Monsters of Celtic Mythology

by Bernard Evslin

  But then upon a day he was instructed to change the Salmon’s diet. Preparations were under way for the great night of the year, the night of the midsummer moon, when the Druids were to assemble from far and near to eat of the Salmon, whose flesh would be magically renewed, and, having eaten, to return to their places with bellies full of wisdom to last the year. So worms and tadpoles were stricken from the menu. Now all the Salmon fed upon were the hazelnuts shaken from the nine hazels. To Finn’s surprise he was not instructed to crack the nuts, only to shake the trees so that the hard little bolls fell into the stream. He wondered about this.

  And Drabne, who sometimes, disquietingly, seemed able to read his thoughts, said, “In these nuts lie kernels of wisdom. When such are to be swallowed, why, then the jaws of the eater must be strong enough to crack the shells for himself.”

  Finn stole a nut and tried to crack it between his teeth. It was like chewing a pebble; all he did was give himself a toothache. “Seems there’s no shortcuts to these matters,” he said to himself. “Well, I must look sharp, then—to steal myself a taste of the Salmon when the Druids feast. For, sure, I must learn enough at least to get myself free of this place and leave my mark on those who have done me harm.”

  Now, by this time the scissors-bird had snipped the thread binding Finn’s lips; it was understood that he had lost the habit of idle speech, and had learned to listen. Indeed, there was little time for anything but preparations for the Druid feast. Three times each day he had to shake the nine hazels so that they would spill their nuts upon the stream, and the Salmon now struck the surface often to feed, not only at dusk. Finn admired the long, lithe thrust of him. Smoothly armored in silver he was; like living coals dusted with ashes were the eyes in their flat sockets. When he opened his mouth it was full of glittering knives. All gullet he seemed, and the Fish Hag chanted:

  “Look sharp, look sharp. Nothing is as hungry as wisdom, for everything must feed it, even hunger. So shake the tree, lad, shake it hard.”

  That night Finn could not sleep. He left the little kennel where he slept behind the witch’s cottage, and drifted over the meadow through the grove of trees circling the pool. The scissors-bird flew sentry as he wandered, not bothering to drive him back toward his hutch, just keeping watch lest he try to escape. Finn sat on the bank staring at the pool. It was black as a tar pit. Then he saw a gliding sliver of light, and he did not know whether the moon was throwing darts from a chink in the clouds or whether it was the Salmon rising.

  “It must be the moon,” he thought. “The Salmon lies far below, fast asleep.”

  He heard a voice say, “Good evening, Finn.”

  “Good evening, sir.”

  “Are you sad, lad?”

  “I cannot sleep.”

  “Then you are too happy or too sad. And I do not believe you are happy.”

  “True for you, Master Salmon.”

  “You’re not old enough to be sad, Finn.”

  “What age do you have to be?”

  “Old enough to have seen enough and done enough to have earned the right. What you think is sadness are silly little vapors of discontent, because you are not man enough to do what you have to do.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Why, to free yourself, of course. To destroy your enemies and help your friends.”

  “You make it sound simple. I don’t know where to begin.”

  “At the beginning, lad. Where else?”

  “And what is that?”

  “Name your enemy.”

  “Oh, that’s easy. Drabne and her helpers—especially the scissors-bird.”

  “Very well; they’ll do for a start. Destroy them, and your immediate troubles will be over, and you’ll be ready for the next batch.”

  “But how? The Fish Hag is very powerful. She has magic on her side—flying needles, spools of thread that tie you up before you know what’s happening, and that terrible shears so swift and sharp, who can cut a lad to pieces as if he were a bolt of cloth.”

  “I’m sorry, Finn,” said the Salmon. “I seldom give advice. And when I do, it’s along general lines. No details. But seeing as you are rather young and tender and may do some interesting things if you are permitted to live, I will stretch a point and tell you this: When faced by powerful enemies, son, use their own weapons against them. Use their strength to your advantage. Seek your allies in the very heart of their camp.”

  “I’m sure that’s good policy, sir,” said Finn. “But I still don’t know how to go about it. Dole me out a bit of your magic wisdom, pray. Just one detail or two of real practical instruction.”

  “Why, for that, Finn, I would need more than your need. The only way you can learn such of me is not by questioning but by eating of my flesh, the way the Druids do.”

  “But I am not a Druid, and if I steal from them, I will be punished most horribly, the witch has said. She will put me to the Fire Flick and the Marrow Log.”

  “Yes. Secrets and penalties, risks and rewards all go together, Finn. Farewell.”

  He flipped in the air and dived and the water closed blackly over him.

  “Well, some of it sounded like good advice,” said Finn to himself. “If I can just figure how to use it.”

  He went back to his hutch and slept. But the next morning he wasn’t so sure. It’s tricky being advised by moonlight; he did not know whether he had actually been conversing with the wise Salmon or whether it had all been a dream. Suppose it had? Wisdom was sometimes offered in dream scenes; the old stories were full of it. Besides, he was never quite certain of how much he saw in his sleep and how much elsewhere.

  But something had changed in him all the same. He found himself doing the first thing that came into his head, and that was a peculiar thing. Druids were gathering in the grove. They were clad in green—long, beautiful, leaf green robes from which their clean, gnarled faces shone. And Finn could see how they had come to be known as Tree Priests, Sages of the Mistletoe. When they doffed their robes for a ceremonial wetting in the pool, Finn crept among the scattered garments, swiftly ripping each one. When the Druids emerged, dripping, and began to dress, there was a great outcry. Their beards shook with rage; they scolded like great jays, grew hoarse as crows, cursing. And Finn was pleased to see Drabne turn into their servant, scurry among them trying to appease them, vowing she would sew up every rip so that they would never know it was mended.

  She squatted right there on the bank of the pool with her workbasket on her lap and began to mend, needle swiftly flashing in and out of the green cloth swaddled about her. The scissors-bird swooped away from its perch near Finn and dived into the workbasket to be ready when the hag needed to snip. Now Finn had his enemy and her helpers busy doing something else. He left the pool and ran beyond the hazel copse to the witch’s cottage. It was the Sacred Salmon Net he was after, and he had to move fast.

  The eyes of the Fish Hag’s cat cast the only light in the room, but Finn lit no candle; he wanted it dark for his deed. Well he knew what dreadful punishments lay in store for him if he should be caught—just thinking of the Fire Flick and the Marrow Log was enough to scare a lad into obedience, and right then and there he almost gave up his plan. But then the voice of the hag creaked in his ears saying, “Do this … do that …” and he thrust aside his fears and whistled the cat to him. The big black torn leaped to his shoulder. Finn felt its purr boiling beneath his hand as he twisted the cat’s head now this way, now that, so he could see by the light of its blazing green eyes. The cat loved Finn, who, in his deepest trouble, found time to tease him with a dangled string and to toss him a peeled tadpole now and then.

  Now, the Sacred Salmon Net had come down from the earliest mists of time when the magic kings of the Tuatha da Danaan reigned in Ireland. Fashioned by Giobniu, the great smith, it was spun of the beard of Mamos, the first Druid, and its handle was a rod of gold. When Finn snatched it off the shelf it seemed no implement at all but a living extension of his own arm, and he knew h
e could scoop up any swimming thing from any water in the world.

  Swiftly he left the cottage, bearing the net. Swiftly he circled the meadow where the Druids were matching verse while the witch was mending, then darted through the hazel copse to the edge of the pool. And then, instead of dipping the net, stood there panting, watching the stars float upside down.

  Finn stood at the edge of the pool; it seemed like a gulf of shadow waiting to swallow him. He stood there at the edge of wisdom, between boyhood and manhood, and was taken by a creeping, bloodsucking sadness in which Murtha’s face hung, now laughing, now cruel, garlanded by memory. And he stood there trying to fight the sadness and let the laughter and cruelty enter him. He felt himself fill with a choking excitement. Now? he asked the night. Now! said the Salmon Net. Now! sighed the trees. Now! sang the drowning stars, and Finn dipped his net.

  He needed but one dip. The net had barely grazed the water when the Salmon flashed out, curved in the air, and landed in the mesh. Finn felt the net come alive with the sudden weight of the great fish. It twitched out of his hands. He bellowed with rage and smote his head.

  “Easy, Finn. Don’t go breaking your skull like that—with so many others ready to do it for you.”

  Finn looked about for the voice and saw the Salmon standing on the shore wearing the net like a cape.

  “Enough gawking, lad. You’ve caught me, now do it.”

  “How shall I cook you, sir?”

  “No time for cooking.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m to be taken raw. Knowledge doesn’t have to be palatable; it just has to be swallowed. And if you cannot stomach the truth unflavored, why, then you’re not meant to be wise.”

  “But I am,” said Finn.

  Then, at the edge of the pool in the weird pearly light of the midsummer moon, Finn ate the Salmon from nose to tail—flesh, bone, scales, guts, eyes—he ate every bit, and a terrible, griping, slimy meal it was. No sooner had he swallowed the last of it than he jumped into the pool, clothes and all, to wash himself clean. When he climbed back onto the bank there stood the Salmon, taller than Finn, looking like a prince in his close-fitting armor of silver.

  “Now, Finn,” he said. “I will tell you what you need to know.”

  “How do I escape the hag?”

  “Your first problem is this: Having been eaten once, I am no longer available for the Druid feast, and our bearded friends are getting hungrier and hungrier. Listen, you can hear them railing at the witch.”

  Finn listened, and heard an angry chattering.

  “I hear them. Where is she?”

  “At the cottage searching for the Salmon Net and not finding it. It won’t take her long to figure out who stole it.”

  “What shall I do, wise sir? What shall I do?”

  “Dip the net again. Catch the Loutish Trout.”

  “But the Druids have been eating salmon flesh for nine hundred years now. Surely they know the difference between salmon and trout.”

  “Not if you follow this recipe: Baste the trout in vinegar and butter, parsley, scallions. Dust it with wheat crumbs and crumbled mandragore. Then lay strips of bacon upon it and broil it until the skin is charred. Stuff it with sautéed crabmeat and serve with a sauce of almonds seethed in cream and sprinkled with poppy. Can you remember that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do it, and so delicious will it be that the Druids will forget all distinction between salmon and trout, loutishness and wisdom, for they will be too busy cramming their gullets with both hands. Then, with bellies full and the drowsy fumes of mandragore and poppy working, they will fall into a sleep so heavy nothing will wake them before breakfast.”

  “What of Drabne?”

  “Oh, she will partake of the feast too, and will grow drowsy enough for you to strike a blow—that is, if you have followed my recipe, selected each ingredient, and done your frying and broiling for the proper time.”

  “What of the scissors-bird?”

  “You’ll have to handle him on your own. But quickly now, lad, or you’ll flub the whole matter. Get cracking with that net and catch the Loutish Trout.”

  “Wait!” cried Finn. “I have questions to ask.”

  “No time left. I’ll give you an all-purpose answer. To break a curse, make a verse.”

  And he disappeared.

  Again Finn dipped his net and again snared a fish—quite a different one this time, a fat trout with a speckled belly and a foolish face.

  Finn cooked the trout as instructed, following the Salmon’s recipe exactly. And exactly then did events befall as the wise fish had foretold. The Druids fell upon the savory dish and devoured it with gusto, smacking their lips and licking their fingers; and no sooner had each finished his portion than he stretched upon the grass in the deepest sleep he had ever slept, and the glade filled with the great snuffling drone of their snores.

  Drabne had eaten heavily of the trout too, but when she felt herself slipping into sleep, she knew that Finn had been taught to trick her. Summoning all her uncanny will she propped herself against a tree and with her last strength began to mutter into her workbasket.

  Finn, seeing her do this, knew that he would soon be attacked by a swarm of needles and pins, not to mention the terrible scissors-bird. He could not outrace them, he could not hide from them, he could not ward off their agonizing stings. Then the last words of the Salmon came to him. To break a curse, make a verse. And just as the shining swarm began to rise from the basket, he shouted:

  Needle and pin,

  So bright and thin,

  And sharp as sin,

  Put a stitch

  In Mistress Witch;

  Sew nose to chin,

  And chin to tree.

  Heed young Finn,

  He’ll set you free …

  And, not believing his own power, he watched in ballooning joy as the needles and pins turned in midair and flashed toward the warty face of the witch. Swerving in bright patterns, the pins basted her chin to the tree, and the needles sped after, trailing thread, and made it permanent. But then something sliced through Finn’s joy; it was the scissors-bird rising viciously out of the basket, and, try as he might, Finn could not find a verse to turn this terror. He did not have to.… The one verse was enough. For the faithful scissors-bird snapped about his mistress, trying to cut the threads that bound her to the tree. As fast as he cut them, the needles sewed them up again.

  As his enemies were thus occupied, Finn strode away from the pool, through the hazel copse, and across the glade where he had suffered much and learned more. Nor did he walk alone. Winners seldom do. The witch’s cat leaped upon his shoulder and perched there like a heavy shadow, grinning wickedly at the squirrels and greening his eyes at troubled birds.

  It was this huge black torn that Finn tried to give Murtha as a gift.

  “Keep your cat,” she said. “It was opals you promised, and opals I must have.”

  “I’ll keep looking,” said Finn.

  But if Murtha gained nothing from that adventure, Finn was given something very important; the Salmon had shown him the beginnings of wisdom. Only the beginning, but enough to go on with. The Salmon’s final words to him were:

  “It may be that you will seek my counsel when I am too far away to answer you. In such case I shall speak through the Harp of Dagda, whose song you shall be able to understand.”

  “What is this Harp of Dagda?”

  “You will know when it comes. It shall appear to you only at the moment of greatest peril.”

  “Well,” said Finn. “In my short career, peril has not been in short supply. I have an idea I shall be needing your counsel soon again.”

  “Let us await the occasion,” said the Salmon.

  “Waiting …” murmured Finn. “That’s the thing I do worst.”

  “And the thing that will serve you best,” said the Salmon. “But you will learn, lad. It’s the hardest lesson of all, but you will learn.…”

&nbs
p; 3

  The Winter Burning

  The King of Ireland lay asleep in his castle at Tara. Behind huge stone walls he slept, and the antechambers were full of armed men; even so, a dream slipped by.

  He was awakened by the sound of his own voice, bellowing. Sword in hand, the royal guards rushed in.

  “I do not want you,” said the king. “Here is a threat beyond violence. Send for my Druids.”

  The Druids came and the king told his dream.

  “A young lad walks along a shore I have never seen, but I know it is near. His hair is so black it seems blue and his eyes so blue they look black. He is attended by a fish in armor and a tomcat larger than a terrier. He stops to look upon the skeleton of a whale. The wind blows through the ribs, making a battle music; the boy sings with it, sings words of menace and mirth as the waves dance and the fish jigs on its tail and the cat bows and the moon wobbles in a ghastly dance.… Read me the dream then, O men of wisdom.”

  The Druids deliberated among themselves, beards wagging. The eldest spoke:

  “Know this, High King, your dream is but the last in a series of signs that tell of a doomful event—the coming of Finn McCool.”

  “The name means nothing to me.”

  “Finn McCool, son of Cuhal, leader of the Fianna, murdered by old Morna, whose sons enjoy your favor.”

  “Son of Cuhal, is he? And why was not the wolf-whelp killed along with his father?”

  “His mother hid him.”

  “Was no search made?”

  “High and low, over, under, middle, and across. But she hid him well.”

  “And was it young Finn I saw in my dream?”

  “Himself. It was a prophetic dream you had—as the best kings do—so that you might prepare yourself.”

  “Does he dare come here so young and ungrown to avenge his father and claim the leadership of the Fianna?”

  “He does so.”

  “Shall I fear the boy?”

  “You shall. He has learned of the Salmon and knows things it is well for one’s foe not to know. You must arm yourself, King. A living enemy has stepped out of the colored shadows of your sleep.”