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

sister’s face got carved and twisted into hers, but it was worse in her case.

“That is the truth,” said Iaran in a voice of lamentation, and her face took on a gnarl and a writhe and a solidity of ugly woe that beat the other two and made even her father marvel.

“He cannot see us now,” Conaran replied, “but he will see us in a minute.”

“Won’t Fionn be glad when he sees us!” said the three sisters.

And then they joined hands and danced joyfully around their father, and they sang a song, the first line of which is:

“Fionn thinks he is safe. But who knows when the sky will fall?”

Lots of the people in the Shí learned that song by heart, and they applied it to every kind of circumstance.

III

By his arts Conaran changed the sight of Fionn’s eyes, and he did the same for Conán.

In a few minutes Fionn stood up from his place on the mound. Everything was about him as before, and he did not know that he had gone into Faery. He walked for a minute up and down the hillock. Then, as by chance, he stepped down the sloping end of the mound and stood with his mouth open, staring. He cried out:

“Come down here, Conán, my darling.”

Conán stepped down to him.

“Am I dreaming?” Fionn demanded, and he stretched out his finger before him.

“If you are dreaming,” said Conán, “I’m dreaming too. They weren’t here a minute ago,” he stammered.

Fionn looked up at the sky and found that it was still there. He stared to one side and saw the trees of Kyle Conor waving in the distance. He bent his ear to the wind and heard the shouting of hunters, the yapping of dogs, and the clear whistles, which told how the hunt was going.

“Well!” said Fionn to himself.

“By my hand!” quoth Conán to his own soul.

And the two men stared into the hillside as though what they were looking at was too wonderful to be looked away from.

“Who are they?” said Fionn.

“What are they?” Conán gasped.

And they stared again.

For there was a great hole like a doorway in the side of the mound, and in that doorway the daughters of Conaran sat spinning. They had three crooked sticks of holly set up before the cave, and they were reeling yarn off these. But it was enchantment they were weaving.

“One could not call them handsome,” said Conán.

“One could,” Fionn replied, “but it would not be true.”

“I cannot see them properly,” Fionn complained. “They are hiding behind the holly.”

“I would be contented if I could not see them at all,” his companion grumbled.

But the Chief insisted.

“I want to make sure that it is whiskers they are wearing.”

“Let them wear whiskers or not wear them,” Conán counselled. “But let us have nothing to do with them.”

“One must not be frightened of anything,” Fionn stated.

“I am not frightened,” Conán explained. “I only want to keep my good opinion of women, and if the three yonder are women, then I feel sure I shall begin to dislike females from this minute out.”

“Come on, my love,” said Fionn, “for I must find out if these whiskers are true.”

He strode resolutely into the cave. He pushed the branches of holly aside and marched up to Conaran’s daughters, with Conán behind him.

IV

The instant they passed the holly a strange weakness came over the heroes. Their fists seemed to grow heavy as lead, and went dingle-dangle at the ends of their arms; their legs became as light as straws and began to bend in and out; their necks became too delicate to hold anything up, so that their heads wibbled and wobbled from side to side.

“What’s wrong at all?” said Conán, as he tumbled to the ground.

“Everything is,” Fionn replied, and he tumbled beside him.

The three sisters then tied the heroes with every kind of loop and twist and knot that could be thought of.

“Those are whiskers!” said Fionn.

“Alas!” said Conán.

“What a place you must hunt whiskers in!” he mumbled savagely. “Who wants whiskers?” he groaned.

But Fionn was thinking of other things.

“If there was any way of warning the Fianna not to come here,” Fionn murmured.

“There is no way, my darling,” said Caevóg, and she smiled a smile that would have killed Fionn, only that he shut his eyes in time.

After a moment he murmured again:

“Conán, my dear love, give the warning whistle so that the Fianna will keep out of this place.”

A little whoof, like the sound that would be made by a baby and it asleep, came from Conán.

“Fionn,” said he, “there isn’t a whistle in me. We are done for,” said he.

“You are done for, indeed,” said Cuillen, and she smiled a hairy and twisty and fangy smile that almost finished Conán.

By that time some of the Fianna had returned to the mound to see why Bran and Sceólan were barking so outrageously. They saw the cave and went into it, but no sooner had they passed the holly branches than their strength went from them, and they were seized and bound by the vicious hags. Little by little all the members of the Fianna returned to the hill, and each of them was drawn into the cave, and each was bound by the sisters.

Oisín and Oscar and mac Lugac came, with the nobles of clann-Baiscne, and with those of clann-Corcoran and clann-Smól; they all came, and they were all bound.

It was a wonderful sight and a great deed this binding of the Fianna, and the three sisters laughed with a joy that was terrible to hear and was almost death to see. As the men were captured they were carried by the hags into dark mysterious holes and black perplexing labyrinths.

“Here is another one,” cried Caevóg as she bundled a trussed champion along.

“This one is fat,” said Cuillen, and she rolled a bulky Fenian along like a wheel.

“Here,” said Iaran, “is a love of a man. One could eat