Gods and Fighting Men, Lady I. A Gregory [best e books to read TXT] 📗

quarrelling on each side now," said Patrick; "and go

on, Oisin, with your story. What happened you after you knew the Fianna

to be at an end?"

 

"I will tell you that, Patrick," said Oisin. "I was turning to go away,

and I saw the stone trough that the Fianna used to be putting their

hands in, and it full of water. And when I saw it I had such a wish and

such a feeling for it that I forgot what I was told, and I got off the

horse. And in the minute all the years came on me, and I was lying on

the ground, and the horse took fright and went away and left me there,

an old man, weak and spent, without sight, without shape, without

comeliness, without strength or understanding, without respect.

 

"There, Patrick, is my story for you now," said Oisin, "and no lie in

it, of all that happened me going away and coming back again from the

Country of the Young."

 

CHAPTER II. (OISIN IN PATRICK'S HOUSE)

And Oisin stopped on with S. Patrick, but he was not very well content

with the way he was treated. And one time he said: "They say I am

getting food, but God knows I am not, or drink; and I Oisin, son of

Finn, under a yoke, drawing stones." "It is my opinion you are getting

enough," said S. Patrick then, "and you getting a quarter of beef and a

churn of butter and a griddle of bread every day." "I often saw a

quarter of a blackbird bigger than your quarter of beef," said Oisin,

"and a rowan berry as big as your churn of butter, and an ivy leaf as

big as your griddle of bread." S, Patrick was vexed when he heard that,

and he said to Oisin that he had told a lie.

 

There was great anger on Oisin then, and he went where there was a

litter of pups, and he bade a serving-boy to nail up the hide of a

freshly killed bullock to the wall, and to throw the pups against it one

by one. And every one that he threw fell down from the hide till it came

to the last, and he held on to it with his teeth and his nails. "Rear

that one," said Oisin, "and drown all the rest."

 

Then he bade the boy to keep the pup in a dark place, and to care it

well, and never to let it taste blood or see the daylight. And at the

end of a year, Oisin was so well pleased with the pup, that he gave it

the name of Bran Og, young Bran.

 

And one day he called to the serving-boy to come on a journey with him,

and to bring the pup in a chain. And they set out and passed by

Slieve-nam-ban, where the witches of the Sidhe do be spinning with their

spinning-wheels; and then they turned eastward into Gleann-na-Smol. And

Oisin raised a rock that was there, and he bade the lad take from under

it three things, a great sounding horn of the Fianna, and a ball of iron

they had for throwing, and a very sharp sword. And when Oisin saw those

things, he took them in his hands, and he said: "My thousand farewells

to the day when you were put here!" He bade the lad to clean them well

then; and when he had done that, he bade him to sound a blast on the

horn. So the boy did that, and Oisin asked him did he see anything

strange. "I did not," said the boy. "Sound it again as loud as you can,"

said Oisin. "That is as hard as I can sound it, and I can see nothing

yet," said the boy when he had done that. Then Oisin took the horn

himself, and he put it to his mouth, and blew three great blasts on it.

"What do you see now?" he said. "I see three great clouds coming," he

said, "and they are settling down in the valley; and the first cloud is

a flight of very big birds, and the second cloud is a flight of birds

that are bigger again, and the third flight is of the biggest and the

blackest birds the world ever saw."

 

"What is the dog doing?" said Oisin. "The eyes are starting from his

head, and there is not a rib of hair on him but is standing up." "Let

him loose now," said Oisin.

 

The dog rushed down to the valley then, and he made an attack on one of

the birds, that was the biggest of all, and that had a shadow like a

cloud. And they fought a very fierce fight, but at last Bran Og made an

end of the big bird, and lapped its blood. But if he did, madness came

on him, and he came rushing back towards Oisin, his jaws open and his

eyes like fire. "There is dread on me, Oisin," said the boy, "for the

dog is making for us, mad and raging." "Take this iron ball and make a

cast at him when he comes near," said Oisin. "I am in dread to do that,"

said the boy. "Put it in my hand, and turn it towards him," said Oisin.

The boy did that, and Oisin made a cast of the ball that went into the

mouth and the throat of the dog, and choked him, and he fell down the

slope, twisting and foaming.

 

Then they went where the great bird was left dead, and Oisin bade the

lad to cut a quarter off it with the sword, and he did so. And then he

bade him cut open the body, and in it he found a rowan berry, the

biggest he had ever seen, and an ivy leaf that was bigger than the

biggest griddle.

 

So Oisin turned back then, and went to where S. Patrick was, and he

showed him the quarter of the bird that was bigger than any quarter of a

bullock, and the rowan berry that was bigger than a churning of butter,

and the leaf. "And you know now, Patrick of the Bells," he said, "that I

told no lie; and it is what kept us all through our lifetime," he said,

"truth that was in our hearts, and strength in our arms, and fulfilment

in our tongues."

 

"You told no lie indeed," said Patrick.

 

And when Oisin had no sight left at all, he used every night to put up

one of the serving-men on his shoulders, and to bring him out to see how

were the cattle doing. And one night the servants had no mind to go, and

they agreed together to tell him it was a very bad night.

 

And it is what the first of them said; "It is outside there is a heavy

sound with the heavy water dropping from the tops of trees; the sound of

the waves is not to be heard for the loud splashing of the rain." And

then the next one said: "The trees of the wood are shivering, and the

birch is turning black; the snow is killing the birds; that is the story

outside." And the third said: "It is to the east they have turned their

face, the white snow and the dark rain; it is what is making the plain

so cold is the snow that is dripping and getting hard."

 

But there was a serving-girl in the house, and she said: "Rise up,

Oisin, and go out to the white-headed cows, since the cold wind is

plucking the trees from the hills."

 

Oisin went out then, and the serving-man on his shoulders; but it is

what the serving-man did, he brought a vessel of water and a birch broom

with him, and he was dashing water in Oisin's face, the way he would

think it was rain. But when they came to the pen where the cattle were,

Oisin found the night was quiet, and after that he asked no more news of

the weather from the servants.

 

CHAPTER III. (THE ARGUMENTS)

And S. Patrick took in hand to convert Oisin, and to bring him to

baptism; but it was no easy work he had to do, and everything he would

say, Oisin would have an answer for it. And it is the way they used to

be talking and arguing with one another, as it was put down afterwards

by the poets of Ireland:--

 

PATRICK. "Oisin, it is long your sleep is. Rise up and listen to the

Psalm. Your strength and your readiness are gone from you, though you

used to be going into rough fights and battles."

 

OLSIN. "My readiness and my strength are gone from me since Finn has no

armies living; I have no liking for clerks, their music is not sweet to

me after his."

 

PATRICK. "You never heard music so good from the beginning of the world

to this day; it is well you would serve an army on a hill, you that are

old and silly and grey."

 

OLSIN. "I used to serve an army on a hill, Patrick of the closed-up

mind; it is a pity you to be faulting me; there was never shame put on

me till now.

 

"I have heard music was sweeter than your music, however much you are

praising your clerks: the song of the blackbird in Leiter Laoi, and the

sound of the Dord Fiann; the very sweet thrush of the Valley of the

Shadow, or the sound of the boats striking the strand. The cry of the

hounds was better to me than the noise of your schools, Patrick.

 

"Little Nut, little Nut of my heart, the little dwarf that was with

Finn, when he would make tunes and songs he would put us all into deep

sleep.

 

"The twelve hounds that belonged to Finn, the time they would be let

loose facing out from the Siuir, their cry was sweeter than harps and

than pipes.

 

"I have a little story about Finn; we were but fifteen men; we took the

King of the Saxons of the feats, and we won a battle against the King of

Greece.

 

"We fought nine battles in Spain, and nine times twenty battles in

Ireland; from Lochlann and from the eastern world there was a share of

gold coming to Finn.

 

"My grief! I to be stopping after him, and without delight in games or

in music; to be withering away after my comrades; my grief it is to be

living. I and the clerks of the Mass books are two that can never agree.

 

"If Finn and the Fianna were living, I would leave the clerks and the

bells; I would follow the deer through the valleys, I would like to be

close on his track.

 

"Ask Heaven of God, Patrick, for Finn of the Fianna and his race; make

prayers for the great man; you never heard of his like."

 

PATRICK. "I will not ask Heaven for Finn, man of good wit that my anger

is rising against, since his delight was to be living in valleys with

the noise of hunts."

 

OISIN. "If you had been in company with the Fianna, Patrick of