Chapter 10

‘I will search the whole world through till I find her,’ cried he, and the dark lad laughed as he heard him. But the fisher’s son took no heed, and off he went, following the sun day after day, till his shoes were in holes and his feet were sore from the journey. Nought did he see but the birds that made their nests in the trees, not so much as a goat or a rabbit. On and on and on he went, till suddenly he came upon a little house, with a woman standing outside it.

‘All hail, fisher’s son!’ said she. ‘I know what you are seeking; enter in and rest and eat, and to-morrow I will give you what help I can, and send you on your way.’

Gladly did Ian the fisher’s son accept her offer, and all that day he rested, and the woman gave him ointment to put on his feet, which healed his sores. At daybreak he got up, ready to be gone, and the woman bade him farewell, saying:

‘I have a sister who dwells on the road which you must travel. It is a long road, and it would take you a year and a day to reach it, but put on these old brown shoes with holes all over them, and you will be there before you know it. Then shake them off, and turn their toes to the known, and their heels to the unknown, and they will come home of themselves.’

The fisher’s son did as the woman told him, and everything happened just as she had said. But at parting the second sister said to him, as she gave him another pair of shoes:

‘Go to my third sister, for she has a son who is keeper of the birds of the air, and sends them to sleep when night comes. He is very wise, and perhaps he can help you.’

Then the young man thanked her, and went to the third sister.

The third sister was very kind, but had no counsel to give him, so he ate and drank and waited till her son came home, after he had sent all the birds to sleep. He thought a long while after his mother had told him the young man’s story, and at last he said that he was hungry, and the cow must be killed, as he wanted some supper. So the cow was killed and the meat cooked, and a bag made of its red skin.

‘Now get into the bag,’ bade the son, and the young man got in and took his gun with him, but the dog and the falcon he left outside. The keeper of the birds drew the string at the top of the bag, and left it to finish his supper, when in flew an eagle through the open door, and picked the bag up in her claws and carried it through the air to an island. There was nothing to eat on the island, and the fisher’s son thought he would die of food, when he remembered the box that the lady had put in his pocket. He opened the lid, and three tiny little birds flew out, and flapping their wings they asked,

‘Good master, is there anything we can do for thee?’

‘Bear me to the kingdom of the king under the waves,’ he answered, and one little bird flew on to his head, and the others perched on each of his shoulders, and he shut his eyes, and in a moment there he was in the country under the sea. Then the birds flew away, and the young man looked about him, his heart beating fast at the thought that here dwelt the lady whom he had sought all the world over.

He walked on through the streets, and presently he reached the house of a weaver who was standing at his door, resting from his work.

‘You are a stranger here, that is plain,’ said the weaver, ‘but come in, and I will give you food and drink.’ And the young man was glad, for he knew not where to go, and they sat and talked till it grew late.

‘Stay with me, I pray, for I love company and am lonely,’ observed the weaver at last, and he pointed to a bed in a corner, where the fisher’s son threw himself, and slept till dawn.

‘There is to be a horse-race in the town to-day,’ remarked the weaver, ‘and the winner is to have the king’s daughter to wife.’ The young man trembled with excitement at the news, and his voice shook as he answered:

‘That will be a prize indeed, I should like to see the race.’

‘Oh, that is quite easy--anyone can go,’ replied the weaver. ‘I would take you myself, but I have promised to weave this cloth for the king.’

‘That is a pity,’ returned the young man politely, but in his heart he rejoiced, for he wished to be alone.

Leaving the house, he entered a grove of trees which stood behind, and took the box from his pocket. He raised the lid, and out flew the three little birds.

‘Good master, what shall we do for thee?’ asked they, and he answered, ‘Bring me the finest horse that ever was seen, and the grandest dress, and glass shoes.’

‘They are here, master,’ said the birds, and so they were, and never had the young man seen anything so splendid.

Mounting the horse he rode into the ground where the horses were assembling for the great race, and took his place among them. Many good beasts were there which had won many races, but the horse of the fisher’s son left them all behind, and he was first at the winning post. The king’s daughter waited for him in vain to claim his prize, for he went back to the wood, and got off his horse, and put on his old clothes, and bade the box place some gold in his pockets. After that he went back to the weaver’s house, and told him that the gold had been given him by the man who had won the race, and that the weaver might have it for his kindness to him.

Now as nobody had appeared to demand the hand of the princess, the king ordered another race to be run, and the fisher’s son rode into the field still more splendidly dressed than he was before, and easily distanced everybody else. But again he left the prize unclaimed, and so it happened on the third day, when it seemed as if all the people in the kingdom were gathered to see the race, for they were filled with curiosity to know who the winner could be.

‘If he will not come of his own free will, he must be brought,’ said the king, and the messengers who had seen the face of the victor were sent to seek him in every street of the town. This took many days, and when at last they found the young man in the weaver’s cottage, he was so dirty and ugly and had such a strange appearance, that they declared he could not be the winner they had been searching for, but a wicked robber who had murdered ever so many people, but had always managed to escape.

‘Yes, it must be the robber,’ said the king, when the fisher’s son was led into his presence; ‘build a gallows at once and hang him in the sight of all my subjects, that they may behold him suffer the punishment of his crimes.’

So the gallows was built upon a high platform, and the fisher’s son mounted the steps up to it, and turned at the top to make the speech that was expected from every doomed man, innocent or guilt. As he spoke he happened to raise his arm, and the king’s daughter, who was there at her father’s side, saw the name which she had written under it. With a shriek she sprang from her seat, and the eyes of the spectators were turned towards her.

‘Stop! stop!’ she cried, hardly knowing what she said. ‘If that man is hanged there is not a soul in the kingdom but shall die also.’ And running up to where the fisher’s son was standing, she took him by the hand, saying,

‘Father, this is no robber or murderer, but the victor in the three races, and he loosed the spells that were laid upon me.’

Then, without waiting for a reply, she conducted him into the palace, and he bathed in a marble bath, and all the dirt that the fairies had put upon him disappeared like magic, and when he had dressed himself in the fine garments the princess had sent to him, he looked a match for any king’s daughter in Erin. He went down into the great hall where she was awaiting him, and they had much to tell each other but little time to tell it in, for the king her father, and the princes who were visiting him, and all the people of the kingdom were still in their places expecting her return.

‘How did you find me out?’ she whispered as they went down the passage.

‘The birds in the box told me,’ answered he, but he could say no more, as they stepped out into the open space that was crowded with people. There the princes stopped.

‘O kings!’ she said, turning towards them, ‘if one of you were killed to-day, the rest would fly; but this man put his trust in me, and had his head cut off three times. Because he has done this, I will marry him rather than one of you, who have come hither to wed me, for many kings here sought to free me from the spells, but none could do it save Ian the fisher’s son.’

From ‘Popular Tales of the West Highlands.’

A Fish Story

Perhaps you think that fishes were always fishes, and never lived anywhere except in the water, but if you went to Australia and talked to the black people in the sandy desert in the centre of the country, you would learn something quite different. They would tell you that long, long ago you would have met fishes on the land, wandering from place to place, and hunting all sorts of animals, and if you consider how fishes are made, you will understand how difficult this must have been and how clever they were to do it. Indeed, so clever were they that they might have been hunting still if a terrible thing had not happened.

One day the whole fish tribe came back very tired from a hunting expedition, and looked about for a nice, cool spot in which to pitch their camp. It was very hot, and they thought that they could not find a more comfortable place than under the branches of a large tree which grew by the bank of a river. So they made their fire to cook some food, right on the edge of a steep bank, which had a deep pool of water lying beneath it at the bottom. While the food was cooking they all stretched themselves lazily out under the tree, and were just dropping off to sleep when a big black cloud which they had never noticed spread over the sun, and heavy drops of rain began to fall, so that the fire was almost put out, and that, you know, is a very serious thing in savage countries where they have no matches, for it is very hard to light it again. To make matters worse, an icy wind began to blow, and the poor fishes were chilled right through their bodies.

‘This will never do,’ said Thuggai, the oldest of the fish tribe. ‘We shall die of cold unless we can light the fire again,’ and he bade his sons rub two sticks together in the hope of kindling a flame, but though they rubbed till they were tired, not a spark could they produce.

‘Let me try,’ cried Biernuga, the bony fish, but he had no better luck, and no more had Kumbal, the bream, nor any of the rest.

‘It is no use,’ exclaimed Thuggai, at last. ‘The wood is too wet. We must just sit and wait till the sun comes out again and dries it.’ Then a very little fish indeed, not more than four inches long and the youngest of the tribe, bowed himself before Thuggai, saying, ‘Ask my father, Guddhu the cod, to light the fire. He is skilled in magic more than most fishes.’ So Thuggai asked him, and Guddhu stripped some pieces of bark off a tree, and placed them on top of the smouldering ashes. Then he knelt by the side of the fire and blew at it for a long while, till slowly the feeble red glow became a little stronger and the edges of the bark showed signs of curling up. When the rest of the tribe saw this they pressed close, keeping their backs towards the piercing wind, but Guddhu told them they must go to the other side, as he wanted the wind to fan his fire. By and by the spark grew into a flame, and a merry crackling was heard.

‘More wood,’ cried Guddhi, and they all ran and gathered wood and heaped it on the flames, which leaped and roared and sputtered.

‘We shall soon be warm now,’ said the people one to another. ‘Truly Guddhu is great’; and they crowded round again, closer and closer. Suddenly, with a shriek, a blast of wind swept down from the hills and blew the fire out towards them. They sprang back hurriedly, quite forgetting where they stood, and all fell down the bank, each tumbling over the other, till they rolled into the pool that lay below. Oh, how cold it was in that dark water on which the sun never shone! Then in an instant they felt warm again, for the fire, driven by the strong wind, had followed them right down to the bottom of the pool, where it burned as brightly as ever. And the fishes gathered round it as they had done on the top of the cliff, and found the flames as hot as before, and that fire never went out, like those upon land, but kept burning for ever. So now you know why, if you dive deep down below the cold surface of the water on a frosty day, you will find it comfortable and pleasant underneath, and be quite sorry that you cannot stay there.

Australian Folk Tale.

The Wonderful Tune.

Maurice Connor was the king, and that’s no small word, of all the pipers in Munster. He could play jig and reel without end, and Ollistrum’s March, and the Eagle’s Whistle, and the Hen’s Concert, and odd tunes of every sort and kind. But he knew one far more surprising than the rest, which had in it the power to set everything dead or alive dancing.

In what way he learned it is beyond my knowledge for he was mighty cautious about telling how he came by so wonderful a tune. At the very first note of that tune the shoes began shaking upon the feet of all how heard it--old or young, it mattered not--just as if the shoes had the ague; then the feet began going, going, going from under them, and at last up and away with them, dancing like mad, whisking here, there, and everywhere, like a straw in a storm--there was no halting while the music lasted.

Not a fair, nor a wedding, nor a feast in the seven parishes round, was counted worth the speaking of without ‘blind Maurice and his pipes.’ His mother, poor woman, used to lead him about from one place to another just like a dog.

Down through Iveragh, Maurice Connor and his mother were taking their rounds. Beyond all other places Iveragh is the place for stormy coasts and steep mountains, as proper a spot it is as any in Ireland to get yourself drowned, or your neck broken on the land, should you prefer that. But, notwithstanding, in Ballinskellig Bay there is a neat bit of ground, well fitted for diversion, and down from it, towards the water, is a clean smooth piece of strand, the dead image of a calm summer’s sea on a moonlight night, with just the curl of the small waves upon it.

Here is was that Maurice’s music had brought from all parts a great gathering of the young men and the young women; for ‘twas not every day the strand of Trafraska was stirred up by the voice of a bagpipe. The dance began; and as pretty a dance it was as ever was danced. ‘Brave music,’ said everybody, ‘and well done,’ when Maurice stopped.

‘More power to your elbow, Maurice, and a fair wind in the bellows,’ cried Paddy Dorman, a hump-backed dancing master, who was there to keep order. ‘’Tis a pity,’ said he, ‘if we’d let the piper run dry after such music; ‘twould be a disgrace to Iveragh, that didn’t come on it since the week of the three Sundays.’ So, as well became him, for he was always a decent man, says he, ‘Did you drink, piper?’

‘I will, sir,’ said Maurice, answering the question on the safe side, for you never yet knew piper or schoolmaster who refused his drink.

‘What will you drink, Maurice?’ says Paddy.

‘I’m no ways particular,’ says Maurice; ‘I drink anything, barring raw water; but if it’s all the same to you, Mister Dorman, may be you wouldn’t lend me the loan of a glass of whisky.’

‘I’ve no glass, Maurice,’ said Paddy; ‘I’ve only the bottle.’

‘Let that be no hindrance,’ answered Maurice; ‘my mouth just holds a glass to the drop; often I’ve tried it sure.’

So Paddy Dorman trusted him with the bottle--more fool was he; and, to his cost, he found that though Maurice’s mouth might not hold more than the glass at one time, yet, owing to the hole in his throat, it took many a filling.

‘That was no bad whisky neither,’ says Maurice, handing back the empty bottle.

‘By the holy frost, then!’ says Paddy, ‘’tis but cold comfort there’s in that bottle now; and ‘tis your word we must take for the strength of the whisky, for you’ve left us no sample to judge by’; and to be sure Maurice had not.

Now I need not tell any gentleman or lady that if he or she was to drink an honest bottle of whisky at one pull, it is not at all the same thing as drinking a bottle of water; and in the whole course of my life I never knew more than five men who could do so without being the worse. Of these Maurice Connor was not one, though he had a stiff head enough of his own. Don’t think I blame him for it; but true is the word that says, ‘When liquor’s in sense is out’; and puff, at a breath, out he blasted his wonderful tune.

‘Twas really then beyond all belief or telling the dancing. Maurice himself could not keep quiet; staggering now on one leg, now on the other, and rolling about like a ship in a cross sea, trying to humour the tune. There was his mother, too, moving her old bones as light as the youngest girl of them all; but her dancing, no, nor the dancing of all the rest, is not worthy the speaking about to the work that was going on down upon the strand. Every inch of it covered with all manner of fish jumping and plunging about to the music, and every moment more and more would tumble in and out of the water, charmed by the wonderful tune. Crabs of monstrous size spun round and round on one claw with the nimbleness of a dancing master, and twirled and tossed their other claws about like limbs that did not belong to them. It was a sight surprising to behold. But perhaps you may have heard of Father Florence Conry, as pleasant a man as one would wish to drink with of a hot summer’s day; and he had rhymed out all about the dancing fishes so neatly that it would be a thousand pities not to give you his verses; so here they are in English:

The big seals in motion, Like waves of the ocean, Or gouty feet prancing, Came heading the gay fish, Crabs, lobsters, and cray-fish, Determined on dancing.

The sweet sounds they followed, The gasping cod swallow’d-- ‘Twas wonderful, really; And turbot and flounder, ‘Mid fish that were rounder, Just caper’d as gaily.

John-dories came tripping; Dull hake, by their skipping, To frisk it seem’d given; Bright mackrel went springing, Like small rainbows winging Their flight up to heaven.

The whiting and haddock Left salt water paddock This dance to be put in; Where skate with flat faces Edged out some old plaices; But soles kept their footing.

Sprats and herrings in powers Of silvery showers All number out-numbered; And great ling so lengthy Was there in such plenty The shore was encumber’d.

The scallop and oyster Their two shells did roister, Like castanets flitting; While limpets moved clearly, And rocks very nearly With laughter were splitting.

Never was such a hullabaloo in this world, before or since; ‘twas as if heaven and earth were coming together; and all out of Maurice Connor’s wonderful tune!

In the height of all these doings, what should there be dancing among the outlandish set of fishes but a beautiful young woman--as beautiful as the dawn of day! She had a cocked hat upon her head; from under it her long green hair--just the colour of the sea--fell down behind, without hindrance to her dancing. Her teeth were like rows of pearls; her lips for all the world looked like red coral; and she had a shining gown pale green as the hollow of the wave, with little rows of purple and red seaweeds settled out upon it; for you never yet saw a lady, under the water or over the water, who had not a good notion of dressing herself out.

Up she danced at last to Maurice, who was flinging his feet from under him as fast as hops--for nothing in this world could keep still while that tune of his was going on--and says she to him, chanting it out with a voice as sweet as honey:

I’m a lady of honour Who live in the sea; Come down, Maurice Connor, And be married to me. Silver plates and gold dishes You shall have, and shall be The king of the fishes, When you’re married to me.

Drink was strong in Maurice’s head, and out he chanted in return for her great civility. It is not every lady, may be, that would be after making such an offer to a blind piper; therefore ‘twas only right in him to give her as good as she gave herself, so says Maurice:

I’m obliged to you, madam: Off a gold dish or plate, If a king, and I had ‘em, I could dine in great state. With your own father’s daughter I’d be sure to agree, But to drink the salt water Wouldn’t do so with me!

The lady looked at him quite amazed, and swinging her head from side to side like a great scholar, ‘Well,’ says she, ‘Maurice, if you’re not a poet, where is poetry to be found?’

In this way they kept on at it, framing high compliments; one answering the other, and their feet going with the music as fast as their tongues. All the fish kept dancing, too; Maurice heard the clatter and was afraid to stop playing lest it might be displeasing to the fish, and not knowing what so many of them may take it into their heads to do to him if they got vexed.

Well, the lady with the green hair kept on coaxing Maurice with soft speeches, till at last she over persuaded him to promise to marry her, and be king over the fishes, great and small. Maurice was well fitted to be their king, if they wanted one that could make them dance; and he surely would drink, barring the salt water, with any fish of them all.

When Maurice’s mother saw him with that unnatural thing in the form of a green-haired lady as his guide, and he and she dancing down together so lovingly to the water’s edge, through the thick of the fishes, she called out after him to stop and come back. ‘Oh, then,’ says she, ‘as if I was not widow enough before, there he is going away from me to be married to that scaly woman. And who knows but ‘tis grandmother I may be to a hake or a cod--Lord help and pity me, but ‘tis a mighty unnatural thing! And my be ‘tis boiling and eating my own grandchild I’ll be, with a bit of salt butter, and I not knowing it! Oh, Maurice, Maurice, if there’s any love or nature left in you, come back to your own ould mother, who reared you like a decent Christian!’ Then the poor woman began to cry and sob so finely that it would do anyone good to hear her.

Maurice was not long getting to the rim of the water. There he kept playing and dancing on as if nothing was the matter, and a great thundering wave coming in towards him ready to swallow him up alive; but as he could not see it, he did not fear it. His mother it was who saw it plainly through the big tears that were rolling down her cheeks; and though she saw it, and her heart was aching as much as ever mother’s heart ached for a son, she kept dancing, dancing all the time for the bare life of her. Certain it was she could not help it, for Maurice never stopped playing that wonderful tune of his.