The King of Ireland's Son Part 15

"Stand up and dress yourself," said Gilly to the Churl. "What do I want with a strip of your skin? But I hope all here will go home with you and stand in your house until you have paid all the money that's claimed from you."

"We'll go home with him," said the mummers.

"We'll stand on his floor until he has paid all the money he has agreed to pay," said the others.

"And now I must tell you, neighbors," said Gilly, "that I never cut the legs of a living horse--neither his horse nor anyone else's. This pair was taken off a poor dead horse by the skinners that were cutting it up."

Well, they all went to the Churl's house and there they stayed until he opened his stone chest and took out his money-box and paid to the mummers the dues of all the people with sixpence over, and paid Gilly his wages in full, one guinea, one groat and a tester, and handed him double wages to give to each of the servant-boys he had injured. Gilly took the money and left the house of the Churl of the Townland of Mischance, and the people and the mummers went to the road with him, and cheered him as he went on his way.

XIV

So, without hap or mishap, Gilly came again to the house of the Spae-Woman. She was sitting at her door-step grinding corn with a quern when he came before her. She cried over him, not believing that he had come safe from the Townland of Mischance. And as long as he was with her she spoke to him of his "poor back."

He stayed with her for two seasons. He mended her fences and he cleaned her spring-well; he ground her corn and he brought back her swarm of bees; he trained a dog to chase the crows out of her field; he had the a.s.s shod, the sheep washed and the goat spancelled. The Spae-Woman was much beholden to him for all he did for her, and one day she said to him, "Gilly of the Goat-skin you are called, but another name is due to you now." "And who will give me another name?" said Gilly of the Goatskin. "Who'll give it to you? Who but the Old Woman of Beare," said the Spae-Woman.

The next day she said to him, "I had a dream last night, and I know now what you are to do. You must go now to the Old Woman of Beare for the name that is due to you. And before she gives it to you, you must tell her and whoever else is in her house as much as you know of the Unique Tale."

"But I know nothing at all of the Unique Tale," said Gilly of the Goatskin.

"There is always a blank before a beginning," said the Spae-Woman. "This evening, when I am grinding the corn at the quern I shall tell you the Unique Tale."

That evening when she sat at the door-step of her house and when the sun was setting behind the elder-bushes the Spae-Woman told Gilly the third part of the Unique Tale. Then she baked a cake and killed a c.o.c.k for him and told him to start on the morrow's morning for the house of the Old Woman of Beare.

Well, he started off in the morning bright and early, leaving good health with the Spae-Woman behind him, and away he went, crossing high hills, pa.s.sing low dales, and keeping on his way without halt or rest, the clear day going and the dark night coming, taking lodgings each evening wherever he found them, and at last he came to the house of the Old Woman of Beare.

He went into the house and found her making marks in the ashes of her fire while her cuckoo, her corncrake and her swallow were picking grains off the table.

"And what can I do for you, good youth?" said the Old Woman of Beare.

"Give me a name," said Gilly, "and listen to the story I have to tell you."

"That I will not," said the Old Woman of Beare, "until you have done a task for me."

"What task can I do for you?" said Gilly of the Goatskin. "I would know," said she, "which of us four is the oldest creature in the world--myself or Laheen the Eagle, Blackfoot the Elk or the Crow of Achill--I leave the Salmon of a.s.saroe out of account altogether."

"And how can a youth like me help you to know that?" said Gilly of the Goatskin.

"An ox was killed on the day I was born and on every one of my birthdays afterwards. The horns of the oxen are in two quarries outside. You must count them and tell me how much half of them amounts to and then I shall know my age."

"That I'll do if you feed me and give me shelter," said Gilly of the Goatskin. "Eat as you like," said the Old Woman of Beare. She pushed him a loaf of bread and a bottle of water. When he cut a slice of the loaf it was just as if nothing had been cut off, and when he took a cupful out of the bottle it was as if no water had been taken out of it at all. When he had drunk and eaten he left the complete loaf and the full bottle of water on the shelf, went outside and began to count the horns on the right-hand side.

On the second day a strange youth came to him and saluted him, and then went to count the horns in the quarry on the left-hand side. This youth was none other than the King of Ireland's Son.

On the third day they had the horns all counted. Then Gilly of the Goatskin and the King of Ireland's Son met together under a bush. "How many horns have you counted?" said the King of Ireland's Son. "So many,"

said Gilly of the Goatskin. "And how many horns have you counted?" "So many," said the King of Ireland's Son.

Just as they were adding the two numbers together they both heard sounds in the air--they were like the sounds that Bards make chanting their verses. And when they looked up they saw a swan flying round and round above them. And the swan chanted the story of the coming of the Milesians to Eirinn, and as the two youths listened they forgot the number of horns they had counted. And when the swan had flown away they looked at each other and as they were hungry they went into the house and ate slices of the unwasted loaf and drank cupfuls out of the inexhaustible bottle. Then the Old Woman of Beare wakened up and asked them to tell her the number of her years.

"We cannot tell you although we counted all the horns," said the King of Ireland's Son, "for just as we were putting the numbers together a swan sang to us and we forgot the number we had counted."

"You didn't do your task rightly," she said, "but as I promised to give this youth a name and to listen to the story he had to tell, I shall have to let it be. You may tell the story now, Gilly of the Goatskin."

They sat at the fire, and while the Old Woman of Beare spun threads on a very ancient spindle, and while the corncrake, the cuckoo and the swallow picked up grains and murmured to themselves, Gilly of the Goatskin told them the Unique Tale. And the story as Gilly of the Goatskin told it follows this.--

A Unique Tale

A King and a Queen were walking one day by the blue pool in their domain. The swan had come to the blue pool, and the bright yellow flowers of the broom were above the water. "Och," said the Queen, "if I might have a daughter that would show such colors--the blue of the pool in her eyes, the bright yellow of the broom in her hair, and the white of the swan in her skin--I would let my seven sons go with the wild geese." "Hush," said the King. "You ask for a doom, and it may be sent you." A shivering came upon the Queen. They went back to the Castle, and that evening the nurse told them that a gray man had pa.s.sed in a circle round her seven sons saying, "If it be as your mother desired, let it be as she has said."

Well, before the broom blossomed again and before the swan came to the blue pool, a child was born to the Queen. It was a girl. The King was sitting with his seven sons when the women came to tell him of the new birth. "O my sons," said he, "may ye be with me all my life." But his sons moved from him as he said it. Out through the door they went, and up the mound that was before the door. There they changed into gray wild geese, and the seven flew towards the empty hills.

No councillor that the King consulted could help to win them back again, and no hunter that he sent through the country could gain tale or tidings of them. The King and Queen were left with one child only, the girl just born. They called her "Sheen," a word that means "Storm,"

because her coming was a storm that swept away her seven brothers. The Queen died, my hearers. Then little Sheen was forgotten by her father, and she was reared and companioned by the servants of the house.

One day, when she was the age her eldest brother was when he was changed from his human form, Sheen went with Mor, the Woodman's daughter, and Siav, the basket-maker's foster-child, to gather berries in the wood.

Going here and there she got separated from Siav and Mor. She came to a place where there were lots of berries and went step after step to pick them. Her feet went down in a marsh. She cried to Mor and Siav, but no answers came from them. She cried and cried again. Her cries startled seven wild geese that rose up and flew round her. "Save me," she cried to them. Then one of the wild geese spoke to her. "Anyone but a girl we would save from the marsh, but such a one we cannot save, because it was a girl who lost us our human forms and the loving companionship of our father." Then Sheen knew--for the servants had often told her the story--that it was one of her seven brothers who spoke. "Since ever I knew of it," said she, "the whole of my trouble has been that I was the cause of your losing your human form and the companionship of our father who is now called the Lonely King. Believe me," said she, "that I would have striven and striven to win you back." There was so much feeling in her voice that her seven brothers, although they had been hardened by thinking about their misfortune, were touched at their hearts and they flew down to help her. They bore up her arms, they caught at her shoulders, they raised up her feet. They carried her beyond the marsh.

Then she knelt down and cried to them, "O my brothers dear, is there anything I can do to restore you to your human forms?" "There is," said the first of the seven wild geese. She begged them to tell it to her.

"It's a long and a tiresome labor we would put on you," said one. "If you would gather the light down that grows on the bogs with your own hands," said another, "and if you spun that down into threads, and wove the threads into a cloth and sewed the cloth into a shirt, and did that over and over again until you had made seven shirts for us, all that time without laughing or crying or saying a word, you could save us. One shirt you could weave and spin and sew in a year. And it would not be until the seven shirts were put upon us that the human form would be restored to each of us." "I would be glad to do all that," said Sheen, "and I would cry no tear, laugh no laugh, and say no word all the time I was doing this task."

Then said the eldest brother, "The marsh is between you and our father's house, and between you and the companions who were with you to-day. If you would do the task that would restore us to our human forms, it were best you did not go back. Beyond the trees is the house of a lone woman, and there you may live until your task is finished." The seven wild geese then flew back to the marsh, and Sheen went to the house beyond the trees. The Spae-Woman lived there. She took Sheen to be a dumb girl, and she gave her food and shelter for the services she did--bringing water from the well in the daytime and grinding corn at the quern at dusk. She had the rest of the day and night for her own task. She gathered the bog-down between noon and sunset and spun the thread at night. When she had lengths of thread spun she began to weave them on the loom. At the end of a year she had the first shirt made. In another year she made the second, then the third, then the fourth, the fifth and the sixth. And all the time she said no word, laughed no laugh and cried no tear.

She was gathering the bog-down for the seventh and last shirt. Once she went abroad on a day when the snow was melted and she felt her footsteps light. Hundreds of birds were on the ground eating plentifully and calling to one another. Sheen could hardly keep from her mouth the song that was in her mind. She would sing and laugh and talk when the last thread was spun and woven, when the last st.i.tch was sewn, and when the shirts of bog-down she had made in silence would have brought back her brothers to their own human forms. She gathered the scarce heads of the cannavan or bog-down with one hand, while she held the other hand to her lips.

Something dropped down at her feet. It was a white grouse and it remained cowering on the ground. Sheen looked up and she saw a hawk above. And when she looked round she saw a man coming across the bog.

The hawk flew towards him and lighted on his shoulder.

Sheen held the white grouse to her breast. The man came near to her and spoke to her and his voice made her stand. He wore the dress of a hunter. His face was brown and lean and his eyes were bright-blue like gentian-flowers. No word did Sheen say to him and he pa.s.sed on with the hawk on his shoulder. Then with the grouse held at her breast she went back to the Spae-Woman's house.

That night when she spun her thread she thought of the blue-eyed, brown-faced man. Would any of her brothers be like him, she wondered, when they were restored to their human shapes. She fed the white grouse with grains of corn and left it to rest in the window-niche above her bed. And then she lay awake and tried to know the meaning in the song the Spae-Woman sang when she sat spinning wool in the chimney Corner--

You would not slumber If laid at my breast!

Little sister, I'll rock you to rest!

The flood on the river beats The swan from its nest!

You would not slumber If laid at my breast!

The rain-drops enc.u.mber The hawthorn's crest: My thoughts have no number: You would not slumber If laid at my breast, Little sister, I'll rock you to rest.

She pa.s.sed the night between sleeping and waking, and when the light grew she saw the white grouse crouching against the window-opening.