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

and jockeying among rough boulders and islands of stone. It was a water of villainous depth and of detestable wetness; of ugly hurrying and of desolate cavernous sound. At a little to their right there was a thin uncomely bridge that waggled across the torrent.

Tibraidè rubbed his eyes, and then he looked again.

“Do you see what I see?” said he to the clerk.

“I don’t know what you see,” said the clerk, “but what I see I never did see before, and I wish I did not see it now.”

“I was born in this place,” said Tibraidè, “my father was born here before me, and my grandfather was born here before him, but until this day and this minute I never saw a river here before, and I never heard of one.”

“What will we do at all?” said the clerk. “What will we do at all?”

“We will be sensible,” said Tibraidè sternly, “and we will go about our business,” said he. “If rivers fall out of the sky what has that to do with you, and if there is a river here, which there is, why, thank God, there is a bridge over it too.”

“Would you put a toe on that bridge?” said the clerk.

“What is the bridge for?” said Tibraidè.

Mongan and mac an Dáv followed them.

When they got to the middle of the bridge it broke under them, and they were precipitated into that boiling yellow flood.

Mongan snatched at the book as it fell from Tibraidès hand.

“Won’t you let them drown, master?” asked mac an Dáv.

“No,” said Mongan, “I’ll send them a mile down the stream, and then they can come to land.”

Mongan then took on himself the form of Tibraidè and he turned mac an Dáv into the shape of the clerk.

“My head has gone bald,” said the servant in a whisper.

“That is part of it,” replied Mongan.

“So long as we know,” said mac an Dáv.

They went on then to meet the King of Leinster.

XVI

They met him near the place where the games were played.

“Good my soul, Tibraidè!” cried the King of Leinster, and he gave Mongan a kiss. Mongan kissed him back again.

“Amen, amen,” said mac an Dáv.

“What for?” said the King of Leinster.

And then mac an Dáv began to sneeze, for he didn’t know what for.

“It is a long time since I saw you, Tibraidè,” said the king, “but at this minute I am in great haste and hurry. Go you on before me to the fortress, and you can talk to the queen that you’ll find there, she that used to be the King of Ulster’s wife. Kevin Cochlach, my charioteer, will go with you, and I will follow you myself in a while.”

The King of Leinster went off then, and Mongan and his servant went with the charioteer and the people.

Mongan read away out of the book, for he found it interesting, and he did not want to talk to the charioteer, and mac an Dáv cried amen, amen, every time that Mongan took his breath. The people who were going with them said to one another that mac an Dáv was a queer kind of clerk, and that they had never seen anyone who had such a mouthful of amens.

But in a while they came to the fortress, and they got into it without any trouble, for Kevin Cochlach, the king’s charioteer, brought them in. Then they were led to the room where Duv Laca was, and as he went into that room Mongan shut his eyes, for he did not want to look at Duv Laca while other people might be looking at him.

“Let everybody leave this room, while I am talking to the queen,” said he; and all the attendants left the room, except one, and she wouldn’t go, for she wouldn’t leave her mistress.

Then Mongan opened his eyes and he saw Duv Laca, and he made a great bound to her and took her in his arms, and mac an Dáv made a savage and vicious and terrible jump at the attendant, and took her in his arms, and bit her ear and kissed her neck and wept down into her back.

“Go away,” said the girl, “unhand me, villain,” said she.

“I will not,” said mac an Dáv, “for I’m your own husband, I’m your own mac, your little mac, your macky-wac-wac.” Then the attendant gave a little squeal, and she bit him on each ear and kissed his neck and wept down into his back, and said that it wasn’t true and that it was.

XVII

But they were not alone, although they thought they were. The hag that guarded the jewels was in the room. She sat hunched up against the wail, and as she looked like a bundle of rags they did not notice her. She began to speak then.

“Terrible are the things I see,” said she. “Terrible are the things I see.”

Mongan and his servant gave a jump of surprise, and their two wives jumped and squealed. Then Mongan puffed out his cheeks till his face looked like a bladder, and he blew a magic breath at the hag, so that she seemed to be surrounded by a fog, and when she looked through that breath everything seemed to be different to what she had thought. Then she began to beg everybody’s pardon.

“I had an evil vision,” said she, “I saw crossways. How sad it is that I should begin to see the sort of things I thought I saw.”

“Sit in this chair, mother,” said Mongan, “and tell me what you thought you saw,” and he slipped a spike under her, and mac an Dáv pushed her into the seat, and she died on the spike.

Just then there came a knocking at the door. Mac an Dáv opened it, and there was Tibraidè, standing outside, and twenty-nine of his men were with him, and they were all laughing.

“A mile was not half enough,” said mac an Dáv reproachfully.

The Chamberlain of the fortress