L9879S10 I9LI €& Wt OLNOHOL 4O ALISHSAINN ar ane ett. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/celticdragonmythOO0Ocampuoft LU : . g ‘ ¢ ” ‘ 4 my z ; Pe ue 4 * it 4 as iy , - . i (ea 7 it } ’ ; re y ‘ = a > Uy i i " ~~ be | >. ’ @ 1 = = ? hades | ie i L ~ ie . a! 4 “ t oY ' 5 M4 ‘CELTIC DRAGON MYTH AA +a Se ¥ixt weds, ee Fen OP » ~f ) fo a ¥ oe : ¥ . we ‘“‘ Tf the king’s daughter is not here to-morrow at this same hour the realm shall be ravaged by me,” said the dragon. (See p. 61.) (Frontispiece, The Celtic Dragon Myth BY J. F. CAMPBELL Collector of “The West Highland Tales” WITH THE Geste of Fraoch and the Dragon TRANSLATED WITH INTRODUCTION BY GEORGE HENDERSON Pu.D. (Vienna); B.LITT. (Oxon.); M.A, (Edin.) Lecturer in Celtic Languages and Literature, University of Glasgow ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY RACHEL AINSLIE GRANT DUFF 922379 Dae) DO. ot EDINBURGH: JOHN GRANT 31 GEORGE IV. BRIDGE IQII Ad Animam Meam. It is day now and here, It ts night across the sea ; Day and night, dark and light, Ever must alternate be. It is work for you and me, It is sleep beyond the sea ; Work and sleep beloved reap, Thou art fated to be free ! TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Tue Geste or Fraocu Tue DeratTH oF FRAOCcH Tue Cettic Dracon Mytu NotTEsS Tue Turee Ways (Gaelic) THE FISHERMAN (Gaelic) vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS “If the king’s daughter is not here to-morrow at this same hour the realm shall be ravaged by me,” said the dragon “Well, well,” said the mermaid, “you may keep him four years more to see if it be easier to part with him. See, here is his like for age. Is yours as fine as mine ?’’ and she held up a big bouncing baby “The storm rose and the king’s daughter quaked for fear, but the lad slept on” . ‘ “He cut off the dragon’s third head, and won the fight ”’ “She sat on a green mound in the gloaming in the mouth of the evening, playing on her harp” . ix Frontispiece Face page 38 ” 68 69 79 wae ts LeMay: MG Ae aad 1 at p INTRODUCTION BeTWEEN the years 1870 and 1884 the late Mr J. F. Campbell of Islay was repeatedly attracted by a series of legends current in the Highlands and Isles, which made special appeal to him as a storyologist. After reading a dozen versions of the stories, he found that no single title fitted so well as that of the Dragon Myth. “It treats of water, egg, mermaid, sea-dragon, tree, beasts, birds, fish, metals, weapons, and men mysteriously produced from sea-gifts. All versions agree in these respects; they are all water myths, and relate to the slaying of water monsters.” As early indeed as 1862, while fresh from work, he had taken incidents from three versions and com- pared them with versions in other languages. Several journeys in the Highlands followed, as also in Japan, China, and Ceylon. While in the East, it was part of his pastimes to make sketches of the Dragons of the Orient, his mind being all the while full of the legends of the West. He regarded this as one of the most important of myths, and the most difficult to deal with. It is the State Myth of England, Russia, and Japan. He found it in the “ Rig Veda,” and he concluded generally that it is Eur-Aryan in the widest sense. Of his own work he expressly says that it is free The Celtic Dragon Myth translation. ‘‘I take the story from the Gaelic and tell it in my own words generally where the scribe’s language is prosy. But when passages occur which — seem worth preservation—bits of recitation and quaint phrases—I have translated carefully. This is work honestly done while my head was full of the subject. I think that it might interest a large number of readers. . . .” The manuscript is among the Campbell of Islay Collection in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, to the Curators of which I am beholden for their courtesy, of which I now make public acknowledgment, in enabling me to complete at Glasgow University Library the transcription which I had begun many years ago. For him the subject had two distinct aspects : first, the story is amusing for children ; secondly, it has a scientific interest for a large and growing number of scholars. He had heard in London Mr Ralston give his lectures upon Russian stories, and found that the children in the audience were much amused. But amongst the audience were also Thomas Carlyle, Professor Owen, Sir R. Murchison, Reeve, Lady Ashburton, Miss Dempster of Skibo, and a number of learned people who wanted to know “the philosophy of the subject.” For Mr Campbell thought there was a great deal of philosophy in it, and he states: ‘‘I want readers, wise and foolish, to be equally well treated. The foolish may read the story, the wise may read both story and notes.” He had read parallel stories in Swedish, German, xii Introduction French, Italian, English, and had heard outlines of Russian versions which seemed to him more mythical and nearer the original shape. He even found a part of the story in a book of Swahili tales told at Zanzibar. “Theoretically,” he remarks in 1876, “this looks like serpent worship, and the defeat of serpent worship by some mythical personage. Many of the incidents which are not in Gaelic, but are in Swedish, can be traced, and are explained in the Russian version, ¢.g., a well is a serpent, an apple tree is another serpent, a cushion in a meadow is a third serpent transformed. ‘Three brothers are concerned in Russian. In Swedish the serpent-slaying heroes are born of maidens who in one instance drink of a well, and in the other eat an apple. ‘Three brothers are concerned in the adventures in Gaelic in one case, and incidents enough for three are in the several versions; if they were combined, Gaelic Swedish and Russian together would make something like a fragment of mythology, but the Gaelic versions give the largest quantity of materials.” The incidents, which number about 440, or deducting what are but variants, about 200, were put together from the following Gaelic versions or stories (of which some specimens are given in this book) collected between January 1856 and January 1861. They are :— 1. Sea-Maiden, No. IV., Popular Tales of the West Highlands, p. 72. Hector Urquhart and John Mackenzie, Inveraray. xiii * The Celtic Dragon Myth 2. The Three Roads. Hector Maclean and B. Macaskill, Berneray. MS. 3. The Fisher's Son and The Daughter of the King of the Golden Castle. John Dewar; J. MacNair, Clachaig, Cowal. MS. 4. The Five-headed Giant. B. Macaskill, Berneray ; and Hector Maclean. MS. 5. The Smith's Son. Same sources. MS. 6. The Fisher. Hector Maclean and Alexander MacNeill, Ceanntangaval, Barra. MS. 7. The Gray Lad. Hector Maclean and John Smith, Polchar, S. Uist. MS. 8. The Second Son of the King of Ireland and The Daughter of the King of France. J. Dewar; J. MacNair, Clachaig, Cowal. MS. g. The Sea Maiden. MS. notes by J. F. C., and John MacPhie, vol. i., Popular Tales. Inter- leaved copy, second recitation. 10. The Sea Maiden. Pp. 328, 346 of English Collection by J. F.C. Notes and MSS. 11. Notes from an Irish blind fiddler on the Loch Goil Head steamer. Interleaved copy. Popular Tales, vol 1., p. 71. Then came further Gaelic versions noted in 1870 and later :— 12. Notes in Journal, Aug. 17, 1870, pp. 1-10, from Lachlan MacNeill) 5 Maxwellton Street, Paisley. 13. Aug. 22, 1870. “John Mackenzie, fisherman, 1 The reciter of Leigheas Cois’ O Céin, published by me in the Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness. xiv Introduction can repeat the story as printed from his telling in my book. Kenmore, Inveraray.” 14. lain Beag Mac An Iasgair (Little John the Fisher’s Son) ; p. 42 of J. F. C.’s Journal for Sept. 1, 1870. From Malcolm MacDonald, fisherman, Benmore Cottage, Mull. 15. Fionn Mac A Bhradaim agus Donnchadh mac a@ Bhradain. From — Maclean, fisherman, Bunessan, Ross of Mull. It will be seen that the legends ranged over a wide Highland area; were thoroughly popular, and of the people. In Ireland there are references to the Dragon story also in Hyde’s Sgeu/aidhe, and one may compare Synge’s The Aran Isles (pp. 40, 46, 24, 55). Parallel tales of contests with water-monsters are world-wide, and the story of St George and the Dragon, as told in Palestine, is very similar to that current in the Highlands. At Beyrit is shown the very well into which ‘he cast the slain monster, and the place where the saint washed his hands thereafter. The story is :— “ There was once a great city that depended for its water-supply upon a fountain without the walls. A great dragon, possessed and moved by Satan himself, took possession of the fountain and refused to allow water to be taken unless, whenever people came to the spring, a youth or maiden was given to him to devour. The people tried again and again to destroy the monster, but though the flower of the city cheerfull went forth against it, its breath was so pestilential that XV The Celtic Dragon Myth they used to drop down dead before they came within bowshot. “The terrorised inhabitants were thus obliged to sacrifice their offspring, or die of thirst ; till at last all the youths of the place had perished except the king’s daughter. So great was the distress of their subjects for want of water that the heart-broken parents could no longer withhold her, and amid the tears of the populace she went out towards the spring where the dragon lay awaiting her. But just as the noisome monster was going to leap on her, Mar Jiryis appeared, in golden panoply upon a fine white steed, and spear in hand. Riding full tilt at the dragon, he struck it fair between the eyes and laid it dead. The king, out of gratitude for this unlooked-for succour, gave Mar Jiryis his daughter and half of his kingdom.” * In the folk-lore of China there is a popular legend that the Chien Tang River was once infested by a great dau or sea-serpent, and in 1129 A.D. a district graduate is said to have heroically thrown himself into the flood to encounter and destroy the monster. Formerly two dragons were supposed by the Chinese to have been in a narrow passage near Chinaye: they were very furious, and upset boats. According to the Rev. Mr Butler of the Presby- terian Mission in Ningpo, “they had to be appeased by the yearly offering of a girl of fair appearance and 1 J. E. Hanauer’s Folk-Lore of the Holy Land, p. 56. Arculf’s stories of St George, learned in Constantinople, reached Iona in the seventh century (v. Adamnan: De Sanctis Locis). xvi Introduction perfect body. At last one of the /iterati determined to stop this. He armed himself and jumped into the water ; blood rose to the surface. He had killed one of the dragons. The other retired to the narrow place. A temple was erected to the hero at Peach Blossom ferry.” In Japan* one of the dragon legends recounts how a very large serpent with eight heads and eight tails came annually and swallowed one person. A married couple who had eight children have at last only one girl left. They are in great grief. The hero, So-sa-no-o no mikoto, went to the sources of the river Hi-no-ka-mi at Idzumo and found an old man and woman clasping a young girl. ‘If you will give that girl to me I will save her.” The mikoto changed his form and assumed that of the girl: he divided the room into eight divisions, and in each placed one sakitub. The serpent approached, drank the saki, got intoxicated, and fell asleep, whereupon the mikoto drew his sword and cut the serpent into pieces! Which proves the unwisdom of the Japanese serpent in drinking saki, and the observant mind of So-sa- no-o ! 1 Gould’s Mythical Monsters, p. 306 (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1886). As a naturalist, this writer considers the dragon no mere offspring of fancy, but infers it to be a long terrestrial lizard, with much in common with Draco volans, Moloch horridus. Fond of bathing and basking in the sun. Habitat, highlands of Central Asia. For the rest he gives interesting accounts by Mr Maclean, minister of Eigg, in 1809, and by Mr Macrae, minister of Glenelg, in 1872, of the so-called Norwegian Sea-Serpent in the West High- lands. 2 Cf. Campbell’s Circular Notes, I., 326. Xvii b The Celtic Dragon Myth In China the dragon is the emblem of imperial power : a five-clawed dragon is embroidered on the Emperor’s robes, with two legs pointing forwards and two backwards. Sometimes it has a pearl in one hand and is surrounded with clouds and fire. The chief dragon is thought to have its abode in the sky, whence it can send rain or withhold it. Its power is symbolised in the Emperor. Literature abounds in references to dragon- monsters. Homer describes the shield of Hercules as having the scaly horror of a dragon coiled, with eyes oblique, that askant shot gleaming fire. Ovid locates the dragon slain by Cadmus near the river Cephisus, in Boeotia. Arthur carries a dragon on his helm, a tradition referred to in the Faerie Queen. Shakespeare, too:— «¢ Peace, Kent; Come not between the Dragon and his wrath! ” Ludd’s dominion was infested by a dragon that shrieked on May-Day Eve. In Wales, St Samson is said to have seized the dragon and thrown it into the sea. Among the Welsh, indeed, a pendragon came to mean a chief, a dictator in times of danger. And if we surveyed the lives of the saints, it would be tedious to enumerate the number who figure as dragon-slayers—all of them active long ere the days of the modern Mediterranean shark! Over the linguistic area covered by the Celtic branches of the Indo-European peoples, legends of contests with monsters have been current from early XVill Introduction times. As to their origin, it is difficult to be certain as to how far they may have been transmitted from one people to another. Possibly external influence may be traced in the Bruden Dé Derga, a Gadhelic text from about the eighth century, which speaks of ‘Tn leuidgn timchella inn domon’”’! (The Leviathan that surrounds the world). The Cymric book of Taliessin tells of ‘That river of dread strife hard by ¢erra [earth], Venom its essence, around the world it goes.’ 2 The arly Lives of the Sats have parallel references. In an eighth-century chronicle con- cerning St Fechin, we hear of evil powers and influences whose rage is “seen in that watery fury, and their hellish hate and turbulence in the beating of the sea against the rocks.” Pious men are often afraid to approach the shore, fearing to encounter the like hellish influence. Of a great storm we read of “the waves rising higher and higher—Satan himself doubtless assisting from beneath.”* ‘The Life of the Irish Saint Abban tells how from his ship he saw a beastly monster on the sea, having a hundred heads of divers forms, two hundred eyes, and as many ears; it extended itself to the clouds and set the waters in such commotion that the ship was almost lost. The sailors feared greatly. St Abban prayed against the monster, the beast fell as if dead, and 1 Leabhar Na h-Uidhri, 850. 2 Rhys, Arthurian Legend, 157. 8 Nineteenth Century, March 1895, p. 422. x1x * The Celtic Dragon Myth there was a calm. But strange to relate, the body of the monster could be seen neither on sea nor on land (et in hoc apparet quod dyabolus fuit).’ In Adamnan’s Life of Colum-Cille* there is a chapter concerning the repulse of a certain aquatic monster (aguati/lis bestia) by the blessed man’s prayer. The incident occurred somewhere by the river Ness. The inhabitants were burying one who had been bitten while swimming. To fetch a coble from the opposite bank, one of Columba’s companions, Lugne Mocumin, cast him- self into the water. And Adamnan relates :— “But the monster, which was lying in the river bed, and whose appetite was rather whetted for more prey than sated with what it already had, perceiving the surface of the water disturbed by the swimmer, suddenly comes up and moves towards the man as he swam in mid-stream, and with a great roar rushes on him with open mouth, while all who were there, barbarians as well as brethran: were greatly terror- struck. The blessed man seeing it, after making the salutary sign of the cross in the empty air with his holy hand upraised, and invoking the name of God, commanded the ferocious monster, saying: ‘Go thou no further, nor touch the man; go back at once. Then, on hearing this word of the saint, the monster was terrified, and fled away again more quickly than if it had been dragged off by ropes, though it had approached Lugne as he swam so 1 Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, ed, Plummer, Tomus Primus, p. 15. 2 Bk. II., c. 27 (trans. W. Huyshe). For a dragon contest, see Nennius,, Historia, x\.-xlv. xXx - Introduction closely that between man and monster there was no more than the length of one punt pole.” The whole incident reflects some natural fact, together with the human belief in the possible occurrence of such. “The belief,’ says Bishop Reeves, “‘ that certain rivers and lakes were haunted by serpents of a demoniacal and terrible character was current among the Irish at a very remote period, and still prevails in many parts of Ireland.” St Molua and St Colman of Dromore are recorded to have saved people from such monsters. As to the modern Irish belief, let Mr W. R. Le Fanu’s Seventy Years of Irish Life be evidence :— “ The Celtic Dragon Myth him all the way home, where he arrived naked and bleeding.” In the Life of St Mochua of Balla it is recounted that no one ventured to pursue a wounded stag that fled to an island in Lough Ree, on account of a horrible monster that infested the lake and was wont to destroy swimmers. A man was at last persuaded to swim across, but as he was returning the beast devoured him. In the 4/tus of St Colum-Cille he refers to a great slimy dragon, terrible and most horrible, that slimy serpent more subtle than all the beasts :— “Draco magnus deterrimus terribilis et antiquus qui fuit serpens lubricus sapientior omnibus bestlis. ... Nor is a similar belief yet extinct in the Highlands. The late Miss Dempster of Skibo records in her manuscript a legend of St Gilbert and the Dragon, with a note that some say that this was not a dragon, ~ but a witch from Lochlin—a variant to be expected in Sutherland :— “There lived once upon a time in Sutherland a great dragon, very fierce and strong. It was this dragon that burnt all the fir woods in Ross, Sutherland, and the Reay country, of which the remains, charred, blackened, and half-decayed, may be found in every moss. Magnificent forests they must have been, but the dragon set fire to them with his fiery breath, and rolled over the whole land. XXii - Introduction Men fled from before his face, and women fainted when his shadow crossed the sky-line. He made the whole land desert. And it came to pass that this evil spirit, whom the people called the ‘beast’ and ‘Dubh Giuthais,’ came nigh to Dornoch as near as Lochfinn, and when he could see the town and spire of St Gilbert, his church— Pity of you, Dornoch, roared the dragon. ‘Pity of you, Dornoch,’ said St Gilbert, and taking with him five long and sharp arrows, and a little lad to carry them, he went out to meet the ‘beast.’ When he came over against it he said, ‘ Pity of you,’ and drew his bow. ‘The first arrow shot the beast through the heart. He was buried by the towns-people. Men are alive now who reckoned distance by so or so far from the ‘stone of the beast’ on the moor between Skibo and Dornoch. The moor is planted, and a wood called Carmore waves over the ashes of the destroying dragon.” This church, Miss Dempster notes, was built between 1235-45, burnt 1570, and rebuilt 1614; it was repaired in 1835 by the Duchess, Countess of Sutherland. While the work was going forward the tomb of the founder, Gilbert, Bishop of Caitness, called St Gilbert, was discovered. .The saying went in Sutherland that when this happened, the cathedral would fall at mid-day the following Sunday; and Mrs Dempster well remembered seeing a third of the congregation (Gaelic) camped out on the hill above the town, expecting to see the 1 There is still an old pronunciation with ¢ hard, and not #4, The Celtic Dragon Myth fall of the roof; nor did many of the oldest inhab- itants go to church for several following Sundays. In addition to legends of the desthir-nimh (venom- ous serpent) and wi/e-bheist (dragon ; also a’ bheisd), there are endless tales of the water-horse (each-uisge) associated with Highland lochs. There is hardly a district without some legend of a Line na Baobh (Badhbh) : very often the water-horse is represented as a kind of creature covered all over with rags and ribbons, typifying the wind-tossed surface of the waves. His appearance is a portent of a drowning soon to follow. In the poem of Tristan and Iseult, by Gottfried of Strassburg, a German poet who wrote about the year 1210, working on sources found by him in a poem by Thomas of Brittany, there is an account of the fight with the dragon, strangely analogous to that in Highland tradition. The hero overcomes a monster, and is about to be robbed of the credit of his exploit by a traitor who claims the princess as his guerdon. It is a widespread Aryan tale. A similar adventure is ascribed to Lancelot in Le cerf au pied blanc, and in the Dutch poem of Morten. At least three of the printed prose versions of Tristan retain the dragon fight,’ whether it formed origin- ally a part of the tale or not. Gottfried of Strass- burg introduces it thus :— “‘ Now, the story tells us that there was at that 1 Léseth, Le Roman en prose de Tristan. For variants of the dragon fight, v. Hartland’s Legend of Perseus, vol. iii. xxiv Introduction time in Ireland a monstrous dragon which devoured the people and wasted the land; so that the king at last had sworn a solemn oath that whoever slew the monster should have the Princess Iseult to wife ; and because of the beauty of the maiden and the fierceness of the dragon, many a valiant knight had lost his life. ‘The land was full of the tale, and it had come to Tristan’s’ ears, and in the thought of this had he made his journey. “The next morning, ere it was light, he rose and armed himself secretly, and took his strongest spear, and mounted his steed, and rode forth into the wilderness. He rode by many a rough path till the sun was high in the heavens, when he turned down- wards into a valley, where, as the geste tells us, the dragon had its lair. ‘Then he saw afar off four men galloping swiftly over the moor where there was no road. One of them was the queen’s seneschal, who would fain have been the lover of the Princess Iseult, but she liked him not. Whenever knights rode forth bent on adventures, the seneschal was ever with them for nothing on earth save that men might say they had seen him ride forth, for never would he face the dragon, but would return swifter than he went. ““ Now, when Tristan saw the men in flight he knew the dragon must be near at hand, so he rode on steadily, and ere long he saw the monster coming towards him, breathing out smoke and flame from its open jaws. The knight laid his spear in rest, and 1 Tristan and his uncle Mark, Zimmer thinks, are ninth-century Pictish chieftains. Iseult he takes to be the daughter of the Viking King of Dublin. XXV The Celtic Dragon Myth set spurs to his steed, and rode so swiftly, and smote so strongly, that the spear went in at the open jaws, and pierced through the throat into the dragon’s heart, and he himself came with such force against the dragon that his horse fell dead, and he could scarce free himself from the steed. But the evil beast fell upon the corpse and partly devoured it, till the wound ° from the spear pained it so sorely that it left the horse half-eaten, and fled into a rocky ravine. “ Tristan followed after the monster, which fled before him, roaring for pain till the rocks rang again with the sound. It cast fire from its jaws and tore up the earth around, till the pain of the wound overcame it, and it crouched down under a wall of rock. Then Tristan drew forth his sword, thinking to slay the monster easily, but twas a hard etrifies the hardest Tristan had ever fought, and in truth he thought it would be his death. For the dragon had as aids smoke and flame, teeth and claws sharper than a shearing knife; and the knight had much ado to find shelter behind the trees and bushes, for the fight was so fierce that the shield he held in his hand was burnt well-nigh to a coal, But the conflict did not endure over-long, for the spear in the vitals of the dragon began to pain him so that he lay on the ground, rolling over and over in agony. Then Tristan came near swiftly and smote with his sword at the heart of the monster so that the blade went in right to the hilt; and the dragon gave ferth a roar so grim and terrible that it was as if heaven and earth fell together, and the cry was heard far and wide through the land, Tristan himself was well-nigh terrified, but as he saw the beast was dead he went Introduction near, and with much labour he forced the jaws open, and cut out the tongue; then he closed the jaws again, and put the tongue in his bosom. He turned him again to the wilderness, thinking to rest through the day, and come again to his people secretly in the shadows of the night; but he was so overcome by ‘the stress of the fight and the fiery breath of the dragon that he was well-nigh spent, and seeing a little lake near at hand into which a clear stream flowed from the rock, he went towards it, and as he came to the cool waters the weight of his armour and the venom of the dragon’s tongue overpowered him, and he fell senseless by the stream. ‘«‘Tseult and her mother afterwards found Tristan, and drew him out of the water, whereupon the dragon’s tongue fell from his breast. And when all the folk came together to know the end of the seneschal’s matter, Tristan spake— *«< Lords all, mark this marvel, I slew the dragon, and cut this tongue from out the jaws, yet this man afterwards smote it a second time to death.’ ‘And all the lords said, ‘One thing is clear, he who came first and cut out the tongue was the man who slew the monster.’ And never a man said nay.” } Wales, too, has its legends of dragons, serpents, and snakes. It seems to have been an old Welsh belief that all lizards were formerly women.’ Every Welsh farmhouse had two snakes. ‘“ They never 1 From Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan and Iseult, by J. L.. Weston, I., 89, 98, 123. Cf. also Bedier’s French retelling, Englished by Mr Belloc. 2 Trevelyan, Folk-Lore and Folk-Stories of Wales, p. 165. xxVii > The Celtic Dragon Myth appeared until just before the death of the master or mistress of the house; then the snakes died.” Parallel with this, perhaps, is the number of river names within the Celtic area that seem to contain the names of goddesses or nymphs of the stream. Such are met with in Léochy, the Nigra Dea (black goddess) of Adamnan ; in Affric, both a lake and river name, also a personal female name, from aith bhric (root), as in breac (spotted) ; in Nevis, where Dr MacBain rightly detected some nymph name like Nebestis ; Aberdeen, Gaelic Odair-dhea’oin, with a strongly trilled 7, showing that dh of old deuona (goddess, etc.) has been assimilated to the preceding word for estuary, deuona itself being a divine name, and exemplifying in a river name what Ausonius tells us was the case with sacred springs in Gaul—fons addite divis (they were dedicated to the gods). To be included in the number is the name of the river Boyne, which under the form Bofind (white cow) yields Boyne, the name of Fraoch’s mother’s sister from the Sidh (Shee) or Faéry. The form Boand | (genitive Boinde), also that in the phrase m (A)ostio Bomdeo (at the mouth of the Boyne) goes back on some such form as Boouinda (white cow). This recalls an Irish name for the Milky Way—4éethar b¢ jinne (the way or path of the cow of whiteness). But in Uist I met with the name Slochd Uis (Milky Way), meaning seemingly “ the path or way of white- ness or brightness,” the root of which recurs again in Uisne (Uisnech). Introduction But the survey of the theme would not be complete in the form in which the more modern tradition leaves it. Ihave therefore given the story of Fraoch from the Book of the Dean of Lismore, and also the first part of the old and important tale known as the Tain Bo Fraich, of which the following manuscripts exist : The Book of Leinster ; The Yellow Book of Lecan ; Edinburgh Advocates’ Library Gaelic MS. XL.; Egerton 1782 (British Museum). This old story has been edited with all the important variants, with his wonted care and skill, by Professor Kuno Meyer in the Zertschrift fir Celtische Philologie for 1902. In making my translation I tried to select from among the best of the variant readings. The last seven sections of the Tém Bé Frdich I have not translated here: they are apart from the Geste of Fraoch, and bring the hero of the narrative on further adventures elsewhere. ‘This tale is one of the oldest of our secular narratives in Gadhelic : it belongs to about the ninth century, a period when the Scoto- Celtic idiom of Alba was one with the language of Erin. A translation was made by the late Mr J. O’Beirne Crowe, which appeared in the Royal Irish Academy Proceedings for 1870, but subsequent studies have necessitated many changes. The name Fraoch (Fraech) is very ancient. It survives in the place name Clonfree (Cluain Fraeich), Strokestown, Roscommon. On an Ogham stone it occurs in. Netta Vroict magi muccot Trenaluggo at Donaghmore, Kildare ; also in Vraicci magi Medvi on xxix * The Celtic Dragon Myth an Ogham from Rathcroghan, Roscommon. In this last it stands for (the stone) of Fraoch, son of Medb.* Another account of the death of Fraoch than that given in what I term the Geste of Fraoch is met with in the Tém Bé Cuainge, where he meets his death at the hands of Cuchulainn. It is noticeable that his fairy origin is pointed to, and that his death is associated with water. ‘This episode is at a later stage in his story than that in Tém Bé Frdich, which gives the serpent encounter. He had by this time accompanied Meve’s forces as recounted in the Cattle-Raid of Cuailnge (Téim Bé Cuailnge), and his healing at the hands of the folk of Faery is to be presupposed : here again they intervene, and we hear of Fraoch’s fairy-mound. Here is the Tam Bo Cuainge version of the death of Fraoch, or Fraech :— ‘‘ They are there till next morning ; then Fraech is summoned to them. ‘Help us, O Fraech,’ said Medb (Meve). ‘Remove from us the strait that is on us. Go before Cuchulainn before us, if per- chance you shall fight with him.’ “‘ He set out early in the morning with nine men, till he reached Ath Fuait. He saw the warrior bathing in the river. “<<« Wait here,’ said Paik to his retinue, ‘ till I come to the man yonder; not good is the water,’ said he. 1 MacAlister’s Jrish Oghams, pt. 3, p. 2133 Journ. Roy. Soc. Antig. Treland, § ser. _ XXX Introduction “‘ He took off his clothes, and goes into the water to him. “<< Do not come to me,’ said Cuchulainn. ‘ You will die from it, and I should be sorry to kill you.’ “¢¢] shall come indeed,’ said Fraech, ‘ that we may meet in the water ; and let your play with me be fair.’ **<« Settle it as you like,’ said Cuchulainn. “<<'The hand of each of us round the other,’ said Fraech. “They set to wrestling for a long time on the water, and Fraech was submerged. Cuchulainn lifted him up again. *««'This time, said Cuchulainn, ‘will you yield and accept your life ?’ «<< ] will not suffer it,’ said Fraech. **Cuchulainn put him under it again, until Fraech was killed. He comes to land; his retinue carry his body to the camp. Ath Fraich, that was the name of that ford for ever. All the host lamented Fraech. They saw a troop of women in green tunics’ on the body of Fraech mac Idaid ; they drew him from them into the mound. Sid Fraich was the name of that mound afterwards.” Ailill’s plan in compassing the death of Fraoch recalls his episode with Fergus, son of Rdg. Keating ® tells how, when Fergus was in_banish- ment in Connaught, it happened that he was with 1 W. Faraday’s translation of The Cattle-Raid of Cuailnge, in Nutt’s Grimm Library, p. 35. Fraech was descended from the people of the Sid, his mother Bebind being a fairy woman. Her sister was Boinn (the river Boyne). 2 Ed. Dinneen, ii., 209. XXxi The Celtic Dragon Myth Ailill and Meve in Magh Ai, where they had a fortress; and one day, when they went out to the shore of a lake that was near the /s (or outer court), Ailill asked Fergus to go and swim in the lake, and Fergus did so. While swimming, Meve was seized by a desire of swimming with him ; and when she had gone into the lake with Fergus, Ailill grew jealous, and he ordered a kinsman of his to cast a spear at Fergus, which pierced him through the breast ; and Fergus came ashore on account of the wound caused by that cast, and extracted the spear from his body and cast it in the direction of Ailill ; and it pierced a gray hound that was near his chariot, and thereupon Fergus fell and died and was buried on the shore of the same lake. . Rhys points out that Ailill (written Oilill in Keating) seems cognate with Welsh e//y// (an elf or demon), and that Meve’s Ailill belongs to a race which is always ranged against the Tuatha Dé Danann. Meve he associates with the goddesses of dawn and dusk, who are found at one time consorting with bright beings and at another with dark ones, and they commonly associate themselves with water. Curious too that Meve’s sisters Eithne and Clothru are associated the one with the river Inny (Eithne) in Westmeath, the other with Clothru’s Isle (Inis Clothraun) in Loch Ree. Eochaidh © Feidhlioch, monarch at Tara, was Meve’s father. He had three sons and three daughters—namely, Breas and Nar and Lothar, XXXii. Introduction the three sons; Eithne Uathach, Clothra, and Méve of Cruachan, the three daughters, as the poet says in this quatrain :— «Three daughters had Eochaidh Feidhlioch, Fame on a lofty seat: Eithne Uathach, fair Méve of Cruachan, And Clothra.” } O’Curry remarks of Meéve that she seemed more calculated to govern many men than to be governed by one man. She soon abandoned Conchobar, and returned to her father, the monarch Eochaidh Feidhlioch, to Tara, who shortly after set her up as the independent queen of the province of Connaught. Through jealousy and hatred, fierce war raged between her and her former husband, Conchobar, who finally was killed by a Connaught champion, Cet Mac Magach. This Conchobar, King of Ultonia, is spoken of as being a terrestrial god among the Ultonians. His mother’s name was Ness, hence he is known as Mac Nessa, ‘This goddess name is connected with that in Loch Ness, and points to her as having been conceived of at first as a water-nymph. This does not prejudice what reflex of historic move- ments these stories may imply. Curiously, the death of Méve, no less than that of Fraoch, is associ- ated with water. Keating’s”* account is as follows :— “When Olill had been slain by Conall Cearnach, Meve went to Inis Clothrann, on Lough Ribh (Ree), to live ; and while she resided there, she was under 1 Dinneen’s Keating, ii., 215. 2 Ed. Dineen, ii., 212. > ) ? b] XXxiii c The Celtic Dragon Myth an obligation (4a gers di, .e. under a taboo or gessa) to bathe every morning in the well which was at the entrance to the island. And when Forbuidhe, son of Conchobar (her former husband) heard this, he visited the well one day alone, and with a line measured from the brink of the well to the other side of the lake, and took the measure with him to Ulster, and practised thus: he inserted two poles in the ground, and tied an end of the line to each pole, and placed an apple on one of the poles, and stood himself at the other pole, and kept constantly firing from his sling at the apple that was on the top of the pole till he struck it. This exercise he practised until he had grown so dexterous that he would miss no aim at the apple. Soon after this there was a meeting of the people of Ulster and Connaught at both sides of the Shannon at Inis Clothrann; and Forbuidhe came there from the east with the Ulster gathering. And one morning, while he was there, he saw Meve bathing, as was her wont, in the fore-mentioned well; and with that he fixed a stone in his sling and hurled it at her, and struck her in the forehead, so that she died on the spot, having been ninety-eight years on the throne of Connaught, as we have said above.”’’ Of Fraoch’s mother Boand, elsewhere spoken of as from the Sidhe, the Bodleian Dindshenchus gives the following account :2— ““ Boann, wife of Nechtan, son of Labraid, son of 1 But see Book of Leinster, 1245, 125a, where the story differs con- siderably from that given by O’Curry, who evidently quoted Keating. 2 Trans. by Stokes, p. 34 of reprint from Folk-Lore, iii., 1892. Béann XXXIV See eee eee Introduction Nama, went with the cupbearers to the well-of-the- green of the fortress. Whoever went alone to it came not from it without disgrace. Now these were the names of the cupbearers whom Nechtan had, even Flesc and Lesc and Luam. Unless the cupbearers went to the well, no human being would come from it without disgrace. ““Then, with pride and haughtiness, the ‘queen went alone to the well, and said that it had no secret or power unless it could disgrace her shape. And she went round the well withershins thrice, to perceive the well’s magic power. Out of the well three waves break over her, and suddenly her right thigh and her right hand and her right eye burst, and then she fled out of the fairy mound, fleeing the disgrace and fleeing the well, so that she reached the sea with the water of the well behind her. And the Inber Boinne (river-mouth of Boyne) drowned her. Hence ‘Boann’ and ‘ Inber Boinne.’” : «¢One day Boyne of the mark of Bregia Broke every fence as far as the White Sea ; Béann was the name on that day Of the wife of Nechtan, son of Labraid.” Nechtan, the mythic owner of the fairy precinct now called Trinity Well, into which one could not now the river Boyne, which rises at the foot of Sid Nechtain, a hill in the barony of Carbury, co. Kildare. The story is versified in the Book of Leinster, 191a. See also Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 123, 556. The origin of rivers and lochs is often ascribed to mortals intruding upon secret wells. ‘Truth lies deep at the bottom of a well, and in allegory will not be gazed upon. It is enough to eat of the fruit of the tree which is nourished by the spring. XXKV c2 The Celtic Dragon Myth gaze with impunity, and from which the river Boyne first burst forth in pursuit of the lady who insulted it, may be cognate, Rhys thought, with Neptune, which certainly seems cognate with Irish Nuada Necht.’ How rivers came to be. personified may be illustrated by an enigma which a poet puts to Finn in the tale of the Fairy-Palace of the Quicken Trees :?— ‘“ XXXix The Celtic Dragon Myth the water, according to a poem in the Book of Fermoy— «¢ Let him not swim Black Water, For therein he shall shed his blood.” According to the Highland Lays, Fraoch dies by the serpent, and Findabair laments him. In the Tdin Bé Fraich there is only a promised betrothal with Findabair. According to the Book of Fermoy, his wife is Treblann, a foster-child to Coirpre mac Rossa, who belonged to Faéry. In the Tém Bé Fréich his healing came from the Sidhe, and he survived to take part with Medb on the foray of the Tdin Bé Cuailnge, when he fell at the hands of Cuchulainn. In either case his death is connected with water. Medb was previously wife of Conchobar, who, according to a gloss in the Book of the Dun Cow, was formerly a god upon earth (dia talmanda). In another account we find Conchobar as the name of a river. Medb’s first husband would thus seem to have been a water-god. One might hazard the suggestion that in old Druidic teaching, Medb herself may have been a sort of sea-mother, if indeed their thought on ultimate things may have got the length of postulating a mother of mankind. The berries for which she craved were from the Tree of Life, the food of the gods, the eating of which by mortals brings death. Rowan hurdles were used 1 Rev. Celtique, 6, 173. With Conchobar’s mother Ness, apparently seen as a goddess-name in Loch Ness, compare the Attic-Bceotian dialect Netos-Nessos: Aiuvy Neoowvris in Thessaly. And compare Hesiod, Theog. 341. x". —— Introduction in Druidic divination:' the rowan was a magic medicine ; a monster was thought to haunt the roots of a rowan, and typified the guardian spirit of the tree. The thought is old among the Celts; on the second altar of Notre Dame there is a figure of the Celtic Hercules killing a serpent,’ which the late Monsieur D’Arbois de Jubainville tried to explain by episodes from Gadhelic myth. The dragon may be thought of as the confiner that holds captive the fruit-bearing Tree of Life. On this view he may be the winter-monster which Hildebrandt sees in the Indian Vritra, the “confiner” that holds captive the rivers, while Indra is the spring or summer sun which frees them from the clutches of the winter dragon. ‘The rage of the sun-god may be conceived of as manifested against the cloud-dragon, or the winter-dragon, or the sea-dragon. Fraoch may thus be the Celtic Hercules Furens, the name being the same in root as fraoch (wrath), early Irish /raech (fury, rage), which is cognate with Cymric gwrug.’ His quest may be a solar journey ; and he is swallowed by the monster as the sun is swallowed by the sea. On this view the dragon myth should portray the hero as being devoured by a fish, as on Semitic ground, for which the reader should consult the great Bible Dictionaries, which treat of Bel and the Dragon 1 For references, see Plummer’s Vite Sanctorum Hibernia, I., cliv. 2S. Reinach, Catalogue Sommaire du musée de Saint Germain, p. 335 Nn. 354+ 8 For the Welsh, see Rhys, notes to Twre Trwyth. xli eee The Celtic Dragon Myth and allied themes. In Fraoch the hero is slain, which is parallel to his being swallowed by the sea ; if not cast up again, he is healed at the hands of the Sidhe. May we not infer that the myth is an endeavour to shadow forth some aspects of the external world, a picture, not yet moralised, of the cosmic process, an eternal tragedy of nature? So far as Fraoch’s conflict is comparable with that of Herakles and the Hydra, I should like to emphasise a trait in Euripides (lon, v. 192) where Herakles kills the hydra with golden sickles: Aepvaiov tdpay évarper xpvoéas dpmas 6 Atos wais. On an Attic vase there is depicted the conflict of Herakles against the Centaur Nessos, in reality, a river-god. Perhaps if we had the Celtic Myth in its earliest stage we should find Medb herself to have been a sort of serpent or water-monster. The idea of a paradise or elysium among the Celts, as with the Greeks, assumes two aspects—either that of the hollow-hill (sdhe), that is, the fairy-mound, or that of the over-sea elysium. This contrast may have some relation to the civilisation and home of the Celts; the former pointing, as to its origin, to their continental home, the latter to their insular and maritime abode. The berries of the rowan tree are the berries of the gods, and as connected with the other world are parallel to the idea attached to Emain Ablach, Emain rich in apples, which, from the Book of Fermoy and from the Voyage of Bran, Professor Kuno Meyer has pointed out is connected xlii a Introduction with the Isle of the Blessed, and parallel to the idea attached to the Vale of Avalion (Avalon), where “falls not hail, nor rain, nor any snow.” Underlying the whole is the idea of the Island of the Blessed, insula promorum quae fortuna vocatur. As to Fraoch’s exploit, in so far as it may be parallel to that of Herakles, Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, in his Com- mentary on the Herakles of Euripides, has pointed out that the garden of the gods, with the tree which carries the apples of life, is really quite independent of the Herakles saga, while a highly archaic variant of that story is that Herakles, leaps into the jaws of a sea-monster, the jaws of death. On Celtic ground, too, we have the contest of a hero with a water-monster quite apart from Fraoch, and the rowan tree guarded by the dragon. The continuation of the Tdi Bé Fréich brings the hero across the sea to the Alps and to the Langobardi. Here Fraoch is represented as_being of the Ultonians: after high exploits he and his friends came to the territory of the Cruithen-tuath, the Pictish people, and later on he joined Ailill and Medb on the Tdin Bé Cuailnge. It is impossible to be sure whether we have not here a hint that Fraoch was a hero of the Picts, the people whom the Gael called Cruithne (Cruithen-tuath), a word cognate in root with Cymric pryd in Ynys Prydain, and pointing to the pre- Gadhelic population of these isles as a people who practised tatooing. Apart from the accessory of the Tree of Life, the xiii * The Celtic Dragon Myth parallel that is closest of all is the rescue of Andro- meda by Perseus. On a hydriain the Berlin Museum there is a representation of Perseus in conflict with the monster fish, where there is present Andromeda, Kepheus, and another woman (Jope?). The whole story of the Geste of Fraoch is there minus the rowan tree and the serpent, which is replaced by the monster fish. Among the Greeks it formed the subject of a lost drama of Euripides, but we know the theme from the pseudo-Apollodorus. Perseus, on having come to Ethiopia, the kingdom of Kepheus, found the king’s daughter Andromeda about to be exposed to a sea-monster. Kassiepeia, the wife of Kepheus, had boasted of her beauty, and thus fell into strife with the Nereids, or water-nymphs. This brought on her the anger of the Nereids and of Poseidon, who sent a flood and a monster to her father’s realm. The oracle of Ammon gave out that the disaster to the kingdom would be averted if the king abandoned his daughter Andromeda to be devoured of the monster. Pressed by the A‘thiopians, Kepheus had his daughter bound to a rock ; in this state she was found by Perseus, who, smitten with love, promised Kepheus to slay the monster on condition that he would have the king’s daughter, on her deliverance, to be his wife. ‘This condition was | agreed to, and thereafter Perseus went to meet the monster, killed it, and rescued Andromeda. This is another version of the Herakles-Hesione saga, which briefly is as follows. Poseidon and Apollo came in xliv Introduction human form to Laomedon, King of Troy,and promised, for a certain reward, to gird his city with walls. The king would not fulfil his promise when the work was ended ; whereupon Apollo sent a pest, and Poseidon a sea-monster which used to carry off the people working on the fields. Laomedon sought the advice of an oracle, which counselled him, in penance for his guilt, to deliver his daughter Hesione to the monster. In consequence of this divine judgment, Hesione was chained to a rock. As Herakles came the way he offered to free the maiden if Laomedon would give him the horses which he formerly received from Zeus on account of Ganymede. Which being agreed to, Herakles slew the monster and freed the maid. But the stubborn king endeavoured to deceive Herakles also, which drew upon him the vengeance whereby Troy is said to have been first of all destroyed. It is at Joppa, in Pheenicia, that the story of Andromeda has been localised of old. Pliny” tells us that the Pheenician Joppa is older than the flood, that it lies on a hill, in front of which is a rock where traces of the fetters of Andromeda are pointed out. And St Jerome, in his Commentary on Jonah, writes: ‘‘ Here (at Joppa) is the place where on the strand are pointed out to this day the rocks to which Andromeda was bound, and from which she is said to have been freed by the help of Perseus. And on an Attic vase is a representation of Jason being vomited 1 Natur. Hist., v., 13. xlv The Celtic Dragon Myth from out of the belly of a sea-monster or dragon at the command of Athene.” While we have no reference as to Fraoch having been swallowed by the dragon, the fisher’s first son was swallowed by the mermaid, who is induced from her love of music to cast him forth once more.’ It is also noticeable that the impostor incident, so common in the dragon stories, alongside of the rescuer, is lacking in Fraoch. But the impostor incident must have been known of old among the Celts, for we find it alluded to in the Rescue of Derforgaill, or Dervorgoil, a variant of a folk-tale introduced into the “ Wooing of Emer,” a text of the Cuchulainn Cycle. On coming to the dwelling of Ruad, King of the Isles, at Hallowe’en, Cuchulainn hears wailing in the fort. The king’s daughter Derforgaill has been assigned in tribute to the Fomori, and she is exposed on the seashore, awaiting their coming. Cuchulainn kills three Fomori (or sea-giants) in single combat, but his last opponent wounds him at the wrist. The girl gives a strip from her raiment to bind his wound, and her rescuer goes off without making himself known. ‘The maiden came to the dan and told her father the whole story. . . . Many in the dgn boasted of having killed the Fomori, but the maiden did not believe them.” On a test having been applied, the maiden recognised Cuchulainn, it is to be inferred, from the piece from off her raiment on his wound.’ 1 Pp. 78-80 of Campbell’s retelling. 2 E. Hull, The Cuchulainn Saga, pp. 81-82 (trans. by K. Meyer-) xlvi — Introduction In Brittany the impostor figures as a charcoal-burner, who professes to have killed the seven-headed serpent to which the king’s daughter was to have been sacrificed, and he carries off the heads. But the herd had cut out the seven tongues, and these are tokens of the true victor.' In Highland folk-tales the rescuer appears in the character of herd,* and the impostor as a squint-eyed,® carroty-headed cook. Its parallel in Ireland is The Thirteenth Son of the King of Erin*; here the hero also hires himself as cow-herd, and rescues a king’s daughter from an ur-féist, a great serpent of the sea, a monster which must get a king’s daughter to devour every seven years. While he slept in the maiden’s lap, she took three hairs from his head and hid them in her bosom. He has three conflicts with the monster, and each time he is victor. On the third trial the hero Sean Ruadh takes a brown apple, given him by a giant’s housekeeper, and threw it into the monster’s mouth, “and the beast fell helpless on the strand, flattened out, and melted away to a dirty jelly on the shore.” The girl was able to identify her 1 Quoted in Hartland’s Legend of Perseus, iii., 6. 2 Cf. also MacInnes, Folk and Hero Tales from Argyll: Lod the Farmer's Son (properly the Ploughman’s son, acirean; Ir. oireamh, genitive oireamhan (ploughman) ; root as in L. aro; Ir. arathar (plough); Welsh arddwr; E. ear (the soil). Cf the racial name Eremon, Airem(on), with which ryan has been compared, Skr. Arjaman. 8 Claon. Hector Maclean’s spelling claghann I would ask the reader to delete in favour of claon. * Curtin, Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland, 157; WLarminie, West Irish Tales and Romances, 196; quoted in Hartland, ibid. iii.., 4-6. xvii The Celtic Dragon Myth rescuer by one of his blue-glass boots. The hero finally put the claimants to death, and wedded the maid. This story has been identified in Brittany and among the Basques. Mr E. Sidney Hartland says: “ The Celtic Dragon Myth brings them back; truly not forever; Athene or some other divinity will bring them to their place, and into the power of the dragon, for the World Order cannot be altered. Yet the hero kills the dragon anew, and fetches the golden apples once more. And so, I would add, with Fraoch. There are dragons still to be slain. May the recital of an old tale kindle the mind to new adventures. Here are materials for poets and painters. It is we who are living now. Let us mould them to express ourselves. The ancients have expressed themselves through similar tales ; nor will we fulfil ourselves by entirely dis- regarding our ancestral past and our wealth of complex tradition. Let me express my heartfelt thanks to Miss Rachel Ainslie Grant Duff, Delgaty Castle, for the kindness which prompted her to make beautiful illustrations for this book. It helps to make it so. much more human, and has given me indefinable pleasure, which will communicate itself to other artists. And if anyone should paint Medb, let them remember an early description in the Tdm: a beautiful, pale, long-faced woman, with long flowing golden-yellow hair, having a crimson cloak fastened with a brooch of gold over her breast, a straight- ridged spear flaming in her hand. The theme is largely identical with that of St George and the Dragon, which meets us in the Golden Legend of Jacques de Voragine, and appears , Introduction in the office books of the Church in the Middle Ages :— “OQ Georgi Martyr inclyte Te decet laus et gloria Predolatum militia Per quem puella regia Existens in tristitia Coram Dracone pessimo Salvata est!” li THE GESTE OF FRAOCH [Wherein 1s told the hero’s origin, his wooing of Find-abair, his killing of the monster that guarded the rowan- tree, and his betrothal.| 1. Fraoch, son of Idad’ of Connaught, was a son of Béebinn from the Sidh,? whose sister hight Boyne (Bofind). Of the heroes of Erin and of Alba the most beautiful man was he, save only that he was short-lived. ‘Twelve cows his mother gave him from the Sidh ; white with red ears were they. For seven years he kept household without taking to himself a wife. The number of his household was fifty princes, in age and dignity his equals, as to form and feature and bearing alike. 2. Find-abair, daughter of Ailill and Meve, from hear-say regarding him, gave him love, of which report was brought him at his place. Erin and Alba were full of his fame and story. 1 me Idaid (Book of the Dun Cow, facsimile, p. 63°, line 27); Idaith (Book of Leinster); Fiduig (Egerton, 1782); Idhaig (Edinburgh, MS. XL.); m°* Fei* (Book of Dean of Lismore). Hence nominative Idad, genitive Idaid, the form of the oldest manuscript, seems preferable: it would readily yield the other variants in regular development. Fraoch may be pronounced as Fraech, 2 Pronounce Shee. The Geste of Fraoch He accordingly bethought him of going to bespeak the girl, and then he talked of the matter with his folk. And his folk said: “ Let word too be sent to thy mother’s sister that she may give thee somewhat of raiment of the rare treasure of the S/d. 3. To the sister Boyne (Bofind) he thereupon went to the plain of Bregia or Moy Breg. She gave him fifty mantles of dark blue, each for hue like to a beetle’s back, with four black-grey brooch-rings on each, and each with a pin of red gold: with fifty pale white tunics having animal figures chased in gold. Also fifty silver shields edged with gold. For each man’s hand a lance like to a candle such as befitted a palace," each having fifty rivets of white- bronze, with knobs of burnished gold: the spear- points from below were of carbuncle inwrought, while the front irons of the spears were chased with precious stones, so that night shone as ’twere by the rays of the sun. Further, fifty swords with hilts of gold, and for each rider a dark grey steed with bits of gold. Around each horse’s neck was a plate of silver with bells of gold ; fifty leather caparisons in purple with threads of silver, with buckles of gold and silver, and animal devices for ornament. Fifty whips in white bronze, with a golden hook on the handle of each. Seven grey-hounds in chains of silver, with an apple of gold a-piece, each having greaves of bronze. There was no colour which the hounds had not. 1 For brightness, i.e. 2 The Geste of Fraoch Accompanying them in garments of diverse colours were seven trumpeters, with trumpets golden and silver, and golden pale yellow tresses, and they had plaids that glistened like the Shee. In front of them went three jesters having silver diadems and gilt about. Each had shields engraved with devices, with crested staves and ribs of white metal along the sides. Opposite them were three harpists, each of kingly presence. And in that guise they set out for Cruachan. 4. Oncoming into the Plain of Cruachan the watch- man perceives them from the Dam. And he spake: *‘I behold a host coming towards the fort in their numbers ; a troop more beautiful or splendid never came to Aililland Meve since they assumed sovereignty, nor ever will. It is as if my head were in a wine- vat with the wind that goes over me: I have never ‘seen the equal of the feats and frolic (the games and gestures) of the hero. His play-rods he casts with a shot from him, and the seven grey-hounds with their seven silver chains are at them ere they fall to earth. 5. Then the folks came to view them from the - Din of Cruachan, insomuch that they smother one another, and sixteen are killed while looking on, On alighting at the door of the din they unyoked their horses and set loose the grey-hounds, which chase to Rath Cruachan seven hinds, seven foxes, seven hares, and seven wild boars, and these the youths kill on the lawn of the fort. Thereafter the dogs dashed into the Brei and caught seven others, which 3 The Geste of Fraoch they deposited at the said entrance to the door of the chief rath, where Fraoch and his folk sat. 6. King Ailill sent word to them, and enquired whence they had come. They accordingly name themselves after their true names, which they gave. “Here,” said they, “is Fraoch, son of Idad.”* This the steward declares to the king and queen. “An illustrious young hero,” quoth Ailill, “let him come into the Luss.” ? And quarters were allotted them. 7. The plan of the house was thus: seven apart- ments it had from fire to wall all around, decorated with gold, each with a fronting of bronze, and partition carvings of red yew variegated by fine planing withal. Three layers of bronze in the arched skirting of each apartment, with seven layers of brass from where the - shields rested to the roof-tree. Of pine the house was made, and it had a covering of shingle on the outside. Sixteen windows it had with brass shuttings in each, and a brass yoke across the roof-light. Four beams of brass in the apartment of Ailill and Meve, all adorned with bronze and in the very centre of the house. Two silver frontings it had, and overlaid with gold; and by the fronting facing Ailill there was a silver wand that would reach the mid “hips” of the house, so as to command the inmates at all times and circuit the house all around from one door to the other. Having hung up their arms within, 1 Mac Idhuidh—Egerton, 1782. 2 Outer court. 4 The Geste of Fraoch they make the circle of the house and were made welcome. 8. “ Welcome are ye!” quoth Ailill and Meve. “It is for that we have come,” quoth Fraoch. ‘Not a journey for boasting shall this be,” quoth Meve. Thereafter Ailill and Meéve arrange the chess- board. Fraoch then takes to playing chess with a man of their company. The most beautiful of chess-boards it was: it had a board of white metal with four ear-handles, and gold edgings. A candlestick of precious stone gave them light. The chess-men were of gold and silver. ‘Get ye food in readiness for the braves,” quoth Ailill. “That is not what I wish,” quoth Meve. “I want to have a game with Fraoch.” “It liketh me well,” quoth Ailill, “get up and go to him.” | Meve then goes to Fraoch and at chess they play. g. Fraoch’s folk in the meantime were a-roasting the animals of the chase. * Let thine harpers play for us!” quoth Ailill to Fraoch. ‘Let them play in sooth!” quoth Fraoch. Harp-bags they had of otter-skins mounted with ruby, adorned with gold and silver, and roe-skins, white as snow around the middle, with black-grey “eyes” in the centre. Gold and silver and bronze in the harps, which were chased with figures of 5 The Geste of Fraoch serpents and birds and hounds in silver and gold. With the movement of the strings the figures would move all about. The harpers having played, twelve of Ailill and of Méve’s folk died of sorrow and of grief. 10. Gentle and melodious this Triad ; theirs were the chants of child-birth.. Three noble brothers were they: Sorrow-strain, Joy-strain, Sleep-strain, and Boyne from the Shee (Side) their mother : it is of this music which Uaithne the Dagda’s harp played that the three are named. What time children were being born its strain was sorrow and travail from the soreness of birth-pangs beginning ; next a strain of glee and of joy it played because of the pleasure of bringing the two sons to the birth ; the strain played by the last son was one soothing and soft because of the heaviness of birth, so that it is from him that the third of the music has been named. Boyne then awoke out of sleep. ““T receive,” she said, “‘ thy three sons, O Uaithne of full ardour, since Sorrow-strain, Joy-strain, Sleep- strain are on kine and women who shall fall by Meve and Aijlill. Men shall fall on hearing the strains being played.” Thereupon the playing ceased. “‘ Splendidly has it come off!” said Fergus. 11. ‘“ Apportion us the food,” said Fraoch to his folk. ‘“‘ Bring it in.” Lothar, having stepped within, divides them the 1 Uaithne. 6 The Geste of Fraoch food. On his hand used he to divide each joint with his sword, leaving neither shred nor skin; since he took to dividing he never hacked the meat under his charge. Three days and three nights, then, were Meve and Fraoch playing chess, by reason of the abundance of precious stones with Fraoch’s folk. Thereafter Fraoch addressed Meve. “Well have I played against thee: I take not thy stake from the chess-board that there be to thee no decay of honour.” “Since ever I have been in this dan,” said Meve, “it is this day that I feel the longest.” | “Yea, certainly indeed,” quoth Fraoch, “ three days and three nights have we been playing chess.” 12. At this Meve starts up. She felt shame at the warriors being without food. And she goes and tells this to Ailill. “An extraordinary deed have we done—the Warriors outside who have arrived to be without food !” “‘ Dearer to thee is chess-playing,” quoth Ailill. «It hinders not food being distributed throughout _ the house to his suite. Three days and three nights are they there without our having perceived the night through the glare of the precious stones within.” “Tell them then,” said Aijlill, ‘‘to cease the lamentations they make until food be served them.” Thereupon food is served them and it pleased 7 The Geste of Fraoch them well; and they stayed there three days and three nights a-feasting. And thereafter Fraoch was called to the hall of audience to converse with Ailill and Meve. They ask him his errand. “It pleases me in sooth to visit you,” said he. “Your company is indeed not displeasing to the household,” said Ailill. ‘‘ Your arrival is preferable to your departure.” * “We shall stay with you another week, then,” said Fraoch. They stay until the end of a fortnight at the din ; every day they go to the chase and hunt. And the men of Connaught used to come to view them. 13. It was, however, a trouble with Fraoch not to have converse with the daughter, for it was that “benefit” that. had specially brought him. Night at end he got up one day to bathe in the river. It was at the same time that she with her maid went to bathe. He takes her hand. “Stay to speak with me, it is for thee I have come,” he said. “‘ Pleased am I,” said the girl, “but if I come I could do nothing for thee.” ‘“‘ Would’st thou not elope?” he queried. “T will not elope,” she said, “I am a king and queen’s daughter. Thine estate is not so humble that thou would’st not get me from my people, and it is my choice too to go to thee, for it is thou whom I 1 Lit., * Your addition is better than your diminution.”’ 8. The Geste of Fraoch have loved. And do thou take this ring of gold with thee,” said the girl, “and it shall ever be a token between us. My mother gave it me to put by ; I will say that I mislaid it.” They each then part. 14. “I am fearing indeed,” quoth Ailill, “the eloping of yon daughter with Fraoch. *‘*Twere not in vain’ even should she be given him; he would come to us with his cattle to aid us at the Tamm,” said Méve. Fraoch goes to the audience chamber. “Is it a secret ye are speaking of ?” he quoth. _ “Though it were a secret, thou would’st fit in,” said Ailill. | ‘Will ye give me your daughter?” said Fraoch. “She will be given thee,” said Ailill, “if thou give me her purchase-price? which I shall name.” “Though shalt have it,” said Fraoch. “Sixty black-grey steeds to me,” said Ailill, “with their bridle-bits of gold, and twelve milch- cows, each in milk, and each having a white red- eared calf; and do thou come to me with all thy force and with thy musicians for the bringing of the kine from Cuailnge—my daughter to be given thee provided thou dost come to the Hosting.” “‘T swear,” Fraoch spake, “ by my shield, by my sword, and by mine arms, I would not give that purchase-price even were it for Meve herself.” 1 « Tove’s labour lost.”’ 2 Dowry from the bridegroom ; cf. marriage-settlement. 9 The Geste of Fraoch Then he marched out of the house. 15. Meve and Ailill thereafter fell to conversing within, and said: ‘Should he carry off the girl he will bring a host of the Kings of Erin against us. What is good is, let us dash after him and slay him forthwith ere he work us ruin.” ‘‘ That were’ a pity and a loss of honour to us,” said Meve. “Tt shall not be a loss of honour for us,” said Ailill, ‘‘ the way I shall prepare it.” » 16. Ailill and Meve go into the Palace. “Let us set off,” said Ailill, “that we may see the chase-hounds a-hunting until midday, until they are tired.” Thereafter they set off to the river to bathe themselves. “ Fraoch ! I am told,” said Ailill, “‘ thou art expert in water; get into this /n? that we may behold thy swimming.” “ What kind of /inn is it?” said Fraoch. “We know not any danger therein, and bathing in it is frequent,” Ailill said. Fraoch then: strips off his clothes asidh goes into the /inn ; his girdle he leaves on shore. Ailill opens Fraoch’s purse behind his back, and finds therein the gold ring, which Ailill recognises. “Come here, O Méve!” said Ailill. Then Meve goes to the place where Ailill was. 1 Lit., is. _ 2 Pool. 10 . =—_ The Geste of Fraoch “Dost thou recognise that ?” said Ailill. “TI do recognise it,” said Meve. Ailill casts the ring into the water. Fraoch, however, perceived that, and saw how a salmon leaped to meet it and took it into his mouth. Fraoch made a dash for the salmon, caught it by the jowl, went to land and brought it to a hidden spot by the brink of the river, He then proceeded to come out of the water. : 17. “Come not out of the water,” said Ailill, “until thou bring me a branch from yonder rowan- tree that is on the brink of the river: beautiful I deem its berries.” He then goes off and breaks a branch from off . the tree, and brings it on his back across the water. — And the remark of Find-abair was: “‘[s that not beautiful that ye see?” Beautiful she thought it to see Fraoch over the black linn:’ the body of great whiteness, the hair of great loveliness, the face so well formed ; the eye of deep grey, and he a tender youth without fault, without blemish ; with his face small below and broad above ; his build straight and flawless ; the branch with the red berries between the throat and the white face. Find-abair was wont to say that she had not seen aught that would come up to him half or third for beauty. 18. Thereafter he throws them the branches out of the water. ‘Lovely and beautiful are the berries ; bring us more of them.” _ 1 Eg. version adds: in the Brei. 11 The Geste of Fraoch He goes off again; as he was in the middle of the /imn, the monster from out the water lays hold of him. ‘‘Give mea sword,” Fraoch cried, **’ The monster hath got hold of me.” There was not on land one who would dare give it to him for fear of Ailill and of Meve. Thereupon Find-abair strips off her clothes and gives a leap into the water with the sword. Ailill casts a five-pronged spear at her from above, a shot’s length, so that it passes through her two tresses of hair. Fraoch, however, caught the spear in his hand, shoots it to landwards, the monster all the while being in his side. It was a bow-cast, a species of champion’s weapon-feat, so that it pierces Ailill’s purple robe and tunic. Thereupon the young braves who were in Ailill’s suite got up. Find-abair then gets out of the water, and leaves the sword in Fraoch’s hand. Fraoch cuts off the monster’s head so that it lay above on its rump, and Fraoch brings the monster to land. From this is named Duiblind Fréich, Fraoch’s Black-Linn (Black-Pool) on the Brei in the lands of the men of Connaught. Thereafter Ailill and Meve go to their dan. 19. “A great deed we have done!” quoth Meve. ‘“‘Of what we have done to the man we repent,” says Ailill, “‘for he is not to blame. As for the girl, on the other hand, her lips shall pale in death ere the morrow’s eve, nor shall her guilt be the bringing of the sword. For this man do ye prepare a bath 12 The Geste of Fraoch of fresh-bacon broth and heifer-flesh minced in it with adze and axe—Fraoch therein to be bathed.” All that was done as he said. 20. Then the Horn-blowers (or Trumpeters) preceded Fraoch to the dzn, and such was their play- ing that thirty of Ailill’s and of Meve’s friends-in- chief die from the magic music. Fraoch was led into the déin, and brought into the bath. And the women-folk rise around him at the vat to rub him and to lave his head. On being brought out of it a bed was made. Then was heard the sore lament from over Cruachan drawing nigh, and there were seen thrice fifty women in crimson tunics, with head-dresses of green, and silver rings on their wrists. One is sent to them for tidings to learn why they keen. “For Fraoch son of Idad” (Fraoch mac Idhaidh), spake the Banshee, “‘in sooth for the darling of the Sidhe—princess of Erin.” Thereat Fraoch hears that plaintive keen. ‘< Lift me out,” said he to his folk, “this is the keen of my mother and of the ladies of Boyne.” Thereupon he is lifted and brought out to them. The women come around him and bring him off to the Sidhe (Shee) of Cruachan. On the morrow at the ninth hour they saw him return, with fifty women around him, and quite whole. Flawless and stainless—the women being alike in age, shape, form, and loveliness, in beauty 13 The Geste of Fraoch and symmetry and figure alike in appearance as the women of the Sidhe, so that there was no means of knowing the one from the other. Men all but smothered one another [as they pressed] around them, until in the door of the liss or outer court they separate. They raise their keen at departure, so that they set the men in the liss beside themselves. From this is named the Keen of the Banshee, a fairy-melody with the musicians of Erin. 21. Into the din goes Fraoch, and the hosts rise up before him, and bid him welcome as if it were from another world he came. Ailill and Meve arise and show they are penitent for the misdeed they did him ; they make full peace and betake themselves to feasting until night. Fraoch summons a servant of his suite and said: ““Get thee off to the spot where I went into the water : a salmon I left there, bring it to Find-abair, and of it let herself take charge, and let her broil it well. The gold-ring is in the salmon’s middle. I expect it will be asked of her to-night.” ! They become inebriated, and music and playing delight them. 22. Quoth Ailill to his steward: “ Bring me all my treasures.” They were brought him and were before him. “Wonderful, wonderful !” they all exclaimed. ** Call ye Find-abair to me,” said Ailill. With a train of fifty maidens she comes in. “Well, daughter,” Ailill spake, ‘“‘the ring which 14 The Geste of Fraoch I gave thee last year is it in thy possession? Bring it me that the warrior-braves may see it; thou shalt have it again.” “I do not know,” she said, “‘ what has become of it.” “ Well, find out,” said Ailill, “it must be sought, else the soul must part with thy body.” “‘It is unworthy to say so; there is much that is fine besides,” said the warrior-braves. And Fraoch spake : **] possess no treasure which I would not give up on behalf of the girl, for she has brought me the word to save my life.” * *< Of treasures thou hast none which can save her if she bring not the ring back,” quoth Ailill. “‘] have no power to give it,” said the girl, “do with me what thou wilt.” ‘“‘ By the god of my folk,” said Ailill, “thy lips shall pale in death if thou return it not. Why it is asked of thee is because of the impossible. Until the dead come back who died since the world began, from where it was flung I know it doth not return.” “Verily, not for reward or longing shall the wished for treasure return,” said the girl. ‘Since, however, thou dost long for it so pressingly I go to bring it thee.” | “Go, indeed, thou shalt not,” said Ailill, “ but let some one go from thee to fetch it.” And the girl sent her maid. 1 Lit., in pledge for my soul. 15 The Geste of Fraoch “I swear by my people’s god,” she said, “ should anyone be found to protect me from the tyrant’s stroke,’ I shall no longer be in thy power should the ring be found.” “‘ Should the ring be found,” said Ailill, “I shall certainly not prevent thee, should it even be with the groom (stable-boy) that thou should’st go.” | 23. The maid then brought into the palace the dish with the broiled salmon thereon, well prepared with honey dressing. Over the salmon lay the golden ring. Ailill and Meéve view it. “Let me see!” said Fraoch, ‘‘and he looked for his purse.” “‘Meseemeth, it is for a testimony that I left my girdle behind,” said Fraoch. ‘ Declare on thy Royal Word what thou hast done with the ring !” | “Yea I will not conceal it from thee,” Ailill said. “* Mine is the ring which was in the purse, and I knew it was Find-abair who gave it thee. On this account I flung it into the Black Linn. On thy word of honour, and by thy soul, declare O Fraoch, how it has happened to be brought out.” Fraoch spoke: “I will not conceal it from thee. On the first day I found the thumb-ring at the door of the /ss, and I knew it was a lovely gem ; therefore I carefully put it by in my purse. On the day that I went to the water I heard how the girl had gone 1 This rendering only paraphrases the original, where sarol mogreiss seems to convey the ideas of oppression and servility. 16 The Geste of Fraoch out to seek it. I said to her: ‘ What reward shall I have from thee for finding it ?’ ‘She told me that she would give me a year’s love. It chanced that I had not got it with me; I had left it behind me in the house. We met not until we met as she gave the sword into my hand in the river. And thereafter I saw when thou didst open the purse, and didst fling the thumb-ring into the water, and I saw the salmon spring to meet it so that it took it into its mouth. Then I caught the salmon, took it up on the bank and put it into the girl’s hand. It is that salmon then which is on the dish.” 24. At these tales the household were struck with astonishment and they marvelled. “] shall not bestow my thought on another youth in Erin after thee,” said Find-abair. “ Betroth thee to him,” said Ailill and Meve, “and do thou come to us with thy kine to the raid of the kine of Cualnge: on thy return once more from the east with thy kine, ye twain shall wed that same night, thou and Find-abair.” “‘T will do so,” Fraoch replied. They are there until the following day, when Fraoch with his companions got ready and bade farewell to Ailill and to Meve. They then set out for their own bounds. 17 B The Geste of Fraoch THE DEATH OF FRAOCH? On Cluan Fraoich® a friend doth sigh Where doth lie a warrior low On his bier ; And his moan makes warriors grieve And bereft of love his spouse. For Idad’s son she doth keen For whom is named Cairn Laive: Fraoch mac Idad of soft locks, Idad’s son of raven hair. Westward there lies Fraoch mac Idad Who fulfilled proud Méve’s behest. On Cruachan Shee (Sidh) a mother weeps : Sad the tale—a mother’s wail She grieves sore for Fraoch her son. Many a field in strifes of old He had won and behold ‘Fraoch mac Idad lieth cold. To Cluan Fraoich comes Find-abair : She doth weep—a sad ladye ; With tresses soft and curling locks And her hand | Of Queen Meve proud heroes sought. 1 Retold after the Book of the Dean of Lismore, a sixteenth century text. The tale might be entitled: The Tree of Life in Gadhelic Legend. Its teaching might be summarised: Thou shalt not break off the branches from the Tree of Life, nor attempt to uproot it; in the day that thou disturbest it thou shalt surely die. Its guardian is the serpent, the Dragon- Snake (the Mother of Mankind possibly thus typified). 2 Fraoch’s mead, i.e. 18. The Geste of Fraoch FRAOCH!? Auctor hujus an Caoch O Cluain 1. H-osnadh caraid an Cluan Fhraoich H-osnadh laoich an caiseal chro H-osnadh dheanann tuirseach fear, Agus da’n guileann bean og. 2. Aig so shear? an carn fa’n bh-feil Fraoch mac Fhiodhaich an fhuilt mhaoith, Fear a rinn buidheachas baoibh Is bho’n sloinntear Carn Fraoich. 3. Gul aon mhna an Cruachan soir Truagh an sgeul fa bh-feil a’ bhean Is se bheir a h-osnadh gu trom Fraoch mac Fiodhaich nan colg sean. 4. Si ’n aon bhean do nidh an gul Ag dol d’a fhios gu Cluan Fraoich, Fionnabhair an fhuilt chais ail Inghean Mhaoidhbh g’am biaid laoich. 1 From the Book of the Dean of Lismore after Dr Cameron’s trans- cription and transliteration in Reliquie Celtice (i. 63). His transliteration is in several places corrected ; mac Fhiodhaich is dialectal for mac Fhiodhaidh, mac Idhaidh, old nominative Idad. 2 Shiar? 3 Recte Maoidhbh. 19 * The Geste of Fraoch Find-abair of golden hair Ailill’s one daughter she Lies side by Fraoch to-night : Of many loved, of many sought But never a love But Fraoch had Find-abair. Her cause of hatred unprovoked Meve found For Fraoch the best of knights, Bravest and friendliest : When love for him she found Her passion he did scorn And hence his wound : Fraoch lies a corpse to-night. Great was the wrong thus wrought by Méve: Simply we still unfold The story old: (With woman-kind side not in ill) His death her scheme foretold. (On Cluan Fraoich a friend doth sigh.) II A rowan tree grew on Loch Méve— Southwards is seen the shore—- Every fourth and every month Ripe fruit the rowan bore : Fruit more sweet than honey-comb, Its clusters’ virtues strong, Its berries red could one but taste Hunger they staved off long. 20 The Geste of Fraoch . Inghean Orla’ as ur folt Is Fraoch an nochd taobh air thaobh Ge mor fear dha’ dtairgeadh i Nior ghradhaich si fear ach Fraoch. . Faigheas Meadhbh a muigh fuath Cairdeas Fhraoich fa fearr an gliadh, A’ chuis fa’n chreuchd-ta a chorp Tre gun lochd a dheanamh ria. . Do chuireadh e gu sa’ bhas Taobh re mnaibh na tug an olc Is mér am pudhar a thuit le Meadhbh Innedsad gun cheilg a nos. H-osnadh. II . Caorrunn do bhi air Loch Mai, Do chidhmist an traigh fa dheas ; Gach[a] raidh [agus] gach mi, Toradh abaidh do bhi air. . Sasadh bidh na caora sin, Ba mhillse na mhil a bhlath ; Do chongbhfadh an caorrann dearg Fear gun bhiadh gu ceann naoi trath. 1 Recte Ailell’. 21 The Geste of Fraoch Its berries’ juice and fruit when red For a year would life prolong : From dread disease it gave relief If what is told be our belief. Yet though it proved a means of life Peril lay closely nigh ; Coiled by its root a dragon lay Forbidding passage by. A messenger for Fraoch was sent By Eochaidh’s daughter keen— When sickness sore Meéve rent: “What ails ?” quoth Fraoch, “ the Queen ?” And Eochaidh’s daughter made reply— Eochaidh of the festive horns— That ne’er would she be whole Till her soft palm were full Of berries from the island in the lake— Fraoch’s hand alone to pull. ‘“< Such I ne’er cull’d,” said Idad’s son Of blushing face ; ‘Yet will I what I yet ne’er willed,” Quoth Fraoch, out of grace. Sir Fraoch moved forward to his fate Forth to the lake and swam the tide ; He found asleep the dragon-snake Around the tree, mouth open wide. (On Cluan Fraoich a friend doth sigh.) 22 The Geste of Fraoch 10, Bliadhain air shaoghal gach fir Do chuireadh sin fa sgeal dearbh Gum bu fhdirinn do luchd cneidh Fromhadh a mheas is e dearg. 11. Do bhi anshastacht' ’na dheigh Ge ba léigh a chobhar an t-sluaigh, Péist nimh do bhi ’na bhun? Bhacadh dha cach dhul d’a bhuain. 12. Léan easlainte throm throm Inghean Eochaidh nan corn saor, Do chuireadh fios leath air Fraoch, Dh’ fhiosraich an laoch ciod thainig ri. 13. A dubhairt Meadhbh nach bi slan Mur faigh lan a boise maoith Do chaoraibh an locha fhuair Gun duine ga bhuain ach Fraoch. 14. Cnuasachd riamh ni dhearnadh mi Ar Mac Fiodhaich go ngné dheirg Ge gar dhéarnas e ar Fraoch Rachsad do bhuain chaor do Mheidhbh. 15. Gluaiseas Fraoch, b’e fear an aigh Bhuain a shnamh air an loch Fhuair a’ pheist is i ’na suain Is a ceann suas ris an dos. H-osnadh. 1 Amsy=aimiseachd ; aimsiughadh, “temptation”: fascination? ’N aimcheist mhér a bha na dhiaidh (Gilhes ; MacLagan). * A’ Bheithir gharg is miosa nimh (Cameron’s Relig. Celt., i., p. 225). 23 The Geste of Fraoch II] Fraoch, Idad’s son, of weapon keen Of the beast being unperceived, Of berries red a lapful brought Meve’s longing to relieve. “Though good be that which thou hast brought,” Quoth Meve of form so fair, “‘ Nought me relieves, O Champion bold Save branch from trunk thou bear.” Fraoch gave consent: no fear he knew But swam the lake once more: But hero never yet did pass The fate for him in store. The rowan by the top he seized From root he pulled the tree ; And the monster of the lake perceived As Fraoch from the land made free. With his gaping maw the hero’s hand He seized in the liquid tide : Fraoch seized the monster by the jaw, Would a knife were by his side ! 24 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. The Geste of Fraoch Ill Fraoch mac Fiodhaich an airm ghéir Thainig o’n phéist gun fhios di, Thug a h-anultach chaor dearg Far an robh Meadhbh dh’ a tigh. ‘“‘ Ach ge maith na tugais leat,” Adubhairt Meadhbh as geal cruth, ‘Ni fhdir mis, a laoich luain Ach slat a bhuain as a bun.” Togras Fraoch, ’s nior ghille tiom, Shnamh a ris air an linn bhuig Is nior fheud [ne]ach’ ge mor agh Theachd o’n bhas an robh a chuid. Gabhas an caorrann air bharr, Tharruing an crann as a fhreimh, Tabhairt do [a] chos do’n tor Mothaicheas do ris a’ phéist. Beireas air agus e air snamh, Is gabhas a lamh ’na craos, Do ghabh sé-san is’ air ghiall, Truagh gun an sgian aig Fraoch ! lor, ach = howsoever. 25 The Geste of Fraoch Find-abair of lovely tresses For Sir Fraoch her love, Unperceived, a knife she bore ; Fraoch’s fair skin the monster tore And gnawing shore his arm away. Fraoch, Idad’s son, in conflict dire With the monster’s woeful ire : On the southern strand they fought and fell And blood the boulders dyed. Nor short the conflict : in his hand Fraoch held the monster’s head ; Which when the maiden did perceive On the strand she swooned as dead. The maid then spake as she awoke— In her palm his hand she placed, “Though now but food for birds-of-prey, Thy renown on earth is traced.” And from the death the hero died The lake doth take its name ; For ever is it hight Loch Meve, And thus resounds his fame. (On Cluan Fraoich a friend doth sigh.) 26 21. 22. 7. 24. on. The Geste of Fraoch Fionnabhair an fhuilt chais ail Do ran chuige sgian gun fhoir, Liodair a’ phéist a chneas ban Is theasgadh a lamh air leodh. Do thuiteadar bonn re bonn Air traigh nan clach corr fo dheas ; Fraoch mac Fiodhaich is a’ phéist, Truagh, a Dhé, mar thug an treas ! Ga cémhrag ni cémhrag géarr : Do rug leis a ceann ’na laimh ; Nar chunnaic an nighean e Do chaidh ’na neul air an traigh. Eir’eas an nighean o’n tamh, Gabhas an lamh, ba lamh bhog ; Ge ta so ’na cuid nan eun! Is mor an t-euchd a rinn a bhos. O’n bhas sin do fhuair am fear Loch Maidhbh gun lean de’n loch Ata an t-ainm sin deth gu luan °Ga ghairm a nuas gus a nos. H-osnadh charaid. 1 na chodaibh éun (traditional variant). 27 The Geste of Fraoch IV His body to Cluan Fraoich is borne A hero on his bier laid low ; And still the mead his name makes known Ah! pity the survivor’s woe. Cairn-of-the-Hand beside me here Is named from Fraoch Cairn Lazve, Back he ne’er turned his hand but fought The foremost when alive. Belov’d the mouth that friends ne’er scorned The lips which woman’s lips had pressed ; Belov’d the chief, of hosts the lord, Belov’d the cheeks the rosiest. Cheek redder than the blood of fawn Hair darker than the raven’s crest, And softer than the streaming foam, Whiter than snow Fraoch’s waist. More fringed than meadow-sweet his locks, Than violet his eye more blue ; Than rowans ripe his lips more red, Whiter his teeth than woodbine hue. 28 © The Geste of Fraoch IV 26. Beirear an sin gu Cluan Fraoich Corp an laoich gu caisil chro ; Air an gcluain tugadh a ainm Is mairg a mhaireas d[a cis bed]. 27. Carn-laimh, an carn so re m’ thaobh O laimh Fhraoich do bhidheast son, Fear nar iompodhadh an treas Fear ba dheise neart an trod. 28. Ionmhuinn am beul nar ob daimh D’am bidis mnai a’ toirbheart phég Ionmhuinn Tighearna nan sluagh Jonmhuinn gruaidh nar dheirg an ros. 29. Duibhe na fitheach barr a fhuilt Deirge a ghruaidh na fuil laoigh Fa mhine na cobhar sruth Gile na an sneachd cneas Fhraoich. 30. Caise na an caisean fholt Guirme a rosg na eidhr’-leac ' Deirge na partan a bheul © Gile a dheud na blaith feith. 1 Yr’ lak (Dean of Lismore’s spelling). A plant is apparently meant as in the other lines: feith “ woodbine, honeysuckle (Hogan’s Luibhleabhran) : partan, “berry of the mountain ash” (id., p. 60). 29 The Geste of Fraoch Than mast his spear was higher ; his voice More musical than lute : No swimmer that with Fraoch could vie His side by water put. Broader than door-leaf was his shield, Whoso could wield it, happy lord ! Long as his lance the arm of Fraoch Than ship’s plate more broad his sword. Would that Fraoch by heroes bold, The bestower of gold—fell ; Alas and alas! through a monster’s hold We hear his funeral knell. (On Cluan Fraoich a friend doth sigh.) 30 31. 32. 33: The Geste of Fraoch Aird’ a shleagh na cranna siuil Binne na teud chiuil a ghuth Snamhaidhe do b’fhearr na Fraoch Cha do shin a thaobh re sruth. Ba leithn’ na comhla a sgiath Ionmhuinn triath a bhi re druim Co fad a lann is a lamh Leithn’ a cholg na clar dhe luing. Truagh nach an comhrag re laoich Do thuit Fraoch a phronnadh ér Tuirs’ sin a thuiteam le péeist Truagh, a Dhe, nach maireann fos. H-osnadh. 31 THE CELTIC DRAGON MYTH 1. At some time of the world, long long ago, there lived a poor old smith whose name was Duncan, and he lived in a little hut by the sea-shore. His house was built of boulders and turf, and thatched with bent and sea-ware ; yellow gowans, green-grass, red thistles, and white flowers grew on the roof and waved in the wind, while the blue peat smoke curled up through a narel at the end of the roof. The fire was on the clay floor inside, and the smith’s forge was at the end of the house. There Duncan had lived for many a long year, and there he was living with an old wife, an old mare, and an old dog for company. He had no son nor daughter, and never a man of his clan to bury him when his time should come. 2. When work was done in the smithy, or when there was no work to do, this old smith used to go out in the evening to fish in an old crazy boat; and many a time he had scanty fare, for fish are scarce and hard to catch in stormy weather in the west country. 3- On a day of these days, longer ago than you can remember, or than I can tell, he was fishing in 33 c The Celtic Dragon Myth the gloaming as he used to do, but he could catch nothing. 4. At last, just at the mouth of night, a mermaid rose at the side of his boat, and she said : “Well, Duncan, are you getting fish?” Now, as everyone in these parts knows full well, mermaids are sea-monsters, half-woman, half-fish, with long yellow hair which they comb when they sit on the rocks to bask. They are very fond of music, they are very rich, and they are able to do many wonderful things. They often endow men and women with magical powers, and sometimes they fall in love with land people and marry them. So Duncan the smith answered the mermaid as he would have answered one of his land friends. “‘'No,” said he, “‘ I’m getting no fish at all.” “« What will you give me,” said the mermaid, “ if I send you plenty of fish.” “Well then,” said he, “I have but little to give.” “What have you got at home?” said the mer- maid. “Well,” said the fisher, “I have an old wife, and an old white mare, and an old black dog, and that is all the stock that I have in the world.” “Will you give me your first son when he is three years old?” said the mermaid, “if I send you fish.” “Tl do that,” said the fisher; and he thought that was a good bargain, for he had no son to give. 34 The Celtic Dragon Myth “It’s a bargain,” said the mermaid, and down she sank. 5. It was too late to fish any more that night, so the fisher sculled home and went to bed. But if the sun rose early next day the fisher rose earlier than she did, and he went to the boat and out to sea, and there he fished his best. But all day long he caught nothing. At last in the time of dusk and lateness, what should he happen upon buta fish. He drew it up to the side of his boat, and reached out his hand to grasp it; but the fish with the hook in his throat opened his big mouth and gaped at him, and it gurgled and gasped out : ‘“‘ Are you going to take me?” “Well I am,” said the fisher. ‘I’m glad enough to get even you.” “‘That’s not the best thing for you to do,” said the fish. ‘‘ Let me go now and you shall have plenty of fish to-morrow.” So the old fisher pulled the hook out of the fish’s throat and let him go, and home he rowed to his hut. 6. Home he went and dragged up his boat, and . his wife met him. “Well,” said she, “have you got anything at all?” ““No,” said he, “I have got nothing, but I shall get plenty to-morrow.” “What a pity it is that you came home empty to-night,” said the wife. “‘There’s no help for it,” said he. 35 The Celtic Dragon Myth And so they went supperless to bed. 7. Next morning he was up as early as the sun and off to sea to try his luck, but all day long he worked in vain. He could not catch hold of a fish, not a nibble could he get all day. But just at the mouth of night, at the time for coming home, the fish jerked and he struck and hauled up cheerily haul over haul. But when the fish came to the top it cried out : ““ Are you going to take me with you to-night ? ” “ Well,” said the old fisher, “I’m glad enough to have got you to take home.” “‘Oh,” said the fish, rolling his eyes, “let me go to-night, it’s best for you, and to-morrow you shall get something worth having.” So the fisher let the fish go, and home he rowed and dragged up his boat on the shingle, and shouldered his tackle, and walked up to his house door, and there his old wife met him again. 8. “Are you come home empty-handed again ?” said she. ‘“T am, indeed,” said the old man. “Qh we shall not live,” said the wife, “ we shall die.” And so they went fasting to bed once more. THe FIsHER. g. On the next day it was the same thing. The old man fished from sunrise to sundown, and never a bite got he till the time of dusk and lateness ; and 36 The Celtic Dragon Myth then in the mouth of the night, a fish laid on the hook. He hauled up cheerily, and when the head was by the side of the boat he gripped the fish fast by the throat. « Are you going to take me?” said the fish. “T am,” said he, “I won’t let you go any more.” “ Well,” said the fish, “‘it can’t be helped. Have you any man to your clan?” “No,” said he, “1 have in the whole wide world but my wife, my mare, and my dog.” Then the fish spoke once more and said : “Thou shalt let no one split me, but do it thyself. Thou shalt put into the pot but a morsel of my liver and a bit of my heart to boil for thyself, and for thy wife, and for thy mare, and for thy dog to eat. “Three bones thou wilt find at the side of my head. Go out and bury them in the garden. | “Thy wife will bear three sons. “Thy mare will cast three foals. “Thy dog will litter three whelps. “ ‘When they are born dig up my bones and keep them. “Three trees will sprout where the bones are buried, and they will be in leaf and budding, in sap and growing, summer and winter, spring and autumn, every day for ever, so long as the clan shall live. “They will droop or wither or die as they do.” 10. Home went the fisherman with the fish, and he did as he was bid. He split the fish himself, and he put a bit of the heart and a morsel of liver into the pot mW The Celtic Dragon Myth to boil, some for himself, some for his wife, some for his mare, some for his dog to eat; and when they had supped he buried the bones in the garden and went to bed ite slept sound. . At the end of thrice three months the wife was ed to bed and she bore three sons. “Oh my husband,” said she, “ what is here?” ‘“‘ Three sons,” said he. “That were well,” said she, “if there were aught to give them.” ‘That there is,” said the old man. Then he cast his eyes around, and the mare had cast three foals, and the hound had littered three whelps, and three trees had sprouted up in the garden. So he went out and dug up the bones and laid them aside as the fish had said. 12. ‘‘So time went on and the children grew, and the old man fished as usual, and he got plenty of fish. But as the third year came near its end he grew sorrowful and failed day by day. At the end of the third year, in the gloaming, the mermaid rose at the side of his boat and she said : “‘ Have you brought your eldest son ?” “No,” said he. “I forgot that this was the day. I did not bring the lad.” “Well, well,” said the mermaid, “ you may keep him four years more to see if it be easier to part with him. See, here is his like for age. Is yours as fine as mine ?” and she held up a big bouncing baby. 13. Home he went full of delight that he had four — 38 ‘Well, well,” said the mermaid, ‘‘ you may keep him four years more to see if it be easier to part with him. See, here is his like for age. Is yours as fine as mine?”’ and she held up a big bouncing baby. [Face p. 38. ‘ The Celtic Dragon Myth more years of his eldest son, and he kept on fishing and catching plenty of fish till the end of the second term was near. ‘Then he grew sad and heavy, and failed daily. But when the end of the seven years had come he went to sea without his boy. ‘The mermaid rose at the side of the boat and she said :— «‘ Have you brought me your eldest son ?” “Oh! I forgot him,” said. the old man. “Go home,” said the mermaid, “and keep your son for seven years more ; but at the end of that time you willbe sure to remember me. It will be no easier then to part with your son, but you shall have plenty of fish till then.” And down she dived into the deep sea. 14. So the old man cheered up and went home joyful, because he had got seven more years of his eldest son. He thought he would be dead before the term ended, and that he would never see the mer- maid again. But time went on, and the end of fourteen years drew near, and the old man grew heavier and heavier, and weaker and weaker day by day, and his wife and his sons could not make out what ailed him. “What is troubling you, father ?” said the eldest son one day. ‘ said he, “‘ where there never was a 1 In a Berneray version three sons start together. 43 > The Celtic Dragon Myth THe THREE Ways. 32. Thus this poor old man who lived long ago had three sons who thought that they would leave their father, and that they would go out into the world to seek their fortunes. The leash of lads set off together upon one way, and they kept going on till they reached a road that spread in three branches. They said to each other when they saw these three ways, that each should take a separate path, and that they should meet there in a year and a day, and so they did, and parted. © | The eldest took the way that went east. The middle brother took the middle way. The youngest took the road that went west. 33. The eldest son rode east, away from the sea- shore and the smell of the brine, rode into the wood till the sun was high and he did not know where he was. He could see nothing but a wilderness of trees. 34. At last he came to an open space where he saw a wolf, a hawk, and a fox standing beside a year- old sheep. Stop, amongst us.” So the lad got off his black horse and pulled out the little rusty knife that he used to have in his father’s boat to split fish, and he cut the sheep into three shares and threw them down before the creatures, and bade them choose. 44 bd said the wolf, “‘and divide this carcase The Celtic Dragon Myth That pleased them well. Said the wolf: ‘When you are hard-pressed, remember me.”’ Said the hawk: ‘“‘ When you are in dire straits, remember me.” Said the fox: “‘ When you are at the worst, think of me.” 35. The beasts and the bird blessed the fisher’s son, and he blessed them, and he mounted again and on he rode through the forest at speed. Each road was crooked, and each path was smooth for him and for his black horse and hound. They went so fast that they caught the swift March wind that blew before them, and the swift March wind that followed after could not catch them. And so they rode and ran through the forest and trees, till the bright clear white clouds of day were going away, and the dark, dim, dusky black clouds of night were coming on apace ; and then they reached the palace gate of a great king’s castle in a realm that is not of this realm at all. First Way. 36. He thought that he could not lodge in so fine a house, and he looked out into the darkness and saw a little light afar off. But if it was far off he was soon there, and he knocked at a low door. ~It was the lowliest- house of all the place and the house of the herd. He tied his horse outside and in he went. 45 The Celtic Dragon Myth “‘ May I have leave to stay here to-night ?” said he to the herd’s wife. But she gave him no answer. Now that herd had no children. He did not know whether to go or stay, or where to go if he went away, so he stayed where he was. Between then and a while the herd himself came home. “‘ Whose horse is that at my door?” said he. << Tt’s mine,” said the lad. “‘ Wife, did you give the wayfarer food?” said the man. ‘“‘] gave him none,” she said. ‘ He never asked as: “Then make ready a meal for him at once,” said the herd. So the churlish wife Went to make ready, and the two men began their tales. | “What news from the big town?” said the wife. | “If there were news we know that you would know it,” said the man, “ but mayhap the stranger does not know ournews. A dragon comes out of the sea every year, and every year . he must have a ‘maiden from. our land to take away. The king has neither son nor daughter but the one daughter, and the lot has fallen on her this year. If he is not at the strand with his only daughter to give her to the dragon that comes out of the sea, the highest stone in his castle will be lowest and the lowest highest, and all the realm will be ravaged by the beast. He has gathered all the 46. The Celtic Dragon Myth people of this realm together to see if he can find ever a man of any kind or condition to guard his girl and gain her and half the realm while the king lives, and all the realm when the king dies, and he has found no man to go to the strand but a cock-eyed, carrotty- headed cook who was carving meat within with a big knife.” 37. “ Well,” said the lad, “‘ you may need a herd and I am seeking service ; will you take me and let me live here and earn my meat.” “Yes,” said the herd. ‘I need a lad to mind the king’s cattle, and you will serve my turn well enough. It was fortune herself that sent you here, for the herd that I had before left me last night.” The lad took service with the king’s herd, and there he lodged. 38. In the morning the herd gave him charge of the cows, and he said: ‘‘ Watch them well, but take good care that you do not let them into the closed park with the boarded gate ; no herd ever put cattle into it that came alive out, and weshould lose herd and herdsman.” “T’ll take care of both,” said the lad, and off he set wrapped in a gray garment. 39. There was an old brown cow that belonged - to a widow and led the herd, and the herdsman followed with his horse and hound, but the pastures were bare. 40. So the herd went up to the park gate, and saw the finest grass he had ever seen. He opened 47 The Celtic Dragon Myth the gate, and the brown cow led the cattle in, and there they stayed all day. 41. But as the evening drew on and milking time, he heard a noise. Firum Farum, little stones going under, Firum Farum great gravel going over, and he saw a great giant with seven heads and humps and: seven necks coming roaring. down the _park. He took three of the beasts by the tail and cast them on the very shower-top* of his shoulder and off he strode. The herd thought it was better to suffer death than lose the beasts ; so he ran to the park door and shut the gate. “¢ Mannikin, open the park gate,” said the giant. “IT won't,” said he. 42. Then the giant gripped the herd, and they fell to fighting with might and main, They made mire of rocks and rocks in mire; when least they sank they reached their knees, where most they sank they reached their eyes. At last the herd began to think he was far from friends and near his foes, and he thought of the wolf, and he was a wolf. And he gave the giant a little light easy lift and tossed him up and knocked him down and stood upon him. 43. ‘‘Death is upon you, giant,” said the herd. “ What’s your éric ?””* 7 ‘¢Oh, that’s much, said the giant.” “I have a copper castle and a copper whistle, and a ruddy russet- 1 Fras-mhullaich, G. H. 2 Eric means the worth of a man; his ransom or the fee paid for man- slaying, the same as the blood-fine of Icelandic law. 48 The Celtic Dragon Myth brown servant. I have a red dress, and a red horse that can fly through the air, meat and drink, and much treasure. Half to be yours while we live, and me to be your faithful comrade in good and evil: all to be yours when I die.” “'That’s mine and your life,” said the herd. And he killed the giant. 44. Then he searched in the giant’s pouch, and found the whistle and rode up to the copper castle and blew a blast. And the ruddy russet-brown servant came out, and he said : “Well, now, I cannot but think that my master must be dead.” ‘Pll be your master and not a whit worse,” said the lad, and he asked for food and drink. ‘That he got, and then he said : “Don’t let a pin’s worth go hence till I come again.” ““T won’t, master,” said the ruddy russet-brown servant who was in the copper castle. 45. The herd left the copper castle and gathered the skirt of his gray garment, and took the brown cow, and the rest followed him home. The old herd met him sauntering on, and he said : * You have come back alive.” * Yes,” said he. “Did you see any man to harm or frighten you ?” ““ No,” said he, “‘ no one.” 46. When the cattle were milked and all about the king’s house were pleased—for they had not enough 49 D The Celtic Dragon Myth of milk-pails to hold the milk—they had to send for carpenters to make more—all the dairymaids and the old herd made much of the new herd, and gave him a good supper and lots to drink. 47. The lad lived with the herd, and every day he went to the grass park and the copper castle till the pasture grew bare. Then he thought he had better go further a-field, and he went in till he came to a second gate of boards and a second park, where the grass was as high as his knees. He opened the gate and let in the cows and there he stayed. 48. But he had not been there long when he heard a greater and a louder clatter than ever. Frum, Farum, little gravel going under ; Firum, Farum, greater gravel going over; and he saw a big man coming. If no greater than the other he was no less, and he had seven heads and seven humps and seven throttles. 49. He came roaring into the park, and he seized six cows by the tails and slung them on to the shower- top of his shoulder and the ridge of his back. 50. The herd thought it better to suffer death than lose the cattle, so he ran to the gate of the park and shut it, and put his shoulder against it. “ Impudent elf, open the gate of my park,” roared the giant. ‘I am not sure but that you may be the slayer of my brother, but I cannot think that such a mannikin did it.” 51. He slung down the cows and sprang to the gate, and seized the lad with the gray garment ; and then began a fight worse than the first. The lad was 50 The Celtic Dragon Myth hard pressed ; it seemed that he was near his foe and far from friends, and he thought once more of the wolf. Then he was a wolf, and he gave the giant a little gentle, cheery, easy lift, and he tossed him up and threw him down, and gave his heart and ribs a bump against the earth. ‘“‘ Mine is your lying down and rising up, death is upon you,” said the lad. ‘“ What’s your éric ?” 52. “That’s much,” said the giant. “I have a silver whistle and a silver castle, and a fine, fair, white servant in it. I have a white steed that can fly through air, or the sky; all is the same to her. I have a white dress, meat and drink, and much treasure ; half to be yours while we live, all to be yours when I die, and I will be your faithful comrade and ally as long as I live.” *“‘That’s mine, and your death,” said the lad. Then he tucked up the tail of his gray garment and slew the giant. 53. Then he searched in the giant’s pouch and found the silver whistle and rode to the silver castle and blew a shrill blast. Out came the fine, fair, white servant, and when he saw the herd he said: *““I do believe that my master must have died.” *‘T’ll be master to you and no whit worse,” said the lad ; “ quickly fetch me food and drink.” He got that, and then he said : “Take care of all that is here till I come again.” “T’ll do that, master,” said the fine, fair, white servant that was in the silver castle. 51 7. The Celtic Dragon Myth 54. Then the lad tucked up the tail of his gray garment, and took the brown cow, and the rest followed home. 55. The old herd met him and counted the cows and they were all there. “Saw you anything to vex or frighten you?” said he. “No,” saidthelad. ‘‘ WhatshouldI see?” And he sauntered home. “‘ My best blessing will I give you,” said the herd, “‘so safe as my cattle come home they never have come before.” 56. And when the cattle came to be milked they had to send for more carpenters to make more milk- pails—such milk had never been seen in the king’s dairy. 57. And all the maids made much of the herd, and gave him lots to eat and drink. 58. And the lad led the cows day by day to the park, and went to the silver castle and came home at night, and lived in the herd’s house till the pasture began to fail. 59. One morning if the sun rose early he rose earlier still, and off he went to the third park far away. He opened the gate and went in, and found grass up to his waist, and there he laid himself out to bask in the sun. 60. But soon he heard a louder clatter than ever, rocks shaking, and stones flying ; and a giant sprang into the park and seized more of the cows by the 52 The Celtic Dragon Myth tail, and slung them on the shower-top of his shoulder and on the lofty ridge of his broad back. He had seven heads and seven humps and seven throttles like the others, and if he was no bigger than the other two, he certainly was no less. 61. Then the herd thought it were better to suffer death than lose the cattle, and he sprang up and shut the park gate and set his back to it. “Open the gate, you insolent imp,” said the giant. ‘‘ Many a king’s son and many a ritter have I cut heads off, and I will take off yours too.” “Two-thirds of your terror be on yourself and one-third on me. I know not why I should fear unless I must,” said the lad. 62. Then the giant slung down the cows, and at each other they went till the herd fell on his knee. “‘A king’s son on his knee!” roared the giant. “« He who went on his knee will go on his elbow.” Then the lad thought he was far from friends and near his foe, and he thought of his friends the beasts. And he was a wolf and a hawk and a fox all at once and turn about, and he was up and down, over and under, and all round the giant till he felled him and knocked the case of his heart and the side of his ribs bump against the hard earth. “Death is upon you, giant,” he said. ‘‘ What’s your éric 2?” 63. “That’s much,” said the old giant. “I have a golden whistle and a golden castle, a brave yellow-faced russet servant in the castle, a yellow 53 7 The Celtic Dragon Myth palfrey that can fly through air or sky, a green dress, meat and drink, and much treasure : half to be yours while we live, all to be yours when I die, and I will be your faithful friend so long as I live.” “It’s all mine, and your death to boot,” said the lad, and he slew him. 64. Then the Gray Lad sought in the giant’s pouch, and found the golden whistle. He gathered the skirts of his gray garment and shut the park gate, and up he went to the golden castle, and he played on the whistle and blew a blast, and the braw, yellow-faced russet servant came out of the castle, and said he: ““T really do think that my master must have died.” : “Tl be your master,” said the herd, “and no ' whit worse,” and he got meat and drink. “Keep all that is here for me till I come again.” Then he went back and found the brown cow at the gate, and she led the herd home as before. 65. The herd met him, and counted the cows, and they were all there, and he said : “Did you see anything to vex or frighten you to-day ?” ““ No,” said the herd, “ What should I see?” And he sauntered home in his gray garment with the cows. 66. That night the carpenters had to send for more wood to make more pails for the milk ; there was so much. 54 The Celtic Dragon Myth 67. And the dairymaids were well pleased with the herd boy. 68. Next morning the herd went back to the park to see what he could find in the golden castle. He had not been long there when he saw a fearful great carlin coming, and she screamed out : ‘You have killed my sons, and you have slain my husband, and now a draught of your blood shall quench my thirst.” She had a tooth for a staff and a tooth to stir the fire, and when she gaped, heart, liver, and lights could be seen through her open maw. The Gray Lad thought he had better flee, for so gruesome a carlin had never been seen. 69. He thought of the fox, and he thought of the hawk, and he was a hawk, and he flew to the top of the high tree. “*Come down till I eat you,” said the carlin. ““Open your gab, then,” said the herd, “till I jump down your throat.” 70. The old carlin gaped wide, and the herd thrust his iron staff down her throat, and it came out at a mole in her breast, and down she fell. Down jumped the herd upon her, and held her stomach fast for fear she should get the staff out again, “‘ Death’s upon you, carlin,” said he, “‘ what’s your éric 2” ‘<'That’s not little,’ said the carlin, “‘if so be that you get it.” 71. “I have three great coffers: one under the 55 The Celtic Dragon Myth foot-board full of gold and silver, two in the upper end of the castle full of all the wealth and wonderful | treasure that man can think of. 72. “I havea goldencomb. Whenused, there falls a golden shower from one side and a silver shower from the other. Whoso combs his hair with the coarse side is hideous, but whoso uses the fine side is handsome as man can be. 73. “I havea golden basin. Whoso washes in it becomes the most beautiful man on earth. ‘“‘] have a cloth’ on which one can have any kind of meat. “‘] have a cup’ in which one can have any kind of drink. 74. “I have a glittering glass” dress. “T have a pretty blue pacing palfrey that can fly through the sky. “Though that’s but little,”’ said the lad, “ it’s mine, and your death,” and he killed the carlin with his glittering steel blade. 75. Up he went to the castle and played upon the golden whistle, and the braw, yellow-russet servant came out. He went into the golden castle, and found all the marvellous things that the carlin had. He combed his head with the golden comb, and Showers of gold and silver fell from his hair. He 1 I. F. C. has scored these two out. 2 « Glass”? is the translation, but anything that shines may be the meaning, say, polished armour. 56 The Celtic Dragon Myth washed in the golden basin and put on the glittering glass garment, and never was seen so handsome a man since the world began. He ate and drank. Never did hungry herd taste such a meal. Then when all was ended he laid his braveries bye, and gave them to his braw, yellow-russet servant to keep. He combed his head with the coarse side of the golden comb and he was shaggy and swarthy, sun-burnt, rough and scabby as he was before. He tucked up the skirts of his gray garment and went to the park gate, let out the brown cow, and sauntered home as usual. THe MERMAID. 76. Then as usual the old herd met him and counted the cows, and said : “Did anything happen to frighten you to-day ?” “No,” said the herd, “nothing. What should happen ?” | 77. “I have news for you this day,” said the herd. *“‘'What’s that?” said the Gray Lad. The great “ Biast” is coming out of the sea to take away the king’s daughter, and unless he gets her the whole realm will be ravaged. “TI should care much more if evil befel our brown cow, than if it happens to the king’s daughter,” said the herd’s boy ; and home he sauntered to the herd’s hut, and went to rest. 78. If the dawn came early next day, the herd 57 The Celtic Dragon Myth rose earlier, and he took the cows and the brown cow at their head, and went straight to the first park. He opened the door of the park, and put them in, because there was no giant there now to meddle with or molest them. Then he tucked up the skirts of his gray garment, and up he went to the copper castle, and took out his copper whistle and played on it, and blew a shrill blast. ‘The ruddy brown-russet servant came out and said : “‘ What’s your will, master ?”’ “Meat and drink, horse and dress, arms and armour,” said the lad. That was ready, and when he had eaten and drunk his fill, he mounted and started. 79. Now when the king found that his only daughter had to be early out on the deep-dyed dark green hills, where the sun rises betimes and sets so late ; and when he could find no man to guard her from the great sea monster that was to come out of the sea but the cock-eyed carrotty cook, who carved the meat with a great big knife in the king’s kitchen, he sent them both off to the strand before sunrise, and fourteen full-armed, worthy warriors with them. When they got there, the king’s daughter sat on a — green mound by the seaside, and the cook went to the shore and flourished his carving-knife. He dug it into the sand and shouted : “Though all the monsters in the sea, and all the - warriors in Sorcha should come, thus will I do to © them.” 58. The Celtic Dragon Myth When he was tired he came to the king’s daughter, and laid his head on her lap. *«Comb my hair,” said he. “Comb your filthy hair?” said the Princess, “you wretched scullion, not I.” 80. Then they saw a shower coming from the West, and the sun in the East, and a glittering warrior with a flashing sword, with a ruddy russet dress, and a red horse riding swiftly from the eastern sky. And when they saw him, the fourteen full-armed worthy warriors fled to hide, and the cock-eyed carrotty-headed cook with the carving-knife ran away faster than they. And he hid in a dark hole where no man could see him and where he could see all. 81. Then the rider of the red palfrey came down to earth and tied his steed to the branch of a tree and came to the king’s daughter, who sat sorrowful on the green mound by the deep-dyed dark green hills by the sea-shore, and he said : “There’s gloom on your face, girl; what ails you ? and why are you here?” “No matter,” said she. “I shall not be here long, for the dragon is coming out of the sea for me, to take me away.” “‘T will stay with you,” said the lad, “and keep you company for a while.” Then he laid his head in her lap to sleep and rest, and she combed his long hair. | 82. “But if you sleep,” said she, “what will rouse you aay 59 The Celtic Dragon Myth | “Tf I sleep,” said he, “‘ nothing will rouse me but: to cut off the tip of my left ear. Do that when the dragon comes.” And so they sat on the green mound in the morning sun, and the king’s daughter combed the lad’s long hair and he fell fast asleep. 83. He had not slept long when the lady looked and saw the dark squall coming from the West, the sea running East, and the waves waxing; and she tried to waken the lad. She laid his sword on his face and he stirred but slept on. Then she saw the dragon coming in the squall with the rising tide and the waxing waves, spouting and blowing spray and spindrift from mouth and nose, and she was terribly frightened by the horrible noise of the fearful beast. She took the lad’s bright sword and ‘cut off the tip of his left ear, and up he rose and shook himself. 84. Then he shook a little rusty shaggy bridle ~ that he had at his girdle and a black steed came and a black hound. He mounted the horse, and down to the strand he rode with the black hound at his heels. 85. And the dragon came to the strand, and he was so weighty that he sank in in the sand. 86. Then they fell upon each other with hard blows and much noise, rattling of stones, clashing of arms, baying and neighing, and shouting and roaring, splashing of billows and turmoil of wind and waves. Man and dog did the best they could, and the dragon 60 The Celtic Dragon Myth ‘fought as well ; sometimes the dragon rolled over the man, sometimes the man rolled over the dragon. 87. At last the man thought that he was far from friends and near his foe, so he gathered his strength and clutched his sword and smote off one of the monster’s heads. 88. “If I had a draught of fair water,” said the dragon, “I would tear you to pieces now.” “Tf I had a draught of good red wine I would slay you this day,” said the fisher’s son. 89. “If one head is off two are om,” said the dragon. “If the king’ S daughter is not here to- morrow at this same hour the realm shall be ravaged by me.” go. Then the dragon went back into the sea and went out of the loch with the ebb tide and the swell- ing waves of the ocean. gi. Then the lad picked up the dragon’s head and tied it in a withy with a queer knot, and he sprang on his red horse and rode off to the eastern sky and disappeared. 92. Now the cook had hid in a place where no one could see him and where he could see every one, and when the coast was clear, out he came and seized the head and flourished his knife, and threatened the king’s daughter with instant death if she dared to say that he did not do this deed of valour. 93. The fourteen full-armed worthy warriors of the king’s guard when all was still came back, and found the cook with the dragon’s head on a withy, 61 The Celtic Dragon Myth and the king’s daughter unharmed. They all marched back to the palace and boasted aloud. 94. But the king’s daughter had the tip of the ear in her pocket. 95. The fisher’s son went back to the copper castle and played on his copper whistle, and gave his red steed to be stabled by the ruddy russet-brown servant, and his dress to be laid aside. Meat he got and good red wine to drink, and when he had rested, he tucked up the skirts of his gray garment and went to the park and opened the gate, and let out the brown cow and the rest of the cattle, and sauntered home as was his wont. g6. ‘“‘I have news for you to-day,” said the old herd when he met him. | “< What’s that ?” said the Gray Lad. “‘' The cock-eyed carrotty cook has cut one head off the beast that was to take away the king’s daughter, but two heads are on yet, and they are to meet to- morrow.” “T had rather our brown cow were well than the realm and the king’s girl,” said the herd’s boy. 97. “ Well,” said the herd. “ It will be said of that cock-eyed cook : ‘ Many a good blade has a bad sheath.’ ”’ “That’s true enough,” said the herd’s boy, and home he went and slept in his dark crib. 98. If the day came soon, sooner than that the herd was up, and off he set with the cows to the second park. He went to the silver castle and 62 The Celtic Dragon Myth sounded his silver whistle, and the fine fair servant came out and said: ‘* What’s your will, Master ?” “* Meat and drink, horse and harness,” said he. That was ready, and when he had eaten and drunk he mounted and rode through the air. 99. The king’s daughter, with the carrotty cock- eyed cook and the fourteen fine, full-armed, worthy warriors were at the strand boasting and brandishing their blades as before. 100. But when the sun rose they looked to the Fast, and saw a gleaming, glittering warrior in silver armour riding through the air on a milk-white steed, with a gleaming, glancing sword of light in his right hand ; and then they fled helter-skelter up to the deep dyed sick: green hills, and the cook hid in his dark hole as he did before. | 101. The rider of the milk-white steed came down to earth, and tied his horse to the branch of a tree and came to the king’s-daughter ; and without more ado he laid his head in her lap, where she sat on the green knoll by the sea-shore, and there they talked for a time and a while, while she combed his hair. 102. ‘‘ But,” said she, “‘if you sleep how shall you be roused ?” “Lay my sword upon my face,” he said, “and if that won’t rouse me, cut off the tip of my little finger when the dragon comes.” 103. Then he slept while the lady sat and combed his hair, and the cook looked out of the 63 >» The Celtic Dragon Myth dark hole, where no one could see him and he could see all. 104. He had not slept long when the West grew dark with a coming squall, and the sea ran East and the waves waxed big and gurly, and the tide rose on the strand. Then she laid the bright steel on his face, and he stirred in his sleep but slept on. Then she saw the dragon in the squall with the spindrift flying, blowing clouds of spray and steam from his mouth and throat and nostrils, and she seized the sword and shore off the tip of his right little finger, and up he rose. 105. He took from his girdle the little black rusty bit and the shaggy headstall and shook it—and the black steed and the black hound were at his side. He mounted, and to the strand he rode. 106. Then the dragon landed and trailed himself up, and he sank in the sand; he was so mighty and weighty, but this time he sank less, for he was lighter by one head. 107. “A hard fight for the king’s daughter to- day,” roared the dragon. “A hard fight,” shouted the herd boy, and at it they went. Horse and hound and man and monster rolled and roared, barked and bayed, and drove the sand and stones into the air, bit and fought and panted till they were tired. It was hard to say which had the best of the battle. 108. At last the herd thought that he was far from friend and too near a fearful foe, so he gathered 64 The Celtic Dragon Myth his might and heaved up the beast, and he put his shoulder under and tossed him up and broke his ribs, and his shoulder-blade on the strand. Then he grasped his shining steel sword and smote off a second head. 109. “If I had a draught of water I would win yet,” said the dragon. “Tf I had a draught of good red wine I would slay you this day,” said the herd. 110. “One head is on if two are off,” said the dragon. ‘I will be here to-morrow to take the king’s daughter. If she is not here I'll ruin the realm.” 111. Then the dragon trailed himself back to the sea, and went out with the ebb and the gurly waves of the dark west. Then the herd bound the head on a withy, mounted his white steed and went off swiftly. 112. Then out came the cock-eyed carrotty cook with his carving-knife, and_danced and boasted and brandished his blade and took the head in his hand. 113. Then down came the worthy well-armed warriors of the king’s guard, and they took the king’s daughter home in triumph, and boasted and shouted more than ever they boasted before. 114. The herd went back to his silver castle and blew his whistle, and gave his milk-white steed and glittering silver armour to his fine fair servant to stable and keep; he called for meat and blood-red Wine to drink, and when he had rested he donned his gray garment and gathered the skirts, and opened 65 E 7 The Celtic Dragon Myth the park gate and let out the brown cow, and followed the beasts home as before. 115. “I’ve got right good news,” said the old herd when he met the lad. “ What’s that ?”’ said he. 116. “It will be often said of that red-skulled cook that a good blade may have a bad sheath.” “What has he done now ?”’ said the lad. “He has brought home the dragon’s second head and broken his ribs and his shoulder-blade, and the king’s daughter is safe ; and all the realm is rejoicing, for they hope to be rid of the dragon to-morrow.” “Ts it so?” said the lad, and he went to the byre with the brown cow and the rest of them and went to bed. | 117. Next morning long before dawn the herd was up and off to the third park with the cows. He put them in and went to his golden castle and played upon his golden whistle, and when the yellow russet servant came out, he said: ‘‘ What’s your will, master ?” ‘““ Meat and drink, horse and harness for a hard fight,” said he. That was ready, and when he had enough he mounted and rode west. 118. The king’s daughter and all her company were at the same place. They looked East and they looked West, and they saw nothing but sky and sea. 119. Then the boasters began to brandish their weapons, and the carrotty, cock-eyed cook came to 66 The Celtic Dragon Myth the king’s daughter where she sat on the green knoll beside the sea-shore by the deep-dyed dark-green hills of Greece, and he laid his head on her lap. 120. ‘* Louse my head,” said he. “‘ You filthy scullion,” said she. ‘ Not I.” 121. Then they looked West and they saw the squall, and they looked East and they saw the same. And they saw a rider riding through the sky in a glittering green garment on a yellow golden-brown palfrey, with a bright, glancing, glittering, bright sword of light in his right hand, and when they saw him they all fled to their lairs as was their wont. 122. The rider of the golden steed came down to earth and tied his horse to the branch and came to the king’s daughter, and laid his hand on her lap at once. | 123. “If I am hard pressed,” he said, “‘ give me a draught of wine.” “And where shall I get wine here ? ” said she. “Take this golden cup,” he said, “and give to me when I am hard pressed.” 124. “And what will wake you if you sleep?” said she. “Cut the size of a coin from the crown of my head,” said he. 125. Then he laid his head in her lap, and she combed his long hair, and he slept for he was tired. 126. Then the tide began to rise, and the clouds to gather in the West, and the dark squall came down, and the sea ran East, and the waves waxed 67 The Celtic Dragon Myth great and gurly green and blue and black. The storm rose and the king’s daughter quaked for fear, but the lad slept on. 127. Then she saw the dragon coming up the loch with the spindrift flying, steaming and spouting, roaring and raving, and she took the sharp sword and shore a bit from the lad’s scalp, a lock of his hair, and a bit of his skin, and up he rose and shook himself. 128. He shook his little black rusty bit and shaggy bridle-rein, and his black horse and hound were beside him. 129. The dragon landed where he landed before, and trailed himself up the sand, and sank in it, so. vast and heavy he was; but he did not sink nearly so far, and he did not go so fast, for he was lighter and weaker. 130. The lad rode to meet him. “A hard battle to-day,” said the dragon. “A stout fight,” said the lad, and at it they went once more. Horse and hound, man and monster, neighing, baying, shouting and roaring, biting and fighting, struggling and wrestling, at hand grips they made little stones fly up, great rocks fall with the clatter of hard knocks. At last they were so tired that they stopped for breath. 131. “If I had a draught of water I would win yet and tear you to bits,” said the dragon. “If I had a draught of good wine I would slay you,” said the herd. 68 “The storm rose and the king’s daughter quaked for fear, but the lad slept on. -~ «He cut off the dragon’s third head, and won the fight.” [Face p. 69. The Celtic Dragon Myth Then the king’s daughter took wine and ran to the lad, and he drank a draught.’ 132. Then he thought of the wolf and he was a wolf, and he tore at the dragon, and was a man and clutched his sword and cut off the dragon’s third head, and won the fight. 133. And the dragon was a pool of water and a heap of sand. Then he tied the head on a withy with a curious knot, and sprang on his golden steed and went the way he came. 134. Out came the cook and flourished his blade, and out came the well-armed worthy warriors of the king’s guard, and home they went with the princess in triumph, for the dragon was dead and the cook had won the princess and half the realm ; and when they got home, all the realm rejoiced that the dragon had died on the shore and would trouble them no further. 135. The lad rode back to his golden castle, and gave his green dress and his golden steed to the yellow-faced russet servant to tend and feed. When he was rested and feasted, he gathered the skirts of his gray garment and gathered his cows and followed them home. 136. The herd met him and said, “ Good news to-night, my lad.” 1 From a Gaelic version told by Dewar and Macnair. In Swedish, the princess aids by putting rags on the necks of the monster, for the heads when they touch water gain life and Jeap on again. This incident i is in Gaelic also, and occurs at the end of this story. a 69 The Celtic Dragon Myth “‘'What’s that ?”’ said he. *“The cook has killed the dragon and won the princess and half the realm, and all the people are bidden to a great wedding-feast that the king will give to-morrow. ‘There is many a good blade in a bad sheath, and that cock-eyed carrotty cook is one.” “You don’t say so,” quoth the Gray Lad, and he sauntered home with his beasts, and slept as if nothing had happened. First Way. 137. Now the king’s daughter and the carrotty cock-eyed cook were to havea hearty merry marriage- feast in the king’s house, but the lad got up as usual and went off with the cows to the third park. 138. He went to the golden castle and blew his whistle ; when the yellow russet lad came out he said : “‘'What’s your will, master ?” That he told him, and when the time came he sauntered home as he used. 139. “ Well,” said the old herd, “I have more news.” “ What’s that ?” said the lad. The king’s daughter says that she will marry no man unless he can loose the knots on the withies on which the dragon’s heads are strung. The cook can’t do it, and the fourteen fine, full-armed worthy warriors of the king’s guard have tried all they can, and no 1 From the Fisher and the Gray Lad (with a bit inserted). 70 ‘ The Celtic Dragon Myth man amongst them is able to loose the least of them. The king has bidden all the realm to the feast, and they are all feasting now. «Why did you not go to the feast with the rest?” said the lad. ““T would not go and leave you alone,” said the old herd. 140. “What a well-decked wedding-board the king and his daughter have now,” said the fisher’s son. “<] wish we had it here in front of us.” 141. ‘Come here, my darling dog,” said he, “‘ and stretch your legs, and don’t be lazy. Run to the bride’s room, and fetch me the cloth that is spread on the board before the king and the bride and the carrotty cock-eyed cook.” 142. Away ran the black dog, and up he went and in he stole to the bride’s room. He seized the cloth and gathered it up before them all, and took it and ran to the herd’s bothy and laid it on the board between them. 143. “Is there any one at all,” said a counsellor that the king had, “who is not here? It is long since I heard it said: ‘Strong is a whelp from a guiding breast.’ Send to the herds hut, and let us see if he is within or if any one is with him.” 144. Away went three of the king’s worthy warriors, and when they got to the herd’s hut, there they found the herd and a stranger, and every bit 1 Js [gidir cuilean a uchd tredir. 71 The Celtic Dragon Myth that ought to be on the king’s board spread on a cloth between. Back they went as fast as they could, and told their tale. 145. ‘I said it once, and I say it now: ‘A whelp is strong from a guiding breast,’”’ said the king’s coun- sellor. ‘‘It was a pity to make such a grand wedding for that carrotty-headed cook who can’t loose these knots. Go back and fetch the herd.” 146. So the well-armed worthy warriors trotted back, and brought the herd, but he could not loose the knots any more than the rest. 147. “‘I said it before, and I say it once again,” said the king’s counsellor: “‘‘ A whelp is strong from a guiding breast.’ Go down and fetch the herd’s boy.” 148. So three worthy warriors went down to the herd’s hut once more, and they said to the lad who sat there: ‘‘ Who told you to take away all that was on the king’s table? Come to the castle.”’ ““T never took it, and I never stirred from here,” said he, ‘‘and I don’t mean to stir.” So the worthy warriors trotted back, and told their tale. 149. “Once more,” said the counsellor, “I say that I have heard it said often: ‘Strong is a whelp from a guiding breast.’” “Get up you little band of worthy warriors from the king’s guard, and go down and fetch up the herd’s boy bound.” 72 The Celtic Dragon Myth 150. So the little band of warriors got up and marched down to the herd’s hut where the boy sat with his black dog. : “Who told you to take all that ought to be on the king’s board?” said they all. ‘“ You must come to the castle.” | “‘T did not take the king’s dinner,” said the lad. “Tf you did not take it, your dog did, and your dog is insolent,” shouted all that little band of worthy warriors. “Don’t talk,” said the captain, “‘but seize him and bind him, and take him as you were told.” 151. “Arise, my puppy,” said the fisher’s son, “and haul them with the rhyme, and drag them against the rhyme, and out into the puddle at the door.” So the dog got up, and dragged them draggled through the puddle outside the herd’s door and the byre. 152. Draggled as they were up went the little band to tell their tale, and the counsellor said: “I don’t believe that that cock-eyed cook or the worthy warriors ever did that deed at all. Have I not said it: ‘Strong is a whelp from a guiding breast’? Go down, you great band of fourteen well-armed worthy warriors of the king’s guard and the bridegroom at your head, and fetch the herd’s boy and his dog bound.” 153. So the cock-eyed carrotty cook got his great carving knife, and the fourteen full-armed worthy 73 The Celtic Dragon Myth warriors of the king’s guard put on their martial array and marched to the herd’s hut where the lad sat in his gray garment with his black dog. 154. °** Why did you dare to take all that was on the king’s board ?” shouted all the great band. “J did not,” said the Gray Lad. “If you did not your dog did, and he is insolent and ill-bred,” said they all at once. ‘‘ Why did you draggle the worthy warriors who came to fetch you?” ‘“ The Celtic Dragon Myth where else, and there was no place to get out of the room but the room door. 224. So the king flew in great rage, and he growled: ‘ Daughter, if you ever dare to make such a disturbance and rout about the house again, I will give it to you with my sword when I come up.” So he marched out and locked the door behind him. 225. When they were all gone, the lad came out of the old shoe and turned heels over head, and was a lad again, and he seized her hand and stole the ring. 226. But since she did not dare to cry out for fear of the king, she said softly — ‘Where were you when they were searching the room ?” | ‘ said the ee ee ee ee es we 4 i ——— i - The Celtic Dragon Myth and I will find him if he is no bigger than a barley- corn.” And off he set to do the ransacking. 339. When he was gone the ant crept out and became a man, and he said: “* How do you do?” (Cia mar a ta thu). “Til enough,” said she. ‘‘Ill you have done to yourself and to me. Me you have lost, and my lot is to take this giant against my will. Oh, if you had been aware of yourself, it had been well with you and with me now, but I must bear my lot since it has fallen upon me.” “It was my mother’s fault,” said he. “I know that,” said she, “‘but if you had taken my counsel, you might have been married to me, with half the realm of the golden castle.” “‘Is there no way to get back ?” said he. ‘No, not while this giant lives,” said she. And then they talked long and sadly, and told the story all over again. 340. “But,” said the fisher’s son, “perhaps I might find a way to slay this giant.” “You cannot slay him,” said she. “It is not in himself that his life is at all.” “ And where, then, is his life?” said the lad. Said she: “It is in a lion that is in a thicket of oak, that is near the house of a farmer, that is at the uttermost end of this forest. In the lion’s belly is a dove, and in the dove an egg. Nothing is that will kill this giant but to smite him with that egg.” 341. Then they heard the clatter of the giant’s 113 H The Celtic Dragon Myth feet coming, and the fisher’s son had to be an ant a second time, and flee into the wood-louse’s hole. The giant came in and sought in the room, and when he could find nothing, he went to bed and slept. When the giant slept, the fisher’s son crept out, for that was the last time he could be an ant, and it would not do to stay longer there. He thought the sooner he was out of the castle the better for him, so he climbed down the bed, and crept over the floor, and crawled up the door and through the keyhole, and down over the floors, and so from door to door, and from room to room, till he was outside the walls of the castle. a 342. Then he thought of the eagle, and sprang and flew to the castle top, and there he sat till day. 343. As soon as the day came, he went upon his wings to see if he could hit upon the farmer’s house near the grove where the lion was. 344. eAt the darkening of lateness he got there and took his own shape, and he beat upon the door, and the farmer came out and said : “‘'Who are you, and whence ?” 345. “I am a poor sailor,” said he, “my ship was lost, and all on board were drowned but me; and since I cannot get back, I am seeking service.” “Come in, lad,” said the farmer, “‘ your sort used to be hungry and thirsty at times.” 346. In he went, and from less to more he offered to be a herd. ‘‘ We need one of your sort,” said the farmer. ‘A lion is in a thicket of wood near us, 114 j ‘ 4 (Fee of en Soh ahd been a ——T ea ee ee ee ee Sa ee The Celtic Dragon Myth and each time the cattle go to that grove, the lion takes one of the cows, and sometimes he takes the best, and sometimes he takes the herd.” “‘T will be herd,” said the fisher’s son, and they settled the bargain. 347. Early in the morning he used to arise to put out the cattle. He drove them out and went ’ with them to pasture where the grass was best, and at night he used to bring them home. 348. One of the farmer’s daughters was dairy- maid, and she fell in love with the herd, and she did not want him ever to go to the forest with the cattle, for fear that he should be slain by the lion. 349. Ona day of these days, the herd said to the farmer: “I will go to the wood with the cattle to- day.” “Well, then, don’t go too far in,” said the farmer, “‘for fear that the lion should happen upon you and take one of the herd.” “T will take care of that,” said the herdsman. The dairymaid did not wish him to go, but she was more afraid that the lion might take the lad. But no matter and never mind, the thing that was done was driving the cows to the wood. 350. When the herdsman got to the grove, instead of keeping the cows back, he drove them farther and farther into the forest, till at last the lion came. 351. He was going to seize a brindled heifer that was there, but the herd got between them. 115 The Celtic Dragon Myth 352. Then he thought on the lion that he helped at the white horse, and in the twinkling of an eye, he was a lion himself. 353. The two lions struggled till the sun was going west beneath the mountain at evening, without knowing which was losing or winning. 354. They could struggle no more, so they sat and stared at each other. 355. “If I had a draught of water I would rive you to gobbets,” said the forest lion. 356. “If I had one of wine I would tear you to tatters asunder,” said the herd lion. Then the forest lion got up and _= stalked back to the wood again, and then the herd lion got up and made a herd of himself, and drove the cattle home, singing a ditty tunefully. 357. When he got home, the farmer said: “‘ How went it with you to-day ?” “Well,” said he. ‘Saw you the lion ?”’ said the master. “ % oa - rae 55 i ., A ‘ UN, wither es ag Sea pelcce Bah ed t as cena é | Socliera ae ages 7 sh ew Vs ah th By = A Oy, GEV reg mr RNR iene: ae ree a We 57 Te huens ; . f - ; Oe ae wig =, Sapereners arp! aah ced VRE re pee : (ated ‘ tg . + cM . " - , laa ARE 8 yee’ 9 aw rt te . Me » aoe a - 4 * : Loree spite es : “Tethed a sea eA aie ee Ts ti rae : = Sr . AAs eh 8: pgp sagow hy Peer ey } 04% we ee hal ae iv oy Ae Se ot jibes ‘ +S ® Sane sie 3 Hoyt - so ial ie ae aL rn a erie ie tw ign , 4a 9t ae (Ae a oi? OY, ; m, a4 f Si mca. he a 4, + aoe, _” BINDING SECT. DEC 18 1980 30 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY Campbell, John Francis The Celtic dragon myth. PATS He set EERE bey U ye EBs Ng Beli 2th ‘i a rh an) vacate 5 a tee ae Mesieead i Pte hae “ere ie a uae ¥ Se) bg: a Ye $3 pRaaelil re night ya tie Sea Bh vale ike . 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