He was a king, a seer and a poet. He was a lord with a manifold
and great train. He was our magician, our knowledgable one,
our soothsayer. All that he did was sweet with him. And, however
ye deem my testimony of Fionn excessive, and, although ye
hold my praising overstrained, nevertheless, and by the King
that is above me, he was three times better than all I say.—Saint
PATRICK.
CHAPTER
I
Fionn [pronounce Fewn to rhyme with “tune”]
got his first training among women. There is no wonder in that,
for it is the pup’s mother teaches it to fight, and women
know that fighting is a necessary art although men pretend there
are others that are better. These were the women druids, Bovmall
and Lia Luachra. It will be wondered why his own mother did not
train him in the first natural savageries of existence, but she
could not do it. She could not keep him with her for dread of
the clann-Morna. The sons of Morna had been fighting and intriguing
for a long time to oust her husband, Uail, from the captaincy
of the Fianna of Ireland, and they had ousted him at last by killing
him. It was the only way they could get rid of such a man; but
it was not an easy way, for what Fionn’s father did not know
in arms could not be taught to him even by Morna. Still, the hound
that can wait will catch a hare at last, and even Manana’nn
sleeps. Fionn’s mother was beautiful, long-haired Muirne:
so she is always referred to. She was the daughter of Teigue,
the son of Nuada from Faery, and her mother was Ethlinn. That
is, her brother was Lugh of the Long Hand himself, and with a
god, and such a god, for brother we may marvel that she could
have been in dread of Morna or his sons, or of any one. But women
have strange loves, strange fears, and these are so bound up with
one another that the thing which is presented to us is not often
the thing that is to be seen.
However it may be, when Uall died Muirne got married
again to the King of Kerry. She gave the child to Bovmall and
Lia Luachra to rear, and we may be sure that she gave injunctions
with him, and many of them. The youngster was brought to the woods
of Slieve Bloom and was nursed there in secret.
It is likely the women were fond of him, for other
than Fionn there was no life about them. He would be their life;
and their eyes may have seemed as twin benedictions resting on
the small fair head. He was fair-haired, and it was for his fairness
that he was afterwards called Fionn; but at this period he was
known as Deimne. They saw the food they put into his little frame
reproduce itself length-ways and sideways in tough inches, and
in springs and energies that crawled at first, and then toddled,
and then ran. He had birds for playmates, but all the creatures
that live in a wood must have been his comrades. There would have
been for little Fionn long hours of lonely sunshine, when the
world seemed just sunshine and a sky. There would have been hours
as long, when existence passed like a shade among shadows, in
the multitudinous tappings of rain that dripped from leaf to leaf
in the wood, and slipped so to the ground. He would have known
little snaky paths, narrow enough to be filled by his own small
feet, or a goat’s; and he would have wondered where they
went, and have marvelled again to find that, wherever they went,
they came at last, through loops and twists of the branchy wood,
to his own door. He may have thought of his own door as the beginning
and end of the world, whence all things went, and whither all
things came.
Perhaps he did not see the lark for a long time, but
he would have heard him, far out of sight in the endless sky,
thrilling and thrilling until the world seemed to have no other
sound but that clear sweetness; and what a world it was to make
that sound! Whistles and chirps, coos and caws and croaks, would
have grown familiar to him. And he could at last have told which
brother of the great brotherhood was making the noise he heard
at any moment. The wind too: he would have listened to its thousand
voices as it moved in all seasons and in all moods. Perhaps a
horse would stray into the thick screen about his home, and would
look as solemnly on Fionn as Fionn did on it. Or, coming suddenly
on him, the horse might stare, all a-cock with eyes and ears and
nose, one long-drawn facial extension, ere he turned and bounded
away with manes all over him and hoofs all under him and tails
all round him. A solemn-nosed, stern-eyed cow would amble and
stamp in his wood to find a flyless shadow; or a strayed sheep
would poke its gentle muzzle through leaves.
“A boy,” he might think, as he stared on a staring
horse, “a boy cannot wag his tail to keep the flies off,”
and that lack may have saddened him. He may have thought that
a cow can snort and be dignified at the one moment, and that timidity
is comely in a sheep. He would have scolded the jackdaw, and tried
to out-whistle the throstle, and wondered why his pipe got tired
when the blackbird’s didn’t. There would be flies to
be watched, slender atoms in yellow gauze that flew, and filmy
specks that flittered, and sturdy, thick-ribbed brutes that pounced
like cats and bit like dogs and flew like lightning. He may have
mourned for the spider in bad luck who caught that fly. There
would be much to see and remember and compare, and there would
be, always, his two guardians. The flies change from second to
second; one cannot tell if this bird is a visitor or an inhabitant,
and a sheep is just sister to a sheep; but the women were as rooted
as the house itself.
CHAPTER
II
Were his nurses comely or harsh-looking? Fionn would
not know. This was the one who picked him up when he fell, and
that was the one who patted the bruise. This one said: “Mind
you do not tumble in the well!”
And that one: “Mind the little knees among the
nettles.”
But he did tumble and record that the only notable
thing about a well is that it is wet. And as for nettles, if they
hit him he hit back. He slashed into them with a stick and brought
them low. There was nothing in wells or nettles, only women dreaded
them. One patronised women and instructed them and comforted them,
for they were afraid about one.
They thought that one should not climb a tree!
“Next week,” they said at last, “you may
climb this one,” and “next week” lived at the end
of the world!
But the tree that was climbed was not worth while
when it had been climbed twice. There was a bigger one near by.
There were trees that no one could climb, with vast shadow on
one side and vaster sunshine on the other. It took a long time
to walk round them, and you could not see their tops.
It was pleasant to stand on a branch that swayed and
sprung, and it was good to stare at an impenetrable roof of leaves
and then climb into it. How wonderful the loneliness was up there!
When he looked down there was an undulating floor of leaves, green
and green and greener to a very blackness of greeniness; and when
he looked up there were leaves again, green and less green and
not green at all, up to a very snow and blindness of greeniness;
and above and below and around there was sway and motion, the
whisper of leaf on leaf, and the eternal silence to which one
listened and at which one tried to look.
When he was six years of age his mother, beautiful,
long-haired Muirne, came to see him. She came secretly, for she
feared the sons of Morna, and she had paced through lonely places
in many counties before she reached the hut in the wood, and the
cot where he lay with his fists shut and sleep gripped in them.
He awakened to be sure. He would have one ear that
would catch an unusual voice, one eye that would open, however
sleepy the other one was. She took him in her arms and kissed
him, and she sang a sleepy song until the small boy slept again.
We may be sure that the eye that could stay open stayed
open that night as long as it could, and that the one ear listened
to the sleepy song until the song got too low to be heard, until
it was too tender to be felt vibrating along those soft arms,
until Fionn was asleep again, with a new picture in his little
head and a new notion to ponder on.
The mother of himself! His own mother!
But when he awakened she was gone.
She was going back secretly, in dread of the sons
of Morna, slipping through gloomy woods, keeping away from habitations,
getting by desolate and lonely ways to her lord in Kerry.
Perhaps it was he that was afraid of the sons of Morna,
and perhaps she loved him.
CHAPTER III
THE women Druids, his guardians, belonged to his father’s
people. Bovmall was Uail’s sister, and, consequently, Fionn’s
aunt. Only such a blood-tie could have bound them to the clann-Baiscne,
for it is not easy, having moved in the world of court and camp,
to go hide with a baby in a wood; and to live, as they must have
lived, in terror.
What stories they would have told the child of the
sons of Morna. Of Morna himself, the huge-shouldered, stern-eyed,
violent Connachtman; and of his sons—young Goll Mor mac
Morna in particular, as huge-shouldered as his father, as fierce
in the onset, but merry-eyed when the other was grim, and bubbling
with a laughter that made men forgive even his butcheries. Of
Cona’n Mael mac Morna his brother, gruff as a badger, bearded
like a boar, bald as a crow, and with a tongue that could manage
an insult where another man would not find even a stammer. His
boast was that when he saw an open door he went into it, and when
he saw a closed door he went into it. When he saw a peaceful man
he insulted him, and when he met a man who was not peaceful he
insulted him. There was Garra Duv mac Morna, and savage Art Og,
who cared as little for their own skins as they did for the next
man’s, and Garra must have been rough indeed to have earned
in that clan the name of the Rough mac Morna. There were others:
wild Connachtmen all, as untameable, as unaccountable as their
own wonderful countryside.
Fionn would have heard much of them, and it is likely
that he practised on a nettle at taking the head off Goll, and
that he hunted a sheep from cover in the implacable manner he
intended later on for Cona’n the Swearer.
But it is of Uail mac Baiscne he would have heard
most. With what a dilation of spirit the ladies would have told
tales of him, Fionn’s father. How their voices would have
become a chant as feat was added to feat, glory piled on glory.
The most famous of men and the most beautiful; the hardest fighter;
the easiest giver; the kingly champion; the chief of the Fianna
na h-Eirinn. Tales of how he had been way-laid and got free; of
how he had been generous and got free; of how he had been angry
and went marching with the speed of an eagle and the direct onfall
of a storm; while in front and at the sides, angled from the prow
of his terrific advance, were fleeing multitudes who did not dare
to wait and scarce had time to run. And of how at last, when the
time came to quell him, nothing less than the whole might of Ireland
was sufficient for that great downfall.
We may be sure that on these adventures Fionn was
with his father, going step for step with the long-striding hero,
and heartening him mightily.
CHAPTER
IV
He was given good training by the women in running
and leaping and swimming.
One of them would take a thorn switch in her hand,
and Fionn would take a thorn switch in his hand, and each would
try to strike the other running round a tree.
You had to go fast to keep away from the switch behind,
and a small boy feels a switch. Fionn would run his best to get
away from that prickly stinger, but how he would run when it was
his turn to deal the strokes!
With reason too, for his nurses had suddenly grown
implacable. They pursued him with a savagery which he could not
distinguish from hatred, and they swished him well whenever they
got the chance.
Fionn learned to run. After a while he could buzz
around a tree like a maddened fly, and oh, the joy, when he felt
himself drawing from the switch and gaining from behind on its
bearer! How he strained and panted to catch on that pursuing person
and pursue her and get his own switch into action.
He learned to jump by chasing hares in a bumpy field.
Up went the hare and up went Fionn, and away with the two of them,
hopping and popping across the field. If the hare turned while
Fionn was after her it was switch for Fionn; so that in a while
it did not matter to Fionn which way the hare jumped for he could
jump that way too. Long-ways, sideways or baw-ways, Fionn hopped
where the hare hopped, and at last he was the owner of a hop that
any hare would give an ear for.
He was taught to swim, and it may be that his heart
sank when he fronted the lesson. The water was cold. It was deep.
One could see the bottom, leagues below, millions of miles below.
A small boy might shiver as he stared into that wink and blink
and twink of brown pebbles and murder. And these implacable women
threw him in!
Perhaps he would not go in at first. He may have smiled
at them, and coaxed, and hung back. It was a leg and an arm gripped
then; a swing for Fionn, and out and away with him; plop and flop
for him; down into chill deep death for him, and up with a splutter;
with a sob; with a grasp at everything that caught nothing; with
a wild flurry; with a raging despair; with a bubble and snort
as he was hauled again down, and down, and down, and found as
suddenly that he had been hauled out.
Fionn learned to swim until he could pop into the
water like an otter and slide through it like an eel.
He used to try to chase a fish the way he chased hares
in the bumpy field—but there are terrible spurts in a fish.
It may be that a fish cannot hop, but he gets there in a flash,
and he isn’t there in another. Up or down, sideways or endways,
it is all one to a fish. He goes and is gone. He twists this way
and disappears the other way. He is over you when he ought to
be under you, and he is biting your toe when you thought you were
biting his tail.
You cannot catch a fish by swimming, but you can try,
and Fionn tried. He got a grudging commendation from the terrible
women when he was able to slip noiselessly in the tide, swim under
water to where a wild duck was floating and grip it by the leg.
“Qu—,” said the duck, and he disappeared
before he had time to get the “-ack” out of him.
So the time went, and Fionn grew long and straight
and tough like a sapling; limber as a willow, and with the flirt
and spring of a young bird. One of the ladies may have said, “He
is shaping very well, my dear,” and the other replied, as
is the morose privilege of an aunt, “He will never be as
good as his father,” but their hearts must have overflowed
in the night, in the silence, in the darkness, when they thought
of the living swiftness they had fashioned, and that dear fair
head.
CHAPTER
V
ONE day his guardians were agitated: they held confabulations
at which Fionn was not permitted to assist. A man who passed by
in the morning had spoken to them. They fed the man, and during
his feeding Fionn had been shooed from the door as if he were
a chicken. When the stranger took his road the women went with
him a short distance. As they passed the man lifted a hand and
bent a knee to Fionn.
“My soul to you, young master,” he said, and as
he said it, Fionn knew that he could have the man’s soul,
or his boots, or his feet, or anything that belonged to him.
When the women returned they were mysterious and whispery.
They chased Fionn into the house, and when they got him in they
chased him out again. They chased each other around the house
for another whisper. They calculated things by the shape of clouds,
by lengths of shadows, by the flight of birds, by two flies racing
on a flat stone, by throwing bones over their left shoulders,
and by every kind of trick and game and chance that you could
put a mind to.
They told Fionn he must sleep in a tree that night,
and they put him under bonds not to sing or whistle or cough or
sneeze until the morning.
Fionn did sneeze. He never sneezed so much in his
life. He sat up in his tree and nearly sneezed himself out of
it. Flies got up his nose, two at a time, one up each nose, and
his head nearly fell off the way he sneezed.
“You are doing that on purpose,” said a savage
whisper from the foot of the tree.
But Fionn was not doing it on purpose. He tucked himself
into a fork the way he had been taught, and he passed the crawliest,
tickliest night he had ever known. After a while he did not want
to sneeze, he wanted to scream: and in particular he wanted to
come down from the tree. But he did not scream, nor did he leave
the tree. His word was passed, and he stayed in his tree as silent
as a mouse and as watchful, until he fell out of it.
In the morning a band of travelling poets were passing,
and the women handed Fionn over to them. This time they could
not prevent him overhearing.
“The sons of Morna!” they said.
And Fionn’s heart might have swelled with rage,
but that it was already swollen with adventure. And also the expected
was happening. Behind every hour of their day and every moment
of their lives lay the sons of Morna. Fionn had run after them
as deer: he jumped after them as hares: he dived after them as
fish. They lived in the house with him: they sat at the table
and ate his meat. One dreamed of them, and they were expected
in the morning as the sun is. They knew only too well that the
son of Uail was living, and they knew that their own sons would
know no ease while that son lived; for they believed in those
days that like breeds like, and that the son of Uail would be
Uail with additions.
His guardians knew that their hiding-place must at
last be discovered, and that, when it was found, the sons of Morna
would come. They had no doubt of that, and every action of their
lives was based on that certainty. For no secret can remain secret.
Some broken soldier tramping home to his people will find it out;
a herd seeking his strayed cattle or a band of travelling musicians
will get the wind of it. How many people will move through even
the remotest wood in a year! The crows will tell a secret if no
one else does; and under a bush, behind a clump of bracken, what
eyes may there not be! But if your secret is legged like a young
goat! If it is tongued like a wolf! One can hide a baby, but you
cannot hide a boy. He will rove unless you tie him to a post,
and he will whistle then.
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
Anew 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 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
he 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.
“I 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.”
“I did taste it by chance,” Fionn laughed, “for
while the fish was roasting a great blister rose on its skin.
I did not like the look of that blister, and I pressed it down
with my thumb. That burned my thumb, so I popped it in my mouth
to heal the smart. If your salmon tastes as nice as my thumb did,”
he laughed, “it will taste very nice.”
“What did you say your name was, dear heart?”
the poet asked.
“I said my name was Deimne.”
“Your name is not Deimne,” said the mild man,
“your name is Fionn.”
“That is true,” the boy answered, “but I
do not know how you know it.”
“Even if I have not eaten the Salmon of Knowledge I
have some small science of my own.”
“It is very clever to know things as you know them,”
Fionn replied wonderingly. “What more do you know of me,
dear master?”
“I know that I did not tell you the truth,” said
the heavy-hearted man.
“What did you tell me instead of it?”
“I told you a lie.”
“It is not a good thing to do,” Fionn admitted.
“What sort of a lie was the lie, master?” “I told
you that the Salmon of Knowledge was to be caught by me, according
to the prophecy.”
“Yes.”
“That was true indeed, and I have caught the fish.
But I did not tell you that the salmon was not to be eaten by
me, although that also was in the prophecy, and that omission
was the lie.”
“It is not a great lie,” said Fionn soothingly.
“It must not become a greater one,” the poet replied
sternly.
“Who was the fish given to?” his companion wondered.
“It was given to you,” Finegas answered. “It
was given to Fionn, the son of Uail, the son of Baiscne, and it
will be given to him.”
“You shall have a half of the fish,” cried Fionn.
“I will not eat a piece of its skin that is as small
as the point of its smallest bone,” said the resolute and
trembling bard. “Let you now eat up the fish, and I shall
watch you and give praise to the gods of the Underworld and of
the Elements.”
Fionn then ate the Salmon of Knowledge, and when it
had disappeared a great jollity and tranquillity and exuberance
returned to the poet.
“Ah,” said he, “I had a great combat with
that fish.”
“Did it fight for its life?” Fionn inquired.
“It did, but that was not the fight I meant.”
“You shall eat a Salmon of Knowledge too,” Fionn
assured him.
“You have eaten one,” cried the blithe poet, “and
if you make such a promise it will be because you know.”
“I promise it and know it,” said Fionn, “you
shall eat a Salmon of Knowledge yet.”
CHAPTER
XI
He had received all that he could get from Finegas.
His education was finished and the time had come to test it, and
to try all else that he had of mind and body. He bade farewell
to the gentle poet, and set out for Tara of the Kings.
It was Samhain-tide, and the feast of Tara was being
held, at which all that was wise or skilful or well-born in Ireland
were gathered together.
This is how Tara was when Tara was. There was the
High King’s palace with its fortification; without it was
another fortification enclosing the four minor palaces, each of
which was maintained by one of the four provincial kings; without
that again was the great banqueting hall, and around it and enclosing
all of the sacred hill in its gigantic bound ran the main outer
ramparts of Tara. From it, the centre of Ireland, four great roads
went, north, south, east, and west, and along these roads, from
the top and the bottom and the two sides of Ireland, there moved
for weeks before Samhain an endless stream of passengers.
Here a gay band went carrying rich treasure to decorate
the pavilion of a Munster lord. On another road a vat of seasoned
yew, monstrous as a house on wheels and drawn by an hundred laborious
oxen, came bumping and joggling the ale that thirsty Connaught
princes would drink. On a road again the learned men of Leinster,
each with an idea in his head that would discomfit a northern
ollav and make a southern one gape and fidget, would be marching
solemnly, each by a horse that was piled high on the back and
widely at the sides with clean-peeled willow or oaken wands, that
were carved from the top to the bottom with the ogham signs; the
first lines of poems (for it was an offence against wisdom to
commit more than initial lines to writing), the names and dates
of kings, the procession of laws of Tara and of the sub-kingdoms,
the names of places and their meanings. On the brown stallion
ambling peacefully yonder there might go the warring of the gods
for two or ten thousand years; this mare with the dainty pace
and the vicious eye might be sidling under a load of oaken odes
in honour of her owner’s family, with a few bundles of tales
of wonder added in case they might be useful; and perhaps the
restive piebald was backing the history of Ireland into a ditch.
On such a journey all people spoke together, for all
were friends, and no person regarded the weapon in another man’s
hand other than as an implement to poke a reluctant cow with,
or to pacify with loud wallops some hoof-proud colt.
Into this teem and profusion of jolly humanity Fionn
slipped, and if his mood had been as bellicose as a wounded boar
he would yet have found no man to quarrel with, and if his eye
had been as sharp as a jealous husband’s he would have found
no eye to meet it with calculation or menace or fear; for the
Peace of Ireland was in being, and for six weeks man was neighbour
to man, and the nation was the guest of the High King. Fionn went
in with the notables.
His arrival had been timed for the opening day and
the great feast of welcome. He may have marvelled, looking on
the bright city, with its pillars of gleaming bronze and the roofs
that were painted in many colours, so that each house seemed to
be covered by the spreading wings of some gigantic and gorgeous
bird. And the palaces themselves, mellow with red oak, polished
within and without by the wear and the care of a thousand years,
and carved with the patient skill of unending generations of the
most famous artists of the most artistic country of the western
world, would have given him much to marvel at also. It must have
seemed like a city of dream, a city to catch the heart, when,
coming over the great plain, Fionn saw Tara of the Kings held
on its hill as in a hand to gather all the gold of the falling
sun, and to restore a brightness as mellow and tender as that
universal largess.
In the great banqueting hall everything was in order
for the feast. The nobles of Ireland with their winsome consorts,
the learned and artistic professions represented by the pick of
their time were in place. The Ard-Ri, Corm of the Hundred Battles,
had taken his place on the raised dais which commanded the whole
of that vast hall. At his Right hand his son Art, to be afterwards
as famous as his famous father, took his seat, and on his left
Goll mor mac Morna, chief of the Fianna of Ireland, had the seat
of honour. As the High King took his place he could see every
person who was noted in the land for any reason. He would know
every one who was present, for the fame of all men is sealed at
Tara, and behind his chair a herald stood to tell anything the
king might not know or had forgotten.
Conn gave the signal and his guests seated themselves.
The time had come for the squires to take their stations
behind their masters and mistresses. But, for the moment, the
great room was seated, and the doors were held to allow a moment
of respect to pass before the servers and squires came in.
Looking over his guests, Conn observed that a young
man was yet standing.
“There is a gentleman,” he murmured, “for
whom no seat has been found.”
We may be sure that the Master of the Banquet blushed
at that.
“And,” the king continued, “I do not seem
to know the young man.”
Nor did his herald, nor did the unfortunate Master,
nor did anybody; for the eyes of all were now turned where the
king’s went.
“Give me my horn,” said the gracious monarch.
The horn of state was put to his hand.
“Young gentleman,” he called to the stranger,
“I wish to drink to your health and to welcome you to Tara.”
The young man came forward then, greater-shouldered
than any mighty man of that gathering, longer and cleaner limbed,
with his fair curls dancing about his beardless face. The king
put the great horn into his hand.
“Tell me your name,” he commanded gently.
“I am Fionn, the son of Uail, the son of Baiscne,”
said the youth.
And at that saying a touch as of lightning went through
the gathering so that each person quivered, and the son of the
great, murdered captain looked by the king’s shoulder into
the twinkling eye of Goll. But no word was uttered, no movement
made except the movement and the utterance of the Ard-Ri’.
“You are the son of a friend,” said the great-hearted
monarch. “You shall have the seat of a friend.”
He placed Fionn at the right hand of his own son Art.
CHAPTER
XII
It is to be known that on the night of the Feast of
Samhain the doors separating this world and the next one are opened,
and the inhabitants of either world can leave their respective
spheres and appear in the world of the other beings.
Now there was a grandson to the Dagda Mor, the Lord
of the Underworld, and he was named Aillen mac Midna, out of Shi’
Finnachy, and this Aillen bore an implacable enmity to Tara and
the Ard-Ri’.
As well as being monarch of Ireland her High King
was chief of the people learned in magic, and it is possible that
at some time Conn had adventured into Tir na n-Og, the Land of
the Young, and had done some deed or misdeed in Aillen’s
lordship or in his family. It must have been an ill deed in truth,
for it was in a very rage of revenge that Aillen came yearly at
the permitted time to ravage Tara.
Nine times he had come on this mission of revenge,
but it is not to be supposed that he could actually destroy the
holy city: the Ard-Ri’ and magicians could prevent that,
but he could yet do a damage so considerable that it was worth
Conn’s while to take special extra precautions against him,
including the precaution of chance.
Therefore, when the feast was over and the banquet
had commenced, the Hundred Fighter stood from his throne and looked
over his assembled people.
The Chain of Silence was shaken by the attendant whose
duty and honour was the Silver Chain, and at that delicate chime
the halt went silent, and a general wonder ensued as to what matter
the High King would submit to his people.
“Friends and heroes,” said Conn, “Aillen,
the son of Midna, will come to-night from Slieve Fuaid with occult,
terrible fire against our city. Is there among you one who loves
Tara and the king, and who will undertake our defence against
that being?”
He spoke in silence, and when he had finished he listened
to the same silence, but it was now deep, ominous, agonized. Each
man glanced uneasily on his neighbour and then stared at his wine-cup
or his fingers. The hearts of young men went hot for a gallant
moment and were chilled in the succeeding one, for they had all
heard of Aillen out of Shl Finnachy in the north. The lesser gentlemen
looked under their brows at the greater champions, and these peered
furtively at the greatest of all. Art og mac Morna of the Hard
Strokes fell to biting his fingers, Cona’n the Swearer and
Garra mac Morna grumbled irritably to each other and at their
neighbours, even Caelte, the son of Rona’n, looked down into
his own lap, and Goll Mor sipped at his wine without any twinkle
in his eye. A horrid embarrassment came into the great hall, and
as the High King stood in that palpitating silence his noble face
changed from kindly to grave and from that to a terrible sternness.
In another moment, to the undying shame of every person present,
he would have been compelled to lift his own challenge and declare
himself the champion of Tara for that night, but the shame that
was on the faces of his people would remain in the heart of their
king. Goll’s merry mind would help him to forget, but even
his heart would be wrung by a memory that he would not dare to
face. It was at that terrible moment that Fionn stood up.
“What,” said he, “will be given to the man
who undertakes this defence?”
“All that can be rightly asked will be royally bestowed,”
was the king’s answer.
“Who are the sureties?” said Fionn.
“The kings of Ireland, and Red Cith with his magicians.”
“I will undertake the defence,” said Fionn. And
on that, the kings and magicians who were present bound themselves
to the fulfilment of the bargain.
Fionn marched from the banqueting hall, and as he
went, all who were present of nobles and retainers and servants
acclaimed him and wished him luck. But in their hearts they were
bidding him good-bye, for all were assured that the lad was marching
to a death so unescapeable that he might already be counted as
a dead man.
It is likely that Fionn looked for help to the people
of the Shi’ themselves, for, through his mother, he belonged
to the tribes of Dana, although, on the father’s side, his
blood was well compounded with mortal clay. It may be, too, that
he knew how events would turn, for he had eaten the Salmon of
Knowledge. Yet it is not recorded that on this occasion he invoked
any magical art as he did on other adventures.
Fionn’s way of discovering whatever was happening
and hidden was always the same and is many times referred to.
A shallow, oblong dish of pure, pale gold was brought to him.
This dish was filled with clear water. Then Fionn would bend his
head and stare into the water, and as he stared he would place
his thumb in his mouth under his “Tooth of Knowledge,”
his “wisdom tooth.”
Knowledge, may it be said, is higher than magic and
is more to be sought. It is quite possible to see what is happening
and yet not know what is forward, for while seeing is believing
it does not follow that either seeing or believing is knowing.
Many a person can see a thing and believe a thing and know just
as little about it as the person who does neither. But Fionn would
see and know, or he would under-stand a decent ratio of his visions.
That he was versed in magic is true, for he was ever known as
the Knowledgeable man, and later he had two magicians in his household
named Dirim and mac-Reith to do the rough work of knowledge for
their busy master.
It was not from the Shi’, however, that assistance
came to Fionn.
CHAPTER
XIII
He marched through the successive fortifications until
he came to the outer, great wall, the boundary of the city, and
when he had passed this he was on the wide plain of Tara.
Other than himself no person was abroad, for on the
night of the Feast of Samhain none but a madman would quit the
shelter of a house even if it were on fire; for whatever disasters
might be within a house would be as nothing to the calamities
without it.
The noise of the banquet was not now audible to Fionn—it
is possible, however, that there was a shamefaced silence in the
great hall—and the lights of the city were hidden by the
successive great ramparts. The sky was over him; the earth under
him; and than these there was nothing, or there was but the darkness
and the wind.
But darkness was not a thing to terrify him, bred
in the nightness of a wood and the very fosterling of gloom; nor
could the wind afflict his ear or his heart. There was no note
in its orchestra that he had not brooded on and become, which
becoming is magic. The long-drawn moan of it; the thrilling whisper
and hush; the shrill, sweet whistle, so thin it can scarcely be
heard, and is taken more by the nerves than by the ear; the screech,
sudden as a devil’s yell and loud as ten thunders; the cry
as of one who flies with backward look to the shelter of leaves
and darkness; and the sob as of one stricken with an age-long
misery, only at times remembered, but remembered then with what
a pang! His ear knew by what successions they arrived, and by
what stages they grew and diminished. Listening in the dark to
the bundle of noises which make a noise he could disentangle them
and assign a place and a reason to each gradation of sound that
formed the chorus: there was the patter of a rabbit, and there
the scurrying of a hare; a bush rustled yonder, but that brief
rustle was a bird; that pressure was a wolf, and this hesitation
a fox; the scraping yonder was but a rough leaf against bark,
and the scratching beyond it was a ferret’s claw.
Fear cannot be where knowledge is, and Fionn was not
fearful.
His mind, quietly busy on all sides, picked up one
sound and dwelt on it. “A man,” said Fionn, and he listened
in that direction, back towards the city.
A man it was, almost as skilled in darkness as Fionn
himself “This is no enemy,” Fionn thought; “his
walking is open.”
“Who comes?” he called.
“A friend,” said the newcomer.
“Give a friend’s name,” said Fionn.
“Fiacuil mac Cona,” was the answer.
“Ah, my pulse and heart!” cried Fionn, and he
strode a few paces to meet the great robber who had fostered him
among the marshes.
“So you are not afraid,” he said joyfully.
“I am afraid in good truth,” Fiacuil whispered,
“and the minute my business with you is finished I will trot
back as quick as legs will carry me. May the gods protect my going
as they protected my coming,” said the robber piously.
“Amen,” said Fionn, “and now, tell me what
you have come for?”
“Have you any plan against this lord of the Shl?”
Fiacuil whispered.
“I will attack him,” said Fionn.
“That is not a plan,” the other groaned, “we
do not plan to deliver an attack but to win a victory.”
“Is this a very terrible person?” Fionn asked.
“Terrible indeed. No one can get near him or away from
him. He comes out of the Shi’ playing sweet, low music on
a timpan and a pipe, and all who hear this music fall asleep.”
“I will not fall asleep,” said Fionn.
“You will indeed, for everybody does.”
“What happens then?” Fionn asked.
“When all are asleep Aillen mac Midna blows a dart
of fire out of his mouth, and everything that is touched by that
fire is destroyed, and he can blow his fire to an incredible distance
and to any direction.”
“You are very brave to come to help me,” Fionn
murmured, “especially when you are not able to help me at
all.”
“I can help,” Fiacuil replied, “but I must
be paid.”
“What payment?”
“A third of all you earn and a seat at your council.”
“I grant that,” said Fionn, “and now, tell
me your plan?”
“You remember my spear with the thirty rivets of Arabian
gold in its socket?”
“The one,” Fionn queried, “that had its head
wrapped in a blanket and was stuck in a bucket of water and was
chained to a wall as well—the venomous Birgha?” “That
one,” Fiacuil replied.
“It is Aillen mac Midna’s own spear,” he
continued, “and it was taken out of his Shi’ by your
father.”
“Well?” said Fionn, wondering nevertheless where
Fiacuil got the spear, but too generous to ask.
“When you hear the great man of the Shi’ coming,
take the wrappings off the head of the spear and bend your face
over it; the heat of the spear, the stench of it, all its pernicious
and acrid qualities will prevent you from going to sleep.”
“Are you sure of that?” said Fionn.
“You couldn’t go to sleep close to that stench;
nobody could,” Fiacuil replied decidedly.
He continued: “Aillen mac Midna will be off his
guard when he stops playing and begins to blow his fire; he will
think everybody is asleep; then you can deliver the attack you
were speaking of, and all good luck go with it.”
“I will give him back his spear,” said Fionn.
“Here it is,” said Fiacuil, taking the Birgha
from under his cloak. “But be as careful of it, my pulse,
be as frightened of it as you are of the man of Dana.”
“I will be frightened of nothing,” said Fionn,
“and the only person I will be sorry for is that Aillen mac
Midna, who is going to get his own spear back.”
“I will go away now,” his companion whispered,
“for it is growing darker where you would have thought there
was no more room for darkness, and there is an eerie feeling abroad
which I do not like. That man from the Shi’ may come any
minute, and if I catch one sound of his music I am done for.”
The robber went away and again Fionn was alone.
CHAPTER
XIV
He listened to the retreating footsteps until they
could be heard no more, and the one sound that came to his tense
ears was the beating of his own heart.
Even the wind had ceased, and there seemed to be nothing
in the world but the darkness and himself. In that gigantic blackness,
in that unseen quietude and vacancy, the mind could cease to be
personal to itself. It could be overwhelmed and merged in space,
so that consciousness would be transferred or dissipated, and
one might sleep standing; for the mind fears loneliness more than
all else, and will escape to the moon rather than be driven inwards
on its own being.
But Fionn was not lonely, and he was not afraid when
the son of Midna came.
A long stretch of the silent night had gone by, minute
following minute in a slow sequence, wherein as there was no change
there was no time; wherein there was no past and no future, but
a stupefying, endless present which is almost the annihilation
of consciousness. A change came then, for the clouds had also
been moving and the moon at last was sensed behind them—not
as a radiance, but as a percolation of light, a gleam that was
strained through matter after matter and was less than the very
wraith or remembrance of itself; a thing seen so narrowly, so
sparsely, that the eye could doubt if it was or was not seeing,
and might conceive that its own memory was re-creating that which
was still absent.
But Fionn’s eye was the eye of a wild creature
that spies on darkness and moves there wittingly. He saw, then,
not a thing but a movement; something that was darker than the
darkness it loomed on; not a being but a presence, and, as it
were, impending pressure. And in a little he heard the deliberate
pace of that great being.
Fionn bent to his spear and unloosed its coverings.
Then from the darkness there came another sound; a
low, sweet sound; thrillingly joyous, thrillingly low; so low
the ear could scarcely note it, so sweet the ear wished to catch
nothing else and would strive to hear it rather than all sounds
that may be heard by man: the music of another world! the unearthly,
dear melody of the Shi’! So sweet it was that the sense strained
to it, and having reached must follow drowsily in its wake, and
would merge in it, and could not return again to its own place
until that strange harmony was finished and the ear restored to
freedom.
But Fionn had taken the covering from his spear, and
with his brow pressed close to it he kept his mind and all his
senses engaged on that sizzling, murderous point.
The music ceased and Aillen hissed a fierce blue flame
from his mouth, and it was as though he hissed lightning.
Here it would seem that Fionn used magic, for spreading
out his fringed mantle he caught the flame. Rather he stopped
it, for it slid from the mantle and sped down into the earth to
the depth of twenty-six spans; from which that slope is still
called the Glen of the Mantle, and the rise on which Aillen stood
is known as the Ard of Fire.
One can imagine the surprise of Aillen mac Midna,
seeing his fire caught and quenched by an invisible hand. And
one can imagine that at this check he might be frightened, for
who would be more terrified than a magician who sees his magic
fail, and who, knowing of power, will guess at powers of which
he has no conception and may well dread.
Everything had been done by him as it should be done.
His pipe had been played and his timpan, all who heard that music
should be asleep, and yet his fire was caught in full course and
was quenched.
Aillen, with all the terrific strength of which he
was master, blew again, and the great jet of blue flame came roaring
and whistling from him and was caught and disappeared.
Panic swirled into the man from Faery; he turned from
that terrible spot and fled, not knowing what might be behind,
but dreading it as he had never before dreaded anything, and the
unknown pursued him; that terrible defence became offence and
hung to his heel as a wolf pads by the flank of a bull.
And Aillen was not in his own world! He was in the
world of men, where movement is not easy and the very air a burden.
In his own sphere, in his own element, he might have outrun Fionn,
but this was Fionn’s world, Fionn’s element, and the
flying god was not gross enough to outstrip him. Yet what a race
he gave, for it was but at the entrance to his own Shi’ that
the pursuer got close enough. Fionn put a finger into the thong
of the great spear, and at that cast night fell on Aillen mac
Midna. His eyes went black, his mind whirled and ceased, there
came nothingness where he had been, and as the Birgha whistled
into his shoulder-blades he withered away, he tumbled emptily
and was dead. Fionn took his lovely head from its shoulders and
went back through the night to Tara.
Triumphant Fionn, who had dealt death to a god, and
to whom death would be dealt, and who is now dead!
He reached the palace at sunrise.
On that morning all were astir early. They wished
to see what destruction had been wrought by the great being, but
it was young Fionn they saw and that redoubtable head swinging
by its hair. “What is your demand?” said the Ard-Ri’.
“The thing that it is right I should ask,” said Fionn:
“the command of the Fianna of Ireland.”
“Make your choice,” said Conn to Goll Mor; “you
will leave Ireland, or you will place your hand in the hand of
this champion and be his man.”
Goll could do a thing that would be hard for another
person, and he could do it so beautifully that he was not diminished
by any action.
“Here is my hand,” said Goll.
And he twinkled at the stern, young eyes that gazed
on him as he made his submission.
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