Monsters of Celtic Mythology

by Bernard Evslin

  “Keep your gold, lady. My deeds are not for sale. Nor am I free to refuse you however I may sympathize with your son and his abductress. I will help you find them. But once found, what follows is up to you. I will meddle no more.”

  “Just locate my Carth for me and I will do the rest and be grateful to you forever.”

  “Farewell, madame.”

  Not long after this the widow received a note from her son that read

  Dear Mother:

  You’re wondering what happened to me. Well, it seems that I’m married to this girl who swam the river that morning and bade me be her husband. I told her you didn’t mean me to get wed until I was forty, but she wouldn’t listen. At first we were going to live in her father’s barn, but after a few nights she decided that I wouldn’t last very long if she took me home because he’s very large and fierce and gets angry quite easily and has other peculiar ways. So we have set up housekeeping in a very comfortable hollow tree with a view of the river. Being a husband is very strange. But it’s enjoyable too in its own way most of the time, and I’m doing quite well for a beginner, my wife says. Her name is Kathleen. Please come and visit us and stay as long as you like. Kathleen joins me in this invitation. She says no matter how bad you are her father is worse, and living with him has taught her to fear neither man, woman, beast, nor devil. Indeed it is true, she is very brave.

  Love,

  Carth

  You can imagine how angry the widow was when she read this letter. She fumed and raged and stamped her foot and clawed the air and smashed a whole roomful of furniture before the red mist of her tantrum cleared and a little sense came back. She seized the note and went rampaging down the road until she found Finn’s encampment.

  “Good morning, widow,” he said. “I did not expect to see you again so soon.”

  “Nor I you,” she said. “Look at this.”

  She thrust the note at him. He read it and smiled. “Well,” he said. “This seems to let me off the hook.”

  “What hook? What hook? What do you mean off?”

  “I mean I am no longer bound to find them. They have found themselves and told you where they are.”

  “You still must help me,” she cried. “Don’t you see this is a trap? She forced him to write this weasel-worded invitation. He never did it himself, poor, stupid, bullied darling. She made him write it, threatening some awful torment to his tender flesh. Now she awaits my coming with a meat cleaver up her sleeve and kettles full of poison brewing in case she gets to serve me tea. You must come with me and protect me against assassination like the young hero you are.”

  “Perhaps if you speak gently to your son’s wife and do not accuse her of kidnapping the lad, and try to treat her as a human being instead of some wild beast—why then, perhaps, she in turn will hang up her meat cleaver and save her kettles of poison for another occasion. And you two will sit and drink tea and converse like two civilized creatures. Is that not possible?”

  “Drink tea with that murdering slut, is it, in her hollow-tree den? Give myself into her treacherous hands completely? And never see light of day again? No, my fine Finn, you must keep your hero vows and come with me and help me thwart the plans of that red-headed young assassin, who has stolen away the innocent son and now wishes to rid herself of the poor grievin’ mother.”

  “Well, there’s no hope for it,” said Finn. “I see I must accompany you on this charming visit. But I am not free until the day after the day after tomorrow.”

  “So be it,” said the widow. “In two days’ time you and I will go together to visit Kathleen ni Houlihan, and see what is to be done to save my boy.”

  But it was not yet to be. On the evening of that day a mighty storm struck the coast, one of the worst in memory, sending huge seas to drown the beaches, tossing boulders like pebbles, leveling whole forests. Nor did Finn have any way of knowing that this fearful weather was the opening salvo in the war between Vilemurk and Lyr.

  In fact, Finn was comfortable enough in his cave and did not wholly regret the storm. “For,” he thought to himself, “it may be that the hollow tree where dwelt the troublesome bride and groom has fallen in the wind as so many other trees have, and they have perhaps found another dwelling where the widow cannot find them. As for that harridan, who knows. Perhaps she was swept out to sea by a wave, or caught in the open and blown quite out of my life. Well, we’ll just wait and see.”

  After the storm, Finn was left alone. His companions, the cat and the hawk, had departed gleefully, for hunting is good in the aftermath of a storm. And the next day the widow appeared.

  “Stir your stumps in there,” she called. “Today is the day you keep your promise, Finn. We go a-visiting, you and I.”

  So it was that Finn, on that fair, cold blue-and-gold morning, found himself in the middle of a dreadful scene. For the raging widow hunted down the young couple. The hollow tree was gone; the forest itself was a tangled thicket of fallen timber where the great trees had been scythed down by the wind. But the woman let nothing discourage her. She followed her nose like a bloodhound, and led Finn straight to the bank of a river where stood the hull of a wrecked ship. Here Kathleen and her spouse had set up housekeeping.

  There was no exchange of greetings. The widow let out a bloody howl and leaped right onto the ribbed hull of the ship, cocking her blackthorn cane to knock Kathleen’s head off her shoulders. But the girl never flinched. Swift as a snake striking, she reached her long arm and twisted the stick out of the widow’s clutch and broke it over her knee, then strode to the widow and stood facing her.

  “Is this how you come a-calling, Mother dear? Were you never in all your long years taught manners, by any chance? Well, you’ve come to the right place to learn.”

  Finn and Carth stood horrified, watching the women. Mother and wife stood crouched, eye to eye, nose to nose, jawbone to jawbone, too close to shriek but berating each other in strangled whispers.

  “He’s mine, mine, mine, and you shan’t have him!”

  “He’s mine now, and I shall keep him!”

  “He has me, and needs no other!”

  “He needs me, not his mother!”

  Now the widow wound her claws into Kathleen’s red hair and tried to pull it out by the roots. But the girl braced herself like a powerful white mare, stiffened the column of her neck, then snapped her head. The long red pelt of her hair snapped like a whip, lifting the widow off her feet and hurling her the length of the deck, where she fetched up against a rusty anchor. She rushed upon Kathleen, screaming:

  “I’ll tear the blue eyes out of your head, you wild hussy!”

  “Come and try, Mother dear,” crooned Kathleen, crouching, and rocking her long arms.

  Now Carth of the Cove, who could not bear to see the two women in his life fight like this, rushed between them—unwisely, for each seized an arm and a leg and pulled at him, crying:

  “He’s mine, he’s mine, he’s mine!”

  “Drop this wife, and come away with me, dearie,” cried his mother, pulling with all her might.

  “Cast off this mother and stay with me,” said Kathleen, pulling with all her wondrous might.

  Flesh and bone could not take this tugging. The boy came apart in their hands. Split right in two, he did, from crotch to pate. The mother was left holding half a son by arm and leg—one arm, one leg, one haunch, one shoulder, half a face split right up the bridge of the nose. And Kathleen, for her part, held half a husband, precisely the other half, and each half useless to mother and wife.

  Finn, in a rage, leaped across the deck, seized the two halves of the boy from the women’s hands, and laid them tenderly down, then clouted each warring woman along the side of the jaw, laying them out flat.

  “Sure,” he said, “you are the two shrews of the world and impossible for a man to deal with. Now look what you’ve done to this poor lad. Aye, and it shall be long work knitting him together, if indeed it can be done at all. For it takes much magic to restore a l
ad so split and torn.”

  He found a hole of the right size where a small tree had been uprooted, and stuck the widow in headfirst. It was a bit narrow, but he jammed her in till she fit snug, with only her feet sticking in the air.

  “She’s too tough to kill and too mean to die,” said Finn to himself, “but this will cool her off a bit.”

  He began to look for another hole for Kathleen. But then he remembered suddenly the blue flame of her eyes, and the limber column of her neck, and her hair red as the oak leaf in autumn. And he returned to her and lifted her out of the wrecked ship and took her to the river where he laved her face until the cool water awakened her. She looked at him silently.

  He said: “On second thought you shall journey with me to the far home of Angus Og, whose magic I will implore to rejoin the halves of your poor husband, whom you and your mother-in-law between you have succeeded in tearing apart. For it is a far journey I make and a great boon to ask at the end of it, and a heavyweight of dead body to carry in this sack, so I will not leave you here, but you shall come with me and help. It is your husband in the sack, after all.”

  “Who are you?” asked Kathleen. “And why do you thrust yourself into my household affairs?”

  “I am Finn McCool. And I advise you to change your tone, my girl, or I may clout you on the other side of the jaw. For you are a beautiful creature to look at, but a terrible shrew. As for your household affairs, I wish I were heartily out of them. But I am under a hero vow to do favors when asked, and I was asked. And here I am. So shut you up, and come along.”

  5

  The Captive God

  That night, after their evening meal, as they sat on a bluff overlooking the sea upon which a path had been kindled by the moon, there was a rustling in the air, and a flash of green fire from four wild eyes, high and low, and Finn’s companions, the hawk and cat, came to him from where they had been off hunting.

  The falcon perched on Finn’s shoulder. The cat, without hesitation, stepped into Kathleen’s lap. And Finn noted with admiration that the girl was not at all frightened by the sudden apparition of the huge black tomcat with blazing eyes who shot out of the darkness at her. She stroked the cat, saying:

  “Good evening to you, Master Puss. You’re a handsome beast to be sure, but I see no one has taught you manners, leaping out of the black darkness like that.”

  She stroked his head and shoulders. He closed his eyes and purred his low, rasping purr. The falcon said to Finn:

  “I have a tale for your ears. May I tell it now?”

  “Tell away,” said Finn.

  “Lord McCool, tell me: Did I hear that bird speaking to you and you answering it?” asked Kathleen.

  “You did.”

  “Well, that’s a marvel, now,” said the girl.

  “Not so marvelous,” said the cat. “I speak too. And in more cultivated accents—without that hawky screech.”

  “You too!” cried Kathleen. “Well, I have been turned out of my peaceable home, and seem to find myself in the middle of an adventure, with strange companions. A meddlesome, gray-eyed stripling who calls himself hero and minds everyone’s business for them, and claims an acquaintance with sorcerers and a hawk that speaks and a cat who boasts of even greater eloquence. Sure, and I’ve fallen into curious company.”

  “You’ve known worse,” said Finn.

  “May I tell my story?” asked the falcon. “I seem to have been interrupted.”

  “Proceed,” said Finn.

  “It’s the kind of thing that interests you, Master. An adventure within an adventure, as it were. And all of it holding enough peril to suit even you.”

  “I’m listening,” said Finn.

  “I heard this story from a gull with whom I had been disputing property rights over the carcass of a fat fish, which he had caught, to be sure, but which I had made him drop. Anyway, he was a pleasant enough bird for a gull; we resolved our quarrel and got to be chatting of this and that. And he told me there was soon going to be a terrible fish shortage because of the anger of Lyr, God of the Sea.

  “‘Why is he angry?’ I asked the gull.

  “‘You would be angry too, if you were a prisoner.’

  “‘Lyr, a prisoner? But who can imprison a god?’

  “‘Another god, of course,’ said the gull.”

  And then the hawk told them what she had learned from the gull—a story that we already know. How Lyr wooed the ice maiden, of Vilemurk’s wrath, and the vengeance he prepared. The rumor of the great crystal that had awakened Lyr’s greed, and how the sea god had sped forth in his chariot drawn by flying fishes to challenge the Pig’s Ploughman and all his dread company: serpent, frost giants, wind-master, and mist hags. And how he had flown straight into the Winter Fiend’s ambush.

  Such was the tale the hawk told Finn, sitting on his shoulder in a clearing of the wood, where the little fire Kathleen had cooked supper on made the tree shadows dance. But Finn and the tall girl sat motionless among the dancing shadows, still and rapt, drinking in the words of the strange tale told by the hawk.

  “Go on,” said Finn. “Don’t stop now, just when Lyr is about to be trapped.”

  “Flying fish,” hissed the falcon. “Imagine fish flying. Disgusting! Sure, and Lyr deserves what happened to him, employing such unnatural creatures.”

  The cat yawned in the firelight, half turning on Kathleen’s lap, and lifted a paw to play with the plume of her hair.

  “But what did happen to Lyr?” crooned Kathleen. “Don’t leave us hangin’, falcon dear. ’Tis a fearsome exciting tale, and you tell it so well. Did he fall into Vilemurk’s trap, or what? Was he ambushed there in the northern wastes? Was there a battle, perhaps? Tell … tell …”

  “Remember the big storm a few days back?” asked the hawk.

  “Oh, yes,” said Kathleen. “It fair leveled the forest over our heads. And didn’t mighty waves pound the beaches, swallowing up fishing huts, sweeping away barns and byres, drowning cattle? Most terrible storm in years it was—and the next day my mother-in-law came a-callin’.”

  “Well, that big storm,” said the hawk, “was only a tiny ripple of the tempest that raged when the forces of the Pig’s Ploughman came raging out of ambush and fell upon the sea king.”

  “Go on. What happened?”

  “I don’t mean to leave you in suspense,” said the hawk. “But unfortunately I cannot finish the story, because the gull never finished it. He got too hungry. The fish had been very scarce, and when he saw the shadow of a trout he dived at it, leaving me there. I waited for him, but he never came back. And I don’t know how the battle ended.”

  No one said anything. Kathleen stared into the fire. The flames snapped. The cat yawned. Suddenly, across the orange face of the moon were pasted the black silhouettes of wild geese. A long flight of them, necks outthrust, wings low, honking faintly, almost a barking sound, like hounds of the air.

  The hawk rose in the air and balanced herself just above Finn’s head.

  “Good night, all!” she cried. “I go a-hunting. We eat goose tomorrow.”

  She disappeared. The honking grew clamorous, alarmed, then nothing was heard save the snapping of the fire.

  “What do you think, lad?” said Kathleen. “What happened out there in the northern wastes? How went the battle? Did Vilemurk conquer Lyr? Did Lyr prevail? Tell me your opinion.”

  Finn said nothing, but stared into the fire, gently biting his thumb.

  “Don’t sit there sucking at your thumb like an idiot child,” cried Kathleen. “I asked you a question. I want an answer. I get excited by stories. I don’t like them to stop before they end. And a good guess is better than nothing.”

  “You have no way of knowing,” said Finn. “But I’ll tell you now. I don’t have to guess, because when I bite my thumb this way, the very one that was scorched when I fried the Wise Salmon—which is another story I may tell you sometime—why, then knowledge comes to me, and I know beyond guessing. I invoke this po
wer only upon special occasions. Not for little secrets, you understand. But the fate of the sea god seems occasion enough. And as I bite my thumb this way, pictures appear in the fire, and I can see them.”

  “What do you see?” whispered Kathleen. “Tell me … tell me …”

  “I see right into the awful depths of the earth that open out under the sea, void under void. I see beyond those depths into the central fires of the earth, where grows a pillar of rock, molten rock far under, then cooling, cooling, until finally cooled by the northern sea, where the rock turns into ice. From this granite base grows a mountain of ice, which is like a huge iceberg, but does not float. And beneath this mountain, right where the granite turns into ice, there to that massive shaft is chained Lyr, shackled by the heaviest bolts ever made by those twisted smiths who labor inside Vilemurk’s smoky mountains and forge his weapons in the volcano fires.”

  “You see all that?” murmured Kathleen.

  “Indeed I do.”

  “What else do you see?”

  “Tilted in the flame I see the oceans of the world. They are lead colored now and have lost their shine. No fish leap, no gulls fly. Crabs and lobsters crawl out of the seven surfs, fleeing the beaches and trying to climb trees. Yes, there is grief upon the waters, for the god has fallen.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Gods cannot die. But they can suffer. And this one is suffering. Chained underneath, deprived of water and light and majesty—tormented by Vilemurk’s bat-winged mist hags who gnaw at him with their snaggly teeth—aye, he suffers. And the waters grieve. And those who live off the bounty of the sea, sailors and fishermen and such, they will perish too.”

  “Terrible pictures you see there in the fire,” said Kathleen.

  “Yes, and I go to change them.”

  “What?”

  “I go to free the God of the Sea.”

  “You? What can you do?”

  “That’s what I mean to find out. Farewell, I go north.”