Irish Fairy Tales Read online

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  To

  Seumas and Iris

  and to

  Helen Fraser

  Irish Fairy Tales

  The Story of Tuan Mac Cairill

  I

  Finnian, the Abbott of Moville, went southwards and eastwards in great haste. News had come to him in Donegal that there were yet people in his own province who believed in gods that he did not approve of, and the gods that we do not approve of are treated scurvily, even by saintly men.

  He was told of a powerful gentleman who observed neither Saint’s day nor Sunday.

  “A powerful person!” said Finnian.

  “All that,” was the reply.

  “We shall try this person’s power,” said Finnian.

  “He is reputed to be a wise and hardy man,” said his informant.

  “We shall test his wisdom and his hardihood.”

  “He is,” that gossip whispered—“he is a magician.”

  “I will magician him,” cried Finnian angrily. “Where does that man live?”

  He was informed, and he proceeded to that direction without delay.

  In no great time he came to the stronghold of the gentleman who followed ancient ways, and he demanded admittance in order that he might preach and prove the new God, and exorcise and terrify and banish even the memory of the old one; for to a god grown old Time is as ruthless as to a beggarman grown old.

  But the Ulster gentleman refused Finnian admittance.

  He barricaded his house, he shuttered his windows, and in a gloom of indignation and protest he continued the practices of ten thousand years, and would not hearken to Finnian calling at the window or to Time knocking at his door.

  But of those adversaries it was the first he redoubted.

  Finnian loomed on him as a portent and a terror; but he had no fear of Time. Indeed he was the foster-brother of Time, and so disdainful of the bitter god that he did not even disdain him; he leaped over the scythe, he dodged under it, and the sole occasions on which Time laughs is when he chances on Tuan, the son of Cairill, the son of Muredac Red-neck.

  II

  Now Finnian could not abide that any person should resist both the Gospel and himself, and he proceeded to force the stronghold by peaceful but powerful methods. He fasted on the gentleman, and he did so to such purpose that he was admitted to the house; for to an hospitable heart the idea that a stranger may expire on your doorstep from sheer famine cannot be tolerated. The gentleman, however, did not give in without a struggle: he thought that when Finnian had grown sufficiently hungry he would lift the siege and take himself off to some place where he might get food. But he did not know Finnian. The great abbot sat down on a spot just beyond the door, and composed himself to all that might follow from his action. He bent his gaze on the ground between his feet, and entered into a meditation from which he would Only be released by admission or death.

  The first day passed quietly.

  Often the gentleman would send a servitor to spy if that deserter of the gods was still before his door, and each time the servant replied that he was still there.

  “He will be gone in the morning,” said the hopeful master.

  On the morrow the state of siege continued, and through that day the servants were sent many times to observe through spyholes.

  “Go,” he would say, “and find out if the worshipper of new gods has taken himself away.”

  But the servants returned each time with the same information.

  “The new druid is still there,” they said.

  All through that day no one could leave the stronghold. And the enforced seclusion wrought on the minds of the servants, while the cessation of all work banded them together in small groups that whispered and discussed and disputed. Then these groups would disperse to peep through the spyhole at the patient, immobile figure seated before the door, wrapped in a meditation that was timeless and unconcerned. They took fright at the spectacle, and once or twice a woman screamed hysterically, and was bundled away with a companion’s hand clapped on her mouth, so that the ear of their master should not be affronted.

  “He has his own troubles,” they said. “It is a combat of the gods that is taking place.”

  So much for the women; but the men also were uneasy. They prowled up and down, tramping from the spyhole to the kitchen, and from the kitchen to the turreted roof. And from the roof they would look down on the motionless figure below, and speculate on many things, including the staunchness of man, the qualities of their master, and even the possibility that the new gods might be as powerful as the old. From these peepings and discussions they would return languid and discouraged.

  “If,” said one irritable guard, “if we buzzed a spear at the persistent stranger, or if one slung at him with a jagged pebble!”

  “What!” his master demanded wrathfully, “is a spear to be thrown at an unarmed stranger? And from this house!”

  And he soundly cuffed that indelicate servant.

  “Be at peace all of you,” he said, “for hunger has a whip, and he will drive the stranger away in the night.”

  The household retired to wretched beds; but for the master of the house there was no sleep. He marched his halls all night, going often to the spyhole to see if that shadow was still sitting in the shade, and pacing thence, tormented, preoccupied, refusing even the nose of his favourite dog as it pressed lovingly into his closed palm.

  On the morrow he gave in.

  The great door was swung wide, and two of his servants carried Finnian into the house, for the saint could no longer walk or stand upright by reason of the hunger and exposure to which he had submitted. But his frame was tough as the unconquerable spirit that dwelt within it, and in no long time he was ready for whatever might come of dispute or anathema.

  Being quite reestablished he undertook the conversion of the master of the house, and the siege he laid against that notable intelligence was long spoken of among those who are interested in such things.

  He had beaten the disease of Mugain; he had beaten his own pupil the great Colm Cillé; he beat Tuan also, and just as the latter’s door had opened to the persistent stranger, so his heart opened, and Finnian marched there to do the will of God, and his own will.

  III

  One day they were talking together about the majesty of God and His love, for although Tuan had now received much instruction on this subject he yet needed more, and he laid as close a siege on Finnian as Finnian had before that laid on him. But ma
n works outwardly and inwardly. After rest he has energy, after energy he needs repose; so, when we have given instruction for a time, we need instruction, and must receive it or the spirit faints and wisdom herself grows bitter.

  Therefore Finnian said: “Tell me now about yourself, dear heart.”

  But Tuan was avid of information about the True God.

  “No, no,” he said, “the past has nothing more of interest for me, and I do not wish anything to come between my soul and its instruction; continue to teach me, dear friend and saintly father.”

  “I will do that,” Finnian replied, “but I must first meditate deeply on you, and must know you well. Tell me your past, my beloved, for a man is his past, and is to be known by it.”

  But Tuan pleaded:

  “Let the past be content with itself, for man needs forgetfulness as well as memory.”

  “My son,” said Finnian, “all that has ever been done has been done for the glory of God, and to confess our good and evil deeds is part of instruction; for the soul must recall its acts and abide by them, or renounce them by confession and penitence. Tell me your genealogy first, and by what descent you occupy these lands and stronghold, and then I will examine your acts and your conscience.”

  Tuan replied obediently:

  “I am known as Tuan, son of Cairill, son of Muredac Red-neck, and these are the hereditary lands of my father.”

  The saint nodded.

  “I am not as well acquainted with Ulster genealogies as I should be, yet I know something of them. I am by blood a Leinsterman,” he continued.

  “Mine is a long pedigree,” Tuan murmured.

  Finnian received that information with respect and interest.

  “I also,” he said, “have an honourable record.”

  His host continued:

  “I am indeed Tuan, the son of Starn, the son of Sera, who was brother to Partholon.”

  “But,” said Finnian in bewilderment, “there is an error here, for you have recited two different genealogies.”

  “Different genealogies, indeed,” replied Tuan thoughtfully, “but they are my genealogies.”

  “I do not understand this,” Finnian declared roundly.

  “I am now known as Tuan mac Cairill,” the other replied, “but in the days of old I was known as Tuan mac Starn, mac Sera.”

  “The brother of Partholon,” the saint gasped.

  “That is my pedigree,” Tuan said.

  “But,” Finnian objected in bewilderment, “Partholon came to Ireland not long after the Flood.”

  “I came with him,” said Tuan mildly.

  The saint pushed his chair back hastily, and sat staring at his host, and as he stared the blood grew chill in his veins, and his hair crept along his scalp and stood on end.

  IV

  But Finnian was not one who remained long in bewilderment. He thought on the might of God and he became that might, and was tranquil.

  He was one who loved God and Ireland, and to the person who could instruct him in these great themes he gave all the interest of his mind and the sympathy of his heart.

  “It is a wonder you tell me, my beloved,” he said. “And now you must tell me more.”

  “What must I tell?” asked Tuan resignedly.

  “Tell me of the beginning of time in Ireland, and of the bearing of Partholon, the son of Noah’s son.”

  “I have almost forgotten him,” said Tuan. “A greatly bearded, greatly shouldered man he was. A man of sweet deeds and sweet ways.”

  “Continue, my love,” said Finnian.

  “He came to Ireland in a ship. Twenty-four men and twenty-four women came with him. But before that time no man had come to Ireland, and in the western parts of the world no human being lived or moved. As we drew on Ireland from the sea the country seemed like an unending forest. Far as the eye could reach, and in whatever direction, there were trees; and from these there came the unceasing singing of birds. Over all that land the sun shone warm and beautiful, so that to our sea-weary eyes, our wind-tormented ears, it seemed as if we were driving on Paradise.

  “We landed and we heard the rumble of water going gloomily through the darkness of the forest. Following the water we came to a glade where the sun shone and where the earth was warmed, and there Partholon rested with his twenty-four couples, and made a city and a livelihood.

  “There were fish in the rivers of Eirè, there were animals in her coverts. Wild and shy and monstrous creatures ranged in her plains and forests. Creatures that one could see through and walk through. Long we lived in ease, and we saw new animals grow—the bear, the wolf, the badger, the deer, and the boar.

  “Partholon’s people increased until from twenty-four couples there came five thousand people, who lived in amity and contentment although they had no wits.”

  “They had no wits!” Finnian commented.

  “They had no need of wits,” Tuan said.

  “I have heard that the firstborn were mindless,” said Finnian. “Continue your story, my beloved.”

  “Then, sudden as a rising wind, between one night and a morning, there came a sickness that bloated the stomach and purpled the skin, and on the seventh day all of the race of Partholon were dead, save one man only.”

  “There always escapes one man,” said Finnian thoughtfully.

  “And I am that man,” his companion affirmed.

  Tuan shaded his brow with his hand, and he remembered backwards through incredible ages to the beginning of the world and the first days of Eirè. And Finnian, with his blood again running chill and his scalp crawling uneasily, stared backwards with him.

  V

  “Tell on, my love,” Finnian murmured.

  “I was alone,” said Tuan. “I was so alone that my own shadow frightened me. I was so alone that the sound of a bird in flight, or the creaking of a dew-drenched bough, whipped me to cover as a rabbit is scared to his burrow.

  “The creatures of the forest scented me and knew I was alone. They stole with silken pad behind my back and snarled when I faced them; the long, grey wolves with hanging tongues and staring eyes chased me to my cleft rock; there was no creature so weak but it might hunt me, there was no creature so timid but it might outface me. And so I lived for two tens of years and two years, until I knew all that a beast surmises and had forgotten all that a man had known.

  “I could pad as gently as any; I could run as tirelessly. I could be invisible and patient as a wild cat crouching among leaves; I could smell danger in my sleep and leap at it with wakeful claws; I could bark and growl and clash with my teeth and tear with them.”

  “Tell on, my beloved,” said Finnian, “you shall rest in God, dear heart.”

  “At the end of that time,” said Tuan, “Nemed the son of Agnoman came to Ireland with a fleet of thirty-four barques, and in each barque there were thirty couples of people.”

  “I have heard it,” said Finnian.

  “My heart leaped for joy when I saw the great fleet rounding the land, and I followed them along scarped cliffs, leaping from rock to rock like a wild goat, while the ships tacked and swung seeking a harbour. There I stooped to drink at a pool, and I saw myself in the chill water.

  “I saw that I was hairy and tufty and bristled as a savage boar; that I was lean as a stripped bush; that I was greyer than a badger; withered and wrinkled like an empty sack; naked as a fish; wretched as a starving crow in winter; and on my fingers and toes there were great curving claws, so that I looked like nothing that was known, like nothing that was animal or divine. And I sat by the pool weeping my loneliness and wildness and my stern old age; and I could do no more than cry and lament between the earth and the sky, while the beasts that tracked me listened from behind the trees, or crouched among bushes to stare at me from their drowsy covert.

 
“A storm arose, and when I looked again from my tall cliff I saw that great fleet rolling as in a giant’s hand. At times they were pitched against the sky and staggered aloft, spinning gustily there like windblown leaves. Then they were hurled from these dizzy tops to the flat, moaning gulf, to the glassy, inky horror that swirled and whirled between ten waves. At times a wave leaped howling under a ship, and with a buffet dashed it into air, and chased it upwards with thunder stroke on stroke, and followed again, close as a chasing wolf, trying with hammering on hammering to beat in the wide-wombed bottom and suck out the frightened lives through one black gape. A wave fell on a ship and sunk it down with a thrust, stern as though a whole sky had tumbled at it, and the barque did not cease to go down until it crashed and sank in the sand at the bottom of the sea.

  “The night came, and with it a thousand darknesses fell from the screeching sky. Not a round-eyed creature of the night might pierce an inch of that multiplied gloom. Not a creature dared creep or stand. For a great wind strode the world lashing its league-long whips in cracks of thunder, and singing to itself, now in a worldwide yell, now in an ear-dizzying hum and buzz; or with a long snarl and whine it hovered over the world searching for life to destroy.

  “And at times, from the moaning and yelping blackness of the sea, there came a sound—thin-drawn as from millions of miles away, distinct as though uttered in the ear like a whisper of confidence—and I knew that a drowning man was calling on his God as he thrashed and was battered into silence, and that a blue-lipped woman was calling on her man as her hair whipped round her brows and she whirled about like a top.

  “Around me the trees were dragged from earth with dying groans; they leaped into the air and flew like birds. Great waves whizzed from the sea: spinning across the cliffs and hurtling to the earth in monstrous clots of foam; the very rocks came trundling and sidling and grinding among the trees; and in that rage, and in that horror of blackness I fell asleep, or I was beaten into slumber.”