Irish Fairy Tales Read online

  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 7

  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. He 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 Conàn, 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 8

  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 themse
lves 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 invisibly 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 Lifé 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 Léin 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 Oisín.2

  “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 Uail mac Baiscne.”

  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.

  2 Pronounced Usheen.

  Chapter 9

  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.”
r />   “Would you have got as good poems by the Shannon or the Suir or by sweet Ana Lifé?”

  “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.