TO THE NORTH.
They spent that night in the wattled cote of a wood-cutter. Tamed
wolves and great hounds slept on the straw beside them, making the air
so foul that they were glad to leave at the first streak of dawn.
A lowering sky--dark and thunderous--shadowed the frowning wastes
before him. Patches of white bog-cotton sprang here and there--ghastly
in the early light; brimming pools flashed like dull steel around; the
stretches of furze and heath held a dull crimson in their hue like the
spent blood on a battle-field.
A sighing hermit--from his cell in a roadside cavern--aided them in
their search for a horse for Cormac’s use; pointing with a fleshless
hand, to a clough in a line of low barren hills, where sluggish runlets
gleamed silvery, in the dank soil of a peat valley.
“In that peat morass,” the hermit told them, “a hundred stallions have
been driven--as spoil in a feud between two kings, that is laying waste
the country side. A score of them have foundered in the bog--and, I
doubt not, will fall easy prey to any passer-by.”
There, knee-deep in slough and peat, Cormac found a beautiful creature;
tired and spent with struggling in the bog--the veins under its satin
skin netting its body like cord; its eyes strained and blood-shot. An
animal so black and glossy that beside it the black peat looked as grey
as ashes.
They found it a long, hard task to draw it from the bog; and only to
be done by harnessing Ethne’s stallion to the struggling creature, and
thus dragging it forth.
Whilst the animal rested and recovered its full strength the woman and
boy disputed over the road they should travel on.
“Come with me first to Tara,” Ethne said. “Come and see the place where
our ancestors reigned as gods and kings. Come and see the halls where
Tuathal held his feasts--where, every day, three hundred cup-bearers
handed golden goblets to the royal guests--and every king in Hibernia
came and paid homage to their over-king.”
“I will not go to Tara!” said Cormac, firmly. He felt that it was too
near the late scene of horror. It was near the Druids’ sacred place of
fire.
“You will not!” cried Ethne, angrily. Then a change came over her face,
and she grew as pale as death. “No--you had better not. You are a
Christian, and even Christians feel shame when they look on Tara. For
was not the curse that it is under laid on it by one of your saints?”
She dropped her voice to sad, moaning tones like the wind among the
branches overhead. “Yes, the feasts are no more and the golden roof
is falling--the wind is sweeping through the sacred halls! Tara is
deserted! Tara is accursed--and the evil was wrought by the Christians!”
Then she raised her voice in a scream, and looked at him with glaring
eyes.
“And you, Cormac of Fail, you--and I also, forgive me, Sun in
heaven--fought for the faith that cursed the home of our ancestors!”
Cormac looked at her with a frown for a time. Ethne’s sudden transports
of emotion had enchanted him. Now he felt he could never look at them
without conjuring up that dreadful scene when she had helped in the
human sacrifice.
She read his thoughts and her fury increased. She knew that the
last few days marked an era in Cormac’s life; he had passed, like
lightning, from boyhood to manhood; in doing so the tie between them
had changed--she had no longer the same power.
He had slipt upon the black stallion’s back, without saddle and without
bridle, one hand grasping the creature’s tangled mane, the other urging
it forward. The horse bounded and leapt furiously, but Cormac sat
firm--a picture of youthful skill and ease.
“To the North!” he said, glancing back at Ethne. “To the North--where
you have promised me warriors!”
So they went on day by day--over rich loam and peat and chalky
marl--towards the wilds of the North.
To the steep and savage hills and cliffs of Tir Conall’s coast, to
Tir Conall’s broad and treeless waste of moor and bog--everywhere
and always the wild sea thrusting fierce arms into the jagged land;
till Cormac felt there was less of land than of water in his path;
for the rains of autumn had commenced--tarn, river and mountain
stream were brimming. Far North they went, until the Ultima Thule of
Hibernia--Innistrahul--lay before them. And then they turned westward;
where the troubled sea, beating under beetling cliffs, sprang higher in
the air than the highest tower of Hibernia.
The bittern and the white stork--coot and heron--were thick in the
marshy land around him; from moor and heath came the weird cries of
curlews, and the fallows were strewn with their egg-shells.
Here he discovered tribes that were sib to him in the country off Tir
Conall. When the two sons of his ancestor, Niall of the Nine Hostages,
made sword-land of so much of Ulster they gave to the northern lands
beyond the country of The Waters, the names of Tir Eogan and Tir
Conall--that is to say Tir Eogan or the Country of Eogan, and Tir
Conall, or Country of Conall.
He found a warm welcome and many followers amongst his kith and kin;
the young warrior, on his matchless steed, took the Hibernian hearts
by storm. Hoary chieftains, weary of warring on each other, came at
the call of one who bore the ancient name; huntsmen left the chase
and armed their great wolfhounds for war; youths from schools and
monasteries left parchment and vellum and took up pike and battle-axe
again. And Cormac found smiles and favour from the daughters of the
land; as he passed they would run and offer him mead and milk and
apples; many a king’s daughter, in her sunny grianan with her carved
work-box before her, busied herself embroidering saffron coloured
crisses for the black-haired youth; many a maiden of less degree
offered him simpler love-tokens; but, if here and there he dallied, he
was never drawn from the great object of his ride--to gather warriors
to do his father’s bidding.
From Druid and from Christian alike the same tale met his ear:
“The greater part of the noble youth of Hibernia become missionaries
and monks--wandering often to the very limits of the earth. Of those
left behind, the idle and careless join the bards; the rest turn
pirates--plundering their own people as well as the Britons and Saxons.
We need such as thee, Cormac of Fail, to strike once more the ancient
chords, and rally our men around thee!”
All agreed it was among the bards he was to find warriors--that
great and numerous company, comprising two thirds of the men of
Hibernia--could he but rouse them from the enervating spirit that
pervaded them. Ethne smiled to herself, well pleased, for it was
from the bards or Filid, she herself had decided they should find
followers; for, although Druidism was not always openly avowed by them,
she knew at heart they retained the ancient faith she trusted to revive
in Hibernia.
Hibernia needed him, Ethne told him often; and her words encouraged
the wild hopes he cherished. Hibernia--with her gold and her learning,
her intellect, her enterprise, her high spirit--might she not be
mistress of the world, could she but send forth warriors as she sent
missionaries?
The Christian zeal Ireland showed was the wonder of the age. Daily,
from her shores, she saw her children depart to spread the gospel in
the world. Kings and scholars--ardent and dauntless--bare foot and
clothed in sack-cloth going forth to spend their lives in wattled cote
by barren sea-shore, or to freeze in Alpine heights, or in open boats
on the ocean. Giving their lives up gladly, that they might spread
the Light in a world of darkness. There were others, spending lives
of prayer, fast-bound in gray stone walls--fasting and lying in cold
stone--and others again spending lives of toil in the monasteries,
making copies of the gospels and the pentateuch for the use of men;
covering coarse Irish vellum with hand-writing of the greatest beauty.
The two faiths--Christian and Pagan--were strangely mingled in these
northern lands. Monastery rose within sight of Druid circle--cromlech
and cross side by side; the Christian crosses often owed their beauty
to the druidical symbols with which they were wreathed. One night
Cormac would lodge with a Druid in the shadow of an ancient tower--on
the next he would crouch on the cold clay of a hermit’s cave. At Derry,
or the Place of Oaks, he stayed with the monks who were building the
great monastery Columba had founded--then he passed to the palace of
the northern kings and joined in its revelry; in the day-time sitting
and watching the feats of the juggling Druids--and at night listening
to their tales as he sat with the hounds and men by the hall fire.
The spirit of early Christianity was to work by degrees amongst the
heathen; it was difficult to wean the people entirely from the ancient
superstitions; often the priests were content, for the time, if they
could but abolish the cruel and evil rites of the Druids.
And Cormac--with a boy’s hopeful outlook--began to trust Ethne was in
a state of transition from the pagan to the Christian faith; for she
ceased to speak to him of the Druids and their religion; no longer
seemed desirous of turning him towards it.
Cormac and his followers rode on--through boundless forests, marshy
wilds, and high-lying pasture-lands; through a land without cities;
over broad, unbridged rivers that they crossed at fords and shallows on
their swimming horses, or by the aid of stepping stones and hurdles; by
unpaved roads and bridle-paths; galloping through scattered hamlets of
wattle and wicker-work; scaring the cotter’s children at play among the
marsh mallows; sometimes slackening their speed amid pastures gray with
sheep. Now pausing to exchange a word with some half-crazed swineherd;
now bursting into wild Hibernian songs; and for days meeting no living
creature save red-deer, wild boar, and swine.
Upon a wet and windy afternoon they reached the Rath of Cormac’s great
kinsman, King Aedh, son of Ainmire--the friend and anointed of Saint
Columba; and, like Columba of the tribe of that Conall Gulban, who had
given its name to the land of Tir Conall.
In the marchland that now stretched before them lay a large village
of wicker cabins. Through these buildings and their accompanying
midden-heaps, they threaded their way till they reached the dun of
the chieftain--King Aedh; a collection of cabins surrounded by a
double wall with a ditch between the two walls. These cabins, although
considerably larger, were built after the same pattern as the other
bee-hive shaped dwellings of the village--by interweaving wattles on
either side of a clay wall and thatching the conical roofs with rushes.
A rude church in the group had hewn oak mingled with the wattled walls.
Just upon the rampart--to escape the shadow thrown by other buildings,
the sun-chamber or Grianan of the chieftain’s wife, was always placed;
formed of white wattles--often polished and sweet scented.