He turned then and saw the island, fragrant with apple trees, sweet with wells of wine; and, hearkening towards the shore, his ears, dulled yet with the unending rhythms of the sea, distinguished and were filled with song; for the isle was, as it were, a nest of birds, and they sang joyously, sweetly, triumphantly.
He landed on that lovely island, and went forward under the darting birds, under the apple boughs, skirting fragrant lakes about which were woods of the sacred hazel and into which the nuts of knowledge fell and swam; and he blessed the gods of his people because of the ground that did not shiver and because of the deeply rooted trees that could not gad or budge.
Chapter 6
Having gone some distance by these pleasant ways he saw a shapely house dozing in the sunlight.
It was thatched with the wings of birds, blue wings and yellow and white wings, and in the centre of the house there was a door of crystal set in posts of bronze.
The queen of this island lived there, Rigru (Large-eyed), the daughter of Lodan, and wife of Daire Degamra. She was seated on a crystal throne with her son Segda by her side, and they welcomed the High King courteously.
There were no servants in this palace; nor was there need for them. The High King found that his hands had washed themselves, and when later on he noticed that food had been placed before him he noticed also that it had come without the assistance of servile hands. A cloak was laid gently about his shoulders, and he was glad of it, for his own was soiled by exposure to sun and wind and water, and was not worthy of a lady’s eye.
Then he was invited to eat.
He noticed, however, that food had been set for no one but himself, and this did not please him, for to eat alone was contrary to the hospitable usage of a king, and was contrary also to his contract with the gods.
“Good, my hosts,” he remonstrated, “it is geasa (taboo) for me to eat alone.”
“But we never eat together,” the queen replied.
“I cannot violate my geasa,” said the High King.
“I will eat with you,” said Segda (Sweet Speech), “and thus, while you are our guest you will not do violence to your vows.”
“Indeed,” said Conn, “that will be a great satisfaction, for I have already all the trouble that I can cope with and have no wish to add to it by offending the gods.”
“What is your trouble?” the gentle queen asked.
“During a year,” Conn replied, “there has been neither corn nor milk in Ireland. The land is parched, the trees are withered, the birds do not sing in Ireland, and the bees do not make honey.”
“You are certainly in trouble,” the queen assented.
“But,” she continued, “for what purpose have you come to our island?”
“I have come to ask for the loan of your son.”
“A loan of my son!”
“I have been informed,” Conn explained, “that if the son of a sinless couple is brought to Tara and is bathed in the waters of Ireland the land will be delivered from those ills.”
The king of this island, Daire, had not hitherto spoken, but he now did so with astonishment and emphasis.
“We would not lend our son to any one, not even to gain the kingship of the world,” said he.
But Segda, observing that the guest’s countenance was discomposed, broke in:
“It is not kind to refuse a thing that the Ard-Rí of Ireland asks for, and I will go with him.”
“Do not go, my pulse,” his father advised.
“Do not go, my one treasure,” his mother pleaded.
“I must go indeed,” the boy replied, “for it is to do good I am required, and no person may shirk such a requirement.”
“Go then,” said his father, “but I will place you under the protection of the High King and of the Four Provincial Kings of Ireland, and under the protection of Art, the son of Conn, and of Fionn, the son of Uail, and under the protection of the magicians and poets and the men of art in Ireland.” And he thereupon bound these protections and safeguards on the Ard-Rí with an oath.
“I will answer for these protections,” said Conn.
He departed then from the island with Segda and in three days they reached Ireland, and in due time they arrived at Tara.
Chapter 7
On reaching the palace Conn called his magicians and poets to a council and informed them that he had found the boy they sought—the son of a virgin. These learned people consulted together, and they stated that the young man must be killed, and that his blood should be mixed with the earth of Tara and sprinkled under the withered trees.
When Segda heard this he was astonished and defiant; then, seeing that he was alone and without prospect of succour, he grew downcast and was in great fear for his life. But remembering the safeguards under which he had been placed, he enumerated these to the assembly, and called on the High King to grant him the protections that were his due.
Conn was greatly perturbed, but, as in duty bound, he placed the boy under the various protections that were in his oath, and, with the courage of one who has no more to gain or lose, he placed Segda, furthermore, under the protection of all the men of Ireland.
But the men of Ireland refused to accept that bond, saying that although the Ard-Rí was acting justly towards the boy he was not acting justly towards Ireland.
“We do not wish to slay this prince for our pleasure,” they argued, “but for the safety of Ireland he must be killed.”
Angry parties were formed. Art, and Fionn the son of Uail, and the princes of the land were outraged at the idea that one who had been placed under their protection should be hurt by any hand. But the men of Ireland and the magicians stated that the king had gone to Faery for a special purpose, and that his acts outside or contrary to that purpose were illegal, and committed no person to obedience.
There were debates in the Council Hall, in the market-place, in the streets of Tara, some holding that national honour dissolved and absolved all personal honour, and others protesting that no man had aught but his personal honour, and that above it not the gods, not even Ireland, could be placed—for it is to be known that Ireland is a god.
Such a debate was in course, and Segda, to whom both sides addressed gentle and courteous arguments, grew more and more disconsolate.
“You shall die for Ireland, dear heart,” said one of them, and he gave Segda three kisses on each cheek.
“Indeed,” said Segda, returning those kisses, “indeed I had not bargained to die for Ireland, but only to bathe in her waters and to remove her pestilence.”
“But dear child and prince,” said another, kissing him likewise, “if any one of us could save Ireland by dying for her how cheerfully we would die.”
And Segda, returning his three kisses, agreed that the death was noble, but that it was not in his undertaking.
Then, observing the stricken countenances about him, and the faces of men and women hewn thin by hunger, his resolution melted away, and he said:
“I think I must die for you,” and then he said:
“I will die for you.”
And when he had said that, all the people present touched his cheek with their lips, and the love and peace of Ireland entered into his soul, so that he was tranquil and proud and happy.
The executioner drew his wide, thin blade and all those present covered their eyes with their cloaks, when a wailing voice called on the executioner to delay yet a moment. The High King uncovered his eyes and saw that a woman had approached driving a cow before her.
“Why are you killing the boy?” she demanded.
The reason for this slaying was explained to her.
“Are you sure,” she asked, “that the poets and magicians really know everything?”
“Do they not?” the king inquired.
“Do they?” she insisted.
And then turning to the magicians:
“Let one magician of the magicians tell me what is hidden in the bags that are lying across the back of my cow.”
But no magician could tell it, nor did they try to.
“Questions are not answered thus,” they said. “There is formulae, and the calling up of spirits, and lengthy complicated preparations in our art.”
“I am not badly learned in these arts,” said the woman, “and I say that if you slay this cow the effect will be the same as if you had killed the boy.”
“We would prefer to kill a cow or a thousand cows rather than harm this young prince,” said Conn, “but if we spare the boy will these evils return?”
“They will not be banished until you have banished their cause.”
“And what is their cause?”
Irish Fairy Tales Page 15