Part 30

In the battle of the next day, the King of Norway was chief; and there was never such destruction of men in Erin before as on that day. This king had a venomous shield with red flames, and if it were put under the sea not one of its flames would stop blazing, and the king himself was not hotter from any of them. When he had the shield on his arm no man could come near him; and he went against the Fenians with only a sword. Not to use weapon had he come, but to let the poison of his shield fly among them. The balls of fire that he sent from the shield went through the bodies of men, so that each blazed up like a splinter of oak which had hung a whole year in the smoke of a chimney, and whoever touched the burning man, blazed up as well as he; and small was every evil that came into Erin before, when compared with that evil.

“Lift up your hands,” said Fin, “and give three shouts of blessing to the man who will put some delay on that foreigner.”

A smile came on the king’s face when he heard the shouts that Fin’s men were giving. It was then that the Chief of the Fenians of Ulster came near; and he had a venomous spear, the Crodearg. He looked at the King of Norway, and saw nothing of him without armor, save his mouth, and that open wide in laughter at the Fenians. He made a cast of his venomous spear, which entered the king’s mouth, and went out through his neck. The shield fell, and its blazing was quenched with the life of its master. The chief cut the head off the king, and made boast of the deed; and his help was the best that the Fenians received from any man of their own men. Many were the deeds of that day; and but few of the forces of the High King went back to their ships in the evening.

On the following day, the foreigners came in thousands; for the High King had resolved to put an end to the struggle. Conan Maol, who never spoke well of any man, had a power which he knew not himself, and which no one in Erin knew except Fin. When Conan looked through his fingers at any man, that man fell dead the next instant.

Fin never told Conan of this, and never told any one; for he knew that Conan would kill all the Fenians when he got vexed if he knew his own power. When the foreigners landed, Fin sent a party of men with Conan to a suitable place, so that when the enemy were attacking, these men would look with Conan through their fingers at the enemy, and pray for assistance against them.

When Conan and his men looked through their fingers, the enemy fell dead in great numbers, and no one knew that it was Conan’s look alone, without prayers or assistance from others, that slew them.

Conan and his company stood there all day, looking through their fingers and praying, whenever a new face made its way from the harbor.

The struggle lasted day after day, till his men spoke to the High King and said to him, “We can never conquer unless you meet Fin in single combat.”

The king challenged Fin to meet him on the third day. Fin accepted, though he was greatly in dread; for he knew that the trunk of the High King’s body was formed of one bone, and that no sword in the world could cut it but the king’s own sword, which was kept in the Eastern World by his grandsire, the King of the Land of the White Men. That old king had seven chambers in a part of his castle, one inside the other. On the door of the outer chamber was one lock, on the second two, and so on to the door of the seventh and innermost chamber, which had seven locks, and in that chamber the sword and shield of the High King were kept. In the service of Daire Donn was a champion, a great wizard, who wished ill to the High King. This man went to Fin, and said, “I will bring you the sword and shield from the Eastern World.”

“Good will be my reward to you,” said Fin, “if you bring them in time.”

Away went the man in a cloud of enchantment, and soon stood before the old king. “Your grandson,” said he, “is to fight with Fin MacCool, and has sent me for his weapons.”

The old king had the sword and shield brought quickly, and gave them. The man hurried back to Erin, and gave the weapons to Fin on the eve of the battle.

Next morning, the High King came to the strand full of confidence. Believing himself safe, he thought he could kill Fin MacCool easily; but when he stood in front of the chief of the Fenians, and saw his own venomous sword unsheathed in the hand of his enemy, and knew that death was fated him from that blade, his face left him for a moment, and his fingers were unsteady.

He rallied, and thinking to win by surprise, rushed suddenly, fiercely and mightily, to combat. One of Fin’s men sprang out, and dealt a great blow with a broadaxe; it laid open the helmet, cut some of the hair of the High King, but touched not the skin of his body. The High King with one blow made two parts of the Fenian, and, rushing at Fin, cut a slice from his shield, and a strip of flesh from his thigh. Fin gave one blow then in answer, which made two equal parts of the king, so that one eye, one ear, one arm, and one leg of him dropped on one side, and the other eye, ear, arm, and leg went to the other side.

Now, the hosts of the High King, and the Fenians of Erin, fought till there was no man standing in the field except one. He raised the body of the High King, and said, “It was bad for us, O Fenians of Erin, but worse for you; I go home in health, and ye have fallen side by side. I will come again soon, and take all Erin.”

“Sad am I,” said Fin, as he lay on the field, “that I did not find death before I heard these words from the mouth of a foreigner, and he going into the Great World with tidings. Is there any man alive near me?”

“I am,” said Fergus Finbel; “and there is no warrior who is not lying in his blood save the chief man of the High King and your own foster-son, Caol.”

“Go to seek my foster-son,” said Fin.

Fergus went to Caol, and asked him how his health was. “If my battle-harness were loosened, my body would fall asunder from wounds; but more grieved am I at the escape of the foreigner with tidings than at my own woful state. Take me to the sea, Fergus, that I may swim after the foreigner; perhaps he will fall by this hand before the life leaves me.”

Fergus took him to the sea; and he swam to the ship. The foreigner thought him one of his own men, and reached down to raise him to the ship-board; but Caol grasped the man firmly and drew him to the water. Both sank in the clear, cold sea, and were drowned.

No man saw the foreigner afterward; but Caol’s body was carried by the waves, borne northward, and past the islands, till it came to land, at the port which is now called Caoil Cuan (Caol’s Harbor).

FOOTNOTES

[1] This Winishuyat is represented as no larger than a man’s thumb, and confined under the hair on the top of the head, the hair being tied over him. He is foresight itself. _Winis_ means “he sees,” what _huyat_ means I have not discovered yet.

[2] _Sprisawn_, in Gaelic _spriosan_, a small twig, and, figuratively, a poor little creature, a sorry little fellow.

[3] Pronounced Shawn,—John.

[4] This is the high point, “the size of a pig’s back,” which the sailor saw from the topmast.

[5] Fin’s wisdom came in each case from chewing his thumb, which he pressed once on the Salmon of Knowledge. An account of this is given in a tale in my “Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland,” p. 211.

NOTES.

The tales in this volume were told me by the following persons:—

Nos. 1, 5, 18, 21. Maurice Lynch, Mount Eagle, West of Dingle, Kerry.

Nos. 2, 11, 24. John Malone, Rahonain, West of Dingle.

Nos. 3, 15. Shea, Kil Vicadowny, West of Dingle.

No. 4. Thomas Brady, Teelin, County Donegal.

No. 6. Maurice Fitzgerald, Emilich Slat, West of Dingle.

Nos. 7, 9, 12, 17. John O’Brien, Connemara.

No. 8. James Byrne, Glen Columkil, County Donegal.

Nos. 10, 14. Colman Gorm, Connemara.

No. 13. Michael Curran, Gortahork, County Donegal.

No. 16. Michael O’Conor, six miles north of Newcastle West, County Limerick.

Nos. 19, 20. Michael Sullivan, Dingle.

No. 22. Dyeermud Duvane, Milltown, County Kerry.

No. 23. Daniel Sheehy, Dunquin, Kerry, a man over a hundred years old.

_Elin Gow, the Swordsmith from Erin, and the Cow Glas Gainach._

_Glas Gainach._ In this name of the celebrated cow _glas_ means gray; _gainach_ is a corruption of _gaunach_, written _gamhnach_, which means a cow whose calf is a year old, that is, a cow without a calf that year, a farrow cow. _Gamhnach_ is an adjective from _gamhan_, a yearling calf.

In Donegal, _gavlen_ is used instead of _gaunach_; and the best story-teller informed me that _gavlen_ means a cow that has not had a calf for five years. He gave the terms for cows that have not had calves for one, two, three, four, and five years. These terms I wrote down; but unfortunately they are not accessible at present. The first in the series is _gaunach_, the last _gavlen_; the intervening ones I cannot recall.

_King Under the Wave_ is a personage met with frequently in Gaelic; his name is descriptive enough, and his character more or less clear in other tales.

_Cluainte_ is a place in the parish of Bally Ferriter, the westernmost district in Ireland. The site of Elin Gow’s house and forge was pointed out by the man who told the story, also the stone pillars between which the cow used to stand and scratch her two sides at once when coming home from pasture in the evening. The pillars are thirteen feet and a half apart, so that Glas Gainach had a bulky body.

Glas Gainach went away finally through the bay called Ferriter’s Cove. In Gaelic, this bay is Caoil Cuan (Caol’s harbor), so called because the body of Caol, foster-son of Fin MacCool, was washed in there after the Battle of Ventry. (See last paragraph of the Battle of Ventry.)

_Saudan Og and the Daughter of the King of Spain, &c._

_Saudan Og_ means young Sultan. This is a curious naturalization of the son of the Sultan in Ireland, a very striking example of the substitution of new heroes in old tales.

_Conal Gulban_ was the great grandfather of Columbkil, founder of Iona and apostle of Scotland; hence, he lived a good many years before any King of the Turks could be in any place. In a certain tale of three brothers which I have heard, the narrator made “two halves” of Mark Antony, the three heroes being Mark, Antony, and Lepidus.

_Laian_, written _Laighean_ in Gaelic, means Leinster; the King of Laian is King of Leinster.

_The Black Thief._

There are many variants of this tale, both in the north and south of Ireland. It seems to have been a great favorite, and is mentioned often, though few know it well.

There are versions connected with Killarney and the O’Donohue.

The adventures in the present tale are very striking. It would be difficult indeed to have narrower escapes than those of the Black Thief.

The racing of the cats through all underground Erin is paralleled in Indian tales, especially those of the Modocs, in which immense journeys are made underground.

_The King’s Son from Erin, the Sprisawn, and the Dark King._

_Lochlinn_ is used to mean Denmark, though there is no connection whatever between the names. Lochlinn is doubtless one of the old names in Gaelic tales, and referred to some kind of water region. Instead of putting the name “Denmark” in place of the name “Lochlinn,” it was said in this case that Lochlinn was Denmark. Other regions or kingdoms in the old tales lost their names: Spain, Sicily, Greece, France were put in place of them; we have lost the clew to what they were. Lochlinn has a look that invites investigation. Were all the people of Lochlinn, creatures of the water, turned by Gaelic tale-tellers into Scandinavians? Very likely.

In the stealing of Manus, we have a case similar to that of Tobit in the Apocrypha.

I know of no parallel to the scene in the three chambers with the chains and the cross-beams. It is terribly grim and merciless. There was no chance for the weak in those chambers.

The work of the serpent in drying the lake by lashing it, and sending the water in showers over the country, is equalled in an Indian tale by ducks which rise from a lake suddenly, and in such incredible numbers that they take all the water away, carry off the lake with them.

_Amadan Mor._

The boyhood of the Amadan Mor has some resemblance to that of the Russian hero, Ilyá Múromets, who sat so many years in the ashes without power to rise.

The fear of stopping in unknown places finds expression frequently in Indian tales, and arises from the fact that the visitor does not know what spirits inhabit them, and therefore does not know how to avoid offending those spirits. Eilin Og seems to have a similar idea in the dark glen.

_Cud, Cad, and Micad._

_Urhu_ is called _Nurhu_ sometimes, and appears to be the same as the old English Norroway, Norway. _Hadone_ is said to be Sicily.

_Cahal, Son of King Conor._

In this tale we have a number of elemental heroes, such as Striker and Wet Mantle. Against Striker, the great blower, no one can do anything at sea. This is the kind of hero who can walk on the water, or at least who never sinks in it much beyond his ankles. This Striker appears in another story as a giant out in the ocean, which he is beating with a club.

In Wet Mantle, whose virtue is in his cloak, which is rain itself, we have an excellent friend for a rain-maker.

_Coldfeet._

This is a good hero, an excellent herdsman and cattle-thief. What a splendid cowboy he would be in the Indian Territory or Wyoming. He has a good strain of simplicity and heroism in him. The bottle of water that is never drained, is like the basket of trout’s blood (also water) in the Indian tale of Walokit and Tumukit.

_Lawn Dyarrig, Son of the King of Erin, and the Knight of Terrible Valley._

The serpent that sleeps seven years can be matched by monsters in American tales. The hearts of these creatures are sliced away by heroes who go down their throats and find other people before them, alive, but unable to escape. Sometimes the monster is killed; sometimes it is weakened and rendered comparatively harmless. There was an Indian monster of this kind in the Columbia River, near the Dalles, and one in the Klamath River, near its mouth.

_Balor and Glas Gavlen._

This was a great tale in the old time; but it is badly broken up now. If we could discover who Balor and his daughter were really, we might, perhaps, be able to understand why his grandson was fated to kill him. The theft of Glas Gavlen is the first act in a series which ends with the death of Balor. No doubt the whole story is as natural as that of Wimaloimis, the grisly-bear cloud-woman (Introduction) who tries to eat her own sons, lightning and thunder, and is killed by them afterward.

_Art, the King’s Son._

This is a striking tale, the head following the body of the gruagach into the earth is peculiar. The pursuit of Art by Balor is as vigorous as it could be. Shall we say that the blade of the screeching sword is lightning, and the screech itself thunder?

In Balor’s account of how his wife maltreated him, we have the incident of the infant saved by the faithful animal. Balor, however, when a wolf, saved himself by prompt action from the fate of Llewelyn’s dog and that of the ichneumen in the Sanscrit tale.

There is no more interesting fact than this in myth tales, that no matter how good the hero, he must have the right weapon. Often there is only one spear or sword, or one kind of spear or sword, in the world with which a certain deed can be done. The hero must have that weapon or fail.

_Shawn Mac Breogan._

In Gaelic, we meet more frequently the cloak of darkness, a cloak of effacement. In this tale we have a cloak or mantle of power, one that makes the wearer the finest person in the world. This is like the mantle of the prophet, which, if it falls on a successor to the office, gives him power equal to that of his predecessor. Of a similar character is the garment of the Wet Mantle Hero, in Cahal, son of King Conor, whose power is in his mantle, which is rain itself.

In a certain Indian tale, two skins are described,—one the skin of a black rain cloud, the other the skin of a gray snow cloud; whenever rain is wanted, the black skin is shaken out in the air, when snow is desired, the gray one is shaken. This shaking is done by two deities in the sky (stones at present), who thus produce rain and snow _ad libitum_. The mantles of power were skins originally. When people had forgotten the special virtue of the skins, and mantles were of cloth or skin indifferently, or later on of cloth exclusively, the virtue connected with mantles by tradition remained to them without reference to material.

In Hungarian tales the food of the steed, very often a mare, is glowing coals. There are Hungarian tales in which little if any doubt is left that the steed is lightning. It was a steed of this character that carried Cahal, son of King Conor, to Striker’s castle, a place to which no ship could go.

The skin of the white mare is like the skin of Klakherrit or Pitis in the Indian tale. When the young woman puts on the skin, she becomes the white mare; when she takes it off, she is herself again.

_The Cotter’s Son and the Half Slim Champion._

Instead of a king’s son, the more usual substitute for an earlier hero, we have in this tale a cotter’s son. The scene of shaking ashes from his person by a mourner who has sat by the fire for a long time, finds a parallel in Indian stories. The Gaelic heroes, however, manage to get vastly more ashes onto themselves than the Indians. The son of the King of Lochlin in this case shakes off seven tons. In one Irish tale that I know, the hero goes out into the field after mourning long at the hearth, and shakes from his person an amount of ashes that covers seven acres in front of him, seven acres behind him, seven acres on his right hand, and seven acres on his left.

The old King of Lochlin, who has the same kind of story to tell as Balor, is a tremendously stubborn old fellow; there is a savage cruelty in the torture which his son inflicts on him that is without parallel, even in myth tales. The old man goes through the roasting with a strength which no stoic or martyr could equal. When he yields at last, he does so serenely, and tells a tale which solves the conundrum completely.

_Fin MacCool, the three Giants, and the Small Men._

The theft of the children of the King of the Big Men has an interesting parallel in an Indian tale from California, a part of which is as follows:—

There was a man named Kuril (which means rib). He didn’t seem to know much; but he could walk right through rocks, in at one side and out at the other. He walked across gullies, through thickets, and over precipices, as easily as on a smooth road. One evening people saw him coming from the west toward the village. When he had come near, the sun went down, and Kuril disappeared right before their eyes. They saw this several times afterwards. He came always just before sunset, never came quite to the village. The children used to play in the evening; and he would stop and look at them, and at sunset he would be gone, turned into something.

One evening a very poor man saw Kuril pass his thumbnail along the top of his head, and split himself, the left half of him became a woman, and the right half remained a man. That night the new pair appeared to the poor man who had seen the splitting, they said that each of them was to be called Kukupiwit now (crooked breast), and talked with him. After that the poor man had great luck, killed many deer; what he wanted, he had. The male Kukupiwit came home late every evening. His other half watched the village children playing; if one stepped aside, or left the others, she thrust it into a basket, and ran home. People looked for their children, but never found them. She would listen, climb a house where she heard a child cry, and look down the smoke-hole. One evening a little boy was crying; his mother could not stop him. At last she said, “Cry away; I’ll go to sleep.” The woman fell asleep; the boy sat crying by the hearth. Soon he saw a piece of roast venison hanging by a string over the fire. He took a piece, ate it, stopped crying, took another; the string was drawn up a little. He reached after it; the string was drawn farther. He reached higher; Kukupiwit the woman caught his hand, pulled him up, put him in her basket, and ran home.

The mother woke now; the boy was gone. She roused her husband; they looked everywhere, found no trace of their son. Next night all in the village were watching. In one house a baby cried, and soon the men who were there heard creeping on the house. One man took the baby, held it high over the fire, and said, “Take this baby!” Kukupiwit reached down; the man lowered the child a little. She reached farther; that moment five or six men caught her arm, and tried to pull her down; but all who were in the house could not do that. One man chopped her arm right off with a flint knife, and threw it out; she fell to the ground where her arm was, she picked it up, and ran home.

_The Hard Gilla._

This tale has a special interest, in that it gives the cause of the Battle of Ventry, described in the next tale. The cause, like that of the Trojan war, was a woman. The daughter of the High King of the World goes to Fin at first, and is then stolen away by him afterwards.

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's Hero-Tales of Ireland, by Jeremiah Curtin