Monsters of Celtic Mythology

by Bernard Evslin

Only the Irish know that Noah had four sons, not three, as the Bible claims. The youngest son was a hellion and a wag. He jeered at his father’s weather forecasts and made unkind remarks about the big, clumsy boat the old man was building. Noah lost his temper and took off after him with an axe, and the lad decided it might be wiser to leave home. But he must have learned something from his father because, when the Flood began, he was ready with a tiny ark of his own in which he stowed his young bride, two pigs and two potatoes, and announced that he would sail far, far to the west beyond people and beyond sin. He landed on an island now called Eire.

  The people of this island were so used to rain that they had even managed to live through the Flood, although, it is said, some of them never quite dried out, even to this day. But after the heavy rain had stopped falling the sky was still covered by clouds, and these clouds pressed low, shrouding the land in thick fog.

  The people were frightened. They were used to fog also, but this was too thick, and was lasting too long. Fear spawned rumor—which ran wild and clotted into tales. Folk whispered dreadful things to each other about the rampaging weather gods, who were more like demons, but who were the only gods they knew. Vilemurk—it was said—the Lord of Winter, the Frost Fiend, had turned himself into a gigantic hog and eaten the sun the way a pig eats an apple.

  One night a strong wind blew, scouring the sky, which seemed to have come much closer to earth, or else the island was floating higher because of the flood tide. Whatever the reason, though, the stars were larger and brighter and seemed to have rearranged themselves. Directly overhead burned a pattern of stars in the shape of a plough whose prongs were pointing toward the North Star, grown huge. Behind the plough loomed a great hunched shape, either bear or boar. A cry arose from the terrified folk:

  “A starry beast stalks the sky! Why? … Why?”

  “He is ploughing,” said the newcomer, that son of Noah who had come floating in out of the Flood and was already answering questions with easy assurance. “He ploughs the black loam of the sky planting wind-seed, rain-seed …”

  “Is he bear—or boar?”

  “Boar,” said the young man, whose name was Meath. “He is the Hog Who Eats the Sun. He is Vilemurk, Lord of Winter.”

  They believed what he told them. For this slender, burning-eyed young man had somehow guided his small house-shaped boat through the howling, whirling flood. He cast an aura of wizardry and spoke with the authority of one whose family had been chosen for survival by an angry god in a far place.

  And since that time, Vilemurk, the Frost Fiend, has been known as the Hog Who Eats the Sun, and has been given a second name—Pig’s Ploughman.

  Why must we know about this last son of Noah? Because he became known as Cuhal ni Tyrne, or King of the Wave in a tongue ancient beyond knowledge, and his descendants became the great clan Cuhal, of which Finn McCuhal was the last and greatest hero. So it was that young Finn always felt a clan loyalty to Lyr, God of the Sea—a loyalty that was to lead him into the greatest peril of his life.

  2

  Gods at Odds

  Now, from the very beginning of things Vilemurk had hated Lyr because, huff and puff and chill as he would, the Frost Fiend could never quite freeze the wide seas. Even in the coldest winter they would ice up only a short way past the shore. For centuries the two gods had been locked in feud; then, suddenly, the feud flared into open warfare. It came about this way: One day in early spring, Lyr made one of his rare trips inland to inspect certain rivers that flow to the sea, and are part of his domain. He spied a beautiful ice maiden, dispatched by Vilemurk to delay the spring and blow her icy breath upon streams and ponds that were trying to thaw, and freeze them fast. Lyr watched the ice maiden for a while, and liked what he saw. He flung his green cloak about her and flew back with her to his crystal and coral island in the very middle of the seven seas. She resisted at first, but he promised her this and that if she would consent to stay with him and become his youngest wife. It meant being a queen, of course, and he offered her the choicest pearls of the oyster crop, and an ivory comb curiously carved, and her own dolphin chariot, and a mermaid’s tail for when she wished to travel underwater. So she agreed to stay with him, and became the youngest and most beautiful of all his briny brides.

  Vilemurk fell into a fury when he learned that someone had stolen his favorite ice maiden, and that this someone was his old enemy, Lyr. Now, of course, he hated the sea god worse than ever, with a hatred that had to end in death or torment.

  For all his fury, though, he made a careful plan. He spread a tale of treasure in the northern sea where Vilemurk holds more power than in other places, and keeps great fleets of ice thronging the open waters, and has dyed all the animals the color of snow. The tale he spread was one meant to appeal to Lyr, lover of all that glitters. A giant crystal, the rumor said, had been spotted floating in the black northern waters. A pure water crystal larger than the largest iceberg, hard as a diamond, and so carved by eons of knife-edged polar winds that it was all polished surfaces and glittering angles. When the sun hit it, the giant crystal blazed forth with rainbow light, making all the jewels of earth seem drabber than pebbles you find in the dust.

  Reports of this wondrous crystal fired Lyr with a wild craving, and he rushed off north to see for himself. He went in such haste that he left behind his escort of swordfish and spearfish and fire eels and shark-toothed mermen, and all ignorant and unguarded sped northward to where his enemy, Vilemurk, the murderous Pig’s Ploughman, lay in ambush.

  Now, Vilemurk had brought with him all the disastrous crew that he commanded …

  The huge, coiled serpentine monster that lies under earth, stone asleep, until he awakes in rage to make the earth quake.

  And the giants who dwell in hollow mountains whose cooking fires are called volcanoes.

  And the Master of Winds, who can whistle up a hurricane as a man whistles for his dog.

  All these and more: The bat-winged mist hags who, flying low and in formation, can lay a blindness on earth and sea. Those same chill crones whose breath can freeze the marrow. When they have nothing else to do they go about robbing cradles of girl babies and train them up as ice maidens.

  All these lay in wait for the God of the Sea. Lyr came flying north, traveling alone in his sky chariot drawn by flying fishes. Toward a rumored treasure and an unknown foe he rushed, standing tall in his chariot, clad in whale-skin armor with a mantle of seal furs swinging from his mighty shoulders, wearing his crown of pearls, white beard flying, holding his three-pronged spear, which he could hurl like a thunderbolt if he wished, or handle as delicately as a seamstress does her needle. Northward he came, flashing across the low horizon, making a strange sun in the northern sky, which was entering its season of night.

  All aglitter, hot with greed, Lyr came riding across the sky to seek the huge gem of water crystal he had heard about—and flew right into Vilemurk’s ambush.

  But young Finn knew nothing of this god-feud that was to trap him in its mighty coils. Nor did he know anything at all about a certain lout named Houlihan, whose notable daughter was to figure so importantly in this adventure.

  3

  Houlihan’s Daughter

  The fact of it is—and a fact or two, but not too many, will fit pleasantly into a true story—the fact is that Houlihan’s wife, when he had one in the long ago, was altogether too tidy. How Houlihan had come to choose her was a mystery. He was a big, brawling red-pelted man; the only time he bathed was when he was caught in the rain. No member of his family had worn shoes since the beginning of time, nor did he ever use knife at table, but tore meat with his hands, then wiped them on his beard. Yet when it came time to marry he chose this brisk little person who fairly shone with cleanliness, and who shook with fury at the mere shadow of dust. Why did he woo her? Why did she allow herself to be won? There is a puzzle between man and woman beyond ordinary meaning, and time can turn a girl into a hag and a man into a stick and the mystery into a gall, but it
is born again at wakes and weddings—which is perhaps why they are so popular.

  Anyway, this little wife of Houlihan’s took the stinking pen that was his farm and made it sweet as a garden of herbs. By heaven, when she was finished the pigs smelled like violets; there was not a nettle or briar to be seen on the place; her pots hung over the hob like dark suns, and fence and barn were whitewashed so white it hurt the eye to look at them.

  She cleaned up her husband, too. Wouldn’t let him near her on their wedding night, rumor said, until he had soaked himself in the river for a full hour, scrubbing himself raw while she stood on the bank telling him what to do. And after she had him awhile, why, hair and beard were clipped, and he was combed and curried and scrubbed and rubbed until he was sleek as an otter. And he seemed happy that way, and anyone who dared jest about new ways or new wife felt the weight of his fist, which was the heaviest in that part of Leinster.

  But for all her bustle, her ways were never grim. Light-footed she was, and pleasant of voice; built small with sapling grace, she seemed to distill light as she went. Too much, perhaps. For certain drees of darkness were deeply offended and resolved to blot her. Of what she most loathed they took the essence and concocted a creature. Out of rot and stench and slime, dead birds, roaches, and rats, they cooked up something that looked like a huge ball of clotted hair, something between a sow and a spider, but ten feet round. And one day in the early spring as she was weeding her garden, it rolled upon her, blotting her light.

  Big Red Houlihan was left with a two-month-old daughter and a house and fields shining with memory, and a bewilderment turning into rage, which turned into pure hell-spite.

  He killed one or two of his neighbors in the first days of his wrath, but simple murder left him unslaked. He needed to go beyond man in his killing. With mighty blows of his axe he knocked down his house and moved into the barn. He could not sleep, so to fill his nights he went cattle raiding, hoping to be caught and killed after a last bloody brawl. But by prudence or design his neighbors left him strictly alone when he was helping himself to their stock. He herded the stolen cows and pigs in great droves into his barn. Nor did he ever clean that barn, but lived there with his little daughter in the muck and mire, which grew more dreadful each day.

  Finally, Houlihan’s barn had become the biggest midden in all Eire, an unbelievably putrid heap that stank all his neighbors out of that part of the country and put a taint upon the air clear to Ulster. When the wind was right, it was said you could smell that barn across the Giant’s Causeway all the way into Scotland. And at the very center of this mountain of filth lived Houlihan, so foul now he could scarcely be distinguished from one of his dung-splattered bulls. Here too, among the crud-worms and flies the size of sparrows, grew his daughter, though no one could tell what she looked like, so thick was her mask of dirt.

  Now this daughter, whose name was Kathleen, loved her father because he belonged to her, and was even fond of her home, for she knew no other. Nevertheless, as she grew older she grew restless, until one day Houlihan said:

  “Now stop your wriggling and squirming, girl. You need a husband to calm you down.”

  “A husband!” she shrieked. “And who would marry me in my filthy state?”

  “Why, whatever lad I catch for you—after I explain his duties a time or two.”

  “Thank you. I’ll catch my own.”

  “Then be about it, and good luck to you. But be sure you bring him here to live. For I need you to serve me, and he can help.”

  “Bring him back to this muck and mire? Why should I?”

  “Because I tell you to.”

  “Why should he?”

  “You will not find me meddling in those delicate questions that arise between man and bride. I am sure you will be able to put the matter to him persuasively, for you were ever a dutiful girl, and it is I who bid you—I, Red Houlihan, who curses every day that keeps him on this pitiful dung heap of earth, and in the long, deep, blackness of whose life you have been the only light.”

  “I’m off,” she said. “I’ll be back with my husband, or perhaps alone.”

  “One last word,” said Houlihan. “Seek you love on the far bank of a river that has no bridge.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Now, on the other side of the river there lived a gentle-mannered, smiling lad with hair like peach floss. Nineteen years old he was, but he had been kept quite childlike by his mother, who was known as the Widow of the Cove. The lad’s name was Carth. What he liked to do best in the world was to lie on a rock in the sun, thinking nothing at all until pictures began drifting through his head. He did not know where they came from or where they were going, but he liked to watch them while they were there. One day the same picture kept swimming in his head: a girl, dripping wet.

  Now, as it happened, in his nineteen years he had never seen a girl of any kind, wet or dry. His mother had kept him from all such, fearing that one of the creatures might decide to marry her boy before he was ripe. And this thought threw her into such a rage that she kept him close to his own homestead, and never allowed him to roam.

  So when he saw this wet girl in a waking dream, she made the first he had ever seen, and he doted upon her, saying to himself: “Oh, how happy I would be if she were real. How softly I would welcome her, offering to do her any service—to chop wood and fetch water, and slop her pigs, and milk her cow, and lay a fire in her hearth so that she might dry herself in its warmth, combing her long red hair. She must be real, though, must she not, else whence comes this image of her in my head? Could it come of itself? Impossible! It must be some shadow of an actual girl with such length of thigh and flash of eye and smoothness of flesh and fiery pennant of hair, for I have no power of invention to paint her for myself. Nor is it a memory, for I have never seen the like or near it, nor any women indeed but my own mother, whose dear skin is like a prune and hair like wire. She must be real, then—and, being real, must be somewhere near, else why should her shadow tease and tangle me so?”

  When he opened his eyes he saw a wet girl on the riverbank wringing out her long red hair, and he did not know whether the dream had brought her or she had brought the dream, and he didn’t care.

  “Good morning to you,” he said. “I am Carth of the Cove.”

  “And good morrow to you, sweet lad. Kathleen is my name. My father is Houlihan, of whom you may have heard.”

  “Not I. I have heard of nothing and seen less. My mother keeps me close.”

  “Mother? Are you not too big now to be having a mother?”

  “It would seem not. I surely have one. And she has me. She is a widow, you see, and childless save for me.”

  “What do you know of kissing and such?”

  “Oh, she kisses me good-night every night. And upon my birthday, you know. A dry, flinching sort of business. Don’t think much of it.”

  “Have you never been properly kissed by a girl?”

  “You’re the first girl I’ve ever met up close.”

  “Well, you have lots to learn and I have lots to teach, only I shall have to learn too while teaching. So let’s be about it.”

  “Do you mean to commence now?”

  “Now? Certainly now. In these matters it is always now. In fact, as I see you sitting up there sweet and savory as a roast piglet, I understand that all this should have happened before. I am fair famished for you, little pig. And ripe for marriage.”

  “But my mother has warned me about girls. I must not meet them, nor meeting, look, nor looking, speak, nor speaking, touch. I’m to avoid them altogether, the lovely, fresh, rain-smelling creatures. She will not have me marry until I am forty.”

  “Will she not?”

  “She is most resolute. Promises to flay the skin off my backside if I do not heed her.”

  “And I promise worse if you do.”

  4

  The Divided Husband

  Some days later Finn was walking along a riverbank, attended by cat and falcon, when a
voice screeched.

  “Halt!”

  It was a woman, standing on the road with wild hair and flying shawls, her face lumpy and red as a fist. Finn stopped at her word.

  “Good day, mistress. May I serve you?”

  “Have you seen a boy on your travels?”

  “One or two. What class of boy would you be seeking?”

  “An imbecile.”

  “I have met such indeed. What does your imbecile look like?”

  “Sweet, sweet, with angel-blue eyes and peach-bloom cheek. Soft-spoken, gentle, all dewy with a mother’s kisses.”

  “I do not believe I have met this lad. But I can understand how you grieve to lose such a son.”

  “Lose him … lose him … I never did! He was stolen!”

  “By whom?”

  “I’m not sure. But my mother’s heart tells me it was a girl who came by water, the slut, to avoid my vigil. Came secretly, leering and fleering, to pounce on my lamb and carry him off.” And the woman danced in her rage, singing:

  Calamity, disaster,

  pestilence and plague.

  I’ll scarify and blast her,

  break her head like an egg.

  Then she turned to Finn and said:

  “You are a doer of deeds, are you not, young sir?”

  “I am, lady. Certain tasks claim my attention.”

  “And you are sworn to aid the weak and helpless, are you not?”

  “I am.”

  “Then you must help me.”

  “Would you be describing yourself as weak and helpless?”

  “Damn your eyes if I am not! I am a poor, lorn widow who has been cheated out of her only son by some sly vixen whom I will strangle with these two hands when I find her. You will help me, will you not?”

  “In my opinion, widow, it will be your enemies who will be needing help.”

  “Oh, woe and wail away, how can I find them? They are fleet and I am slow. If I do not appeal to your chivalry, let me try your greed. For thirty years I have been skimping and scrimping, and now I have a pot of gold. A double handful of the lovely stuff do I offer if you help me find my boy.”