Irish Fairy Tales by James Stephens (e ink ebook reader TXT) 📕

“No one but a deer that loved me, and that I loved.”

“Ah me!” cried Fionn in anguish, “tell me your tale, my son.”

“A dark stern man came often after us, and he used to speak with the deer. Sometimes he talked gently and softly and coaxingly, but at times again he would shout loudly and in a harsh, angry voice. But whatever way he talked the deer would draw away from him in dread, and he always left her at last furiously.”

“It is the Dark Magician of the Men of God,” cried Fionn despairingly.

“It is indeed, my soul,” said Caelte.

“The last time I saw the deer,” the child continued, “the dark man was speaking to her. He spoke for a long time. He spoke gently and angrily, and gently and angrily, so that I thought he would never stop talking, but in the end he struck her with a hazel rod, so that she was forced to follow him when he went away. She was looking back at me all the time and she was crying so bitterly that anyone would pity her. I tried to follow her also, but I could not move, and I cried after her too, with rage and grief, until I could see her no more and hear her no more. Then I fell on the grass, my senses went away from me, and when I awoke I was on the hill in the middle of the hounds where you found me.”

That was the boy whom the Fianna called Oisín, or the Little Fawn. He grew to be a great fighter afterwards, and he was the chief maker of poems in the world. But he was not yet finished with the Shí. He was to go back into Faery when the time came, and to come thence again to tell these tales, for it was by him these tales were told.

We do not know where Becfola came from. Nor do we know for certain where she went to. We do not even know her real name, for the name Becfola, “Dowerless” or “Small-dowered,” was given to her as a nickname. This only is certain, that she disappeared from the world we know of, and that she went to a realm where even conjecture may not follow her.

It happened in the days when Dermod, son of the famous Ae of Slane, was monarch of all Ireland. He was unmarried, but he had many foster-sons, princes from the Four Provinces, who were sent by their fathers as tokens of loyalty and affection to the Ard-Ri, and his duties as a foster-father were righteously acquitted. Among the young princes of his household there was one, Crimthann, son of Ae, King of Leinster, whom the High King preferred to the others over whom he held fatherly sway. Nor was this wonderful, for the lad loved him also, and was as eager and intelligent and modest as becomes a prince.

The High King and Crimthann would often set out from Tara to hunt and hawk, sometimes unaccompanied even by a servant; and on these excursions the king imparted to his foster-son his own wide knowledge of forest craft, and advised him generally as to the bearing and duties of a prince, the conduct of a court, and the care of a people.

Dermod mac Ae delighted in these solitary adventures, and when he could steal a day from policy and affairs he would send word privily to Crimthann. The boy, having donned his hunting gear, would join the king at a place arranged between them, and then they ranged abroad as chance might direct.

On one of these adventures, as they searched a flooded river to find the ford, they saw a solitary woman in a chariot driving from the west.

“I wonder what that means?” the king exclaimed thoughtfully.

“Why should you wonder at a woman in a chariot?” his companion inquired, for Crimthann loved and would have knowledge.

“Good, my Treasure,” Dermod answered, “our minds are astonished when we see a woman able to drive a cow to pasture, for it has always seemed to us that they do not drive well.”

Crimthann absorbed instruction like a sponge and digested it as rapidly.

“I think that is justly said,” he agreed.

“But,” Dermod continued, “when we see a woman driving a chariot of two horses, then we are amazed indeed.”

When the machinery of anything is explained to us we grow interested, and Crimthann became, by instruction, as astonished as the king was.

“In good truth,” said he, “the woman is driving two horses.”

“Had you not observed it before?” his master asked with kindly malice.

“I had observed but not noticed,” the young man admitted.

“Further,” said the king, “surmise is aroused in us when we discover a woman far from a house; for you will have both observed and noticed that women are home-dwellers, and that a house without a woman or a woman without a house are imperfect objects, and although they be but half observed, they are noticed on the double.”

“There is no doubting it,” the prince answered from a knitted and thought-tormented brow.

“We shall ask this woman for information about herself,” said the king decidedly.

“Let us do so,” his ward agreed.

“The king’s majesty uses the words ‘we’ and ‘us’ when referring to the king’s majesty,” said Dermod, “but princes who do not yet rule territories must use another form of speech when referring to themselves.”

“I am very thoughtless,” said Crimthann humbly.

The king kissed him on both cheeks.

“Indeed, my dear heart and my son, we are not scolding you, but you must try not to look so terribly thoughtful when you think. It is part of the art of a ruler.”

“I shall never master that hard art,” lamented his fosterling.

“We must all master it,” Dermod replied. “We may think with our minds and with our tongues, but we should never think with our noses and with our eyebrows.”

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