Book: Irish Fairy Tales

J >> James Stephens >> Irish Fairy Tales




The sons of Morna came, but there were only two grim women living
in a lonely hut to greet them. We may be sure they were well
greeted. One can imagine Goll's merry stare taking in all that
could be seen; Cona'n's grim eye raking the women's faces while
his tongue raked them again; the Rough mac Morna shouldering here
and there in the house and about it, with maybe a hatchet in his
hand, and Art Og coursing further afield and vowing that if the
cub was there he would find him.



CHAPTER VI

But Fionn was gone. He was away, bound with his band of poets for
the Galtees.

It is likely they were junior poets come to the end of a year's
training, and returning to their own province to see again the
people at home, and to be wondered at and exclaimed at as they
exhibited bits of the knowledge which they had brought from the
great schools. They would know tags of rhyme and tricks about
learning which Fionn would hear of; and now and again, as they
rested in a glade or by the brink of a river, they might try
their lessons over. They might even refer to the ogham wands on
which the first words of their tasks and the opening lines of
poems were cut; and it is likely that, being new to these things,
they would talk of them to a youngster, and, thinking that his
wits could be no better than their own, they might have explained
to him how ogham was written. But it is far more likely that his
women guardians had already started him at those lessons.

Still this band of young bards would have been of infinite
interest to Fionn, not on account of what they had learned, but
because of what they knew. All the things that he should have
known as by nature: the look, the movement, the feeling of
crowds; the shouldering and intercourse of man with man; the
clustering of houses and how people bore themselves in and about
them; the movement of armed men, and the homecoming look of
wounds; tales of births, and marriages and deaths; the chase with
its multitudes of men and dogs; all the noise, the dust, the
excitement of mere living. These, to Fionn, new come from leaves
and shadows and the dipple and dapple of a wood, would have
seemed wonderful; and the tales they would have told of their
masters, their looks, fads, severities, sillinesses, would have
been wonderful also.

That band should have chattered like a rookery.

They must have been young, for one time a Leinsterman came on
them, a great robber named Fiacuil mac Cona, and he killed the
poets. He chopped them up and chopped them down. He did not leave
one poeteen of them all. He put them out of the world and out of
life, so that they stopped being, and no one could tell where
they went or what had really happened to them; and it is a wonder
indeed that one can do that to anything let alone a band. If they
were not youngsters, the bold Fiacuil could not have managed them
all. Or, perhaps, he too had a band, although the record does not
say so; but kill them he did, and they died that way.

Fionn saw that deed, and his blood may have been cold enough as
he watched the great robber coursing the poets as a wild dog
rages in a flock. And when his turn came, when they were all
dead, and the grim, red-handed man trod at him, Fionn may have
shivered, but he would have shown his teeth and laid roundly on
the monster with his hands. Perhaps he did that, and perhaps for
that he was spared.

"Who are you?" roared the staring black-mouth with the red tongue
squirming in it like a frisky fish.

"The son of Uail, son of Baiscne," quoth hardy Fionn. And at that
the robber ceased to be a robber, the murderer disappeared, the
black-rimmed chasm packed with red fish and precipices changed to
something else, and the round eyes that had been popping out of
their sockets and trying to bite, changed also. There remained a
laughing and crying and loving servant who wanted to tie himself
into knots if that would please the son of his great captain.
Fionn went home on the robber's shoulder, and the robber gave
great snorts and made great jumps and behaved like a first-rate
horse. For this same Fiacuil was the husband of Bovmall, Fionn's
aunt. He had taken to the wilds when clann-Baiscne was broken,
and he was at war with a world that had dared to kill his Chief.



CHAPTER VII

A new life for Fionn in the robber's den that was hidden in a
vast cold marsh.

A tricky place that would be, with sudden exits and even suddener
entrances, and with damp, winding, spidery places to hoard
treasure in, or to hide oneself in.

If the robber was a solitary he would, for lack of someone else,
have talked greatly to Fionn. He would have shown his weapons and
demonstrated how he used them, and with what slash he chipped his
victim, and with what slice he chopped him. He would have told
why a slash was enough for this man and why that man should be
sliced. All men are masters when one is young, and Fionn would
have found knowledge here also. lie would have seen Fiacuil's
great spear that had thirty rivets of Arabian gold in its socket,
and that had to be kept wrapped up and tied down so that it would
not kill people out of mere spitefulness. It had come from Faery,
out of the Shi' of Aillen mac Midna, and it would be brought back
again later on between the same man's shoulder-blades.

What tales that man could tell a boy, and what questions a boy
could ask him. He would have known a thousand tricks, and because
our instinct is to teach, and because no man can keep a trick
from a boy, he would show them to Fionn.

There was the marsh too; a whole new life to be learned; a
complicated, mysterious, dank, slippery, reedy, treacherous life,
but with its own beauty and an allurement that could grow on one,
so that you could forget the solid world and love only that which
quaked and gurgled.

In this place you may swim. By this sign and this you will know
if it is safe to do so, said Fiacuil mac Cona; but in this place,
with this sign on it and that, you must not venture a toe.

But where Fionn would venture his toes his ears would follow.

There are coiling weeds down there, the robber counselled him;
there are thin, tough, snaky binders that will trip you and grip
you, that will pull you and will not let you go again until you
are drowned; until you are swaying and swinging away below, with
outstretched arms, with outstretched legs, with a face all stares
and smiles and jockeyings, gripped in those leathery arms, until
there is no more to be gripped of you even by them.

"Watch these and this and that," Fionn would have been told, "and
always swim with a knife in your teeth."

He lived there until his guardians found out where he was and
came after him. Fiacuil gave him up to them, and he was brought
home again to the woods of Slieve Bloom, but he had gathered
great knowledge and new supplenesses.

The sons of Morna left him alone for a long time. Having made
their essay they grew careless.

"Let him be," they said. "He will come to us when the time
comes."

But it is likely too that they had had their own means of getting
information about him. How he shaped? what muscles he had? and
did he spring clean from the mark or had he to get off with a
push? Fionn stayed with his guardians and hunted for them. He
could run a deer down and haul it home by the reluctant skull.
"Come on, Goll," he would say to his stag, or, lifting it over a
tussock with a tough grip on the snout, "Are you coming, bald
Cona'n, or shall I kick you in the neck?"

The time must have been nigh when he would think of taking the
world itself by the nose, to haul it over tussocks and drag it
into his pen; for he was of the breed in whom mastery is born,
and who are good masters.

But reports of his prowess were getting abroad. Clann-Morna began
to stretch itself uneasily, and, one day, his guardians sent him
on his travels.

"It is best for you to leave us now," they said to the tall
stripling, "for the sons of Morna are watching again to kill
you."

The woods at that may have seemed haunted. A stone might sling at
one from a tree-top; but from which tree of a thousand trees did
it come? An arrow buzzing by one's ear would slide into the
ground and quiver there silently, menacingly, hinting of the
brothers it had left in the quiver behind; to the right? to the
left? how many brothers? in how many quivers . . .? Fionn was a
woodsman, but he had only two eyes to look with, one set of feet
to carry him in one sole direction. But when he was looking to
the front what, or how many whats, could be staring at him from
the back? He might face in this direction, away from, or towards
a smile on a hidden face and a finger on a string. A lance might
slide at him from this bush or from the one yonder.. In the night
he might have fought them; his ears against theirs; his noiseless
feet against their lurking ones; his knowledge of the wood
against their legion: but during the day he had no chance.

Fionn went to seek his fortune, to match himself against all that
might happen, and to carve a name for himself that will live
while Time has an ear and knows an Irishman.



CHAPTER VIII

Fionn went away, and now he was alone. But he was as fitted for
loneliness as the crane is that haunts the solitudes and bleak
wastes of the sea; for the man with a thought has a comrade, and
Fionn's mind worked as featly as his body did. To be alone was no
trouble to him who, however surrounded, was to be lonely his life
long; for this will be said of Fionn when all is said, that all
that came to him went from him, and that happiness was never his
companion for more than a moment.

But he was not now looking for loneliness. He was seeking the
instruction of a crowd, and therefore when he met a crowd he went
into it. His eyes were skilled to observe in the moving dusk and
dapple of green woods. They were trained to pick out of shadows
birds that were themselves dun-coloured shades, and to see among
trees the animals that are coloured like the bark of trees. The
hare crouching in the fronds was visible to him, and the fish
that swayed in-visibly in the sway and flicker of a green bank.
He would see all that was to be seen, and he would see all that
is passed by the eye that is half blind from use and wont.

At Moy Life' he came on lads swimming in a pool; and, as he
looked on them sporting in the flush tide, he thought that the
tricks they performed were not hard for him, and that he could
have shown them new ones.

Boys must know what another boy can do, and they will match
themselves against everything. They did their best under these
observing eyes, and it was not long until he was invited to
compete with them and show his mettle. Such an invitation is a
challenge; it is almost, among boys, a declaration of war. But
Fionn was so far beyond them in swimming that even the word
master did not apply to that superiority.

While he was swimming one remarked: "He is fair and well shaped,"
and thereafter he was called "Fionn" or the Fair One. His name
came from boys, and will, perhaps, be preserved by them.

He stayed with these lads for some time, and it may be that they
idolised him at first, for it is the way with boys to be
astounded and enraptured by feats; but in the end, and that was
inevitable, they grew jealous of the stranger. Those who had been
the champions before he came would marshal each other, and, by
social pressure, would muster all the others against him; so that
in the end not a friendly eye was turned on Fionn in that
assembly. For not only did he beat them at swimming, he beat
their best at running and jumping, and when the sport degenerated
into violence, as it was bound to, the roughness of Fionn would
be ten times as rough as the roughness of the roughest rough they
could put forward. Bravery is pride when one is young, and Fionn
was proud.

There must have been anger in his mind as he went away leaving
that lake behind him, and those snarling and scowling boys, but
there would have been disappointment also, for his desire at this
time should have been towards friendliness.

He went thence to Lock Le'in and took service with the King of
Finntraigh. That kingdom may have been thus called from Fionn
himself and would have been known by another name when he arrived
there.

He hunted for the King of Finntraigh, and it soon grew evident
that there was no hunter in his service to equal Fionn. More,
there was no hunter of them all who even distantly approached him
in excellence. The others ran after deer, using the speed of
their legs, the noses of their dogs and a thousand well-worn
tricks to bring them within reach, and, often enough, the animal
escaped them. But the deer that Fionn got the track of did not
get away, and it seemed even that the animals sought him so many
did he catch.

The king marvelled at the stories that were told of this new
hunter, but as kings are greater than other people so they are
more curious; and, being on the plane of excellence, they must
see all that is excellently told of.

The king wished to see him, and Fionn must have wondered what the
king thought as that gracious lord looked on him. Whatever was
thought, what the king said was as direct in utterance as it was
in observation.

"If Uail the son of Baiscne has a son," said the king, "you would
surely be that son."

We are not told if the King of Finntraigh said anything more, but
we know that Fionn left his service soon afterwards.

He went southwards and was next in the employment of the King of
Kerry, the same lord who had married his own mother. In that
service he came to such consideration that we hear of him as
playing a match of chess with the king, and by this game we know
that he was still a boy in his mind however mightily his limbs
were spreading. Able as he was in sports and huntings, he was yet
too young to be politic, but he remained impolitic to the end of
his days, for whatever he was able to do he would do, no matter
who was offended thereat; and whatever he was not able to do he
would do also. That was Fionn.

Once, as they rested on a chase, a debate arose among the
Fianna-Finn as to what was the finest music in the world.

"Tell us that," said Fionn turning to Oisi'n [pronounced Usheen]

"The cuckoo calling from the tree that is highest in the hedge,"
cried his merry son.

"A good sound," said Fionn. "And you, Oscar," he asked, "what is
to your mind the finest of music?"

"The top of music is the ring of a spear on a shield," cried the
stout lad.

"It is a good sound," said Fionn. And the other champions told
their delight; the belling of a stag across water, the baying of
a tuneful pack heard in the distance, the song of a lark, the
laugh of a gleeful girl, or the whisper of a moved one.

"They are good sounds all," said Fionn.

"Tell us, chief," one ventured, "what you think?"

"The music of what happens," said great Fionn, "that is the
finest music in the world."

He loved "what happened," and would not evade it by the swerve of
a hair; so on this occasion what was occurring he would have
occur, although a king was his rival and his master. It may be
that his mother was watching the match and that he could not but
exhibit his skill before her. He committed the enormity of
winning seven games in succession from the king himself! ! !

It is seldom indeed that a subject can beat a king at chess, and
this monarch was properly amazed.

"Who are you at all?" he cried, starting back from the chessboard
and staring on Fionn.

"I am the son of a countryman of the Luigne of Tara," said Fionn.

He may have blushed as he said it, for the king, possibly for the
first time, was really looking at him, and was looking back
through twenty years of time as he did so. The observation of a
king is faultless--it is proved a thousand times over in the
tales, and this king's equipment was as royal as the next.

"You are no such son," said the indignant monarch, "but you are
the son that Muirne my wife bore to Uall mac Balscne."

And at that Fionn had no more to say; but his eyes may have flown
to his mother and stayed there.

"You cannot remain here," his step-father continued. "I do not
want you killed under my protection," he explained, or
complained.

Perhaps it was on Fionn's account he dreaded the sons of Morna,
but no one knows what Fionn thought of him for he never
thereafter spoke of his step-father. As for Muirne she must have
loved her lord; or she may have been terrified in truth of the
sons of Morna and for Fionn; but it is so also, that if a woman
loves her second husband she can dislike all that reminds her of
the first one. Fionn went on his travels again.



CHAPTER IX

All desires save one are fleeting, but that one lasts for ever.
Fionn, with all desires, had the lasting one, for he would go
anywhere and forsake anything for wisdom; and it was in search of
this that he went to the place where Finegas lived on a bank of
the Boyne Water. But for dread of the clann-Morna he did not go
as Fionn. He called himself Deimne on that journey.

We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not
answered we get wise, for a well-packed question carries its
answer on its back as a snail carries its shell. Fionn asked
every question he could think of, and his master, who was a poet,
and so an honourable man, answered them all, not to the limit of
his patience, for it was limitless, but to the limit of his
ability.

"Why do you live on the bank of a river?" was one of these
questions. "Because a poem is a revelation, and it is by the
brink of running water that poetry is revealed to the mind."

"How long have you been here?" was the next query. "Seven years,"
the poet answered.

"It is a long time," said wondering Fionn.

"I would wait twice as long for a poem," said the inveterate
bard.

"Have you caught good poems?" Fionn asked him.

"The poems I am fit for," said the mild master. "No person can
get more than that, for a man's readiness is his limit."

"Would you have got as good poems by the Shannon or the Suir or
by sweet Ana Life'?"

"They are good rivers," was the answer. "They all belong to good
gods."

"But why did you choose this river out of all the rivers?"

Finegas beamed on his pupil.

"I would tell you anything," said he, "and I will tell you that."

Fionn sat at the kindly man's feet, his hands absent among tall
grasses, and listening with all his ears. "A prophecy was made to
me," Finegas began. "A man of knowledge foretold that I should
catch the Salmon of Knowledge in the Boyne Water."

"And then?" said Fionn eagerly.

"Then I would have All Knowledge."

"And after that?" the boy insisted.

"What should there be after that?" the poet retorted.

"I mean, what would you do with All Knowledge?"

"A weighty question," said Finegas smilingly. "I could answer it
if I had All Knowledge, but not until then. What would you do, my
dear?"

"I would make a poem," Fionn cried.

"I think too," said the poet, "that that is what would be done."

In return for instruction Fionn had taken over the service of his
master's hut, and as he went about the household duties, drawing
the water, lighting the fire, and carrying rushes for the floor
and the beds, he thought over all the poet had taught him, and
his mind dwelt on the rules of metre, the cunningness of words,
and the need for a clean, brave mind. But in his thousand
thoughts he yet remembered the Salmon of Knowledge as eagerly as
his master did. He already venerated Finegas for his great
learning, his poetic skill, for an hundred reasons; but, looking
on him as the ordained eater of the Salmon of Knowledge, he
venerated him to the edge of measure. Indeed, he loved as well as
venerated this master because of his unfailing kindness, his
patience, his readiness to teach, and his skill in teaching.

"I have learned much from you, dear master," said Fionn
gratefully.

"All that I have is yours if you can take it," the poet answered,
"for you are entitled to all that you can take, but to no more
than that. Take, so, with both hands."

"You may catch the salmon while I am with you," the hopeful boy
mused. "Would not that be a great happening!" and he stared in
ecstasy across the grass at those visions which a boy's mind
knows.

"Let us pray for that," said Finegas fervently.

"Here is a question," Fionn continued. "How does this salmon get
wisdom into his flesh?"

"There is a hazel bush overhanging a secret pool in a secret
place. The Nuts of Knowledge drop from the Sacred Bush into the
pool, and as they float, a salmon takes them in his mouth and
eats them."

"It would be almost as easy," the boy submitted, "if one were to
set on the track of the Sacred Hazel and eat the nuts straight
from the bush."

"That would not be very easy," said the poet, "and yet it is not
as easy as that, for the bush can only be found by its own
knowledge, and that knowledge can only be got by eating the nuts,
and the nuts can only be got by eating the salmon."

"We must wait for the salmon," said Fionn in a rage of
resignation.



CHAPTER X

Life continued for him in a round of timeless time, wherein days
and nights were uneventful and were yet filled with interest. As
the day packed its load of strength into his frame, so it added
its store of knowledge to his mind, and each night sealed the
twain, for it is in the night that we make secure what we have
gathered in the day.

If he had told of these days he would have told of a succession
of meals and sleeps, and of an endless conversation, from which
his mind would now and again slip away to a solitude of its own,
where, in large hazy atmospheres, it swung and drifted and
reposed. Then he would be back again, and it was a pleasure for
him to catch up on the thought that was forward and re-create for
it all the matter he had missed. But he could not often make
these sleepy sallies; his master was too experienced a teacher to
allow any such bright-faced, eager-eyed abstractions, and as the
druid women had switched his legs around a tree, so Finegas
chased his mind, demanding sense in his questions and
understanding in his replies.

To ask questions can become the laziest and wobbliest occupation
of a mind, but when you must yourself answer the problem that you
have posed, you will meditate your question with care and frame
it with precision. Fionn's mind learned to jump in a bumpier
field than that in which he had chased rabbits. And when he had
asked his question, and given his own answer to it, Finegas would
take the matter up and make clear to him where the query was
badly formed or at what point the answer had begun to go astray,
so that Fionn came to understand by what successions a good
question grows at last to a good answer.

One day, not long after the conversation told of, Finegas came to
the place where Fionn was. The poet had a shallow osier basket on
his arm, and on his face there was a look that was at once
triumphant and gloomy. He was excited certainly, but be was sad
also, and as he stood gazing on Fionn his eyes were so kind that
the boy was touched, and they were yet so melancholy that it
almost made Fionn weep. "What is it, my master?" said the alarmed
boy.

The poet placed his osier basket on the grass.

"Look in the basket, dear son," he said. Fionn looked.

"There is a salmon in the basket."

"It is The Salmon," said Finegas with a great sigh. Fionn leaped
for delight.

"l am glad for you, master," he cried. "Indeed I am glad for
you."

"And I am glad, my dear soul," the master rejoined.

But, having said it, he bent his brow to his hand and for a long
time he was silent and gathered into himself.

"What should be done now?" Fionn demanded, as he stared on the
beautiful fish.

Finegas rose from where he sat by the osier basket.

"I will be back in a short time," he said heavily. "While I am
away you may roast the salmon, so that it will be ready against
my return."

"I will roast it indeed," said Fionn.

The poet gazed long and earnestly on him.

"You will not eat any of my salmon while I am away?" he asked.

"I will not eat the littlest piece," said Fionn.

"I am sure you will not," the other murmured, as he turned and
walked slowly across the grass and behind the sheltering bushes
on the ridge.

Fionn cooked the salmon. It was beautiful and tempting and
savoury as it smoked on a wooden platter among cool green leaves;
and it looked all these to Finegas when he came from behind the
fringing bushes and sat in the grass outside his door. He gazed
on the fish with more than his eyes. He looked on it with his
heart, with his soul in his eyes, and when he turned to look on
Fionn the boy did not know whether the love that was in his eyes
was for the fish or for himself. Yet he did know that a great
moment had arrived for the poet.

"So," said Finegas, "you did not eat it on me after all?" "Did I
not promise?" Fionn replied.

"And yet," his master continued, "I went away so that you might
eat the fish if you felt you had to."

"Why should I want another man's fish?" said proud Fionn.

"Because young people have strong desires. I thought you might
have tasted it, and then you would have eaten it on me."

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