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

it was because their arms were round each other’s necks. There were old, lusty women going by, and when these were not talking together it was because their mouths were mutually filled with apples and meat-pies. There were young warriors with mantles of green and purple and red flying behind them on the breeze, and when these were not looking disdainfully on older soldiers it was because the older soldiers happened at the moment to be looking at them. There were old warriors with yard-long beards flying behind their shoulders llke wisps of hay, and when these were not nursing a broken arm or a cracked skull, it was because they were nursing wounds in their stomachs or their legs. There were troops of young women who giggled as long as their breaths lasted and beamed when it gave out. Bands of boys who whispered mysteriously together and pointed with their fingers in every direction at once, and would suddenly begin to run like a herd of stampeded horses. There were men with carts full of roasted meats. Women with little vats full of mead, and others carrying milk and beer. Folk of both sorts with towers swaying on their heads, and they dripping with honey. Children having baskets piled with red apples, and old women who peddled shellfish and boiled lobsters. There were people who sold twenty kinds of bread, with butter thrown in. Sellers of onions and cheese, and others who supplied spare bits of armour, odd scabbards, spear handles, breastplate-laces. People who cut your hair or told your fortune or gave you a hot bath in a pot. Others who put a shoe on your horse or a piece of embroidery on your mantle; and others, again, who took stains off your sword or dyed your fingernails or sold you a hound.

It was a great and joyous gathering that was going to the feast.

Mongan and his servant sat against a grassy hedge by the roadside and watched the multitude streaming past.

Just then Mongan glanced to the right whence the people were coming. Then he pulled the hood of his cloak over his ears and over his brow.

“Alas!” said he in a deep and anguished voice.

Mac an Dáv turned to him.

“Is it a pain in your stomach, master?”

“It is not,” said Mongan.

“Well, what made you make that brutal and belching noise?”

“It was a sigh I gave,” said Mongan.

“Whatever it was,” said mac an Dáv, “what was it?”

“Look down the road on this side and tell me who is coming,” said his master.

“It is a lord with his troop.”

“It is the King of Leinster,” said Mongan.

“The man,” said mac an Dáv in a tone of great pity, “the man that took away your wife! And,” he roared in a voice of extraordinary savagery, “the man that took away my wife into the bargain, and she not in the bargain.”

“Hush,” said Mongan, for a man who heard his shout stopped to tie a sandie, or to listen.

“Master,” said mac an Dáv as the troop drew abreast and moved past.

“What is it, my good friend?”

“Let me throw a little small piece of a rock at the King of Leinster.”

“I will not.”

“A little bit only, a small bit about twice the size of my head.”

“I will not let you,” said Mongan.

When the king had gone by mac an Dáv groaned a deep and dejected groan.

“Ocón!” said he. “Ocón-ío-go-deó!” said he.

The man who had tied his sandal said then:

“Are you in pain, honest man?”

“I am not in pain,” said mac an Dáv.

“Well, what was it that knocked a howl out of you like the yelp of a sick dog, honest man?”

“Go away,” said mac an Dáv, “go away, you flat-faced, nosey person.”

“There is no politeness left in this country,” said the stranger, and he went away to a certain distance, and from thence he threw a stone at mac an Dáv’s nose, and hit it.

XV

The road was now not so crowded as it had been. Minutes would pass and only a few travellers would come, and minutes more would go when nobody was in sight at all.

Then two men came down the road: they were clerics.

“I never saw that kind of uniform before,” said mac an Dáv.

“Even if you didn’t,” said Mongan, “there are plenty of them about. They are men that don’t believe in our gods,” said he.

“Do they not, indeed?” said mac an Dáv. “The rascals!” said he. “What, what would Manannán say to that?”

“The one in front carrying the big book is Tibraidè. He is the priest of Cell Camain, and he is the chief of those two.”

“Indeed, and indeed!” said mac an Dáv. “The one behind must be his servant, for he has a load on his back.”

The priests were reading their offices, and mac an Dáv marvelled at that.

“What is it they are doing?” said he.

“They are reading.”

“Indeed, and indeed they are,” said mac an Dáv. “I can’t make out a word of the language except that the man behind says amen, amen, every time the man in front puts a grunt out of him. And they don’t like our gods at all!” said mac an Dáv.

“They do not,” said Mongan.

“Play a trick on them, master,” said mac an Dáv.

Mongan agreed to play a trick on the priests.

He looked at them hard for a minute, and then he waved his hand at them.

The two priests stopped, and they stared straight in front of them, and then they looked at each other, and then they looked at the sky. The clerk began to bless himself, and then Tibraidè began to bless himself, and after that they didn’t know what to do. For where there had been a road with hedges on each side and fields stretching beyond them, there was now no road, no hedge, no field; but there was a great broad river sweeping across their path; a mighty tumble of yellowy-brown waters, very swift, very savage; churning and billowing