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

these; it was not a yowl nor a groan, although it was both of these: for it was one sound made up of these sounds, and there was in it, too, a whine and a yelp, and a long-drawn snoring noise, and a deep purring noise, and a noise that was like the squeal of a rusty hinge, and there were other noises in it also.

“The gods be praised!” said the man who was in the branch above the king.

“What for this time?” said the king.

“Because that dog cannot climb a tree,” said the man.

And the man on a branch yet above him groaned out “Amen!”

“There is nothing to frighten sheep like a dog,” said Manannán, “and there is nothing to frighten these sheep like this dog.”

He put the dog on the ground then.

“Little dogeen, little treasure,” said he, “go and kill the sheep.”

And when he said that the dog put an addition and an addendum on to the noise he had been making before, so that the men of Ireland stuck their fingers into their ears and turned the whites of their eyes upwards, and nearly fell off their branches with the fear and the fright which that sound put into them.

It did not take the dog long to do what he had been ordered. He went forward, at first, with a slow waddle, and as the venomous sheep came to meet him in bounces, he then went to meet them in wriggles; so that in a while he went so fast that you could see nothing of him but a head and a wriggle. He dealt with the sheep in this way, a jump and a chop for each, and he never missed his jump and he never missed his chop. When he got his grip he swung round on it as if it was a hinge. The swing began with the chop, and it ended with the bit loose and the sheep giving its last kick. At the end of ten minutes all the sheep were lying on the ground, and the same bit was out of every sheep, and every sheep was dead.

“You can come down now,” said Manannán.

“That dog can’t climb a tree,” said the man in the branch above the king warningly.

“Praise be to the gods!” said the man who was above him.

“Amen!” said the warrior who was higher up than that.

And the man in the next tree said:

“Don’t move a hand or a foot until the dog chokes himself to death on the dead meat.”

The dog, however, did not eat a bit of the meat. He trotted to his master, and Manannán took him up and wrapped him in his cloak.

“Now you can come down,” said he.

“I wish that dog was dead!” said the king.

But he swung himself out of the tree all the same, for he did not wish to seem frightened before Manannán.

“You can go now and beat the men of Lochlann,” said Manannán. “You will be King of Lochlann before nightfall.”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” said the king.

“It’s no threat,” said Manannán.

The son of Lir turned then and went away in the direction of Ireland to take up his one-day rights, and Fiachna continued his battle with the Lochlannachs.

He beat them before nightfall, and by that victory he became King of Lochlann and King of the Saxons and the Britons.

He gave the Black Hag seven castles with their territories, and he gave her one hundred of every sort of cattle that he had captured. She was satisfied.

Then he went back to Ireland, and after he had been there for some time his wife gave birth to a son.

VIII

“You have not told me one word about Duv Laca,” said the Flame Lady reproachfully.

“I am coming to that,” replied Mongan.

He motioned towards one of the great vats, and wine was brought to him, of which he drank so joyously and so deeply that all people wondered at his thirst, his capacity, and his jovial spirits.

“Now, I will begin again.”

Said Mongan:

There was an attendant in Fiachna Finn’s palace who was called An Dáv, and the same night that Fiachna’s wife bore a son, the wife of An Dáv gave birth to a son also. This latter child was called mac an Dáv, but the son of Fiachna’s wife was named Mongan.

“Ah!” murmured the Flame Lady.

The queen was angry. She said it was unjust and presumptuous that the servant should get a child at the same time that she got one herself, but there was no help for it, because the child was there and could not be obliterated.

Now this also must be told.

There was a neighbouring prince called Fiachna Duv, and he was the ruler of the Dal Fiatach. For a long time he had been at enmity and spiteful warfare with Fiachna Finn; and to this Fiachna Duv there was born in the same night a daughter, and this girl was named Duv Laca of the White Hand.

“Ah!” cried the Flame Lady.

“You see!” said Mongan, and he drank anew and joyously of the fairy wine.

In order to end the trouble between Fiachna Finn and Fiachna Duv the babies were affianced to each other in the cradle on the day after they were born, and the men of Ireland rejoiced at that deed and at that news. But soon there came dismay and sorrow in the land, for when the little Mongan was three days old his real father, Manannán the son of Lir, appeared in the middle of the palace. He wrapped Mongan in his green cloak and took him away to rear and train in the Land of Promise, which is beyond the sea that is at the other side of the grave.

When Fiachna Duv heard that Mongan, who was affianced to his daughter Duv Laca, had disappeared, he considered that his compact of peace was at an end, and one day he came by surprise and attacked the palace. He killed Fiachna Finn in that battle, and