Book: Irish Fairy Tales

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But the Chief insisted.

"I want to make sure that it is whiskers they are wearing."

"Let them wear whiskers or not wear them," Cona'n counselled.
"But let us have nothing to do with them."

"One must not be frightened of anything," Fionn stated.

"I am not frightened," Cona'n explained. "I only want to keep my
good opinion of women, and if the three yonder are women, then I
feel sure I shall begin to dislike females from this minute out."

"Come on, my love," said Fionn, "for I must find out if these
whiskers are true."

He strode resolutely into the cave. He pushed the branches of
holly aside and marched up to Conaran's daughters, with Cona'n
behind him.



CHAPTER IV

The instant they passed the holly a strange weakness came over
the heroes. Their fists seemed to grow heavy as lead, and went
dingle-dangle at the ends of their arms; their legs became as
light as straws and began to bend in and out; their necks became
too delicate to hold anything up, so that their heads wibbled and
wobbled from side to side.

"What's wrong at all?" said Cona'n, as he tumbled to the ground.

"Everything is," Fionn replied, and he tumbled beside him.

The three sisters then tied the heroes with every kind of loop
and twist and knot that could be thought of.

"Those are whiskers!" said Fionn.

"Alas!" said Conan.

"What a place you must hunt whiskers in?' he mumbled savagely.
"Who wants whiskers?" he groaned.

But Fionn was thinking of other things.

"If there was any way of warning the Fianna not to come here,"
Fionn murmured.

"There is no way, my darling," said Caevo'g, and she smiled a
smile that would have killed Fionn, only that he shut his eyes in
time.

After a moment he murmured again:

"Cona'n, my dear love, give the warning whistle so that the
Fianna will keep out of this place."

A little whoof, like the sound that would be made by a baby and
it asleep, came from Cona'n.

"Fionn," said he, "there isn't a whistle in me. We are done for,"
said he.

"You are done for, indeed," said Cuillen, and she smiled a hairy
and twisty and fangy smile that almost finished Cona'n.

By that time some of the Fianna had returned to the mound to see
why Bran and Sceo'lan were barking so outrageously. They saw the
cave and went into it, but no sooner had they passed the holly
branches than their strength went from them, and they were seized
and bound by the vicious hags. Little by little all the members
of the Fianna returned to the hill, and each of them was drawn
into the cave, and each was bound by the sisters.

Oisi'n and Oscar and mac Lugac came, with the nobles of
clann-Baiscne, and with those of clann-Corcoran and clann-Smo'l;
they all came, and they were all bound.

It was a wonderful sight and a great deed this binding of the
Fianna, and the three sisters laughed with a joy that was
terrible to hear and was almost death to see. As the men were
captured they were carried by the hags into dark mysterious holes
and black perplexing labyrinths.

"Here is another one," cried Caevo'g as she bundled a trussed
champion along.

"This one is fat," said Cuillen, and she rolled a bulky Fenian
along like a wheel.

"Here," said Iaran, "is a love of a man. One could eat this kind
of man," she murmured, and she licked a lip that had whiskers
growing inside as well as out.

And the corded champion whimpered in her arms, for he did not
know but eating might indeed be his fate, and he would have
preferred to be coffined anywhere in the world rather than to be
coffined inside of that face. So far for them.



CHAPTER V

Within the cave there was silence except for the voices of the
hags and the scarcely audible moaning of the Fianna-Finn, but
without there was a dreadful uproar, for as each man returned
from the chase his dogs came with him, and although the men went
into the cave the dogs did not.

They were too wise.

They stood outside, filled with savagery and terror, for they
could scent their masters and their masters' danger, and perhaps
they could get from the cave smells till then unknown and full of
alarm.

From the troop of dogs there arose a baying and barking, a
snarling and howling and growling, a yelping and squealing and
bawling for which no words can be found. Now and again a dog
nosed among a thousand smells and scented his master; the ruff of
his neck stood up like a hog's bristles and a netty ridge
prickled along his spine. Then with red eyes, with bared fangs,
with a hoarse, deep snort and growl he rushed at the cave, and
then he halted and sneaked back again with all his ruffles
smoothed, his tail between his legs, his eyes screwed sideways in
miserable apology and alarm, and a long thin whine of woe
dribbling out of his nose.

The three sisters took their wide-channelled, hard-tempered
swords in their hands, and prepared to slay the Fianna, but
before doing so they gave one more look from the door of the cave
to see if there might be a straggler of the Fianna who was
escaping death by straggling, and they saw one coming towards
them with Bran and Sceo'lan leaping beside him, while all the
other dogs began to burst their throats with barks and split
their noses with snorts and wag their tails off at sight of the
tall, valiant, white-toothed champion, Goll mor mac Morna. "We
will kill that one first," said Caevo'g.

"There is only one of him," said Cuillen.

"And each of us three is the match for an hundred," said Iaran.

The uncanny, misbehaved, and outrageous harridans advanced then
to meet the son of Morna, and when he saw these three Goll
whipped the sword from his thigh, swung his buckler round, and
got to them in ten great leaps.

Silence fell on the world during that conflict. The wind went
down; the clouds stood still; the old hill itself held its
breath; the warriors within ceased to be men and became each an
ear; and the dogs sat in a vast circle round the combatants, with
their heads all to one side, their noses poked forward, their
mouths half open, and their tails forgotten. Now and again a dog
whined in a whisper and snapped a little snap on the air, but
except for that there was neither sound nor movement.

It was a long fight. It was a hard and a tricky fight, and Goll
won it by bravery and strategy and great good luck; for with one
shrewd slice of his blade he carved two of these mighty
termagants into equal halves, so that there were noses and
whiskers to his right hand and knees and toes to his left: and
that stroke was known afterwards as one of the three great
sword-strokes of Ireland. The third hag, however, had managed to
get behind Goll, and she leaped on to his back with the bound of
a panther, and hung here with the skilful, many-legged,
tight-twisted clutching of a spider. But the great champion gave
a twist of his hips and a swing of his shoulders that whirled her
around him like a sack. He got her on the ground and tied her
hands with the straps of a shield, and he was going to give her
the last blow when she appealed to his honour and bravery.

"I put my life under your protection," said she. "And if you let
me go free I will lift the enchantment from the Fianna-Finn and
will give them all back to you again."

"I agree to that," said Goll, and he untied her straps. The
harridan did as she had promised, and in a short time Fionn and
Oisi'n and Oscar and Cona'n were released, and after that all the
Fianna were released.



CHAPTER VI

As each man came out of the cave he gave a jump and a shout; the
courage of the world went into him and he felt that he could
fight twenty. But while they were talking over the adventure and
explaining how it had happened, a vast figure strode over the
side of the hill and descended among them. It was Conaran's
fourth daughter.

If the other three had been terrible to look on, this one was
more terrible than the three together. She was clad in iron
plate, and she had a wicked sword by her side and a knobby club
in her hand She halted by the bodies of her sisters, and bitter
tears streamed down into her beard.

"Alas, my sweet ones," said she, "I am too late."

And then she stared fiercely at Fionn.

"I demand a combat," she roared.

"It is your right," said Fionn. He turned to his son.

"Oisi'n, my heart, kill me this honourable hag." But for the only
time in his life Oisi'n shrank from a combat.

"I cannot do it" he said, "I feel too weak."

Fionn was astounded. "Oscar," he said, "will you kill me this
great hag?"

Oscar stammered miserably. "I would not be able to," he said.

Cona'n also refused, and so did Caelte mac Rona'n and mac Lugac,
for there was no man there but was terrified by the sight of that
mighty and valiant harridan.

Fionn rose to his feet. "I will take this combat myself," he said
sternly.

And he swung his buckler forward and stretched his right hand to
the sword. But at that terrible sight Goll mae Morna blushed
deeply and leaped from the ground.

"No, no," he cried; "no, my soul, Fionn, this would not be a
proper combat for you. I take this fight."

"You have done your share, Goll," said the captain.

"I should finish the fight I began," Goll continued, "for it was
I who killed the two sisters of this valiant hag, and it is
against me the feud lies."

"That will do for me," said the horrible daughter of Conaran. "I
will kill Goll mor mac Morna first, and after that I will kill
Fionn, and after that I will kill every Fenian of the
Fianna-Finn."

"You may begin, Goll," said Fionn, "and I give you my blessing."

Goll then strode forward to the fight, and the hag moved against
him with equal alacrity. In a moment the heavens rang to the
clash of swords on bucklers. It was hard to with-stand the
terrific blows of that mighty female, for her sword played with
the quickness of lightning and smote like the heavy crashing of a
storm. But into that din and encirclement Goll pressed and
ventured, steady as a rock in water, agile as a creature of the
sea, and when one of the combatants retreated it was the hag that
gave backwards. As her foot moved a great shout of joy rose from
the Fianna. A snarl went over the huge face of the monster and
she leaped forward again, but she met Goll's point in the road;
it went through her, and in another moment Goll took her head
from its shoulders and swung it on high before Fionn.

As the Fianna turned homewards Fionn spoke to his great champion
and enemy.

"Goll," he said, "I have a daughter."

"A lovely girl, a blossom of the dawn," said Goll.

"Would she please you as a wife?" the chief demanded.

"She would please me," said Goll.

"She is your wife," said Fionn.


But that did not prevent Goll from killing Fionn's brother
Cairell later on, nor did it prevent Fionn from killing Goll
later on again, and the last did not prevent Goll from rescuing
Fionn out of hell when the Fianna-Finn were sent there under the
new God. Nor is there any reason to complain or to be astonished
at these things, for it is a mutual world we llve in, a
give-and-take world, and there is no great harm in it.




BECUMA OF THE WHITE SKIN



CHAPTER I

There are more worlds than one, and in many ways they are unlike
each other. But joy and sorrow, or, in other words, good and
evil, are not absent in their degree from any of the worlds, for
wherever there is life there is action, and action is but the
expression of one or other of these qualities.

After this Earth there is the world of the Shi'. Beyond it again
lies the Many-Coloured Land. Next comes the Land of Wonder, and
after that the Land of Promise awaits us. You will cross clay to
get into the Shi'; you will cross water to attain the
Many-Coloured Land; fire must be passed ere the Land of Wonder is
attained, hut we do not know what will be crossed for the fourth
world.

This adventure of Conn the Hundred Fighter and his son Art was by
the way of water, and therefore he was more advanced in magic
than Fionn was, all of whose adventures were by the path of clay
and into Faery only, but Conn was the High King and so the
arch-magician of Ireland.

A council had been called in the Many-Coloured Land to discuss
the case of a lady named Becuma Cneisgel, that is, Becuma of the
White Skin, the daughter of Eogan Inver. She had run away from
her husband Labraid and had taken refuge with Gadiar, one of the
sons of Mananna'n mac Lir, the god of the sea, and the ruler,
therefore, of that sphere.

It seems, then, that there is marriage in two other spheres. In
the Shi' matrimony is recorded as being parallel in every respect
with earth-marriage, and the desire which urges to it seems to he
as violent and inconstant as it is with us; but in the
Many-Coloured Land marriage is but a contemplation of beauty, a
brooding and meditation wherein all grosser desire is unknown and
children are born to sinless parents.

In the Shi' the crime of Becuma would have been lightly
considered, and would have received none or but a nominal
punishment, but in the second world a horrid gravity attaches to
such a lapse, and the retribution meted is implacable and grim.
It may be dissolution by fire, and that can note a destruction
too final for the mind to contemplate; or it may be banishment
from that sphere to a lower and worse one.

This was the fate of Becuma of the White Skin.

One may wonder how, having attained to that sphere, she could
have carried with her so strong a memory of the earth. It is
certain that she was not a fit person to exist in the
Many-Coloured Land, and it is to be feared that she was organised
too grossly even for life in the Shi'.

She was an earth-woman, and she was banished to the earth.

Word was sent to the Shi's of Ireland that this lady should not
be permitted to enter any of them; from which it would seem that
the ordinances of the Shi come from the higher world, and, it
might follow, that the conduct of earth lies in the Shi'.

In that way, the gates of her own world and the innumerable doors
of Faery being closed against her, Becuma was forced to appear in
the world of men.

It is pleasant, however, notwithstanding her terrible crime and
her woeful punishment, to think how courageous she was. When she
was told her sentence, nay, her doom, she made no outcry, nor did
she waste any time in sorrow. She went home and put on her nicest
clothes.

She wore a red satin smock, and, over this, a cloak of green silk
out of which long fringes of gold swung and sparkled, and she had
light sandals of white bronze on her thin, shapely feet. She had
long soft hair that was yellow as gold, and soft as the curling
foam of the sea. Her eyes were wide and clear as water and were
grey as a dove's breast. Her teeth were white as snow and of an
evenness to marvel at. Her lips were thin and beautifully curved:
red lips in truth, red as winter berries and tempting as the
fruits of summer. The people who superintended her departure said
mournfully that when she was gone there would be no more beauty
left in their world.

She stepped into a coracle, it was pushed on the enchanted
waters, and it went forward, world within world, until land
appeared, and her boat swung in low tide against a rock at the
foot of Ben Edair.

So far for her.



CHAPTER II

Conn the Hundred Fighter, Ard-Ri' of Ireland, was in the lowest
spirits that can be imagined, for his wife was dead. He had been
Ard-Ri for nine years, and during his term the corn used to be
reaped three times in each year, and there was full and plenty of
everything. There are few kings who can boast of more kingly
results than he can, but there was sore trouble in store for him.

He had been married to Eithne, the daughter of Brisland Binn,
King of Norway, and, next to his subjects, he loved his wife more
than all that was lovable in the world. But the term of man and
woman, of king or queen, is set in the stars, and there is no
escaping Doom for any one; so, when her time came, Eithne died.

Now there were three great burying-places in Ireland--the Brugh
of the Boyne in Ulster, over which Angus Og is chief and god; the
Shi' mound of Cruachan Ahi, where Ethal Anbual presides over the
underworld of Connacht, and Tailltin, in Royal Meath. It was in
this last, the sacred place of his own lordship, that Conn laid
his wife to rest.

Her funeral games were played during nine days. Her keen was sung
by poets and harpers, and a cairn ten acres wide was heaved over
her clay. Then the keening ceased and the games drew to an end;
the princes of the Five Prov-inces returned by horse or by
chariot to their own places; the concourse of mourners melted
away, and there was nothing left by the great cairn but the sun
that dozed upon it in the daytime, the heavy clouds that brooded
on it in the night, and the desolate, memoried king.

For the dead queen had been so lovely that Conn could not forget
her; she had been so kind at every moment that he could not but
miss her at every moment; but it was in the Council Chamber and
the Judgement Hall that he most pondered her memory. For she had
also been wise, and lack-ing her guidance, all grave affairs
seemed graver, shadowing each day and going with him to the
pillow at night.

The trouble of the king becomes the trouble of the subject, for
how shall we live if judgement is withheld, or if faulty
decisions are promulgated? Therefore, with the sorrow of the
king, all Ireland was in grief, and it was the wish of every
person that he should marry again.

Such an idea, however, did not occur to him, for he could not
conceive how any woman should fill the place his queen had
vacated. He grew more and more despondent, and less and less
fitted to cope with affairs of state, and one day he instructed
his son Art to take the rule during his absence, and he set out
for Ben Edair.

For a great wish had come upon him to walk beside the sea; to
listen to the roll and boom of long, grey breakers; to gaze on an
unfruitful, desolate wilderness of waters; and to forget in those
sights all that he could forget, and if he could not forget then
to remember all that he should remember.

He was thus gazing and brooding when one day he observed a
coracle drawing to the shore. A young girl stepped from it and
walked to him among black boulders and patches of yellow sand.



CHAPTER III

Being a king he had authority to ask questions. Conn asked her,
therefore, all the questions that he could think of, for it is
not every day that a lady drives from the sea, and she wearing a
golden-fringed cloak of green silk through which a red satin
smock peeped at the openings. She replied to his questions, but
she did not tell him all the truth; for, indeed, she could not
afford to.

She knew who he was, for she retained some of the powers proper
to the worlds she had left, and as he looked on her soft yellow
hair and on her thin red lips, Conn recognised, as all men do,
that one who is lovely must also be good, and so he did not frame
any inquiry on that count; for everything is forgotten in the
presence of a pretty woman, and a magician can be bewitched also.

She told Conn that the fame of his son Art had reached even the
Many-Coloured Land, and that she had fallen in love with the boy.
This did not seem unreasonable to one who had himself ventured
much in Faery, and who had known so many of the people of that
world leave their own land for the love of a mortal.

"What is your name, my sweet lady?" said the king.

"I am called Delvcaem (Fair Shape) and I am the daughter of
Morgan," she replied.

"I have heard much of Morgan," said the king. "He is a very great
magician."

During this conversation Conn had been regarding her with the
minute freedom which is right only in a king. At what precise
instant he forgot his dead consort we do not know, but it is
certain that at this moment his mind was no longer burdened with
that dear and lovely memory. His voice was melancholy when he
spoke again.

"You love my son!"

"Who could avoid loving him?" she murmured.

"When a woman speaks to a man about the love she feels for
another man she is not liked. And," he continued, "when she
speaks to a man who has no wife of his own about her love for
another man then she is disliked."

"I would not be disliked by you," Becuma murmured.

"Nevertheless," said he regally, "I will not come between a woman
and her choice."

"I did not know you lacked a wife," said Becuma, but indeed she
did.

"You know it now," the king replied sternly.

"What shall I do?" she inquired, "am I to wed you or your son?"

"You must choose," Conn answered.

"If you allow me to choose it means that you do not want me very
badly," said she with a smile.

"Then I will not allow you to choose," cried the king, "and it is
with myself you shall marry."

He took her hand in his and kissed it.

"Lovely is this pale thin hand. Lovely is the slender foot that I
see in a small bronze shoe," said the king.

After a suitable time she continued:

"I should not like your son to be at Tara when I am there, or for
a year afterwards, for I do not wish to meet him until I have
forgotten him and have come to know you well."

"I do not wish to banish my son," the king protested.

"It would not really be a banishment," she said. "A prince's duty
could be set him, and in such an absence he would improve his
knowledge both of Ireland and of men. Further," she continued
with downcast eyes, "when you remember the reason that brought me
here you will see that his presence would be an embarrassment to
us both, and my presence would be unpleasant to him if he
remembers his mother."

"Nevertheless," said Conn stubbornly, "I do not wish to banish my
son; it is awkward and unnecessary."

"For a year only," she pleaded.

"It is yet," he continued thoughtfully, "a reasonable reason that
you give and I will do what you ask, but by my hand and word I
don't like doing it."

They set out then briskly and joyfully on the homeward journey,
and in due time they reached Tara of the Kings.



CHAPTER IV

It is part of the education of a prince to be a good chess
player, and to continually exercise his mind in view of the
judgements that he will be called upon to give and the knotty,
tortuous, and perplexing matters which will obscure the issues
which he must judge. Art, the son of Conn, was sitting at chess
with Cromdes, his father's magician.

"Be very careful about the move you are going to make," said
Cromdes.

"CAN I be careful?" Art inquired. "Is the move that you are
thinking of in my power?"

"It is not," the other admitted.

"Then I need not be more careful than usual," Art replied, and he
made his move.

"It is a move of banishment," said Cromdes.

"As I will not banish myself, I suppose my father will do it, but
I do not know why he should."

"Your father will not banish you."

"Who then?" "Your mother."

"My mother is dead."

"You have a new one," said the magician.

"Here is news," said Art. "I think I shall not love my new
mother."

"You will yet love her better than she loves you," said Cromdes,
meaning thereby that they would hate each other.

While they spoke the king and Becuma entered the palace.

"I had better go to greet my father," said the young man.

"You had better wait until he sends for you," his companion
advised, and they returned to their game.

In due time a messenger came from the king directing Art to leave
Tara instantly, and to leave Ireland for one full year.

He left Tara that night, and for the space of a year he was not
seen again in Ireland. But during that period things did not go
well with the king nor with Ireland. Every year before that time
three crops of corn used to be lifted off the land, but during
Art's absence there was no corn in Ireland and there was no milk.
The whole land went hungry.

Lean people were in every house, lean cattle in every field; the
bushes did not swing out their timely berries or seasonable nuts;
the bees went abroad as busily as ever, but each night they
returned languidly, with empty pouches, and there was no honey in
their hives when the honey season came. People began to look at
each other questioningly, meaningly, and dark remarks passed
between them, for they knew that a bad harvest means, somehow, a
bad king, and, although this belief can be combated, it is too
firmly rooted in wisdom to be dismissed.

The poets and magicians met to consider why this disaster should
have befallen the country and by their arts they discovered the
truth about the king's wife, and that she was Becuma of the White
Skin, and they discovered also the cause of her banishment from
the Many-Coloured Land that is beyond the sea, which is beyond
even the grave.

They told the truth to the king, but he could not bear to be
parted from that slender-handed, gold-haired, thin-lipped, blithe
enchantress, and he required them to discover some means whereby
he might retain his wife and his crown. There was a way and the
magicians told him of it.

"If the son of a sinless couple can be found and if his blood be
mixed with the soll of Tara the blight and ruin will depart from
Ireland," said the magicians.

"If there is such a boy I will find him," cried the Hundred
Fighter.

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