THE LAUGHTER OF PETERKIN
[Illustration: The king saw a fountain of exceeding beauty.
_Frontis._]
]
THE LAUGHTER OF PETERKIN.
“A RETELLING OF OLD TALES OF
THE CELTIC WONDERWORLD.” by
⋅ FIONA MACLEOD ⋅
[Illustration]
⋅DRAWINGS⋯BY⋯SUNDERLAND⋯ROLLINSON⋅§⋅
⋅LONDON⋅
⋅ARCHIBALD⋅CONSTABLE⋅&⋅CO⋅
⋅1897⋅
TO
ISLA,
EILIDH,
FIONA,
AND
IVOR
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
PAGE
_PROLOGUE._ THE LAUGHTER OF PETERKIN 9
THE FOUR WHITE SWANS 33
THE FATE OF THE SONS OF TURENN 117
DARTHOOL AND THE SONS OF USNA 177
_NOTES_ 281
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY SUNDERLAND ROLLINSON
THE KING SAW A FOUNTAIN OF EXCEEDING
BEAUTY _Frontispiece_
AS SHE TOUCHED FIONULA, LIR’S FAIR YOUNG
DAUGHTER BECAME A BEAUTIFUL SNOW-WHITE
SWAN _To face page_ 33
TURENN INTERCEDING FOR HIS SONS " 117
A GREAT RAVEN, GLOSSY BLACK, AND BURNISHED
IN THE SUN RAYS _To face page_ 177
[Illustration]
The Laughter of Peterkin
[Illustration]
The Laughter of Peterkin
At the rising of the moon, Peterkin awoke, and laughed. He was in his
little white bed near the open window, so that when a moonbeam wavered
from amid the branches of the great poplar, falling suddenly upon his
tangled curls and yellowing them with a ripple of pale gold, it was as
though a living thing stole in out of the June night.
He had not awaked at first. The moonbeam seemed caught in a tangle:
then it glanced along a crescent tress on the pillow: sprang back like
a startled bird: flickered hither and thither above the little sleeping
face: and at last played idly on the closed eyelids with their long
dark eyelashes. It was then that Peterkin awoke.
When he opened his eyes he sat up, and so the moonbeam fell into the
two white cups of his tiny hands. He held it, but like a yellow eel it
wriggled away, and danced mockingly upon the counterpane.
With a sleepy smile he turned and looked out of the window. How dark
it was out there! That white moth which wavered to and fro made the
twilight like a shadowy wall. Then upon this wall Peterkin saw a
great fantastic shape. It grew and grew, and spread out huge arms and
innumerable little hands: and in its shadow-face it had seven shining
eyes. Peterkin stared, awe-struck. Then there was a dance of moonshine,
a cascade of trickling, rippling yellow, and he saw that the shape
in the night was the familiar poplar, and that its arms were the
big boughs and branches where the spotted mavis and the black merle
sang each morning, and that the innumerable little hands were the
ever-tremulous, ever-dancing, round little leaves, and that the seven
glittering eyes were only seven stars that had caught among the topmost
twigs.
II
Peterkin was very sleepy, but before his head sank back to the pillow
he saw something which caused him to hold his breath, and made his
eyes grow so round and large that they were like the little pools one
sees on the hill-side.
Every here and there he saw tiny yellow and green lives slipping and
sliding along and in and out of the branches of the poplar. Sometimes
they were all pale yellow, like gold; sometimes of a shimmering green;
sometimes so dusky that only by their shining eyes were they visible.
At first he could not clearly distinguish these unfamiliar denizens of
the great poplar. The vast green pyramid seemed innumerously alive.
Then gradually he saw that each delicate shape was like a human being:
little men and women, but smaller than the smallest children, smaller
even than dolls. They were all laughing and chasing each other to and
fro. Some slid swiftly down an outspread branch, and then dropped on to
a green leafy billow or plunged into an inscrutable maze: others swung
by the little crook at the end of each leaf, and laughed as they were
blown this way and that by puffs of air: and a few daring ones climbed
to the topmost sprays of the topmost boughs and held up tiny white
hands like daisies. These wished to clasp the moonshine. As well might
a fish try to catch the moon-dazzle on the water! No wonder Peterkin
laughed.
Ever and again a delicate sweet singing came from the moonshine-folk.
Peterkin listened, but could hear no words he knew. Perhaps there were
no words at all, or mayhap he himself knew too few. But the singing was
strangely familiar. Sometimes when mother sang, surely he had heard it:
as far back, farther back, than memory could take him, he had heard
some echo of it. Cradle-sweet it was, that dim snatch of a fugitive
strain. And, too, had he not heard something of it in the wind, when
that went whispering through the grass and in and out of the wild-rose
thicket, or when it lifted and waved a great wing and fanned the trees
into vast swaying flames of green? Yes, even in the fire he had heard
it. When the orange and red flames flickered among the coals, or caught
the sap in the pine-logs and grew into yellow and blue with hearts of
purple, he had heard a faint far-off music.
Peterkin gave a little gasp when a sudden wave of shadow, trailed
across the poplar by a long slow-travelling cloud, swept from bough
to bough. It was as though all the singing, laughing, dancing folk had
been drowned.
He stared through the darkness, but there was nothing to be seen.
He shivered. It was lonely out there. Again he heard a sound as of
a remote singing. As before, he could not hear what the words were.
But, once more, it was not all unfamiliar. It was sadder than anything
that dimly he remembered, save the long mournful crooning of a Gaelic
cradle-song, sadder than any flame-whisper in a waning fire, or than
any cadence of the wind in the grass, or among the thickets of wild
rose.
III
Next night Peterkin lay awake a long time, hoping to see the
moonshine-folk again. He had spoken of them, but was told that there
were no little people in the poplar. At first this was the more strange
to him, for had he not seen them? Then, after he had scrupulously
examined the branches from beneath as well as at a distance, he
comforted himself with the thought that, while there might be no
little people actually living in the poplar, they came into the tree
on the flood of the moonshine.
But that night there was no moon-flood. A south wind had arisen at
sundown, and had shepherded from beyond the hills a medley of strayed
clouds: these, intricately interwoven, now spread from horizon to
horizon, obliterating the stars and obscuring even the radiance of the
new-risen moon.
If there were no moonlight, and therefore no little yellow and
green lives with bright shining eyes, there was a strange exquisite
whispering that grew into music sweeter than any which Peterkin had
ever heard.
He rose and crept stealthily from his bed to the door. It was ajar, and
he looked, half-fearfully, half-wonderingly, into the open passage.
How long and dark it was, and haunted by unfamiliar shadows: but,
clasping the skirts of his nightgown close to him, he ran swiftly to
the balustrade at the far end.
There the stair lamp shed a comfortable glow. Peterkin looked warily
down the stairs, into the hall, along the closed or opened rooms. There
was no one stirring. The front door too was open, for the night was
warm, or perhaps some one had strayed without.
The child stood awhile, hesitating. Then he slipped down the stairway
like a swift moonbeam. For the first time he realized he was only a
little child, when he passed the great antlered stag’s-head in the
hall, and the high stand hung with coats and hats, the raiment of
giants as they seemed, and mysteriously life-like.
But once in the open air he lost all fear. True, a great mass of
rhododendrons ran close to the avenue to the right, and through this
the path meandered to the gardens behind the house: but there was
nothing unfamiliar about their gloom, for Peterkin loved their green
shadowy depths at noon, and their fragrant dusk when the long shadows
on the lawn slept longer and bluer, till they sank invisibly into the
grass.
Old Donal McDonal the gardener, on his way through the shrubberies,
rubbed his eyes: for he thought he saw a sprite. He could have sworn,
he said to Mairgred Cameron the cook, after he entered the house, that
he had seen a small white ghost flitting from bush to bush. Both shook
their heads, and wondered if the White Lady were come again, that
apparition which legend averred was to be seen by mortal eyes once in
every generation, and always before some tragic event or death itself.
But as for Peterkin he had no thought of such things. He was now in the
garden, eager in his quest of the little people who hide among leaves
and grass, and love the dusk and the moonlit dark.
He had no fear as he ran to and fro along the grassy ways. Why should
he be afraid of the dark? There was nothing there to frighten him, or
any child.
For a time he ran to and fro, or crept warily among the lilac bushes.
His little white figure drifted hither and thither like a moth. Once
he was still, when he stood, shimmering white, among the lilies of the
valley, which clustered among their green sheaths at the far end of the
garden. Here, a few days ago, he had buried a dead bird he had found
under a net. It was a thrush, the gardener had told him, puzzled at
the slow tears which welled from the eyes of the little lad. And now
Peterkin wondered if the bird were awake.
He had gone to Ian Mor, who was staying with his father and mother, and
told him about the buried bird: and Ian had comforted him with this
tale:--
“Long ago there was a great king. He had the wisdom of wisdom, as the
saying is. One day the plague came to his kingdom, and he lost the
three lives which were dearest to him in all the world. These were his
mother, his wife, and his little son.
“This king was a poet and dreamer, as well as a great warrior and
prince, and he had ever been wont to have communion with the powers and
sweet influences which are behind the innumerable veils of the world.
Through these he had come to know the mystery of the Spirit of Life.
“With this Eternal Spirit he held communion in his deep sorrow. It was
then that he learned how what is beautiful cannot pass, for beauty
is like life that is mortal, but whose essence does not perish. In
fragrance, in colour, in sweet sound, somehow and somewhere, that which
is beautiful is transmuted when suddenly changed or slain.
“So he prayed to the Spirit of Life that his dear ones might not pass
from him utterly.
“On the morrow, when he rose and went into his favourite place in the
royal gardens, a secret hollow in a glade of ilex and pine, he saw a
fountain of exceeding beauty. The spray rose dazzling white against
the sombre green of the old trees, and seemed to be alive with a myriad
rainbow-spirits, who ceaselessly flashed their wings as they darted
hither and thither. The king was looking upon this, entranced by its
sunny loveliness, when he noticed a white dove flying round the high
sunlit fount, and at the hither margin of the water a cream-white
dappled fawn, which stooped its graceful neck and drank.
“The king marvelled; for not only had there never been any fountain in
that place, but he knew that no wild fawn could wander there from the
distant forests, and no dove had he ever seen so snowy white and with
wings radiant as though stained by the rainbow-hues of the flying spray.
“Suddenly it was as though a mist fell from his eyes. He saw and
understood. His old mother, his wife, his little son, had not passed
away, although they were dead. His mother had been fair and beautiful
even in her white-hair years; and of the beauty of his wife, whom he
loved so passing well, the poets had sung from one end of the land to
another; while his little son had been held to be so perfect that there
was none like him.
“And now the king saw that the beauty of his mother had passed into a
living fount of waters, whose spray cooled the air and made a sound of
aerial music and a laughing radiance everywhere; and that the beauty
of the woman whom he had loved so passing well was transmuted into the
wild fawn which drank at the water’s edge; and that the beauty of his
little son was now the white dove which beat its wings in the rainbow
spray.
“The king rejoiced therein with a great joy. Many of his people thought
him mad, but he smiled at that saying, and with grave eyes prayed that
that madness would come to all true and noble souls in his kingdom.
“For a year and a day this joy was his. Then the fountain ceased to
rise, and the dove to beat its pinions in the spray, and the wild fawn
to drink at the water’s edge. The rumour went from mouth to mouth that
this was because the plague had come again. The king was heavy with
sorrow, for he had taken his deepest happiness in the beauty of these
three lovely things, as, of yore, in the beauty of his aged mother,
and in the beauty of the woman whom he loved, and in the beauty of his
little son. So once again he remembered how he had been helped. With
shame at his heart he upbraided himself because he had lived too much
to the things of the moment and so had lost touch with those which
were of the enduring life. That night he spent in unspoken prayer and
prolonged meditation; and at dawn on the morrow he went slowly and
sadly forth, hoping against hope that his life might be gladdened again.
“The sun rose as he crossed the glade of ilex and pine. There was no
fountain, as he well knew; but where the fountain had been he saw a
garth of wild hyacinths, of a blue so wonderful that no Maytide sky was
ever more delicately wrought of azure and purple. And above this were
two little brown birds, which sang with so sweet voice and bewildered
rapture that his heart melted within him.
“Then he knew that in these new joys he had found again the beauty he
had lost.
“When, in the change of the days, the hyacinths spilt their blue wave
into the rising green of the fern, and the birds ceased singing their
lovely aerial songs, the king no longer grieved, for now he knew that
what was beautiful would not perish but drift from change to change.
“And so it was. For when, weary of his pain, he went forth one night
to the lovely glade of ilex and pine, he saw the ground white with the
little blooms we call Stars of Bethlehem, and among these a glow-worm
lay and glowed like a lamp in a white wilderness, and from an ancient
ilex came the voice of a nightingale.
“Thus the king was comforted.
“And so you too, Peterkin,” added Ian Mor, “need not sorrow too much
for your little dead bird. It will live again mayhap in the fragrance
of a lily or in the beauty of a rose. It will rise again, Peterkin.”
This tale had sunk deeply into the child’s mind, and perhaps all the
more so because the words, and the meaning behind the words, were
sometimes beyond him. But he understood well the drift of what Ian Mor
had told him.
He was prepared for any miracle. If his little bird should rise through
the brown earth and ascend singing towards the stars; or if he should
hear a song and see no bird; or if a fount should well from where its
body lay; or if a rare bloom should spring from the earth; or if a
fragrance, new and sweet, should reach him--if one of these things
should happen, or anything akin, it would be no surprise to him.
But while he was still wondering, he heard voices.
“Peterkin! Peterkin!”
He did not answer, but laughing low to himself, crept in among the
lilies-of-the-valley, and lay there, himself like a white bloom. The
voices came near, nearer, and passed by. Peterkin’s heart smote him,
for he heard the pain in the calling voices; but it was so cool and
quiet there among the lilies, and it was so sweet to be out of sight of
every one and lost, that he could not break the spell.
What if he were to be found by the elfin-folk and led into fairyland?
He thrilled both with fear and eager delight at the thought. Surely
even now he heard the delicate music of the lily-bells?
Peterkin did not know that he had a neighbour. Suddenly, he heard a
faint rustle. Ah, it was one of the Shee--one of the little people!
Mayhap it was the green Harper, of whom Ian Mor had told him, or one of
the seven star-crowned queens, or the haughty Midir, with a peacock’s
feather in his moon-gold hair, or Fand, who walked in fairy dew,
or--or----
And then Peterkin saw who his neighbour was. From under a stone, beset
by lily-sheaths, a small toad crawled. Its strange bright eyes were
fixed upon the staring child, whom, however, it did not seem to heed
after it had once examined this strange white creature who lay among
the lilies.
Suddenly Peterkin began to laugh. The toad sat still, solemnly
regarding him. Peterkin laughed the more. Once the toad gave a short
jump, though this was not from fear, or even from lack of interest in
his unfamiliar neighbour, but because a gnat had come temptingly almost
within reach of his long, thin, serpentine tongue.
“Tell me, toad,” Peterkin said at last, “why are you so funny?”
Whether it was because the toad was not given to gaiety, or whether his
disappointment about the gnat had soured him, he did not respond save
by an unwinking stare. After a while it shot out its tongue, as though
it were speculating as to Peterkin’s flavour as a pleasant morsel, or
perhaps only to find if he were within reach.
This was too much for Peterkin, who rolled back among the lilies,
crushing the little white bells into a floating fragrance. But, alas,
that betraying laughter!
Peterkin was still in its throes when he heard a voice falling upon him
as though out of the skies.
“Ah, there you are, you little rascal! How you frightened us all, and
what a hunt we have had!”
Almost before he recognised the voice of Ian Mor, Peterkin was seized
and lifted high into the air.
“Don’t be angry, Ian,” the child whispered. “I came out to see the
fairies. And then I ran on here to see if the little dead bird had come
out of the earth again.”
“And have you seen a fairy, Peterkin?”
“I don’t know. I saw a toad.”
“What did the toad do?”
“It looked at me till I laughed. Then it put out its tongue, and I
laughed and laughed and laughed.”
“I’m thinking that toad must have been a fairy in disguise, Peterkin.
But now come: I am going to carry you back to your bed.”
And whether it was because of Peterkin’s escape into the garden, or
what vaguely came to him there, or what Ian Mor told him as he carried
him homeward in his arms, he did hear the horns of elf-land that night,
and did see the gathering of the Shee in the moonshine. But it was in
a drowsy hollow in the dim wood of sleep, wherein the birds were white
soft-pinioned dreams, and the moon waxed and waned like the lily that
sinks and rises in dark pools.
IV
In those first fragments of Peterkin’s experiences, all his life was
foreshadowed. Wonder, delight, longing, laughter--the four winds of
childhood--these blew for him through his first few years, through
childhood and boyhood and youth. He is a man now; but though the
laughter is rarer and the longing deeper and more constant, there still
blow through the dark glens and wide sunlit moors of his mind the four
winds of Laughter, Longing, Wonder, and Delight.
As year after year went by, his mind became a storehouse of all that
was most beautiful and marvellous in the Celtic wonder-world. It is
no wonder this, since he had for story-teller Ian Mor, and Eilidh whom
Ian loved; and knew every shepherd on the hillsides of Strachurmore,
and every fisherman on the shores of Loch Fyne. The old ballads, the
old romances, the strange fragments of the Ossianic tales, the lore of
fairydom, fantastic folk-lore, craft of the woodlands, all of the outer
and inner life grew into and became interwrought with the fibre of his
most intimate being.
I am not here telling the story of Peterkin himself. He stands, indeed,
for many children rather than for one, for many lives and not an
individual merely.
In a sense, therefore, Peterkin is not merely a little child, a boy,
a youth, who went through his years gladly laughing, mysteriously
wondering, wrought to pain and joy, to suffering and delight, by all he
saw and heard and inwardly learned; but a type of the Wonder-Child, and
so a brother to all children, to poets, and dreamers.
Of the many tales of old times which Peterkin loved, none did he dwell
upon with so much delight as those three which are familiar throughout
Ireland and Gaelic Scotland as “The Three Sorrows of Story-Telling.”
In “The Children of Lir,” in “Deirdre and the Sons of Usna,” in “The
Children of Turenn,” he found pre-eminently the haunting charm and
sad exquisite beauty which are the colour and fragrance of the Celtic
genius. And though in his manhood he turned with deeper emotion to
tales such as “Dermid and Grainne,” or “The Amadan Mor,” it was of
these early favourites that he loved to think, that he loved to
re-read, to hear again, to re-tell.
That is why, therefore, I have chosen to make this book essentially
a re-telling of the beautiful old tales of “The Three Sorrows,” so
familiar once to our Gaelic ancestors, and still, in however crude a
form, the most popular of all the tales of the Gael. They are sad,
it is true, because all the old beautiful tales are sad; but it is a
sadness which is a fragrance about an exquisite bloom, and that bloom
wrought of joy and keen delight. They were not sad, they who lived the
old, joyous, heroic life; in some poignant vicissitude, some sudden
slaying, some passing of a bright flame into a melancholy wane, we
see a sad gleam about the end of their days, and, seeing thus the
fortuitous coming and going of life and death, read into the old
chronicles a melancholy which often is not there.
Of course, a tale such as “The Fate of the Children of Lir”--probably
the story known above all others among the children of Western Scotland
and Ireland--is sad with another sadness, that of prolonged and
unmerited suffering. But to the Gaelic mind, at least, this is redeemed
by the sense of heroic endurance, of the deep unselfish devotion of a
lovely womanly type such as is represented by Fionula, and perhaps,
above all, by the music and beauty which were the sweet doom of Fionula
and her brothers.
But to me not one of them is sad, save with beauty. For through all I
hear the sound of Peterkin’s laughter. Sometimes it was aroused by an
episode; sometimes it leapt like a hound along the trail of vagrant
thoughts; sometimes it came and went as an eddying wind, none knowing
whence or whither.
This laughter of Peterkin has become for me one of the sweet wonderful
voices of nature--the four winds of Childhood: Wonder, Delight,
Longing, and Laughter. Ah, children, children, to one and all I wish
the golden fortune of Peterkin.
V
When Peterkin was still a child he was familiar with tales of the old
world which now-a-days we keep from children, because they are not old
enough to understand. That, I fear, is more because we ourselves do not
understand, or are out of sympathy. Is a child more likely to be hurt,
or to be nobly attuned to the chant-royal of life, by acquaintance with
stories of vivid and beautiful human love such as that of Nathos and
Darthool, or Dermid and Grainne? Surely, what is beautiful is not a
thing to be feared; and though, alas! so many of us do now indeed dread
beauty and feel toward it a strange baffled aversion, there are others
who know it to be the profoundest and most exquisite mystery in life.
To Peterkin at any rate there was never anything but what was stirring
and heroic and full of charm and beauty in these old tales: and through
all his days their atmosphere was in his mind, so that he made life
fairer for himself and others.
Few stories delighted him more than the wild folk-lore tales which he
heard from the shepherds and fishermen, or than those which he was told
on Iona. It was to that island he was taken when he was still a child,
at a time when the shadow of death darkened his young life. But there,
staying with Ian Mor and with Eilidh, his wife, he lived the happiest
months of his early years, and came closer to the beauty of the past
and to the beauty of the present than ever before or after.
It was on Iona that he first heard the “Three Sorrows of
Story-Telling,” though that of Nathos and Darthool--or of “The Sons of
Usna,” as it is generally called--was rather overheard by him as Ian
related it to Eilidh, than told to him direct.
Throughout the first months of his stay in Iona, Peterkin was told
something daily by Ian Mor, so that, child as he was, he became
familiar with strange names and peoples of the past, as well as with
all the wonders of the living world. True, there was thus in his mind
a jumble of the past and the present, and Columba was more real to him
than McCailin Mor himself, and Finn and Cuchulain, Ossian and Oscar and
Dermid as vivid and actual as any fisherman of Iona.
When he was old enough to follow aright, Ian Mor told him, anew and in
his own way, the three famous tales which follow.
The Tale of the Four
White Swans
“The cold and cruel fate that overtook
The children of the great De Danann, Lir,
Is of the Sorrow-stories of our isle.
This sorrow-tale indeed is old and young;
Old, for so many hundred years have gone
Since last beneath the midnight shimmering star
Was heard the music of the birds of snow:
Young, for amid the bright-eyed tuneful Gael
The sorrows of the snowy-breasted four
Are told again to-day, and shall be told
Long as the children of Milesius last
To people Banba’s hills and pleasant vales.”
_The Three Sorrows of Story-Telling_:
“The Children of Lir,”
_trs. by Dr. Douglas Hyde_.
[Illustration: As she touched Fionula, Lir’s fair young daughter became
a beautiful snow-white swan.
_To face p. 33._]
]
The Tale of the Four
White Swans
The story that I will tell you now is one of the most famous among all
the peoples of the Gael. It is called sometimes “The Tale of the Four
White Swans,” sometimes “The Fate of the Children of Lir,” sometimes
simply “Fionula,”[1] because of the beauty and tenderness of Lir’s
daughter.
The tale is of the old far-off days. It was old when Ossian was a
youth, and Fionn heard it as a child from the lips of grey-beards.
Often I have spoken to you, Peterkin, of the Danann folk, the
Tuatha-De-Danann who lived in the lands of our race before the foreign
peoples came and drove the ancient dwellers in Ireland and Scotland
to the hills and remote places. When men allude to them now in this
late day, they speak of the Dedannans (as they are often called) as the
Hidden Folk, the Quiet People, the Hill Folk, and even as the Fairies.
It is natural, therefore, that years are as dust in the chronicles of
this lost race. They live for hundreds of years where we live for ten;
and so it is that the foam of time is white against the brief wave of
our life, when against the mighty and long reach of theirs it is but
flying spray.
You have heard Eilidh singing the song of the Four White Swans. It is a
music that hundreds of tired ears have heard. It is so sweet, Peterkin,
that old men grow young, and old women are girls again, and weary
hearts ache no more, and dreams and hopes become real, and peace puts
out her white healing hand.
“Have you heard that singing, Ian?”
“Yes, my boykin, often. And you, too, shall often hear it. It is
in lonely places, in lonely hours, that you shall hear it. It is a
beautiful strange sound, and so old and so wonderful that in it you
will hear the beating of the heart of the world thousands of years
ago. But first I will tell you the story of the Four Swans, and then
we can speak again of the strange singing I have heard at times, and
that you often shall hear.”
The Dedannans were the most wonderful and happy people in the world
till they became discontented with what the unknown and beautiful
gods had given them. Then they split into sections, and some sought
one vain thing and some another, and in the end all found weariness.
Their wise men knew that as long as they were at one no enemy could
prevail against them; but it has never been the way of the unquiet
to believe in the old wisdom, and so feuds arose, and the Fairy Host
itself--as the great array of the warriors of the Tuatha-De-Danann was
called--ceased to be invincible, because the banners blew to the four
winds.
Not all their ancestral sojournings in the dim lands of the East, nor
in the ages of their migration to the country of fjords which has its
whole length in the sea, nor in Alba, that is now Scotland, nor Eiré,
that is now Ireland, not all they had learned in their remote past
helped them against the undoing of their own folly.
It has been said that the Dedannans never fought against men till the
Milesians, the warriors of Miled out of some land in the south--the
land, mayhap, we know as Spain--came against them upon the banks of a
river then as now called the Blackwater, in the heart of Meath.
But before the Dedannans themselves ever saw it, the Green Isle was
held by the Firbolgs, a terrible, heroic race, but allied to the dark
powers. Some say they became demons, after they were defeated in many
battles by the Tuatha-De-Danann, and at last wholly conquered. But so
old is this ancient tired world, that long before the Dedannans and the
Firbolg people fought for sovereignty, the Firbolg had striven with
and overcome an earlier race--the Nemedians--which had come to Ireland
under a mysterious king, Nemed. None knows who Nemed was, though he may
have been a god, seeing that he overcame that most ancient people who
were the first to set foot in the Isle of Destiny, under Partholan, a
son of him who was called the Most High God.
Whether it be true or not that the overlordship of the world was meant
for man, certain it is that man has thought so. Therefore are all
stories of his cosmic strife coloured by this destiny. Terrible and
mighty were the Firbolgs, fierce and terrible and beautiful were the
Dedannans, but now there is no rumour of either, save in the wail of
the wind, or in the stirring of swift, stealthy feet in the moonshine.
But now, Peterkin, I will tell you about the children of Lir, who was
one of the great princes of the Dedannans.
The first great battle between the Milesians and the Dedannans had been
fought, and the ancient people, for all their secret powers of wonders
and enchantment, had been defeated. Throughout all Erin--for Ireland at
that time was called either Eiré (Erin), or Fola, or Banba, after three
great queens--there was a rumour of lamentation. It was the beginning
of the end, though few save the wisest Druids foresaw it.
But the people knew that their dissensions were the cause of their
sorrow. They clamoured for one king to be overlord, so that the whole
Dedannan race might be united.
There were five great princes who claimed to be king by right. Of these
two were greater than the others--Bove Derg, son of Dagda, one of the
divine race (and some say a mighty god), and Lir of Shee Finnaha.
In the end Bove Derg was elected Ardree, or High King. Even Midir
the Haughty acquiesced in this judgment of the people, but Lir was
wroth and held aloof. All the princes and warriors were fierce with
Lir because he had left the assembly in anger, paying heed to no one,
and scornfully ignoring the majesty of the king. A hundred swords of
proven heroes leapt before Bove Derg, for all were eager to follow Lir
and destroy him and his, because of the insult to the king and to the
voice and freewill of the people. But Bove Derg was a wise and generous
prince, and forbore. This was well. For in time a great sorrow came
upon Lir. When the rumour of this sorrow reached Bove Derg, he saw how
he might win over Lir.
“In my house,” he said, “are my three foster-children, the daughters
of Aileel of Ara. Each is beautiful, all are wise and sweet and noble.
Let messengers go to Lir, and tell him that my friendship is his if he
will have it. Surely now he will submit to the will of the people. And
he can have to wife whomsoever of the three daughters of Aileel he may
choose, if so be that she will gladly and freely go with him.”
Lir was glad at this message. He called his warriors together, and in
fifty chariots he and they set forth. They rested not till they came
to the palace of Bove Derg, by the Great Lake, nigh to the place now
called Killaloe. Great were the rejoicings, and again at the alliance
which after many days was made between the king and Lir.
When Lir saw the three daughters of Aileel, he could not say who was
the most beautiful.
“Each is alike beautiful, O king,” he said; “and I cannot tell which is
best. But surely the eldest must be the noblest of the three, and so I
will choose her, if so be that she gladly and freely come with me as my
wife.”
And so it was. When Lir returned to his own place, he took with him
as his wife the beautiful Aev, who was the eldest of the daughters of
Aileel of Ara, and was foster-child of Bove Derg the king. From that
day, too, a deep and true friendship lived between Bove Derg and Lir.
In the course of time Aev bore him twin children, a son and a daughter.
The daughter was named Fionula, because of her lovely whiteness, and
the son was named Aed, for that his eyes, and the mind behind his
eyes, were bright and wonderful as a flame of fire.
And at the end of the second year Aev again bore twin children. Both
were sons, and they were named Fiachra and Conn. But in giving them
life she lost her own.
Lir was in bitter distress because of her death, and for the reason
that his four little children were now motherless. He was comforted by
Bove Derg, who not only gave him friendship and kingly aid and counsel,
but said that he should not be left alone to mourn, and that his little
ones should not go motherless.
Thus it was that Aeifa, the second of the daughters of Aileel of Ara
and foster-child of Bove Derg the king, came to Shee Finnaha and
espoused Lir.
For some years all went well. Aeifa nursed the children, and tended
them. They were so fair and beautiful that the poets sang of them
far and wide. Even Bove Derg loved them as though they were his own.
As for Lir, so great was his love, that he could not bear to be long
apart from them. His sleeping-room was separated from them only by a
deerskin, and this often he pulled aside at dawn, so that he might see
his dear ones, and perchance go to them to talk lightly and happily, or
to caress them with loving laughter and joy.
Lir was never sad save when the four children went south to the Great
Lake to stay awhile with Bove Derg, who in his turn was filled with
melancholy when the time came for them to go home again. Nor was Lir
ever so proud as when, at the Feast of Age, whenever that festival came
to be held at Shee Finnaha, the king and the nobles and the warriors
delighted in the beauty and marvellous sweet charm of Fionula and Aed
and Fiachra and Conn. Thus it was that the saying grew: “Fair as the
four children of Lir.”
But there was a deep shadow behind all this joy. This shadow came out
of the heart of Aeifa. In love there is sometimes a poisonous mist. It
is what we call Jealousy. At first Aeifa truly loved her step-children.
But as the years lapsed, and when Fionula was passing from girlhood
into maidenhood, the wife of Lir was filled with anger against the four
children. She was bitter at heart because their father loved them with
so great a tenderness, and that even the king himself cared for them
above all else, and because all the Dedannans had joy of them.
The time came when this dull smouldering fire, which she might have
overcome had she loved nobly and not ignobly, burst into flame. This
flame withered her heart, and rose thence till it obscured her mind.
She had something of the old druidical wisdom, but she feared the
counter-spells of others wiser than herself. Nevertheless she set
herself to learn one or other of the ancient incantations against which
even the gods are powerless to avert evil from men and women.
While she was brooding thus--and for weeks and even months she lay in
the house of Lir as one stricken with some terrible ill--her rage grew
till she could no longer endure the sight of her husband or of her
step-children.
One day she arose and ordered the horses to be yoked to her chariot,
and bade a small chosen company to be ready to go with her and the
four children to the Great Lake: for, she said, she wished to see
Bove Derg, her foster-father, and to take the children to gladden
his heart. Lir was sad, and sadder still when he saw the tears in
Fionula’s eyes. In vain he asked her why this drifting dew was there
instead of the sun-bright laughing glancings he joyed so much to see.
She would not answer: for all she could have said was that in a dream
she had fore-knowledge of the evil desire of Aeifa to kill her and
her brothers. Perhaps, she thought, it was but a dream. She loved
honour, too, and would not put her father against his wife because of a
visionary thing that came to her in the night.
It was when they were in a deep gorge of the hills that Aeifa was
overcome by her hatred. Turning to her attendants, she offered them
wealth and whatsoever they desired if only they would slay the four
children of Lir then and there, inasmuch as these had come between her
and her husband, and had therein and in all else made her life a burden
to her.
The attendants listened with horror. Not one there would lift a hand
against Lir’s children. What was wealth, or any fruit of desire,
compared with so foul a treachery, so terrible a crime! The oldest
among them even warned Lir’s wife that the very thought of such evil
would surely work a dreadful punishment against her.
At this, Aeifa laughed wildly. Then, seizing a sword, she strove to
wield it herself against the defenceless children. The three boys
stood, wondering. In the blue eyes of Fionula there was something the
wife of Lir dreaded more than the wrath of husband or king. Dashing
the sword to the ground, she cried to the chariot-driver to make haste
onward.
No word was spoken among them till they reached the hither end of the
Lake of Darvra.[2] There Aeifa called a halt, and the horses were
unyoked for rest. It was a fair and warm day, so when she bade the
children undress and go into the water, they did so gladly.
While their white sunlit bodies were splashing in the lake, she took
from beneath the rim of the chariot, where she had secreted it, a
druidical fairy wand. This had been given her by a Dedannan druid, and
was a dreadful thing to possess, for its power was of the black magic,
against which nothing might prevail. Going to the side of the clear
water, she struck lightly with the wand the shoulder of each of the
four children; and, as she touched Fionula, Lir’s fair young daughter
became a beautiful snow-white swan, and as she touched Aed and Fiachra
and Conn, Lir’s three young sons were changed like unto Fionula.
A cry of lamentation arose from the witnesses of this deed, though none
guessed that the ill was so dreadful and beyond the reach of druidic
skill, nor did the children know at first what evil had befallen them,
but swam to and fro laughing in their hearts, and rejoicing in their
white feathers and in their swift joy in the water. But when Fionula
heard the lamentation, and looked upon the evil face of Aeifa her
stepmother, she knew that the hour of doom had come.
Then Aeifa stretched out her arms, and chanted these words:
“Lost far and wide on Darvra’s gloomy water,
With other lonely birds tost far and wide.
For nevermore shall Lir behold his daughter,
And never shall his sons lie by his side.”
Then while all on the shore stood in deep grief, Fionula swam close,
and looked up into the white face of Aeifa, which was whiter then than
the whitest breast-feathers of these poor bewildered swans.
“This is an evil deed thou hast done, O Aeifa,” she said. “Out of a
bitter heart thou hast wrought this cruel wrong upon us who love thee,
and have never done or wished thee ill. Nevertheless it is not our
ill that shall endure for ever, but thine own evil. There shall be an
avenging terrible for thee, whensoever it come.”
It was then that Fionula for the first time sang as a swan, and even
then the marvellous sweet singing brought both gladness and tears into
the hearts of those who heard.
“In the years long ago, long ago now, long ago,
We were loved by her who dooms us to this evil cruel woe:
Who with magic wand and words
Hath changed us into birds--
Snow-white swans to drift and drift for evermore
Homeless, weary, tempest-baffled hence from shore to shore.”
A silence followed this melancholy singing. Then at last Fionula spoke
again.
“Tell us, O Aeifa, how long this doom is to be upon us, so that we may
know when death shall come to take away our suffering?”
Then because in that day it was not honourable to refuse the truth when
asked, Aeifa did as Fionula prayed of her.
“Better would it be for thee and thy brothers to know nothing and to
hope much. But since thou hast asked this thing I will tell it:
“Three hundred years shall ye, Fionula, and Aed and Fiachra and Conn,
who are now four white swans, abide here on this great lonely, desolate
lake of Darvra. For three hundred years thereafter shall ye inhabit the
wild sea of Moyle, which lies between the Stairway of the Giants, and
the bleak shores of the great headland of Alba.[3] And for yet another
three hundred years ye shall drift to and fro among the storm-swept
seas off the rocky isles to the west of Erin.
“Furthermore, ye shall be idle sport for the storms until Lairgnen, a
great prince of the north, has union with Decca, in the south: until
the Taillkenn,[4] the new prophet, shall come to Erin and preach a new
faith that shall chase away the old gods: and until ye shall be filled
with fear and wonder at a strange sound, that shall be the ringing of
the first Christian bell. All this I tell ye because of the prophetic
sight I have, and that has come to me through the druidic wand
wherewith I have changed ye into four wild white swans. And this too, I
say unto ye, Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn, that neither by your
own power nor by your prayers, nor by mine, nor by the power of Lir and
Bove Derg, nor by that of all kings and princes and druids whatsoever;
no, nor by any god, nor by any power in heaven or earth, can ye be
freed from this spell I have put upon ye, until the times and events I
have spoken of shall be fulfilled.”
When Aeifa had ceased speaking, there was no sound to be heard, save
the lap-lapping of the lake-water upon the shore. Of the company of
those with her none spake a word, each dreading the evil that was sure
to come. At last a faint sobbing came from amid the sedges, where the
young brothers nestled by the side of Fionula, who had already begun to
mother these dear ones whom she loved.
When she heard these sobs, Aeifa’s heart smote her. Even if she would,
she could not now undo the age-long spell she had set upon the children
of Lir. But one thing was left to her that she might do with the fairy
wand, which could be moved once again if stirred by the breath of her
will.
“Hearken, O children of Lir,” she cried, “for I have yet one thing
to say: and that out of the sorrow in my heart because of the doom I
have put upon ye. Although ye are turned into wild swans, ye shall not
become as the desert birds, and have no speech but the savage screams
and cries of the wilderness. Ye shall keep for ever your own sweet
Gaelic speech, and so be able to talk each with the other, and with
any of the human kind whom ye may meet. And more than this, ye shall
be able to sing the most sweet, plaintive songs, and the most wild,
haunting music that ever man has heard; so that all whose ears list
shall be lulled into deep sleep, or into a peace sweeter than slumber
itself. Nor shall the law of the soulless brutes be upon you, but ye
shall be Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn, the children of Lir.”
Having said these words, Aeifa raised her arms and chanted this song:
“Speed hence, speed hence, O lone white swans,
Across the wind-sprent foam;
The wave shall be your father now,
And the wind alone shall kiss your brow,
And the waste be your home.
Speed hence, speed hence, O lone white swans,
Your age-long quest to make;
Three hundred years on Moyle’s wild breast,
Three hundred years on the wilder west,
Three hundred on this lake.
Speed hence, speed hence, O lone white swans,
And Lir shall call in vain;
For all his aching heart and tears,
For all the weariness of his years,
Ye shall not come again.
Speed hence, speed hence, O lone white swans,
Till the ringing of Christ’s bell;
Then at the last ye shall have rest,
And Death shall take ye to his breast
At the ringing of Christ’s bell.”
Having sung this farewell song, Aeifa ordered the horses to be yoked
again to her chariot.
This done, she drove away westward, nor was there a single heart in
those who accompanied her but was filled with sorrow and foreboding.
When the lake was no longer visible, and the gloom of the mountains
came down upon the pass which led towards the westlands where Bove Derg
dwelled, a faint wild aerial singing was heard, delicate as tinkling
cowbells on far hill-pastures.
Before Aeifa drew near to the great dun of Bove Derg, she put each of
her company under a solemn bond of silence as to what she had meant to
do and not done, and as to what later she had done; and because of the
lealty of the bond to a woman, and also because of the fear of each
towards the druidical fairy wand that she still carried, the oath was
taken by one and all.
Therefore it was easy for Aeifa to mislead Bove Derg as to the reason
why she had not brought the children of Lir with her. Nevertheless he
doubted greatly that his foster-daughter deceived him, for he could not
think that Lir his friend would so mistrust him as to refuse to let
Fionula and her brothers accompany their stepmother.
So, secretly, he sent a swift messenger across the hills and straths to
the dun of Lir.
Lir was at once wroth and filled with fear when he heard that Aeifa
had reached the dun of Bove Derg without the children. Some treachery
surely had been done, he cried.
Then, calling together a company, he set forth with all speed. Towards
sundown, the cavalcade came upon the wide desolate shores of the great
lake of Darvra.
“What is that sound?” cried Lir.
“It is the wind in the reeds, O Lir,” answered a spearman by his side.
“The wind in the reeds is a sweet sound to hear, Coran, but never have
I heard any wind that could make so sweet a music.”
“It is the little gentle lapping of the wavelets by the west wind, O
Lir.”
“It is no gentle lapping of the wavelets by the west wind, Coran, nor
yet is it the wind in the reeds; but that is the voice of Fionula
singing.”
And as the sound grew clearer, all heard it, and soon the words were
audible:
“Behold the Danann host is on the shore,
Seeking for those now lost for evermore;
But let us haste towards that proud array
And tell the tidings of this fatal day.”
And while the song was still in the ears of all there, Lir gave a great
cry and pointed to where above the midmost of the lake four wild swans
were winging swiftly towards the eastern shore.
When he heard from Fionula--and he knew her voice, which was sweeter
than any other he had ever heard--of all that had happened, and of
the strange and dreadful doom that was put upon her and her brothers,
he fell sobbing to the ground. From all his company the keening of a
bitter lamentation arose.
Alas, as he knew well, not even the great length of years which the
Dedannan folk lived--and a score of years is to them what one year
is to us--would enable him to see his dear ones again. Three hundred
years on Darvra, these he might mayhap live to see; but not the three
hundred years on the bleak and wild region of the Moyle, nor the three
hundred on the wild tempestuous western seas, nor the far-off day when
a prophet called Taillken would come to Erin with a new faith, and in
the glens and across the plains would be heard the strange chiming of
Christ’s bell.
Yet was he comforted when he heard that his children were to keep their
Gaelic speech, and to be human in all things save only in their outward
shape. And glad he was that they were to be able to chant music so
wild and sweet that all who should hear it would be filled with joy
and peace. For music is the most beautiful and wonderful thing in the
world, and is the oldest, as it will be the latest speech.
“Remain with us this night, here by the lake,” said Fionula, “and we
shall sing to you our fairy music.”
So all abode there, and so sweet was the song of the children of Lir,
that he himself and all his company fell into a deep, restful slumber.
All night long they sang their sweet sad song, and were glad because of
the quiet dark figures by the lake-side lying drowned in shadow. Slowly
the moon sank behind the hills. Then the stars glistened whitelier and
smaller, and a soft rosy flush came over the mountain crest in the
east. Then Lir awoke, and Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn ceased
their singing, and spread out their white pinions to the light of a
new day, and ruffled their snowy breasts against the frothing that the
dawn-wind made upon the lake.