Monsters of Celtic Mythology

by Bernard Evslin

  Stab and jab

  jab and stab …

  Better talk,

  better gab …

  “No,” groaned the thrig.

  “Been doing good deeds again, haven’t you? Let you out of my sight for a minute every thousand years, and up you pop into the light trying to help some poor fool do the right thing instead of taking life as it is. Well, you’ll tell me what you did, and I’ll undo it.”

  “Never,” said the thrig.

  “Never’s a long time, little one, especially when there’s pain attached. You’ll tell me, for I’ll torment you till you do.”

  I come and I go,

  I fly and I spy.

  I am Drabne of Dole,

  I live in a hole,

  and I need to know.…

  “That’s what witch means, small fool, Woman Who Knows. Now hear what I intend, Thrig of Tone: If you don’t tell me straight, I’ll round off your edges a bit and use you as a pincushion for the next ten hundred years. And it’ll be pain, pain, pain all the time. I have plenty of tatters that need mending. My master’s socks need doing too. His hooves, you know, they wear right through.”

  Thereupon she poked and prodded and jabbed and stabbed the poor little fellow until he could bear it no longer, and told her what he had done.

  “Aha,” she said. “A very good deed, indeed, but not too late to stop.”

  She threw him into her workbasket and stomped off to her big iron pot, where it boiled over a fire of brambles. She cast in the scale of a fishy thing that lives at the bottom of the sea and has neither sight nor touch nor any sense at all but is one blind suck. Henbane she added, and nightshade, wormwood, drear weed, and various poison fats that clog the senses, whispering all the while:

  In this cauldron

  Stew and roast.

  Hearing ail,

  Music fail,

  Make him then

  Deaf as post.…

  A smoke arose from the witch’s brew, curling in the spirals of a most evil spell, and wafted itself out of her den and up the long way into the world—flew into the wood and fumed around the flat head of one of the serpents who was following Finn, drawn by his music. This serpent straightaway fell deaf, heard nothing anymore, but followed along anyway, no longer dancing, only crawling, filling with stupefied wrath.

  Finn knew nothing. He went skipping and piping through the wood until he came to his own village, silent now, for it was the hot, golden after-lunch hour when giants nap. He climbed into his bull-hide cradle and gazed upon young Murtha, sleeping sweetly as a folded flower.

  “Sleep, little beauty,” he whispered. “Sleep, my flower. Dream whatever dreams you do, and I shall sit here and my music shall steal through your ears and into your dreams, and when you awake you will hear the same music and not know whether you are awake or asleep, seeing me or dreaming still. And when the snakes come and frighten you, it will be with the slowness of nightmare, and in the darkened enchantment of that half dream you will hear me play and see me do, and watch the writhing evil dance to my tune. So you will know me for what I am and love me forever. Sleep then, sleep until you awake.”

  He sat cross-legged and began to pipe again. The wolves came, and the deer. Bear, fox, badger, rabbit, weasel. They stood at the foot of the tree, listening. Then, sure enough, he saw the serpents unreeling themselves through the branches of the tree, winding down toward the cradle.

  “Strange,” he thought to himself, “they were mottled green, both of them, but now one has changed color. It’s a dull gray, like lead. Oh, well, I suppose he has changed his skin. Snakes do, I hear. What’s the difference? I’ll play and they shall dance.”

  The green snake was already dancing, slowly winding fold upon mottled fold about the limb from which the cradle swung. But the gray one had crawled into the cradle itself, filling it with great coils of dully glimmering metal hide.

  Murtha was awake now, staring with stark-wide violet eyes at what had come into her sleep. And Finn thought that he was locked in nightmare. For this snake was not dancing. Its tiny eyes were poison red and seemed to be spinning, making Finn’s head whirl with fear. Not dancing, this serpent, but oozing toward Finn. It curled the tip of its tail around the lad’s ribs and began to squeeze. Finn felt his bones cracking. He could do nothing else, so he kept playing. He sat there piping, although the breath was being choked out of him. As his sight darkened he saw the snake above still dancing. And Finn, knowing that he was being killed, put all his pain and all his fear and all his loneliness into the pipe, and the pipe answered.

  Now the green snake above danced on, filled with the wild, sleepy magic of this music. The last exquisite strains of Finn’s fluting plaited the snake’s loops with slow joy, so that the coils he wove were made of living cable, stronger than steel. And when he heard the music growing dim and saw the gray serpent throttling Finn, he simply cast a loop about the strangler and pressed the life out of its body, all without ceasing his dance.

  Finn felt the coils lose their deathly grip; his breath came free. In the huge joy of breathing he blew so loud a blast upon his reed that the giants awoke and came running to see. What they saw was young Finn sitting in his bull-hide cradle piping a tune, and a huge green serpent dancing, and another metal-colored snake hanging limp and dead, while violet-eyed little Murtha shook her shoulders and snapped her fingers and smiled like the sun upon water.

  “Finn!” cried his mother, snatching him up and hugging him to her. “Are you all right? Has the murdering beast harmed you, my child?”

  “I’m fine, Mother. Put me back and let me play.”

  Finn’s mother was not much for weeping, but she wept then.

  “Don’t cry, Mother. Take the silver one and skin off his hide and make yourself a belt.”

  “I’ll do that, Son. And know it for the finest girdle in all the world.”

  The giants were whispering to each other. “’Tis a wonder now. A proud mother she is this day. Young Finn’s a hero for all his small bones.”

  “Save a bit of the hide to make a drum for Murtha here,” said Finn. “Do that, Mother, and she will drum to my fluting and all will be well.”

  “Do it I will,” said his mother. “As soon as the beast can be peeled.”

  “Answer me, darlin’,” said Finn to Murtha. “Will you have a silver drum and beat the measure as I play?”

  The giants shouted their pride. The animals brayed and bellowed and trumpeted. A muffled shriek of pain came from Drabne of Dole, for witches suffer when wickedness fails. And the birds in the trees made a racket of glee.

  Young Murtha, though, said nothing at all; she wasn’t one for answering questions. Besides, she was doing something new. She stood among the snake’s coils and danced along with him. He swayed, casting his green loops about her like a garland come to life. The giants then began to stamp too, stomping the earth mightily, shaking the trees.

  And Drabne of Dole, deep underground, whimpered and moaned and screamed, but no one heard her, for the day was full of joyful noise.

  As for the Thrig of Tone, the witch’s grief was his chance. He undid his bonds and escaped from her workbasket and made his way back to the wood. There he lives till this day, they say, doing sometimes good and sometimes mischief according to his mood, but mostly good nowadays, for the balance is so much the other way.

  Children still get lost in that wood, and when they are found, say that a manikin with a face like a nut taught them to take music out of a reed. He wears a crown, they say, which is a single crystal, tear shaped, full of moon fire. Their parents laugh and tell them they were never lost at all but only asleep, dreaming. The children do not argue, but they know what they know. And it’s a fact that children so lost and so found grow up fond of strange places and adventure. They go about the world confusing wind and laughter, tears and moon crystals, teasing music out of reeds, heroes out of shadows, stories out of grief.

  2

  The Fish Hag

  So the young
Finn had balked Drabne of Dole in her first attempt on his life. But she was not one to be comfortably defied; she fed on foundered dreams and drank young tears like wine. What was worse, she was a two-day witch. When not being Drabne she doubled as the Fish Hag.

  And as the Fish Hag she had a job to do in the scheme of things. She guarded the Salmon of Knowledge to see that this important fish was not hooked by the wrong people, or things learned by those who were meant to be ignorant. It was a hard job. Many there were who hunted the Salmon—Ireland has always been a land of scholars—and the Fish Hag had little time for tormenting a frisky lad. But she loathed Finn enough to take on extra work. And she began to set out baits for him.

  She studied him awhile from hidden places and found that he belonged to that curious breed whose weaknesses do not matter because they are most surely betrayed by their gifts. Now Finn had many gifts, but they were still raw. An imagination that darkened the horses of the sun for night use so that they galloped through his sleep, bearing him to certain hills and valleys where he knew he had been before. This was a gift, but raw. For he insisted on searching for these hills and valleys and green-lit meadows and echoing caves even when he was awake, and could not accept it when they were not to be found. Also, from the first, he suffered from fear of being a coward, pushing himself to rash acts that were to pass for courage. And this trait of his was useful to Drabne, but she needed something else—and found it in his feeling for Murtha, which was his most perilous gift. For he was too young to be doing what he was doing, and that was attaching the idea of all grace and surprise to the image of one girl.

  Upon a summer day then, Murtha, while wandering in a wood, heard a hoarse voice speak her name.

  “Murtha, Murtha …”

  “Who calls me?”

  “Myself.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Not where you’re looking. Lift your eyes.”

  Murtha looked up. There, seated on a low limb of an alder tree, was an ugly gray bird with a pouchy beak.

  “Good morning to you,” said Murtha. “What sort of bird do you call yourself?”

  “Pelican.”

  “Why is your beak made like that?”

  “For carrying fish back to my nest.”

  “Are you a fishing bird, then?”

  “Am I not? The very best.”

  “What do you do so far from the sea? There are no fish here.”

  “I have come to see you, Murtha.”

  “Well, that’s friendly of you. How is it you can talk at all, by the way? Is it common among pelicans?”

  “Not very. But I’m a special bird, if I say so myself. I’m not only good at speaking but at guessing. I know, for instance, what you would like best in the world—an opal necklace with stones as big as hazelnuts, full of drowned lights.”

  “The very thing!” cried Murtha, clapping her hands. “I didn’t know what it was I wanted most in the world, but now that you’ve mentioned it I can’t wait till I get one.”

  “And I’m here to tell you how,” said the pelican, who was really Drabne, or the Fish Hag in disguise, of course. “A bit of a way it is, past three meadows and a wood, up one hill and down two to a secret place. There stand nine hazels circling a spring. At the bottom of that spring is a bed of opals.… Here must Finn McCool come in the first dawn, and if he asks me courteously, I will tell him how to dive for those opals, and you shall have a necklace finer far than any worn by any princess of any realm.”

  “I’ll come get them myself. I can swim and dive better than Finn.”

  “No, it must be he.”

  “Oh, pooh. Why?”

  “It is the way of things. The jewel a girl wears must be given her by a lad or it loses its luster. Now don’t be wasting my time. Do you want those opals or not?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Then go tell Finn what to do. Off with you!”

  “Thank you, Mr. Pelican.”

  “Miss, dear. But you are welcome indeed.”

  The pelican rose heavily and flapped away. And Murtha, seeing the ragged wings and the stiff tail and the humped beak, felt her heart squeezed by fear, for it seemed the shape of a witch riding a broomstick and not a bird at all. But then she saw the opals sliding their lights about the slenderness of her neck, and she forgot her fear and ran off to tell Finn.

  Just as the windy sky showed its first apricot glow, Finn McCool came to the place he had been told to go, past three meadows and a wood, up one hill and down two. There he counted nine hazels huddled in the mist about a spring of water. There was a curdling of the mist as the boy watched; it thickened into the shape of a hag, who said:

  “A fair morning to you, boy-dear.”

  “The like to you, mistress.”

  “And what brings you to the Spring of the Nine Hazels, Finn?”

  “I was instructed to come here.”

  “Indeed? And who did the instructing, may I ask?”

  “Murtha of the Vale.”

  “Murtha, is it? How does she know of this place, and by what right does she tell you what she knows?”

  “She was advised by a pelican to tell me to come here and fetch her the opals that lie beneath the stream.”

  “Pelicans, opals, little girls who know more than what’s good for them and little boys who know less. This is a mixedup tale you’re telling me, and I don’t like it at all.”

  The crone wore a tattered cloak. She had wild feathery gray hair and hands like the feet of a bird. Her nose bent to meet her chin and the chin curved up to meet the nose halfway. Every time she spoke both nose and chin moved, and Finn was so fascinated waiting to see whether they would finally touch that he lost the drift of her words.

  “Why are you looking at me in that foolish way?”

  “I am waiting to see whether your nose touches your chin. It comes closer each word. It’s very interesting.”

  “Is it, now?”

  She smiled and Finn shuddered. Ugly as she was in the ordinary way, the look of her trying to be pleasant was not to be believed.

  “Pray be not displeased, mistress. I meant no rudeness.”

  “Oh, you have a few lessons in courtesy to learn, but time enough, time enough. I have so much to teach you I don’t know where to start.”

  “Are you a teacher?”

  “Not by trade. But every good mistress instructs her own servants.”

  “I am no servant. I am Finn McCool.”

  “The very name I was given. Enough chatter, though. Lessons are bitter here, and the first of them is ‘Shut up and listen.’”

  He leaped away and started to run. She pointed her hands at him, muttering. A sewing basket floated in out of nowhere and perched between her hands. She continued muttering. A spool leaped out of the basket, rolled rapidly along the ground, hopping over twigs, and circled Finn, casting its threads about him, binding his legs. Though delicate as silk, the thread was strong as cable; he could not move. The spool rose in the air, still circling, and wrapped him about until he was cocooned from shoulder to foot. The witch whistled. The spool sailed back into the basket and paused to allow a needle to thread itself. The needle flashed out of the basket toward Finn. Darting more swiftly than a dragonfly, it sewed up his lips.

  “The less you speak the more you hear. And for a learner, listening is a lot better than discussion,” said Drabne. “Any questions? No? Splendid. You’ve learned something already.”

  Finn felt his eyes fill with hot tears, but they were of rage, not grief. And when he thought the witch would misread them, he grew angrier than ever, and the hot tears gushed.

  “Yes, weep,” said the hag. “You’ll learn it won’t help, so you’ll stop. Oh, I know it’s painful, but pain is the beginning of education.” She snapped her fingers. “Needle, thread, your work is done. Come back home, the lesson’s begun.”

  The thread binding Finn was drawn back into the humming spool in the witch’s basket, and the needle flashed back to its cushion. And now something
truly fearful arose from the basket, a scissors flying like a bird, snapping its steel beak. The scissors-bird darted in on Finn, nipped his ear till the blood came. Finn picked up a stick and batted at it, but the scissors-bird was far too quick and flashed in and out lightly, sticking and nipping the boy until he felt as though he had been rolled in nettles. He dropped his stick and the scissors stopped biting, but sailed close to his head, snapping its jaws.

  “He will be your tutor,” said Drabne. “He is called the Scholar’s Friend. He will keep you up to the mark.”

  So Finn became the Fish Hag’s servant and learned certain duties about the pool. Simple ones at first. To feed small worms to larger ones until the larger ones grew fat enough to be fed to the Salmon, whom Finn never saw plain, only as a silver flash when he rose at dusk to feed. Finn was taught to hunt plump tadpoles for the fish, and to peel them before casting them back into the pool.

  “Truly, he’s a delicate feeder, this fellow,” said Finn to himself. “And I should not mind having a look at him at all.”

  For something had happened to Finn in his few weeks of servitude. He had grown used to pain and hard work and even to his fear of the circling scissors-bird and the hovering hag. He had gotten used to his lips being sewed up tight. Since he could not speak with anyone else, he held long, interesting conversations with himself. Indeed, tuned to listening as he was, and forced to take note of things as his painful lessons multiplied, he found himself growing more curious, needing to know how things worked, how they came to be, how they connected with other things. His biggest pain was the sense of being compelled to act in a certain way without his own wishes being consulted. He could not bear the idea of being considered a servant. But he found that concocting silent plans of vengeance, vividly pictured, enacted in great detail before sleep, helped him to forget that pain too. So he lulled himself each night with charades of violence done to Drabne, to the faithful denizens of her workbasket, to the Salmon, which he still knew only as a silver flash at dusk.