by Tom O'Neill
‘Don’t bother me with your pretences,’ she replied. ‘We have business to discuss.’
‘That’s all well and good,’ said Bolg, the headman, ‘but if you don’t mind me saying so, you are a cat. Maybe if you explain yourself, we might have more time for you.’
‘You are right that I have the form of a cat and you will have scrawbs the depth of the Shannon river across your face if you want to discuss that subject further. You have the head of a goat and you don’t hear me commenting on that, you pompous little nose picking. I have no interest in explaining myself to the likes of you. Do you understand me clearly now?’
The cat, as tall as a doorway, padded in.
Bolg nodded in pale silence.
After the cat had settled down again and stopped swishing her short tail that Dinny kept staring at, she said with contained shrillness, ‘Mac Cumhaill has gotten far too powerful. He moves around as if the entire country belongs to him. He is too proud. He needs to be brought down. The country needs a new king and the Fianna needs a new warrior. A more reasonable and easy-going man who knows his place.’
The Magillas were staring at her in silence. They had never heard any person or cat openly express such sedition outside of themselves. Eventually Bolg whispered, ‘You’ll find no disagreement here.’
‘Aren’t you all tired of sitting around a fire and just talking about Mac Cumhaill?’
‘We are that. But what can we do about it?’ said Bolg Magilla.
‘Well, in fact, I do enjoy it,’ said Dinny, still staring in one direction. ‘And who gave you the scutty tail?’
The cat stood up looking like she was ready to tear them all apart and then leave. Dinny’s mother cracked him on the head this time, with the back of a hatchet. As he fell bleeding on the floor, she said, ‘Will you shut your stupid gob and stop giving this fine lady a bad impression of us.’
‘Maybe if we combine our strengths we can do something that will see an end to Cormac Mac Airt and Fionn Mac Cumhaill forever,’ said the white cat.
She talked for only a few minutes about her plan. It was simple. She was offering to make Miley Magilla leader of the Fianna and Bolg Magilla, High King of the country. To start her plan, she needed to go inside Bolg’s body, giving him strength, speed, and magical powers that no man possessed. He was so excited about becoming king that he agreed immediately without considering the discomfort of having a cat three times his own scrawny little size squeeze inside him. Or even how she might enter. But he needn’t have worried. In a flash, the cat was gone. Bolg didn’t even swell up much but they could all see that he was already transformed as he stood up and sprang to the door without any complaint about his bad knee or his sore neck.
They wasted no time. The very next day all twenty-seven of the Magillas headed for Tara. Bolg was now so strong that he was able to carry ten of them on his shoulders as he ran across the country.
At Tara, the young Fianna soldier who was guarding the gate happened to be from Corofin and knew the Magillas only too well. He stopped them. ‘What do you pack of mongrels want here? I thought you’d been told not to set foot outside of Corofin.’
‘Talk with respect to your new masters,’ said Miley.
‘We’ve come to see Fionn,’ said Bolg.
‘He’s not available today. Or any day. Now go away and don’t be bothering me,’ laughed the guard.
‘Soon your family will be at the side of the forest eating grass and begging for my mercy. Now stand aside,’ growled Bolg, throwing the strong young Fianna soldier to the ground like he was made of straw.
They stormed into the great hall where Mac Cumhaill and some of his men stood with the King discussing a hunting expedition. Mac Cumhaill turned to look, and said, ‘Who let you stroll in here like this?’
At the sound of Mac Cumhaill’s booming voice, some of the Magillas remembered the past and got scared. But when the bandraoi realised that her host was backing out of the hall, she started hissing and scratching inside his head. ‘You can’t give up now, you snivelling coward. If you stop now I’ll turn you into a worm burrowing in a cow dung waiting for a crow to peck you.’
To mask his fear Bolg ran forward and said, tripping over his words, ‘Fionn, son of the outlaw Cumhaill, I contest you to a challenge.’
Mac Cumhaill laughed.
‘Well if it isn’t whiny Bolg, the uncrowned king of sheep thieves,’ said Conán, stepping in front. ‘I thought we’d told you to stay in Corofin.’
‘Unless you’re scared, come out now and I’ll show you who is the better man.’
Mac Cumhaill laughed again.
‘Are you sure his mind is sound, lads?’ asked Diarmuid the Polite. He was next to Mac Cumhaill. He appealed to the other Magillas. ‘Why don’t you take him away quietly and we won’t say any more about it.’
But Bolg persisted.
In the end, Mac Cumhaill saw that the only way to get Bolg to stop pestering him was to agree to a contest.
‘There’s only one condition,’ said Bolg. ‘If I win, being the better man, I must become king and my fine son Miley will become leader of the Fianna.’
At this stage, even the King was laughing. Thinking that there wasn’t the remotest chance of Magilla winning, Cormac said, ‘Alright, grand. It will make for a bit of diversion. We agree.’
Then the contests started. The first was a race around the country. Mac Cumhaill got a fright. He hadn’t been taking Magilla seriously. He stopped to eat beautiful apples offered to him by a woman on the path side in Dál Riata, up in the very north of the country. Magilla got ahead of him. He had to race very hard for the rest of the journey and only barely headed past Magilla as they re-entered Tara.
The cat inside Magilla’s head was seething and spitting with anger to the extent that Magilla could hardly see out through his eye balls.
The next contest was of strength. Again, it went on for the whole day. Each time Mac Cumhaill lifted a bigger rock, Magilla would step up and lift it too. By now the word of a fierce contest of giants had spread and a crowd had gathered, stunned to see someone giving Mac Cumhaill competition. Soon they were both lifting houses in each hand. In the end, Mac Cumhaill decided to finish it. With one enormous effort, he pulled Mount Laigin from its roots in Slane, lifted it over his head, homes, farmers, sheep, and all. He put it down beyond the area of four lakes in the most beautiful part of the south east. Hard as Magilla tried, he wasn’t able to repeat any such feat.
The crowd cheered loudly. The cat was so angry now that she was setting fire to the inside of Magilla’s head and smoke was coming out of his nostrils.
The last and most important part of the contest was a sword fight. The fight started at first light. Mac Cumhaill’s head was occupied with ways to overpower the little man without cutting him irreparably. But then he saw the strange strength and skill with which Magilla slashed and defended. He knew that there would be little room for niceties. The battle ran with terrible intensity all day long. Neither man could get the better of the other. In the evening Magilla asked for a rest and Mac Cumhaill agreed. They both sat down in the battle field. As was the custom, everyone else went to their homes knowing that fighting would only resume at first light.
When they had all gone, Mac Cumhaill tried to speak to Magilla to see if there was any way he could talk sense to him and avoid the blood that would surely be spilled the next day. But Magilla looked at him without even uttering a response. At about midnight, a shadow came across the moon. Mac Cumhaill looked up and for a second he imagined he saw his father’s spirit moving through the sky, come to help him. Then in the dark, he saw Magilla standing over him and he saw a glint as Magilla’s sword sliced through the air towards his head. Mac Cumhaill managed to roll aside and with the dagger that was always near to his hand, sliced into Magilla’s side. Magilla’s sword lodged in the ground and he fell down. It looked like a very bad wound. Mac Cumhaill felt poorly at what he had done to the little man, whom he still refused to see as a prope
r adversary. He whispered to Magilla to try to hang on while he went to call the Tara healers to see if they could save him. As Mac Cumhaill ran off shouting for help, the cat healed Magilla’s wound instantly and hissed, ‘This is your chance! He has his back turned, this is your chance!’
Magilla jumped high in the air and pounced with a cat-speed swipe of an axe, striking the back of Mac Cumhaill’s head. As Mac Cumhaill fell, an enormous roar came from the cloud that moved in front of the moon. It scared even the cat. Magilla ran off, leaving Mac Cumhaill lying there.
Magilla laid low waiting to hear whether Mac Cumhaill was dead or alive. Diarmuid and Conán went searching for Mac Cumhaill. It didn’t take them long to find the broken trees where the battle had resumed. And they found Mac Cumhaill, still lying on the ground with a big gash on the back of his head.
Mac Cumhaill was in a coma. Ten men carried him back to his home place. Over the coming days all kinds of help was sought. But nothing any druid or healer did could wake him. Oonagh stayed by his side night and day.
As time went by those that could, carried on with living.
One day Magilla went to the King.
‘What do you want here, you lowly dog?’ said Cormac.
‘I’ve come to claim my dues. You can get over your bellyaching about Mac Cumhaill. He was defeated by the much better man. If he recovers I might consider letting him work on my farm. But now it’s time to remember we had an agreement. I must now have your seat and my boy Miley must be the head of the Fianna.’
In the corner the gentle Diarmuid rose up to attack Magilla. Goll stood up too, less certainly.
Magilla stood his ground and spoke to Goll in a cunning voice that sent a chill through the gathering, ‘Ah now, Goll, don’t pretend to be so upset about Fionn. We all know you are only angry that Miley is going to be head of the Fianna instead of you. But if you are cool-headed now you can be second in charge.’
The King argued with Magilla for days. But Magilla stuck with cold calmness to his argument. Several people had heard the King’s promises. He now had to keep his word or give up his honour. That was his only choice and it was no choice at all because a person without honour is without everything there is.
When the King stood up and walked from his seat, Magilla’s inner guest was disappointed that Cormac was not in a rage and she could not resist speaking. The clear voice called after Cormac, ‘You! You think you’re a smart man, Mac Airt?’
He turned.
‘Are you smart enough to be able to read your own future?’ The voice continued with a jeer, ‘Can you see how it goes from here for you? Your best years are done. Only creaky age, pains and a pauper’s death are ahead.’
The King hung his head and left.
Soon the whole country was changing. Magilla was bringing his friends into the Fianna. He was demanding that all villages give him gold and their best grain. Each local chief had to bring forward a girl so that Dinny, Bolg’s slow son, could choose a wife from each area. Even the cat found all this repulsive, but it was not her business.
Of more concern to her was Dreoilín. She didn’t like the way the wren druid stared at Magilla. She ordered Magilla to bar him from Tara.
Bolg brought the ancient Magilla’s friendly brehon Guaire and put him in charge of all areas within a day’s trot of Tara, overruling the existing wise men of Brega, Mide and Laigan.
This brehon, Guaire, dull and learned as he was, was not above vengeance. His very first ruling was against the poet, Flann. He decreed that Flann had committed the major offence of ridiculing other men in a song. No more details than that. He couldn’t bear to even mention the name of the song because of course it was himself and the elder Magilla who had been the subjects of the song. He didn’t even give Flann a chance to defend himself, a thing that even the least learned man in the field knew was a basic right in brehon law. Flann was barred from attending any of the festivals or from reciting any verse in public. This was a harsh punishment for a person who had been more esteemed than a king and hosted generously every place he visited.
People started saying, ‘Well there is nothing to be done about it. Magilla won the contest. Now we just have to get used to him.’
The Fianna divided. Some had left with Conán. Others took the lead from Goll and Diarmuid who told them they were duty-bound to obey Miley, much as they might dislike it.
Fionn had started to come around but nobody was sure whether that was a good thing because the things he saw so tormented him. The contents of his head seemed to be still in working order. He was sitting up and getting some ability to talk. In the evenings, Diarmuid would come back to Mac Cumhaill’s camp to bring news of what Magilla was doing. Goll sometimes also came but was never willing to say anything against Magilla.
It was on one such evening that Matha arrived. Matha’s claims to have seen something else inside of Bolg Magilla had struck silence on them all. Even those who were working at Tara by day and seeing the little man very regularly had not observed anything of what Matha was describing.
Mac Cumhaill got Matha to repeat exactly what he had seen but he couldn’t explain it much better than he had already done. He had seen a flash. The voice was maybe female but he wasn’t sure it was human. ‘The face seemed ferocious,’ he said, ‘and I know you’re really going to think I’m mad for saying this, but it almost looked like, well like an enormous white cat.’
‘Aha!’ said Mac Cumhaill. He was prepared to guess now who he was dealing with. As was Dreoilín. He had been sitting in the window and now changed back from lark to old man. He was keeping out of sight as much as possible because his banishment from Tara had been followed by an order that he be tracked down and burnt for wishing bad on the new King of Ireland.
‘Indeed,’ Dreoilín said, ‘I too sensed there was something inside him. But she probably knew I would have remembered her and so was careful not to lash out in my presence.’
‘When were you planning to tell us that?’ said Conán, tactlessly laughing at Dreoilín.
Matha thought that the look Dreoilín gave him wasn’t entirely warm.
They sat till morning, discussing various ideas about how to tackle this situation. She was obviously a great deal more powerful now from her time in the ocean, than the malicious little white cat they had last seen. It would have been dangerous for Mac Cumhaill in his still weakened state to challenge Magilla again while she was putting sinews in his arms and spring in his little legs. After all, he had only barely beaten him in full health.
In the early hours, Conán hit on an idea. ‘I have a friend who might be able to help.’
‘Is that the friend who you sneak off to visit whenever we’re near the Black Mountains?’ asked Goll, who had not approved of this friendship since Conán had first told them about it.
‘The very one,’ said Conán, ignoring Goll’s shaking head. ‘Coinín is her name. And she has very little time for white cats.’
‘The same one who calls herself a healing woman, but who nobody ever heard of healing anyone?’ asked Goll, unpleasantly.
‘She might not be willing to heal all that’s wrong with you,’ said Conán, ‘but she would be more than willing to help Fionn Mac Cumhaill. What more do you want?’
‘At what price would we involve this woman of yours?’ said Goll.
‘We’re not in a position to be particular,’ said Dreoilín, intervening just in time before Conán got up to hit Goll. ‘Conán, kindly tell your friend that her help would be much appreciated.’
‘Conán and Coinín indeed,’ Goll grumbled away under his breath. ‘Which one is the rabbit? A nice how are you. The man has not a thread of decency or culture in his body, hanging around in the company of a person like that.’
In less than two hours, Conán was back. He introduced Coinín. A rabbit was not the animal any observer would have compared her with. The woman, though reputed to be ancient, had the tall straight stature of a twenty year old, beneath long ropes of grey hair. She had th
e shape of a smile permanently on her mouth. Her complexion was unnaturally creamy with no colour in her cheeks. She raised one eye brow and grinned at Matha, sending a shiver down his back.
‘She has all the appearance of a wolf mother,’ said Goll quietly to Dreoilín.
‘Well, I’ll only say this, I’d rather have her on our side,’ responded Dreoilín.
‘On this occasion she is,’ said Goll uneasily, ‘but remember, when you lie down with dogs you wake up with fleas.’
‘Be mannerly now. I’m not asking questions,’ said Dreoilín, looking very sharply into Goll’s eyes. ‘We all know what we want out of this, I assume.’
That quietened Goll. Everyone knew he was enjoying his new position, leading the Fianna for Miley Magilla.
The whole group walked on towards Tara, more slowly now. Coinín had sensed Goll’s discomfort. Clearly, a liking for the sport of baiting was one of the things that she and Conán had in common. She latched onto Goll. She kept asking him questions about why he didn’t have a wife, how many cows he had, what colour eggs his hens laid, and such. She would refuse to move further until the others made him respond and then she would laugh hysterically at the answers.
When they got close, they set up camp. Coinín pulled two huge pots, seemingly from the air. She got to work. In one pot, she was making a potion to try on Mac Cumhaill who was having to be supported by other men as he stumbled along. In it, she put nettles, woodlice, dock leaves, elderberries and some powders that she took from her shawl. In the other pot, she was making a potion to drive the cat from Magilla. In that one she put sceach thorns, sloes, sheep poo, and to Goll’s consternation she also insisted that his under linen had to be dipped in the stew.
Mac Cumhaill was offered a sample from the first pot. He was feeling weak even from the few hours of walking. He wouldn’t normally have swallowed a potion from a person he knew very little about. But he was fed up of feeling frail and he didn’t even bother considering Goll’s warnings. Coinín spooned a little of her foul green potion from the first pot into Mac Cumhaill’s gaping gob.