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

of the most delicate prince in this assembly. You will not evade your challenge in that way, my love, and you shall run with me or you shall run to your ship with me behind you. What length of course do you propose, dear heart?”

“I never run less than sixty miles,” Cael replied sullenly.

“It is a small run,” said the Carl, “but it will do. From this place to the Hill of the Rushes, Slieve Luachra of Munster, is exactly sixty miles. Will that suit you?”

“I don’t care how it is done,” Cael answered.

“Then,” said the Carl, “we may go off to Slieve Luachra now, and in the morning we can start our race there to here.”

“Let it be done that way,” said Cael.

These two set out then for Munster, and as the sun was setting they reached Slieve Luachra and prepared to spend the night there.

IV

“Cael, my pulse,” said the Carl, “we had better build a house or a hut to pass the night in.”

“I’ll build nothing,” Cael replied, looking on the Carl with great disfavour.

“No!”

“I won’t build house or hut for the sake of passing one night here, for I hope never to see this place again.”

“I’ll build a house myself,” said the Carl, “and the man who does not help in the building can stay outside of the house.”

The Carl stumped to a nearby wood, and he never rested until he had felled and tied together twenty-four couples of big timber. He thrust these under one arm and under the other he tucked a bundle of rushes for his bed, and with that one load he rushed up a house, well thatched and snug, and with the timber that remained over he made a bonfire on the floor of the house.

His companion sat at a distance regarding the work with rage and aversion.

“Now Cael, my darling,” said the Carl, “if you are a man help me to look for something to eat, for there is game here.”

“Help yourself,” roared Cael, “for all that I want is not to be near you.”

“The tooth that does not help gets no helping,” the other replied.

In a short time the Carl returned with a wild boar which he had run down. He cooked the beast over his bonfire and ate one half of it, leaving the other half for his breakfast. Then he lay down on the rushes, and in two turns he fell asleep.

But Cael lay out on the side of the hill, and if he went to sleep that night he slept fasting.

It was he, however, who awakened the Carl in the morning.

“Get up, beggarman, if you are going to run against me.”

The Carl rubbed his eyes.

“I never get up until I have had my fill of sleep, and there is another hour of it due to me. But if you are in a hurry, my delight, you can start running now with a blessing. I will trot on your track when I waken up.”

Cael began to race then, and he was glad of the start, for his antagonist made so little account of him that he did not know what to expect when the Carl would begin to run.

“Yet,” said Cael to himself, “with an hour’s start the beggarman will have to move his bones if he wants to catch on me,” and he settled down to a good, pelting race.

V

At the end of an hour the Carl awoke. He ate the second half of the boar, and he tied the unpicked bones in the tail of his coat. Then with a great rattling of the boar’s bones he started.

It is hard to tell how he ran or at what speed he ran, but he went forward in great two-legged jumps, and at times he moved in immense one-legged, mud-spattering hops, and at times again, with wide-stretched, far-flung, terrible-tramping, space-destroying legs he ran.

He left the swallows behind as if they were asleep. He caught up on a red deer, jumped over it, and left it standing. The wind was always behind him, for he outran it every time; and he caught up in jumps and bounces on Cael of the Iron, although Cael was running well, with his fists up and his head back and his two legs flying in and out so vigorously that you could not see them because of that speedy movement.

Trotting by the side of Cael, the Carl thrust a hand into the tail of his coat and pulled out a fistfull of red bones.

“Here, my heart, is a meaty bone,” said he, “for you fasted all night, poor friend, and if you pick a bit off the bone your stomach will get a rest.”

“Keep your filth, beggarman,” the other replied, “for I would rather be hanged than gnaw on a bone that you have browsed.”

“Why don’t you run, my pulse?” said the Carl earnestly; “why don’t you try to win the race?”

Cael then began to move his limbs as if they were the wings of a fly, or the fins of a little fish, or as if they were the six legs of a terrified spider.

“I am running,” he gasped.

“But try and run like this,” the Carl admonished, and he gave a wriggling bound and a sudden outstretching and scurrying of shanks, and he disappeared from Cael’s sight in one wild spatter of big boots.

Despair fell on Cael of the Iron, but he had a great heart.

“I will run until I burst,” he shrieked, “and when I burst, may I burst to a great distance, and may I trip that beggar-man up with my burstings and make him break his leg.”

He settled then to a determined, savage, implacable trot.

He caught up on the Carl at last, for the latter had stopped to eat blackberries from the bushes on the road, and when he drew nigh, Cael began to jeer and sneer angrily at the Carl.

“Who lost the tails of his coat?” he roared.

“Don’t ask riddles