Book: Irish Fairy Tales

J >> James Stephens >> Irish Fairy Tales




But at this the Carl burst into a roar of laughter, so that the
eardrums of the warriors present almost burst inside of their
heads.

"Be reassured, my darling, I am no beggarman, and my quality is
not more gross than is the blood of the most delicate prince in
this assembly. You will not evade your challenge in that way, my
love, and you shall run with me or you shall run to your ship
with me behind you. What length of course do you propose, dear
heart?"

"I never run less than sixty miles," Cael replied sullenly.

"It is a small run," said the Carl, "but it will do. From this
place to the Hill of the Rushes, Slieve Luachra of Munster, is
exactly sixty miles. Will that suit you?"

"I don't care how it is done," Cael answered.

"Then," said the Carl, "we may go off to Slieve Luachra now, and
in the morning we can start our race there to here."

"Let it be done that way," said Cael.

These two set out then for Munster, and as the sun was setting
they reached Slieve Luachra and prepared to spend the night
there.



CHAPTER IV

"Cael, my pulse," said the Carl, "we had better build a house or
a hut to pass the night in."

"I'Il build nothing," Cael replied, looking on the Carl with
great disfavour.

"No!"

"I won't build house or hut for the sake of passing one night
here, for I hope never to see this place again."

"I'Il build a house myself," said the Carl, "and the man who does
not help in the building can stay outside of the house."

The Carl stumped to a near-by wood, and he never rested until he
had felled and tied together twenty-four couples of big timber.
He thrust these under one arm and under the other he tucked a
bundle of rushes for his bed, and with that one load he rushed up
a house, well thatched and snug, and with the timber that
remained over he made a bonfire on the floor of the house.

His companion sat at a distance regarding the work with rage and
aversion.

"Now Cael, my darling," said the Carl, "if you are a man help me
to look for something to eat, for there is game here."

"Help yourself," roared Cael, "for all that I want is not to be
near you."

"The tooth that does not help gets no helping," the other
replied.

In a short time the Carl returned with a wild boar which he had
run down. He cooked the beast over his bonfire and ate one half
of it, leaving the other half for his breakfast. Then be lay down
on the rushes, and in two turns he fell asleep.

But Cael lay out on the side of the hill, and if he went to sleep
that night he slept fasting. It was he, however, who awakened the
Carl in the morning.

"Get up, beggarman, if you are going to run against me."

The Carl rubbed his eyes.

"I never get up until I have had my fill of sleep, and there is
another hour of it due to me. But if you are in a hurry, my
delight, you can start running now with a blessing. I will trot
on your track when I waken up."

Cael began to race then, and he was glad of the start, for his
antagonist made so little account of him that he did not know
what to expect when the Carl would begin to run.

"Yet," said Cael to himself, "with an hour's start the beggarman
will have to move his bones if he wants to catch on me," and he
settled down to a good, pelting race.



CHAPTER V

At the end of an hour the Carl awoke. He ate the second half of
the boar, and he tied the unpicked bones in the tail of his coat.
Then with a great rattling of the boar's bones he started.

It is hard to tell how he ran or at what speed he ran, but he
went forward in great two-legged jumps, and at times he moved in
immense one-legged, mud-spattering hops, and at times again, with
wide-stretched, far-flung, terrible-tramping, space-destroying
legs he ran.

He left the swallows behind as if they were asleep. He caught up
on a red deer, jumped over it, and left it standing. The wind was
always behind him, for he outran it every time; and he caught up
in jumps and bounces on Cael of the Iron, although Cael was
running well, with his fists up and his head back and his two
legs flying in and out so vigorously that you could not see them
because of that speedy movement.

Trotting by the side of Cael, the Carl thrust a hand into the
tail of his coat and pulled out a fistfull of red bones.

"Here, my heart, is a meaty bone," said he, "for you fasted all
night, poor friend, and if you pick a bit off the bone your
stomach will get a rest."

"Keep your filth, beggarman," the other replied, "for I would
rather be hanged than gnaw on a bone that you have browsed."

"Why don't you run, my pulse?" said the Carl earnestly; "why
don't you try to win the race?"

Cael then began to move his limbs as if they were the wings of a
fly, or the fins of a little fish, or as if they were the six
legs of a terrified spider.

"I am running," he gasped.

"But try and run like this," the Carl admonished, and he gave a
wriggling bound and a sudden outstretching and scurrying of
shanks, and he disappeared from Cael's sight in one wild spatter
of big boots.

Despair fell on Cael of the Iron, but he had a great heart. "I
will run until I burst," he shrieked, "and when I burst, may I
burst to a great distance, and may I trip that beggar-man up with
my burstings and make him break his leg."

He settled then to a determined, savage, implacable trot. He
caught up on the Carl at last, for the latter had stopped to eat
blackberries from the bushes on the road, and when he drew nigh,
Cael began to jeer and sneer angrily at the Carl.

"Who lost the tails of his coat?" he roared.

"Don't ask riddles of a man that's eating blackberries," the Carl
rebuked him.

"The dog without a tall and the coat without a tail," cried Cael.

"I give it up," the Carl mumbled.

"It's yourself, beggarman," jeered Cael.

"I am myself," the Carl gurgled through a mouthful of
blackberries, "and as I am myself, how can it be myself? That is
a silly riddle," he burbled.

"Look at your coat, tub of grease?'

The Carl did so.

"My faith," said he, "where are the two tails of my coat?" "I
could smell one of them and it wrapped around a little tree
thirty miles back," said Cael, "and the other one was
dishonouring a bush ten miles behind that."

"It is bad luck to be separated from the tails of your own coat,"
the Carl grumbled. "I'll have to go back for them. Wait here,
beloved, and eat blackberries until I come back, and we'll both
start fair."

"Not half a second will I wait," Cael replied, and he began to
run towards Ben Edair as a lover runs to his maiden or as a bee
flies to his hive.

"I haven't had half my share of blackberries either," the Carl
lamented as he started to run backwards for his coat-tails.

He ran determinedly on that backward journey, and as the path he
had travelled was beaten out as if it had been trampled by an
hundred bulls yoked neck to neck, he was able to find the two
bushes and the two coat-tails. He sewed them on his coat.

Then he sprang up, and he took to a fit and a vortex and an
exasperation of running for which no description may be found.
The thumping of his big boots grew as con-tinuous as the
pattering of hailstones on a roof, and the wind of his passage
blew trees down. The beasts that were ranging beside his path
dropped dead from concussion, and the steam that snored from his
nose blew birds into bits and made great lumps of cloud fall out
of the sky.

He again caught up on Cael, who was running with his head down
and his toes up.

"If you won't try to run, my treasure," said the Carl, "you will
never get your tribute."

And with that he incensed and exploded himself into an
eye-blinding, continuous, waggle and complexity of boots that
left Cael behind him in a flash.

"I will run until I burst," sobbed Cael, and he screwed agitation
and despair into his legs until he hummed and buzzed like a
blue-bottle on a window.

Five miles from Ben Edair the Carl stopped, for he had again come
among blackberries.

He ate of these until he was no more than a sack of juice, and
when he heard the humming and buzzing of Cael of the Iron he
mourned and lamented that he could not wait to eat his fill He
took off his coat, stuffed it full of blackberries, swung it on
his shoulders, and went bounding stoutly and nimbly for Ben
Edair.



CHAPTER VI

It would be hard to tell of the terror that was in Fionn's breast
and in the hearts of the Fianna while they attended the
conclusion of that race.

They discussed it unendingly, and at some moment of the day a man
upbraided Fionn because he had not found Caelte the son of Rona'n
as had been agreed on.

"There is no one can run like Caelte," one man averred.

"He covers the ground," said another.

"He is light as a feather."

"Swift as a stag." "Lunged like a bull."

"Legged like a wolf."

"He runs!"

These things were said to Fionn, and Fionn said these things to
himself.

With every passing minute a drop of lead thumped down into every
heart, and a pang of despair stabbed up to every brain.

"Go," said Fionn to a hawk-eyed man, "go to the top of this hill
and watch for the coming of the racers."

And he sent lithe men with him so that they might run back in
endless succession with the news.

The messengers began to run through his tent at minute intervals
calling "nothing," "nothing," "nothing," as they paused and
darted away.

And the words, "nothing, nothing, nothing," began to drowse into
the brains of every person present.

"What can we hope from that Carl?" a champion demanded savagely.

"Nothing," cried a messenger who stood and sped.

"A clump!" cried a champion.

"A hog!" said another.

"A flat-footed,"

"Little-wlnded,"

"Big-bellied,"

"Lazy-boned,"

"Pork!"

"Did you think, Fionn, that a whale could swim on land, or what
did you imagine that lump could do?"

"Nothing," cried a messenger, and was sped as he spoke.

Rage began to gnaw in Fionn's soul, and a red haze danced and
flickered before his eyes. His hands began to twitch and a desire
crept over him to seize on champions by the neck, and to shake
and worry and rage among them like a wild dog raging among sheep.

He looked on one, and yet he seemed to look on all at once.

"Be silent," he growled. "Let each man be silent as a dead man."

And he sat forward, seeing all, seeing none, with his mouth
drooping open, and such a wildness and bristle lowering from that
great glum brow that the champions shivered as though already in
the chill of death, and were silent.

He rose and stalked to the tent-door.

"Where to, O Fionn?" said a champion humbly.

"To the hill-top," said Fionn, and he stalked on.

They followed him, whispering among themselves, keeping their
eyes on the ground as they climbed.



CHAPTER VII

"What do you see?" Fionn demanded of the watcher.

"Nothing," that man replied.

"Look again," said Fionn.

The eagle-eyed man lifted a face, thin and sharp as though it had
been carven on the wind, and he stared forward with an immobile
intentness.

"What do you see?" said Fionn.

"Nothing," the man replied.

"I will look myself," said Fionn, and his great brow bent forward
and gloomed afar.

The watcher stood beside, staring with his tense face and
unwinking, lidless eye.

"What can you see, O Fionn?" said the watcher.

"I can see nothing," said Fionn, and he projected again his grim,
gaunt forehead. For it seemed as if the watcher stared with his
whole face, aye, and with his hands; but Fionn brooded weightedly
on distance with his puckered and crannied brow.

They looked again.

"What can you see?" said Fionn.

"I see nothing," said the watcher.

"I do not know if I see or if I surmise, but something moves,"
said Fionn. "There is a trample," he said.

The watcher became then an eye, a rigidity, an intense
out-thrusting and ransacking of thin-spun distance. At last he
spoke.

"There is a dust," he said.

And at that the champions gazed also, straining hungrily afar,
until their eyes became filled with a blue darkness and they
could no longer see even the things that were close to them.

"I," cried Cona'n triumphantly, "I see a dust."

"And I," cried another.

"And I."

"I see a man," said the eagle-eyed watcher.

And again they stared, until their straining eyes grew dim with
tears and winks, and they saw trees that stood up and sat down,
and fields that wobbled and spun round and round in a giddily
swirling world.

"There is a man," Cona'n roared.


"A man there is," cried another.

"And he is carrying a man on his back," said the watcher.

"It is Cael of the Iron carrying the Carl on his back," he
groaned.

"The great pork!" a man gritted.

"The no-good!" sobbed another.

"The lean-hearted,"

"Thick-thighed,"

"Ramshackle,"

"Muddle-headed,"

"Hog!" screamed a champion.

And he beat his fists angrily against a tree.

But the eagle-eyed watcher watched until his eyes narrowed and
became pin-points, and he ceased to be a man and became an optic.

"Wait," he breathed, "wait until I screw into one other inch of
sight."

And they waited, looking no longer on that scarcely perceptible
speck in the distance, but straining upon the eye of the watcher
as though they would penetrate it and look through it.

"It is the Carl," he said, "carrying something on his back, and
behind him again there is a dust."

"Are you sure?" said Fionn in a voice that rumbled and vibrated
like thunder.

"It is the Carl," said the watcher, "and the dust behind him is
Cael of the Iron trying to catch him up."

Then the Fianna gave a roar of exultation, and each man seized
his neighbour and kissed him on both cheeks; and they gripped
hands about Fionn, and they danced round and round in a great
circle, roaring with laughter and relief, in the ecstasy which
only comes where grisly fear has been and whence that bony jowl
has taken itself away.



CHAPTER VIII

The Carl of the Drab Coat came bumping and stumping and clumping
into the camp, and was surrounded by a multitude that adored him
and hailed him with tears.

"Meal!" he bawled, "meal for the love of the stars!"

And he bawled, "Meal, meal!" until he bawled everybody into
silence.

Fionn addressed him.

"What for the meal, dear heart?"

"For the inside of my mouth," said the Carl, "for the recesses
and crannies and deep-down profundities of my stomach. Meal,
meal!" he lamented.

Meal was brought.

The Carl put his coat on the ground, opened it carefully, and
revealed a store of blackberries, squashed, crushed, mangled,
democratic, ill-looking.

"The meal!" he groaned, "the meal!"

It was given to him.

"What of the race, my pulse?" said Fionn.

"Wait, wait," cried the Carl. "I die, I die for meal and
blackberries."

Into the centre of the mess of blackberries he discharged a
barrel of meal, and be mixed the two up and through, and round
and down, until the pile of white-black, red-brown
slibber-slobber reached up to his shoulders. Then he commenced to
paw and impel and project and cram the mixture into his mouth,
and between each mouthful he sighed a contented sigh, and during
every mouthful he gurgled an oozy gurgle.

But while Fionn and the Fianna stared like lost minds upon the
Carl, there came a sound of buzzing, as if a hornet or a queen of
the wasps or a savage, steep-winged griffin was hovering about
them, and looking away they saw Cael of the Iron charging on them
with a monstrous extension and scurry of bis legs. He had a sword
in his hand, and there was nothing in his face but redness and
ferocity.

Fear fell llke night around the Fianna, and they stood with slack
knees and hanging hands waiting for death. But the Carl lifted a
pawful of his oozy slop and discharged this at Cael with such a
smash that the man's head spun off his shoulders and hopped along
the ground. The Carl then picked up the head and threw it at the
body with such aim and force that the neck part of the head
jammed into the neck part of the body and stuck there, as good a
head as ever, you would have said, but that it bad got twisted
the wrong way round. The Carl then lashed his opponent hand and
foot.

"Now, dear heart, do you still claim tribute and lordship of
Ireland?" said he.

"Let me go home," groaned Cael, "I want to go home."

"Swear by the sun and moon, if I let you go home, that you will
send to Fionn, yearly and every year, the rent of the land of
Thessaly."

"I swear that," said Cael, "and I would swear anything to get
home."

The Carl lifted him then and put him sitting into his ship. Then
he raised his big boot and gave the boat a kick that drove it
seven leagues out into the sea, and that was how the adventure of
Cael of the Iron finished.

"Who are you, sir?" said Fionn to the Carl.

But before answering the Carl's shape changed into one of
splendour and delight.

"I am ruler of the Shi' of Rath Cruachan," he said.

Then Fionn mac Uail made a feast and a banquet for the jovial
god, and with that the tale is ended of the King of Thessaly's
son and the Carl of the Drab Coat.




THE ENCHANTED CAVE OF CESH CORRAN



CHAPTER I

Fionn mac Uail was the most prudent chief of an army in the
world, but he was not always prudent on his own account.
Discipline sometimes irked him, and he would then take any
opportunity that presented for an adventure; for he was not only
a soldier, he was a poet also, that is, a man of science, and
whatever was strange or unusual had an irresistible at-traction
for him. Such a soldier was he
that, single-handed, he could take the Fianna out of any hole
they got into, but such an inveterate poet was he that all the
Fianna together could scarcely retrieve him from the abysses into
which he tumbled. It took him to keep the Fianna safe, but it
took all the Fianna to keep their captain out of danger. They did
not complain of this, for they loved every hair of Fionn's head
more than they loved their wives and children, and that was
reasonable for there was never in the world a person more worthy
of love than Fionn was.

Goll mac Morna did not admit so much in words, but he admitted it
in all his actions, for although he never lost an opportunity of
killing a member of Fionn's family (there was deadly feud between
clann-Baiscne and clann-Morna), yet a call from Fionn brought
Goll raging to his assistance like a lion that rages tenderly by
his mate. Not even a call was necessary, for Goll felt in his
heart when Fionn was threatened, and he would leave Fionn's own
brother only half-killed to fly where his arm was wanted. He was
never thanked, of course, for although Fionn loved Goll he did
not like him, and that was how Goll felt towards Fionn.

Fionn, with Cona'n the Swearer and the dogs Bran and Sceo'lan,
was sitting on the hunting-mound at the top of Cesh Corran. Below
and around on every side the Fianna were beating the coverts in
Legney and Brefny, ranging the fastnesses of Glen Dallan,
creeping in the nut and beech forests of Carbury, spying among
the woods of Kyle Conor, and ranging the wide plain of Moy Conal.

The great captain was happy: his eyes were resting on the sights
he liked best--the sunlight of a clear day, the waving trees, the
pure sky, and the lovely movement of the earth; and his ears were
filled with delectable sounds--the baying of eager dogs, the
clear calling of young men, the shrill whistling that came from
every side, and each sound of which told a definite thing about
the hunt. There was also the plunge and scurry of the deer, the
yapping of badgers, and the whirr of birds driven into reluctant
flight.



CHAPTER II

Now the king of the Shi' of Cesh Corran, Conaran, son of Imidel,
was also watching the hunt, but Fionn did not see him, for we
cannot see the people of Faery until we enter their realm, and
Fionn was not thinking of Faery at that moment. Conaran did not
like Fionn, and, seeing that the great champion was alone, save
for Cona'n and the two hounds Bran and Sceo'lan, he thought the
time had come to get Fionn into his power. We do not know what
Fionn had done to Conaran, but it must have been bad enough, for
the king of the Shi' of Cesh Cotran was filled with joy at the
sight of Fionn thus close to him, thus unprotected, thus
unsuspicious.

This Conaran had four daughters. He was fond of them and proud of
them, but if one were to search the Shi's of Ireland or the land
of Ireland, the equal of these four would not be found for
ugliness and bad humour and twisted temperaments.

Their hair was black as ink and tough as wire: it stuck up and
poked out and hung down about their heads in bushes and spikes
and tangles. Their eyes were bleary and red. Their mouths were
black and twisted, and in each of these mouths there was a hedge
of curved yellow fangs. They had long scraggy necks that could
turn all the way round like the neck of a hen. Their arms were
long and skinny and muscular, and at the end of each finger they
had a spiked nail that was as hard as horn and as sharp as a
briar. Their bodies were covered with a bristle of hair and fur
and fluff, so that they looked like dogs in some parts and like
cats in others, and in other parts again they looked like
chickens. They had moustaches poking under their noses and woolly
wads growing out of their ears, so that when you looked at them
the first time you never wanted to look at them again, and if you
had to look at them a second time you were likely to die of the
sight.

They were called Caevo'g, Cuillen, and Iaran. The fourth
daughter, Iarnach, was not present at that moment, so nothing
need be said of her yet.

Conaran called these three to him.

"Fionn is alone," said he. "Fionn is alone, my treasures."

"Ah!" said Caevo'g, and her jaw crunched upwards and stuck
outwards, as was usual with her when she was satisfied.

"When the chance comes take it," Conaran continued, and he smiled
a black, beetle-browed, unbenevolent smile.

"It's a good word," quoth Cuillen, and she swung her jaw loose
and made it waggle up and down, for that was the way she smiled.

"And here is the chance," her father added.

"The chance is here," Iaran echoed, with a smile that was very
like her sister's, only that it was worse, and the wen that grew
on her nose joggled to and fro and did not get its balance again
for a long time.

Then they smiled a smile that was agreeable to their own eyes,
but which would have been a deadly thing for anybody else to see.

"But Fionn cannot see us," Caevo'g objected, and her brow set
downwards and her chin set upwards and her mouth squeezed
sidewards, so that her face looked like a badly disappointed nut.

"And we are worth seeing," Cuillen continued, and the
disappointment that was set in her sister's face got carved and
twisted into hers, but it was worse in her case.

"That is the truth," said Iaran in a voice of lamentation, and
her face took on a gnarl and a writhe and a solidity of ugly woe
that beat the other two and. made even her father marvel.

"He cannot see us now," Conaran replied, "but he will see us in a
minute."

"Won't Fionn be glad when he sees us!" said the three sisters.

And then they joined hands and danced joyfully around their
father, and they sang a song, the first line of which is:
"Fionn thinks he is safe. But who knows when the sky will
fall?"

Lots of the people in the Shi' learned that song by heart, and
they applied it to every kind of circumstance.



CHAPTER III

BY his arts Conaran changed the sight of Fionn's eyes, and he did
the same for Cona'n.

In a few minutes Fionn stood up from his place on the mound.
Everything was about him as before, and he did not know that he
had gone into Faery. He walked for a minute up and down the
hillock. Then, as by chance, he stepped down the sloping end of
the mound and stood with his mouth open, staring. He cried out:

"Come down here, Cona'n, my darling."

Cona'n stepped down to him.

"Am I dreaming?" Fionn demanded, and he stretched out his finger
before him.

"If you are dreaming," said Congn, "I'm dreaming too. They
weren't here a minute ago," he stammered.

Fionn looked up at the sky and found that it was still there. He
stared to one side and saw the trees of Kyle Conor waving in the
distance. He bent his ear to the wind and heard the shouting of
hunters, the yapping of dogs, and the clear whistles, which told
how the hunt was going.

"Well!" said Fionn to himself.

"By my hand!" quoth Cona'n to his own soul.

And the two men stared into the hillside as though what they were
looking at was too wonderful to be looked away from.

"Who are they?" said Fionn.

"What are they?" Cona'n gasped. And they stared again.

For there was a great hole like a doorway in the side of the
mound, and in that doorway the daughters of Conaran sat spinning.
They had three crooked sticks of holly set up before the cave,
and they were reeling yarn off these. But it was enchantment they
were weaving.

"One could not call them handsome," said Cona'n.

"One could," Fionn replied, "but it would not be true."

"I cannot see them properly," Fionn complained. "They are hiding
behind the holly."

"I would he contented if I could not see them at all," his
companion grumbled.

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