The High Deeds of Finn MacCool (8 page)

And when speech came easily enough to him for story telling, it was a strange story he had to tell Finn, sitting between Bran and Skolawn at the Fian Captain's feet, one winter's night with the wind howling like a wolf pack about the door.

Ever since he could remember, he had lived with a dappled hind. He supposed that she was his mother, for he had had no other, nor any father, so far as he knew. And she had given him milk when he was very small, and the warmth of her body curled about him when the nights were cold, and comfort when he was hurt or unhappy, and love and gentleness at all times. They had lived in a green and beautiful valley, from which – he was not quite sure how or why – there seemed no way out, but he supposed there must have been, after all, because assuredly there was a way in, though he had never found it. And this he knew, because though he lived on nuts and berries in summer, in winter food was left for him daily in a certain cave on the hillside; and also because a man came to them at times, a very tall dark man, at whose coming he had always been troubled and afraid. Sometimes the man spoke to the hind his mother in tones that were darkly sweet as heather honey, sometimes in a voice hard with menace, but always the hind shrank away and would not even look at him; until at last he went off again, very angry.

And then there came a day when the dark stranger spoke with his mother for a very long time, sometimes
pleadingly and gently, sometimes urgently and as though there were pain within him, sometimes ragingly, like a cold gale through the woods in winter, but still she would do nothing but shrink away from him, yet keeping always between him and the boy. At last the man gave up pleading and threatening alike, and did a thing that the boy had never seen him do before. He lifted up the hazel wand which he always carried in his hand and struck her with it, and then turned instantly and strode away.

And this time the hind followed him, trembling and seeming as though she strove to draw back, but following still.

Then the boy was terribly afraid, and cried out to his mother not to leave him. But when he would have run after her, his feet seemed to have taken root in the ground. And his mother looked back at him, piteously, the great tears falling from her eyes. Yet still she followed the dark man as though he drew her after him on a chain.

Then, still struggling to follow her, crying out in rage and terror and desolation, the boy fell to the ground, and into a blackness that was like sleep but not like good sleep.

When he awoke from the blackness, he was lying on the bare heather slopes of Ben Bulben. And he was alone.

For days he hung about the slopes of the mountain, seeking and seeking for his hidden valley, and never finding it again, until at last the Fian hunting dogs found him.

So Finn knew that he would never find Saba again, but he knew also that she had left him a son.

He called the boy Oisĩn which means Little Fawn, and he grew up to become one of the greatest champions of the Fianna. But always there was a strangeness about him, for he was of the Fairy Kind on his mother's side. And famous warrior that he became, he was still more famous for the songs that he made and the strange and wonderful stories that he told, for from his mother's side he had the gift of minstrelsy, and he could sing a bird out of an arbutus tree or the morning star down from the skirts of the sunrise.

But the story of Saba and the Dark Druid he could not give an end to. No one knows the end of that story, to this day.

Cullen, the Smith of the Danann People, had his hall in the Fairy mound on Slieve Gallion near Armagh. And he had two daughters, one called Ainé and the other Milucra.

Beautiful they were, and like to each other as two white bramble flowers on a spray, and many fine tall warriors came seeking them in marriage. But both Ainé and Milucra had set their love on Finn Mac Cool, and would not so much as look at any other man. And both wanting the same man, they grew jealous of each other and were ready to do each other an ill turn at any hour of the day or night. But Finn Mac Cool was still searching for his lost love at that time, and had no eyes for either of them.

One day a chieftain came seeking Ainé for his wife. A fine tall man he was, with eyes as darkly blue as the hills of Connemara before rain and a neck as strong as a stallion's; but he was no longer young. Cullen thought well of the match. ‘If you marry him, though to be sure he is mortal, and not of our blood, you will have a position that will bring on you the envy of half the women in Erin. Be thinking, my daughter, before you send him away as you have sent others.'

‘I am not needing to think,' said Ainé. ‘I am beautiful am I not? I can have mortal men with heads as black as a rook's wing or as yellow as birch leaves in
autumn, or as red as a chestnut horse's coat. Or I can have men of our own Danann kind who will never grow old at all. Why then should I marry a man whose hair is already grey? Father, I will not do such a thing! Not until Lough Lein runs dry and Slieve Gallion falls into the sea!'

Now Milucra overheard this, and she thought to herself that if she could not get Finn Mac Cool for her own, (and she had begun to understand that she could not) here was a chance to make sure that her sister Ainé should not have him either. There would be some comfort in that, thought she. And she gathered together all those of her friends who were not also friends of her sister's, and bade them come with her up to the little grey lough on the crest of Slieve Gallion. And there, forming a ring about the lough they loosed their hair and linked hands, and going round and about and
against the wind and against the sun, they made a dancing magic that charged the water with a strong enchantment.

And long after this, Bran and Skolawn started a hind near the Hill of Almu, and ran it northwards towards Slieve Gallion. Finn followed, desperate for a closer view of the hind, though something deep within him told him that it was not Saba. But on the high mountainside she vanished as through the dark rocks had opened and let her through. And though Finn searched and searched, refusing to listen to the thing within him that knew the hind was not Saba, he could find no more trace of her than if she had been the end of a fading rainbow.

But in his searching he came upon the little lonely grey lough on the crest of the moutain. And there on the bank was a beautiful woman sitting with her head lowered on her knee, and weeping sore.

He drew closer, and asked her what terrible thing had happened to cause her so much grief.

‘I have lost the gold ring that I prize most in all the world, for it was set on my finger by my young hero before he died. Now it has slipped off into the cold cruel water, and I shall never see it again.'

‘I will get it back for you,' said Finn, and stripping off his hunting leathers he dived into the lough.

The water was cold as the green mountain spate that comes down in spring from the melting snows, and he went down and down into the strange twilight world at the heart of the lough. Jagged rocks loomed faintly through the dimness, and long green weed floated out towards him as though to entangle him and draw him into itself, but nowhere could he see any gleam of gold
before he had to come up for air. The woman cried out to him from the bank, ‘Try again! Oh, try again!' and again he dived, but with no more success than he had had the first time. And when he broke surface empty-handed, the woman cried to him, ‘Try again! Oh, try again!' A third time he dived, and this time, lodged in a cranny between two boulders, he saw the glint of a golden ring. He snatched it up, and with his heart almost bursting through his ribs, kicked upward and rose to the surface of the water.

‘I have it,' he shouted and struck out towards where the woman still sat on the bank.

‘Give it to me!' she cried, so eager that it seemed she could not even wait for him to land, but leaned foward to take the ring he held out to her before his feet touched the bottom. But the instant she had it in her hand, she gave a strange high laugh, and dived into the water, making no more splash than an otter makes, and was gone.

Then Finn knew that some kind of magic was being worked against him, and the sooner he was out of the water and away from that place the better for him. He sprang ashore, but as he touched dry land, the clear mountain light dimmed as though a shadow had been drawn across his eyes, and his legs gave under him with a strange trembling weakness, and he ptiched forward on to his face. Slowly he contrived to prop himself up on his arms, and looked down with his strangely shadowed sight at his hands outspread on the turf among the little mountain flowers, and they were the knotted and thick-veined hands of an old, old man.

Cold horror seized on Finn, and he struggled to cry
out to Bran and Skolawn who were sniffing in a troubled way about the edge of the lough, but his voice came as a cracked whisper, and Skolawn only looked up for an instant and growled softly, as though warning the stranger to take no liberties, while Bran never turned for an instant from his desperate questing around the margin of the water. So even his own hounds did not know him.

Finn put his Thumb of Knowledge between his teeth, wondering if even that power was lost to him. But the power remained, and instantly he knew that Milucra the daughter of Cullen had been both the hind and the woman by the lough shore, he knew that all this was her doing, and he knew why she had done it.

Meanwhile, in Almu of the White Walls, the day wore on to supper time, and Finn had not returned, though there were guests at the hearth and all men knew that he would never be so lacking in courtesy as to leave them to sup without their host. Then Keelta Mac Ronan, he who could outrun the west wind, called for the swiftest runners among Finn's household, and with a couple of their best trail-hounds in leash, they set out to find him.

The hounds picked up his scent easily enough, and followed it without a check, and so just as the moon was getting up, they came to the little lonely lough on the crest of Slieve Gallion. And there on the lough shore they found a wretched, doddering old man, so weak that he could scarcely stand, and Bran and Skolawn questing to and fro among the grey rocks of the mountain top, who came to them whining in desperate trouble when they drew near.

‘Old man,' said Keelta, ‘has Finn Mac Cool passed this way?'

The old man stood wavering on his feet, and gazing from one to another strangely and terribly. They thought that he did not understand, perhaps age had made him wander in his wits. ‘Finn Mac Cool,' they said, ‘the Captain of the Fianna of Erin: have you seen him? You could not be mistaking him, a giant of a man with hair as pale as bleached barley.'

The old man seemed to be trying to answer, but his voice was no more than a wheezing mumble and they could not understand what he said.

At last he beckoned to Keelta, and when the swift-footed one stepped near, whispered to him with a great effort, ‘I am Finn Mac Cool.'

Keelta started back, and stared wildly round at the others. ‘The grandfather says – he says that
he
is Finn Mac Cool.'

The rest cried out in angry unbelief. ‘The old man has taken leave of his wits! Or he seeks to play a trick on us! Throw him in the lough to learn better manners!' But Keelta saw something in the old man's face that made him bend close again.

And gathering himself for a mighty effort, for his remaining strength seemed ebbing moment by moment, Finn wheezed and gasped out the story of what had happened to him at the hands of Milucra, the daughter of Cullen the Smith.

Then the Fianna believed that the old man was indeed Finn, bound by Danann enchantment, and wrath seized them.

Keelta and another scrambled down the mountainside to where the trees began, and cut branches of
birch and quicken, and bringing them back, bound them into the framework of a litter; they spread their cloaks over the framework and lifted Finn into it. Then, carrying him in their midst, they set out for the Fairy mound where Cullen the Smith had his hall.

There they set down the litter, and with their broad iron-bladed daggers, began to dig.

For three days and three nights they dug into the Fairy mound, tunnelling deeper and deeper. And on the third day they reached the innermost heart of it. To their mortal eyes, their senses protected from the Fairy glamour by the cold iron of the daggers with which they dug, there was no splendid palace there, no forecourt full of prancing horses, no banquet hall brilliant with rich hangings and vessels of gold and silver; only a dark earthen cavern, held up by rough slabs of stone, but in the entrance to the cavern stood Ainé, holding a great drinking cup of the reddest gold.

She smiled and said, ‘That was good digging.'

‘We had good cause,' said Keelta Mac Ronan.

‘I was waiting for you,' said Ainé, still smiling, ‘for I know the magic of Milucra my sister, and I hold in my hand that which shall undo the harm.' And she went forward to the litter on which Finn lay, and held out to him the golden cup.