Irish Fairy Tales - James Stephens (to read list .txt) 📗

“It is spoken like a hero,” he admitted after a moment, “and if you cannot be matched on those terms it will not be from a dearth of applicants.”

“In running alone,” Fionn continued thoughtfully, “we have a notable champion, Caelte mac Ronán.”

“This son of Ronán will not long be notable,” the stranger asserted.

“He can outstrip the red deer,” said Conán.

“He can outrun the wind,” cried Fionn.

“He will not be asked to outrun the red deer or the wind,” the stranger sneered. “He will be asked to outrun me,” he thundered. “Produce this runner, and we shall discover if he keeps as great heart in his feet as he has made you think.”

“He is not with us,” Conán lamented.

“These notable warriors are never with us when the call is made,” said the grim stranger.

“By my hand,” cried Fionn, “he shall be here in no great time, for I will fetch him myself.”

“Be it so,” said Cael.

“And during my absence,” Fionn continued, “I leave this as a compact, that you make friends with the Fianna here present, and that you observe all the conditions and ceremonies of friendship.”

Cael agreed to that.

“I will not hurt any of these people until you return,” he said.

Fionn then set out towards Tara of the Kings, for he thought Caelte mac Ronán would surely be there; “and if he is not there,” said the champion to himself, “then I shall find him at Cesh Corran of the Fianna.”

He had not gone a great distance from Ben Edair when he came to an intricate, gloomy wood, where the trees grew so thickly and the undergrowth was such a sprout and tangle that one could scarcely pass through it. He remembered that a path had once been hacked through the wood, and he sought for this. It was a deeply scooped, hollow way, and it ran or wriggled through the entire length of the wood.

Into this gloomy drain Fionn descended and made progress, but when he had penetrated deeply in the dank forest he heard a sound of thumping and squelching footsteps, and he saw coming towards him a horrible, evil-visaged being; a wild, monstrous, yellow-skinned, big-boned giant, dressed in nothing but an ill-made, mud-plastered, drab-coloured coat, which swaggled and clapped against the calves of his big bare legs. On his stamping feet there were great brogues of boots that were shaped like, but were bigger than, a boat, and each time he put a foot down it squashed and squirted a barrelful of mud from the sunk road.

Fionn had never seen the like of this vast person, and he stood gazing on him, lost in a stare of astonishment.

The great man saluted him.

“All alone, Fionn?” he cried. “How does it happen that not one Fenian of the Fianna is at the side of his captain?”

At this inquiry Fionn got back his wits.

“That is too long a story and it is too intricate and pressing to be told, also I have no time to spare now.”

“Yet tell it now,” the monstrous man insisted.

Fionn, thus pressed, told of the coming of Cael of the Iron, of the challenge the latter had issued, and that he, Fionn, was off to Tara of the Kings to find Caelte mac Ronán.

“I know that foreigner well,” the big man commented.

“Is he the champion he makes himself out to be?” Fionn inquired.

“He can do twice as much as he said he would do,” the monster replied.

“He won’t outrun Caelte mac Ronán,” Fionn asserted.

The big man jeered.

“Say that he won’t outrun a hedgehog, dear heart. This Cael will end the course by the time your Caelte begins to think of starting.”

“Then,” said Fionn, “I no longer know where to turn, or how to protect the honour of Ireland.”

“I know how to do these things,” the other man commented with a slow nod of the head.

“If you do,” Fionn pleaded, “tell it to me upon your honour.”

“I will do that,” the man replied.

“Do not look any further for the rusty-kneed, slow-trotting son of Ronán,” he continued, “but ask me to run your race, and, by this hand, I will be first at the post.”

At this the Chief began to laugh⁠—

“My good friend, you have work enough to carry the two tons of mud that are plastered on each of your coattails, to say nothing of your weighty boots.”

“By my hand,” the man cried, “there is no person in Ireland but myself can win that race. I claim a chance.”

Fionn agreed then.

“Be it so,” said he. “And now, tell me your name?”

“I am known as the Carl of the Drab Coat.”

“All names are names,” Fionn responded, “and that also is a name.”

They returned then to Ben Edair.

When they came among the host the men of Ireland gathered about the vast stranger; and there were some who hid their faces in their mantles so that they should not be seen to laugh, and there were some who rolled along the ground in merriment, and there were others who could only hold their mouths open and crook their knees and hang their arms and stare dumbfoundedly upon the stranger, as though they were utterly dazed.

Cael of the Iron came also on the scene, and he examined the stranger with close and particular attention.

“What in the name of the devil is this thing?” he asked of Fionn.

“Dear heart,” said Fionn, “this is the champion I am putting against you in the race.”

Cael of the Iron grew purple in the face, and he almost swallowed his tongue through wrath.

“Until the end of eternity,” he roared, “and until the very last moment of doom I will not move one foot in a race with this greasy, big-hoofed, ill-assembled resemblance of a beggarman.”

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

“Be reassured, my darling, I am no beggarman, and my quality is not more gross than is the blood