SETANTA AND THE SMITH’S DOG
“How he fell
From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o’er the crystal battlements; from morn
To noon, from noon to dewy eve,
A Summer’s day, he fell; and with the setting sun
Dropped from the zenith like a falling star,
On Lemnos.”
MILTON.
When Culain saw far away the tall figures of the Ultonians against the
sunset, and the flashing of their weapons and armour, he cried out with
a loud voice to his people to stop working and slack the furnaces
and make themselves ready to receive the Red Branch; and he bade the
household thralls prepare the supper, roast, boiled and stewed, which
he had previously ordered. Then he himself and his journeymen and
apprentices stripped themselves, and in huge keeves of water filled by
their slaves they washed from them the smoke and sweat of their labour
and put on clean clothes. The mirrors at which they dressed themselves
were the darkened waters of their enormous tubs.
Culain sent a party of his men and those who were the best dressed
and the most comely and who were the boldest and most eloquent in the
presence of strangers, to meet the high King of the Ultonians on the
moor, but he himself stood huge in the great doorway just beyond the
threshold and in front of the bridge over which the Red Branch party was
to pass. He had on him over his clothes a clean leathern apron which was
not singed or scored. It was fastened at his shoulders and half covered
his enormous hairy chest, was girt again at his waist and descended
below his knees. He stood with one knee crooked, leaning upon a long
ash-handled sledge with a head of glittering bronze. There he gave a
friendly and grave welcome to the King and to all the knights one by
one. It was dusk when Concobar entered the dun.
“Are all thy people arrived?” said the smith.
“They are,” said Concobar.
Culain bade his people raise the drawbridge which spanned the deep
black moat surrounding the city, and after that, with his own hands he
unchained his one dog. The dog was of great size and fierceness. It was
supposed that there was no man in Ireland whom he could not drag down.
He had no other good quality than that he was faithful to his master
and guarded his property vigilantly at night. He was quick of sight and
hearing and only slept in the daytime. Being let loose he sprang over
the moat and three times careered round the city, baying fearfully.
Then he stood stiffly on the edge of the moat to watch and listen, and
growled at intervals when he heard some noise far away. It was then
precisely that Setanta set forth from Emain Macha. Earth quaked to the
growling of that ill beast.
In the meantime the smith went into the dun, and when he had commanded
his people to light the candles throughout the chamber, he slammed to
the vast folding doors with his right hand and his left, and drew forth
the massy bar from its place and shot it into the opposing cavity. There
was not a knight amongst the Red Branch who could shut one of those
doors, using both hands and his whole strength. Of the younger knights,
some started to their feet and laid their hands on their sword hilts
when they heard the bolt shot.
The smith sat down on his high seat over against Concobar, with his
dusky sons and kinsmen around him, and truly they contrasted strangely
with the bravery and beauty of the Ultonians. He called for ale, and
holding in his hands a huge four-cornered mether of the same, rimmed
with silver and furnished with a double silver hand-grip, he pledged
the King and bade him and his a kindly welcome. He swore, too, that no
generation of the children of Rury, and he had wrought for many, had
done more credit to his workmanship than themselves, nor had he ever
made the appliances of war for any of the Gael with equal pleasure.
Concobar, on the other hand, responded discreetly, and praised
the smith-work of Culain, praising chiefly the shield called Ocean
[Footnote: Concobar’s shield. When Concobar was in danger the shield
roared. The sea, too, roared responsive.], which was one of the wonders
of the north-west of Europe. The smith and all his people were well
pleased at that speech, and Culain bade his thralls serve supper, which
proved to be a very noble repast. There was enough and to spare for
all the Ultonians. When supper was ended, the heroes and the artificers
pledged each other many times and drank also to the memory of famous men
of yore and their fathers who begat them, as was right and customary;
and they became very friendly and merry without intoxication, for
intoxication was not known in the age of the heroes.
Then said Concobar: “We have this night toasted many heroes who are
gone, and, as it is not right that we should praise ourselves, I propose
that we drink now to the heroes that are coming, both those unborn, and
those who, still being boys, are under tutors and instructors; and for
this toast I name the name of my nephew Setanta, son of Sualtam, who,
if any, will one day, O Culain, if I mistake not, illustrate in an
unexampled manner thy skill as an artificer of weapons and armour.”
“Is he then a boy of that promise, O Concobar?” said the smith, “for if
he is I am truly rejoiced to hear it.”
“He is all that I say,” answered the King somewhat hotly, “and of a
beauty corresponding. And of that thou shalt be the judge to-night, for
he is coming, and indeed I am momentarily expecting to hear the loud
clamour of his brazen hurle upon the doors of the dun, after his having
leapt at one bound both thy moat and thy rampart.”
The smith started from his high seat uttering a great oath, such as men
used then, and sternly chid Concobar because he had said that all his
people had arrived. “If the boy comes now,” he said, “ere I can chain
the dog, verily he will be torn into small pieces.”
Just then they heard the baying of the dog sounding terribly in the
hollow night, and every face was blanched throughout the vast chamber.
Then without was heard a noise of trampling feet and short furious yells
and sibilant gaspings, as of one who exerts all his strength, after
which a dull sound at which the earth seemed to shake, mingled with a
noise of breaking bones, and after that silence. Ere the people in the
dun could do more than look at each other speechless, they heard a clear
but not clamorous knocking at the doors of the dun. Some of the smith’s
young men back-shot the bolt and opened the doors, and the boy Setanta
stepped in out of the night. He was very pale. His scarlet mantle was in
rags and trailing, and his linen tunic beneath and his white knees red
with blood, which ran down his legs and over his bare feet. He made a
reverence, as he had been taught, to the man of the house and to
his people, and went backwards to the upper end of the chamber. The
Ultonians ran to meet him, but Fergus Mac Roy was the first, and he took
Setanta upon his mighty shoulder and bore him along and set him down at
the table between himself and the King.
“Did the dog come against thee?” said Culain.
“Truly he came against me,” answered the boy.
“And art thou hurt?” cried the smith.
“No, indeed,” answered Setanta, “but I think he is.”
At that moment a party of the smith’s people entered the dun bearing
between them the carcass of the dog from whose mouth and white crooked
fangs the blood was gushing in red torrents; and they showed Culain
how the skull of the dog and his ribs had been broken in pieces by some
mighty blow, and his backbone also in divers places. Also they said:
“One of the great brazen pillars which stand at the bridge head is bent
awry, and the clean bronze denied with blood, and it was at the foot of
that pillar we found the dog.” So saying, they laid the body upon the
heather in front of Culain’s high seat, that it might be full in his
eye, and when they did so and again sat down, there was a great silence
in the chamber.