Irish Fairy Tales

by Stephens, James

“Light the yolk!” he cried.

  “Until one year is up and out you are not to pass the night in any house that I am in.”

  “By my head and hand!” Branduv stammered.

  “And if you come into a house where I am during the time and term of that year, you are not to sit down in the chair that I am sitting in.”

  “Heavy is my doom!” he groaned.

  “But,” said Duv Laca, “if I am sitting in a chair or a seat you are to sit in a chair that is over against me and opposite to me and at a distance from me.”

  “Alas!” said the king, and he smote his hands together, and then he beat them on his head, and then he looked at them and at everything about, and he could not tell what anything was or where anything was, for his mind was clouded and his wits had gone astray.

  “Why do you bind these woes on me?” he pleaded.

  “I wish to find out if you truly love me.”

  “But I do,” said the king. “I love you madly and dearly, and with all my faculties and members.”

  “That is the way I love you,” said Duv Laca. “We shall have a notable year of courtship and joy. And let us go now,” she continued, “for I am impatient to be with you.”

  “Alas!” said Branduv, as he followed her. “Alas, alas!” said the King of Leinster.

  Chapter 13

  I think,” said the Flame Lady, “that whoever lost that woman had no reason to be sad.”

  Mongan took her chin in his hand and kissed her lips.

  “All that you say is lovely, for you are lovely,” said he, “and you are my delight and the joy of the world.”

  Then the attendants brought him wine, and he drank so joyously of that and so deeply, that those who observed him thought he would surely burst and drown them. But he laughed loudly and with enormous delight, until the vessels of gold and silver and bronze chimed mellowly to his peal and the rafters of the house went creaking.

  For (said he), Mongan loved Duv Laca of the White Hand better than he loved his life, better than he loved his honour. The kingdoms of the world did not weigh with him beside the string of her shoe. He would not look at a sunset if he could see her. He would not listen to a harp if he could hear her speak, for she was the delight of ages, the gem of time, and the wonder of the world till Doom.

  She went to Leinster with the king of that country, and when she had gone Mongan fell grievously sick, so that it did not seem he could ever recover again; and he began to waste and wither, and he began to look like a skeleton, and a bony structure, and a misery.

  Now this also must be known.

  Duv Laca had a young attendant, who was her foster-sister as well as her servant, and on the day that she got married to Mongan, her attendant was married to mac an Dáv, who was servant and foster-brother to Mongan. When Duv Laca went away with the King of Leinster, her servant, mac an Dáv’s wife, went with her, so there were two wifeless men in Ulster at that time, namely, Mongan the king and mac an Dáv his servant.

  One day as Mongan sat in the sun, brooding lamentably on his fate, mac an Dáv came to him.

  “How are things with you, master?” asked mac an Dáv.

  “Bad,” said Mongan.

  “It was a poor day brought you off with Manannán to the Land of Promise,” said his servant.

  “Why should you think that?” inquired Mongan.

  “Because,” said mac an Dáv, “you learned nothing in the Land of Promise except how to eat a lot of food and how to do nothing in a deal of time.”

  “What business is it of yours?” said Mongan angrily.

  “It is my business surely,” said mac an Dáv, “for my wife has gone off to Leinster with your wife, and she wouldn’t have gone if you hadn’t made a bet and a bargain with that accursed king.”

  Mac an Dáv began to weep then.

  “I didn’t make a bargain with any king,” said he, “and yet my wife has gone away with one, and it’s all because of you.”

  “There is no one sorrier for you than I am,” said Mongan.

  “There is indeed,” said mac an Dáv, “for I am sorrier myself.”

  Mongan roused himself then.

  “You have a claim on me truly,” said he, “and I will not have any one with a claim on me that is not satisfied. Go,” he said to mac an Dáv, “to that fairy place we both know of. You remember the baskets I left there with the sod from Ireland in one and the sod from Scotland in the other; bring me the baskets and sods.”

  “Tell me the why of this?” said his servant.

  “The King of Leinster will ask his wizards what I am doing, and this is what I will be doing. I will get on your back with a foot in each of the baskets, and when Branduv asks the wizards where I am they will tell him that I have one leg in Ireland and one leg in Scotland, and as long as they tell him that he will think he need not bother himself about me, and we will go into Leinster that way.”

  “No bad way either,” said mac an Dáv.

  They set out then.

  Chapter 14

  It was a long, uneasy journey, for although mac an Dáv was of stout heart and goodwill, yet no man can carry another on his back from Ulster to Leinster and go quick. Still, if you keep on driving a pig or a story they will get at last to where you wish them to go, and the man who continues putting one foot in front of the other will leave his home behind, and will come at last to the edge of the sea and the end of the world.

  When they reached Leinster the feast of Moy Lifé was being held, and they pushed on by forced marches and long stages so as to be in time, and thus they came to the Moy of Cell Camain, and they mixed with the crowd that were going to the feast.

  A great and joyous concourse of people streamed about them. There were young men and young girls, and when these were not holding each other’s hands it was because their arms were round each other’s necks. There were old, lusty women going by, and when these were not talking together it was because their mouths were mutually filled with apples and meat-pies. There were young warriors with mantles of green and purple and red flying behind them on the breeze, and when these were not looking disdainfully on older soldiers it was because the older soldiers happened at the moment to be looking at them. There were old warriors with yard-long beards flying behind their shoulders like wisps of hay, and when these were not nursing a broken arm or a cracked skull, it was because they were nursing wounds in their stomachs or their legs. There were troops of young women who giggled as long as their breaths lasted and beamed when it gave out. Bands of boys who whispered mysteriously together and pointed with their fingers in every direction at once, and would suddenly begin to run like a herd of stampeded horses. There were men with carts full of roasted meats. Women with little vats full of mead, and others carrying milk and beer. Folk of both sorts with towers swaying on their heads, and they dripping with honey. Children having baskets piled with red apples, and old women who peddled shell-fish and boiled lobsters. There were people who sold twenty kinds of bread, with butter thrown in. Sellers of onions and cheese, and others who supplied spare bits of armour, odd scabbards, spear handles, breastplate-laces. People who cut your hair or told your fortune or gave you a hot bath in a pot. Others who put a shoe on your horse or a piece of embroidery on your mantle; and others, again, who took stains off your sword or dyed your finger-nails or sold you a hound.

  It was a great and joyous gathering that was going to the feast.

  Mongan and his servant sat against a grassy hedge by the roadside and watched the multitude streaming past.

  Just then Mongan glanced to the right whence the people were coming. Then he pulled the hood of his cloak over his ears and over his brow.

  “Alas!” said he in a deep and anguished voice.

  Mac an Dáv turned to him.

  “Is it a pain in your stomach, master?”

  “It is not,” said Mongan.

  “Well, what made you make that brutal and belching noise?”

  “It was a sigh I gave,” said Mongan. />
  “Whatever it was,” said mac an Dáv, “what was it?”

  “Look down the road on this side and tell me who is coming,” said his master.

  “It is a lord with his troop.”

  “It is the King of Leinster,” said Mongan.

  “The man,” said mac an Dáv in a tone of great pity, “the man that took away your wife! And,” he roared in a voice of extraordinary savagery, “the man that took away my wife into the bargain, and she not in the bargain.”

  “Hush,” said Mongan, for a man who heard his shout stopped to tie a sandal, or to listen.

  “Master,” said mac an Dáv as the troop drew abreast and moved past.

  “What is it, my good friend?”

  “Let me throw a little, small piece of a rock at the King of Leinster.”

  “I will not.”

  “A little bit only, a small bit about twice the size of my head.”

  “I will not let you,” said Mongan.

  When the king had gone by mac an Dáv groaned a deep and dejected groan.

  “Ocón!” said he. “Ocón-ío-go-deó!” said he.

  The man who had tied his sandal said then:

  “Are you in pain, honest man?”

  “I am not in pain,” said mac an Dáv.

  “Well, what was it that knocked a howl out of you like the yelp of a sick dog, honest man?”

  “Go away,” said mac an Dáv, “go away, you flat-faced, nosy person.”

  “There is no politeness left in this country,” said the stranger, and he went away to a certain distance, and from thence he threw a stone at mac an Dáv’s nose, and hit it.

  Chapter 15

  The road was now not so crowded as it had been. Minutes would pass and only a few travellers would come, and minutes more would go when nobody was in sight at all.

  Then two men came down the road: they were clerics.

  “I never saw that kind of uniform before,” said mac an Dáv.

  “Even if you didn’t,” said Mongan, “there are plenty of them about. They are men that don’t believe in our gods,” said he.

  “Do they not, indeed?” said mac an Dáv. “The rascals!” said he. “What, what would Manannán say to that?”

  “The one in front carrying the big book is Tibraidè. He is the priest of Cell Camain, and he is the chief of those two.”

  “Indeed, and indeed!” said mac an Dáv. “The one behind must be his servant, for he has a load on his back.”

  The priests were reading their offices, and mac an Dáv marvelled at that.

  “What is it they are doing?” said he.

  “They are reading.”

  “Indeed, and indeed they are,” said mac an Dáv. “I can’t make out a word of the language except that the man behind says amen, amen, every time the man in front puts a grunt out of him. And they don’t like our gods at all!” said mac an Dáv.

  “They do not,” said Mongan.

  “Play a trick on them, master,” said mac an Dáv.

  Mongan agreed to play a trick on the priests.

  He looked at them hard for a minute, and then he waved his hand at them.

  The two priests stopped, and they stared straight in front of them, and then they looked at each other, and then they looked at the sky. The clerk began to bless himself, and then Tibraidè began to bless himself, and after that they didn’t know what to do. For where there had been a road with hedges on each side and fields stretching beyond them, there was now no road, no hedge, no field; but there was a great broad river sweeping across their path; a mighty tumble of yellowy-brown waters, very swift, very savage; churning and billowing and jockeying among rough boulders and islands of stone. It was a water of villainous depth and of detestable wetness; of ugly hurrying and of desolate cavernous sound. At a little to their right there was a thin uncomely bridge that waggled across the torrent.

  Tibraidè rubbed his eyes, and then he looked again.

  “Do you see what I see?” said he to the clerk.

  “I don’t know what you see,” said the clerk, “but what I see I never did see before, and I wish I did not see it now.”

  “I was born in this place,” said Tibraidè, “my father was born here before me, and my grandfather was born here before him, but until this day and this minute I never saw a river here before, and I never heard of one.”

  “What will we do at all?” said the clerk. “What will we do at all?”

  “We will be sensible,” said Tibraidè sternly, “and we will go about our business,” said he. “If rivers fall out of the sky what has that to do with you, and if there is a river here, which there is, why, thank God, there is a bridge over it too.”

  “Would you put a toe on that bridge?” said the clerk.

  “What is the bridge for?” said Tibraidè.

  Mongan and mac an Dáv followed them.

  When they got to the middle of the bridge it broke under them, and they were precipitated into that boiling yellow flood.

  Mongan snatched at the book as it fell from Tibraidè’s hand.

  “Won’t you let them drown, master?” asked mac an Dáv.

  “No,” said Mongan, “I’ll send them a mile down the stream, and then they can come to land.”

  Mongan then took on himself the form of Tibraidè and he turned mac an Dáv into the shape of the clerk.

  “My head has gone bald,” said the servant in a whisper.

  “That is part of it,” replied Mongan.

  “So long as we know!” said mac an Dáv.

  They went on then to meet the King of Leinster.

  Chapter 16

  They met him near the place where the games were played.

  “Good my soul, Tibraidè!” cried the King of Leinster, and he gave Mongan a kiss. Mongan kissed him back again.

  “Amen, amen,” said mac an Dáv.

  “What for?” said the King of Leinster.

  And then mac an Dáv began to sneeze, for he didn’t know what for.

  “It is a long time since I saw you, Tibraidè,” said the king, “but at this minute I am in great haste and hurry. Go you on before me to the fortress, and you can talk to the queen that you’ll find there, she that used to be the King of Ulster’s wife. Kevin Cochlach, my charioteer, will go with you, and I will follow you myself in a while.”

  The King of Leinster went off then, and Mongan and his servant went with the charioteer and the people.

  Mongan read away out of the book, for he found it interesting, and he did not want to talk to the charioteer, and mac an Dáv cried amen, amen, every time that Mongan took his breath. The people who were going with them said to one another that mac an Dáv was a queer kind of clerk, and that they had never seen any one who had such a mouthful of amens.

  But in a while they came to the fortress, and they got into it without any trouble, for Kevin Cochlach, the king’s charioteer, brought them in. Then they were led to the room where Duv Laca was, and as he went into that room Mongan shut his eyes, for he did not want to look at Duv Laca while other people might be looking at him.

  “Let everybody leave this room, while I am talking to the queen,” said he; and all the attendants left the room, except one, and she wouldn’t go, for she wouldn’t leave her mistress.

  Then Mongan opened his eyes and he saw Duv Laca, and he made a great bound to her and took her in his arms, and mac an Dáv made a savage and vicious and terrible jump at the attendant, and took her in his arms, and bit her ear and kissed her neck and wept down into her back.

  “Go away,” said the girl, “unhand me, villain,” said she.

  “I will not,” said mac an Dáv, “for I’m your own husband, I’m your own mac, your little mac, your macky-wac-wac.” Then the attendant gave a little squeal, and she bit him on each ear and kissed his neck and wept down into his back, and said that it wasn’t true and that it was.

  Chapter 17

  But they were not alone, although they thought they were. The hag that guarded the jewe
ls was in the room. She sat hunched up against the wall, and as she looked like a bundle of rags they did not notice her. She began to speak then.

  “Terrible are the things I see,” said she. “Terrible are the things I see.”

  Mongan and his servant gave a jump of surprise, and their two wives jumped and squealed. Then Mongan puffed out his cheeks till his face looked like a bladder, and he blew a magic breath at the hag, so that she seemed to be surrounded by a fog, and when she looked through that breath everything seemed to be different to what she had thought. Then she began to beg everybody’s pardon.

  “I had an evil vision,” said she, “I saw crossways. How sad it is that I should begin to see the sort of things I thought I saw.”

  “Sit in this chair, mother,” said Mongan, “and tell me what you thought you saw,” and he slipped a spike under her, and mac an Dáv pushed her into the seat, and she died on the spike.

  Just then there came a knocking at the door. Mac an Dáv opened it, and there was Tibraidè standing outside, and twenty-nine of his men were with him, and they were all laughing.

  “A mile was not half enough,” said mac an Dáv reproachfully.

  The Chamberlain of the fortress pushed into the room and he stared from one Tibraidè to the other.

  “This is a fine growing year,” said he. “There never was a year when Tibraidès were as plentiful as they are this year. There is a Tibraidè outside and a Tibraidè inside, and who knows but there are some more of them under the bed. The place is crawling with them,” said he.

  Mongan pointed at Tibraidè.

  “Don’t you know who that is?” he cried.

  “I know who he says he is,” said the Chamberlain.

  “Well, he is Mongan,” said Mongan, “and these twenty-nine men are twenty-nine of his nobles from Ulster.”

  At that news the men of the household picked up clubs and cudgels and every kind of thing that was near, and made a violent and woeful attack on Tibraidè’s men. The King of Leinster came in then, and when he was told Tibraidè was Mongan he attacked them as well, and it was with difficulty that Tibraidè got away to Cell Camain with nine of his men and they all wounded.