Book: Irish Fairy Tales

J >> James Stephens >> Irish Fairy Tales




"Halt there!" cried the king.

"Who should I halt for?" the lady demanded, halting all the same,
as is the manner of women, who rebel against command and yet
receive it.

"Halt for Dermod!"

"There are Dermods and Dermods in this world," she quoted.

"There is yet but one Ard-Ri'," the monarch answered.

She then descended from the chariot and made her reverence.

"I wish to know your name?" said he.

But at this demand the lady frowned and answered decidedly:

"I do not wish to tell it."

"I wish to know also where you come from and to what place you
are going?"

"I do not wish to tell any of these things."

"Not to the king!"

"I do not wish to tell them to any one."

Crimthann was scandalised.

"Lady," he pleaded, "you will surely not withhold information
from the Ard-Ri'?"

But the lady stared as royally on the High King as the High King
did on her, and, whatever it was he saw in those lovely eyes, the
king did not insist.

He drew Crimthann apart, for he withheld no instruction from that
lad.

"My heart," he said, "we must always try to act wisely, and we
should only insist on receiving answers to questions in which we
are personally concerned."

Crimthann imbibed all the justice of that remark.

"Thus I do not really require to know this lady's name, nor do I
care from what direction she comes."

"You do not?" Crimthann asked.

"No, but what I do wish to know is, Will she marry me?"

"By my hand that is a notable question," his companion stammered.

"It is a question that must be answered," the king cried
triumphantly. "But," he continued, "to learn what woman she is,
or where she comes from, might bring us torment as well as
information. Who knows in what adventures the past has engaged
her!"

And he stared for a profound moment on disturbing, sinister
horizons, and Crimthann meditated there with him."

"The past is hers," he concluded, "but the future is ours, and we
shall only demand that which is pertinent to the future."

He returned to the lady.

"We wish you to be our wife," he said. And he gazed on her
benevolently and firmly and carefully when he said that, so that
her regard could not stray otherwhere. Yet, even as he looked, a
tear did well into those lovely eyes, and behind her brow a
thought moved of the beautiful boy who was looking at her from
the king's side.

But when the High King of Ireland asks us to marry him we do not
refuse, for it is not a thing that we shall be asked to do every
day in the week, and there is no woman in the world but would
love to rule it in Tara.

No second tear crept on the lady's lashes, and, with her hand in
the king's hand, they paced together towards the palace, while
behind them, in melancholy mood, Crimthann mac Ae led the horses
and the chariot.



CHAPTER II

They were married in a haste which equalled the king's desire;
and as he did not again ask her name, and as she did not
volunteer to give it, and as she brought no dowry to her husband
and received none from him, she was called Becfola, the
Dowerless.

Time passed, and the king's happiness was as great as his
expectation of it had promised. But on the part of Becfola no
similar tidings can be given.

There are those whose happiness lies in ambition and station, and
to such a one the fact of being queen to the High King of Ireland
is a satisfaction at which desire is sated. But the mind of
Becfola was not of this temperate quality, and, lacking
Crimthann, it seemed to her that she possessed nothing.

For to her mind he was the sunlight in the sun, the brightness in
the moonbeam; he was the savour in fruit and the taste in honey;
and when she looked from Crimthann to the king she could not but
consider that the right man was in the wrong place. She thought
that crowned only with his curls Crlmthann mac Ae was more nobly
diademed than are the masters of the world, and she told him so.

His terror on hearing this unexpected news was so great that he
meditated immediate flight from Tara; but when a thing has been
uttered once it is easier said the second time and on the third
repetition it is patiently listened to.

After no great delay Crimthann mac Ae agreed and arranged that he
and Becfola should fly from Tara, and it was part of their
understanding that they should live happily ever after.

One morning, when not even a bird was astir, the king felt that
his dear companion was rising. He looked with one eye at the
light that stole greyly through the window, and recognised that
it could not in justice be called light.

"There is not even a bird up," he murmured.

And then to Becfola.

"What is the early rising for, dear heart?"

"An engagement I have," she replied.

"This is not a time for engagements," said the calm monarch.

"Let it be so," she replied, and she dressed rapidly.

"And what is the engagement?" he pursued.

"Raiment that I left at a certain place and must have. Eight
silken smocks embroidered with gold, eight precious brooches of
beaten gold, three diadems of pure gold."

"At this hour," said the patient king, "the bed is better than
the road."

"Let it be so," said she.

"And moreover," he continued, "a Sunday journey brings bad luck."

"Let the luck come that will come," she answered.

"To keep a cat from cream or a woman from her gear is not work
for a king," said the monarch severely.

The Ard-Ri' could look on all things with composure, and regard
all beings with a tranquil eye; but it should be known that there
was one deed entirely hateful to him, and he would punish its
commission with the very last rigour--this was, a transgression
of the Sunday. During six days of the week all that could happen
might happen, so far as Dermod was concerned, but on the seventh
day nothing should happen at all if the High King could restrain
it. Had it been possible he would have tethered the birds to
their own green branches on that day, and forbidden the clouds to
pack the upper world with stir and colour. These the king
permitted, with a tight lip, perhaps, but all else that came
under his hand felt his control.

It was hls custom when he arose on the morn of Sunday to climb to
the most elevated point of Tara, and gaze thence on every side,
so that he might see if any fairies or people of the Shi' were
disporting themselves in his lordship; for he absolutely
prohibited the usage of the earth to these beings on the Sunday,
and woe's worth was it for the sweet being he discovered breaking
his law.

We do not know what ill he could do to the fairies, but during
Dermod's reign the world said its prayers on Sunday and the Shi'
folk stayed in their hills.

It may be imagined, therefore, with what wrath he saw his wife's
preparations for her journey, but, although a king can do
everything, what can a husband do . . .? He rearranged himself
for slumber.

"I am no party to this untimely journey," he said angrily.

"Let it be so," said Becfola.

She left the palace with one maid, and as she crossed the doorway
something happened to her, but by what means it happened would be
hard to tell; for in the one pace she passed out of the palace
and out of the world, and the second step she trod was in Faery,
but she did not know this.

Her intention was to go to Cluain da chaillech to meet Crimthann,
but when she left the palace she did not remember Crimthann any
more.

To her eye and to the eye of her maid the world was as it always
had been, and the landmarks they knew were about them. But the
object for which they were travelling was different, although
unknown, and the people they passed on the roads were unknown,
and were yet people that they knew.

They set out southwards from Tara into the Duffry of Leinster,
and after some time they came into wild country and went astray.
At last Becfola halted, saying:

"I do not know where we are."

The maid replied that she also did not know.

"Yet," said Becfola, "if we continue to walk straight on we shall
arrive somewhere."

They went on, and the maid watered the road with her tears.

Night drew on them; a grey chill, a grey silence, and they were
enveloped in that chill and silence; and they began to go in
expectation and terror, for they both knew and did not know that
which they were bound for.

As they toiled desolately up the rustling and whispering side of
a low hill the maid chanced to look back, and when she looked
back she screamed and pointed, and clung to Becfola's arm.
Becfola followed the pointing finger, and saw below a large black
mass that moved jerkily forward.

"Wolves!" cried the maid. "Run to the trees yonder," her mistress
ordered. "We will climb them and sit among the branches."

They ran then, the maid moaning and lamenting all the while.

"I cannot climb a tree," she sobbed, "I shall be eaten by the
wolves."

And that was true.

But her mistress climbed a tree, and drew by a hand's breadth
from the rap and snap and slaver of those steel jaws. Then,
sitting on a branch, she looked with angry woe at the straining
and snarling horde below, seeing many a white fang in those
grinning jowls, and the smouldering, red blink of those leaping
and prowling eyes.



CHAPTER III

But after some time the moon arose and the wolves went away, for
their leader, a sagacious and crafty chief, declared that as long
as they remained where they were, the lady would remain where she
was; and so, with a hearty curse on trees, the troop departed.
Becfola had pains in her legs from the way she had wrapped them
about the branch, but there was no part of her that did not ache,
for a lady does not sit with any ease upon a tree.

For some time she did not care to come down from the branch.
"Those wolves may return," she said, "for their chief is crafty
and sagacious, and it is certain, from the look I caught in his
eye as he departed, that he would rather taste of me than cat any
woman he has met."

She looked carefully in every direction to see if ane might
discover them in hiding; she looked closely and lingeringly at
the shadows under distant trees to see if these shadows moved;
and she listened on every wind to try if she could distinguish a
yap or a yawn or a sneeze. But she saw or heard nothing; and
little by little tranquillity crept into her mind, and she began
to consider that a danger which is past is a danger that may be
neglected.

Yet ere she descended she looked again on the world of jet and
silver that dozed about her, and she spied a red glimmer among
distant trees.

"There is no danger where there is light," she said, and she
thereupon came from the tree and ran in the direction that she
had noted.

In a spot between three great oaks she came upon a man who was
roasting a wild boar over a fire. She saluted this youth and sat
beside him. But after the first glance and greeting he did not
look at her again, nor did he speak.

When the boar was cooked he ate of it and she had her share. Then
he arose from the fire and walked away among the trees. Becfola
followed, feeling ruefully that something new to her experience
had arrived; "for," she thought, "it is usual that young men
should not speak to me now that I am the mate of a king, but it
is very unusual that young men should not look at me."

But if the young man did not look at her she looked well at him,
and what she saw pleased her so much that she had no time for
further cogitation. For if Crimthann had been beautiful, this
youth was ten times more beautiful. The curls on Crimthann's head
had been indeed as a benediction to the queen's eye, so that she
had eaten the better and slept the sounder for seeing him. But
the sight of this youth left her without the desire to eat, and,
as for sleep, she dreaded it, for if she closed an eye she would
be robbed of the one delight in time, which was to look at this
young man, and not to cease looking at him while her eye could
peer or her head could remain upright.

They came to an inlet of the sea all sweet and calm under the
round, silver-flooding moon, and the young man, with Becfola
treading on his heel, stepped into a boat and rowed to a
high-jutting, pleasant island. There they went inland towards a
vast palace, in which there was no person but themselves alone,
and there the young man went to sleep, while Becfola sat staring
at him until the unavoidable peace pressed down her eyelids and
she too slumbered.

She was awakened in the morning by a great shout.

"Come out, Flann, come out, my heart!"

The young man leaped from his couch, girded on his harness, and
strode out. Three young men met him, each in battle harness, and
these four advanced to meet four other men who awaited them at a
little distance on the lawn. Then these two sets of four fought
togethor with every warlike courtesy but with every warlike
severity, and at the end of that combat there was but one man
standing, and the other seven lay tossed in death.

Becfola spoke to the youth.

"Your combat has indeed been gallant," she said.

"Alas," he replied, "if it has been a gallant deed it has not
been a good one, for my three brothers are dead and my four
nephews are dead."

"Ah me!" cried Becfola, "why did you fight that fight?"

"For the lordship of this island, the Isle of Fedach, son of
Dali."

But, although Becfola was moved and horrified by this battle, it
was in another direction that her interest lay; therefore she
soon asked the question which lay next her heart:

"Why would you not speak to me or look at me?"

"Until I have won the kingship of this land from all claimants, I
am no match for the mate of the High King of Ireland," he
replied.

And that reply was llke balm to the heart of Becfola.

"What shall I do?" she inquired radiantly. "Return to your home,"
he counselled. "I will escort you there with your maid, for she
is not really dead, and when I have won my lordship I will go
seek you in Tara."

"You will surely come," she insisted.

"By my hand," quoth he, "I will come."

These three returned then, and at the end of a day and night they
saw far off the mighty roofs of Tara massed in the morning haze.
The young man left them, and with many a backward look and with
dragging, reluctant feet, Becfola crossed the threshold of the
palace, wondering what she should say to Dermod and how she could
account for an absence of three days' duration.



CHAPTER IV

IT was so early that not even a bird was yet awake, and the dull
grey light that came from the atmosphere enlarged and made
indistinct all that one looked at, and swathed all things in a
cold and livid gloom.

As she trod cautiously through dim corridors Becfola was glad
that, saving the guards, no creature was astir, and that for some
time yet she need account to no person for her movements. She was
glad also of a respite which would enable her to settle into her
home and draw about her the composure which women feel when they
are surrounded by the walls of their houses, and can see about
them the possessions which, by the fact of ownership, have become
almost a part of their personality. Sundered from her belongings,
no woman is tranquil, her heart is not truly at ease, however her
mind may function, so that under the broad sky or in the house of
another she is not the competent, precise individual which she
becomes when she sees again her household in order and her
domestic requirements at her hand.

Becfola pushed the door of the king's sleeping chamber and
entered noiselessly. Then she sat quietly in a seat gazing on the
recumbent monarch, and prepared to consider how she should
advance to him when he awakened, and with what information she
might stay his inquiries or reproaches.

"I will reproach him," she thought. "I will call him a bad
husband and astonish him, and he will forget everything but his
own alarm and indignation."

But at that moment the king lifted his head from the pillow and
looked kindly at her. Her heart gave a great throb, and she
prepared to speak at once and in great volume before he could
formulate any question. But the king spoke first, and what he
said so astonished her that the explanation and reproach with
which her tongue was thrilling fled from it at a stroke, and she
could only sit staring and bewildered and tongue-tied.

"Well, my dear heart," said the king, "have you decided not to
keep that engagement?"

"I--I-- !" Becfola stammered.

"It is truly not an hour for engagements," Dermod insisted, "for
not a bird of the birds has left his tree; and," he continued
maliciously, "the light is such that you could not see an
engagement even if you met one."

"I," Becfola gasped. "I---!"

"A Sunday journey," he went on, "is a notorious bad journey. No
good can come from it. You can get your smocks and diadems
to-morrow. But at this hour a wise person leaves engagements to
the bats and the staring owls and the round-eyed creatures that
prowl and sniff in the dark. Come back to the warm bed, sweet
woman, and set on your journey in the morning."

Such a load of apprehension was lifted from Becfola's heart that
she instantly did as she had been commanded, and such a
bewilderment had yet possession of her faculties that she could
not think or utter a word on any subject.

Yet the thought did come into her head as she stretched in the
warm gloom that Crimthann the son of Ae must be now attending her
at Cluain da chaillech, and she thought of that young man as of
something wonderful and very ridiculous, and the fact that he was
waiting for her troubled her no more than if a sheep had been
waiting for her or a roadside bush.

She fell asleep.



CHAPTER V

In the morning as they sat at breakfast four clerics were
announced, and when they entered the king looked on them with
stern disapproval.

"What is the meaning of this journey on Sunday?" he demanded.

A lank-jawed, thin-browed brother, with uneasy, intertwining
fingers, and a deep-set, venomous eye, was the spokesman of those
four.

"Indeed," he said, and the fingers of his right hand strangled
and did to death the fingers of his left hand, "indeed, we have
transgressed by order."

"Explain that."

"We have been sent to you hurriedly by our master, Molasius of
Devenish."

"A pious, a saintly man," the king interrupted, "and one who does
not countenance transgressions of the Sunday."

"We were ordered to tell you as follows," said the grim cleric,
and he buried the fingers of his right hand in his left fist, so
that one could not hope to see them resurrected again. "It was
the duty of one of the Brothers of Devenish," he continued, "to
turn out the cattle this morning before the dawn of day, and that
Brother, while in his duty, saw eight comely young men who fought
together."

"On the morning of Sunday," Dermod exploded.

The cleric nodded with savage emphasis.

"On the morning of this self-same and instant sacred day."

"Tell on," said the king wrathfully.

But terror gripped with sudden fingers at Becfola's heart.

"Do not tell horrid stories on the Sunday," she pleaded. "No good
can come to any one from such a tale."

"Nay, this must be told, sweet lady," said the king. But the
cleric stared at her glumly, forbiddingly, and resumed his story
at a gesture.

"Of these eight men, seven were killed."

"They are in hell," the king said gloomily.

"In hell they are," the cleric replied with enthusiasm.

"And the one that was not killed?"

"He is alive," that cleric responded.

"He would be," the monarch assented. "Tell your tale."

"Molasius had those seven miscreants buried, and he took from
their unhallowed necks and from their lewd arms and from their
unblessed weapons the load of two men in gold and silver
treasure."

"Two men's load!" said Dermod thoughtfully.

"That much," said the lean cleric. "No more, no less. And he has
sent us to find out what part of that hellish treasure belongs to
the Brothers of Devenish and how much is the property of the
king."

Becfola again broke in, speaking graciously, regally, hastily:
"Let those Brothers have the entire of the treasure, for it is
Sunday treasure, and as such it will bring no luck to any one."

The cleric again looked at her coldly, with a harsh-lidded,
small-set, grey-eyed glare, and waited for the king's reply.

Dermod pondered, shaking his head as to an argument on his left
side, and then nodding it again as to an argument on his right.

"It shall be done as this sweet queen advises. Let a reliquary be
formed with cunning workmanship of that gold and silver, dated
with my date and signed with my name, to be in memory of my
grandmother who gave birth to a lamb, to a salmon, and then to my
father, the Ard-Ri'. And, as to the treasure that remains over, a
pastoral staff may be beaten from it in honour of Molasius, the
pious man."

"The story is not ended," said that glum, spike-chinned cleric.

The king moved with jovial impatience.

"If you continue it," he said, "it will surely come to an end
some time. A stone on a stone makes a house, dear heart, and a
word on a word tells a tale."

The cleric wrapped himself into himself, and became lean and
menacing. He whispered: "Besides the young man, named Flann, who
was not slain, there was another person present at the scene and
the combat and the transgression of Sunday."

"Who was that person?" said the alarmed monarch.

The cleric spiked forward his chin, and then butted forward his
brow.

"It was the wife of the king," he shouted. "It was the woman
called Becfola. It was that woman," he roared, and he extended a
lean, inflexible, unending first finger at the queen.

"Dog!" the king stammered, starting up.

"If that be in truth a woman," the cleric screamed.

"What do you mean?" the king demanded in wrath and terror.

"Either she is a woman of this world to he punished, or she is a
woman of the Shi' to be banished, but this holy morning she was
in the Shi', and her arms were about the neck of Flann."

The king sank back in his chair stupefied, gazing from one to the
other, and then turned an unseeing, fear-dimmed eye towards
Becfola.

"Is this true, my pulse?" he murmured.

"It is true," Becfola replied, and she became suddenly to the
king's eye a whiteness and a stare. He pointed to the door.

"Go to your engagement," he stammered. "Go to that Flann."

"He is waiting for me," said Becfola with proud shame, "and the
thought that he should wait wrings my heart."

She went out from the palace then. She went away from Tara: and
in all Ireland and in the world of living men she was not seen
again, and she was never heard of again.




THE LITTLE BRAWL AT ALLEN



CHAPTER I

"I think," said Cairell Whiteskin, "that although judgement was
given against Fionn, it was Fionn had the rights of it."

"He had eleven hundred killed," said Cona'n amiably, "and you may
call that the rights of it if you like."

"All the same-- " Cairell began argumentatively.

"And it was you that commenced it," Cona'n continued.

"Ho! Ho!" Cairell cried. "Why, you are as much to blame as I am."

"No," said Cona'n, "for you hit me first."

"And if we had not been separated-- "the other growled.

"Separated!" said Cona'n, with a grin that made his beard poke
all around his face.

"Yes, separated. If they had not come between us I still
think-- "

"Don't think out loud, dear heart, for you and I are at peace by
law."

"That is true," said Cairell, "and a man must stick by a
judgement. Come with me, my dear, and let us see how the
youngsters are shaping in the school. One of them has rather a
way with him as a swordsman."

"No youngster is any good with a sword," Conan replied.

"You are right there," said Cairell. "It takes a good ripe man
for that weapon."

"Boys are good enough with slings," Confro continued, "but except
for eating their fill and running away from a fight, you can't
count on boys."

The two bulky men turned towards the school of the Fianna.

It happened that Fionn mac Uail had summoned the gentlemen of the
Fianna and their wives to a banquet. Everybody came, for a
banquet given by Fionn was not a thing to be missed. There was
Goll mor mac Morna and his people; Fionn's son Oisi'n and his
grandson Oscar. There was Dermod of the Gay Face, Caelte mac
Ronan--but indeed there were too many to be told of, for all the
pillars of war and battle-torches of the Gael were there.

The banquet began.

Fionn sat in the Chief Captain's seat in the middle of the fort;
and facing him, in the place of honour, he placed the mirthful
Goll mac Morna; and from these, ranging on either side, the
nobles of the Fianna took each the place that fitted his degree
and patrimony.

After good eating, good conversation; and after good
conversation, sleep--that is the order of a banquet: so when each
person had been served with food to the limit of desire the
butlers carried in shining, and jewelled drinking-horns, each
having its tide of smooth, heady liquor. Then the young heroes
grew merry and audacious, the ladies became gentle and kind, and
the poets became wonders of knowledge and prophecy. Every eye
beamed in that assembly, and on Fionn every eye was turned
continually in the hope of a glance from the great, mild hero.

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