Collected Folk Tales

Now in a match, mowers take time off together for sharpening up; so brownie calls to farmer, “When do we wiffle-waffle, mate?”

“Oh, about noon, maybe,” says farmer.

“Noon!” says brownie. “I’ve lost my land!”

He drops his scythe, and he’s never seen on that farm again. And no wonder.

Adapted from the Translation of WHITLEY STOKES

I have to admit to a weakness for Celtic legends. It would be all too easy to fill this book with them. For me, no other people were so rich and terrifying in their imagination. They found no need to explain: the stories often appear to be strung together at random – and yet there is always the feeling that everything is very simple. We are looking at a real and brilliant and logical world through strange glass.

You can take this story all at once, or bit by bit. All at once will crowd your brain with colour: bit by bit will make thoughts like yeast.

The Voyage of Maelduin’s Boat This. Three Years and Seven Months Was It Wandering in the Ocean.

here was a famous man of the Eoganacht of Ninuss (that is, the Eoganacht of the Arans): his name was Ailill of the Edge of Battle. A mighty soldier was he, and a hero-lord of his own tribe and kindred. And there was a young nun, the prioress of a church of nuns, with whom he met. Between them both there was a noble boy; Maelduin, son of Ailill, was he.

Now this boy was reared by the king’s queen, and she gave out that she was his mother.

Now the one fostermother reared him and the king’s three sons, in one cradle, and on one breast, and on one lap.

Beautiful indeed was his form, and it is doubtful if there has been in flesh anyone as beautiful as he. So he grew up till he was a young warrior and fit to use weapons. Great, then, was his brightness and his gaiety and his playfulness. In his play he outwent all his comrades, both in throwing balls, and running, and leaping, and putting stones, and racing horses. He had truly the victory in each of those games.

One day, then, a certain haughty warrior grew envious against him, and he said in raging anger, “You,” he said, “whose clan and kindred no one knows, whose mother and father no one knows, to vanquish us in every game, whether we contend with you on land or on water, or on the draughtboard!”

So then Maelduin was silent, for till that time he had thought that he was the son of the king and of the queen his fostermother. Then he said to his fostermother, “I will not eat and I will not drink until you tell me,” said he, “my mother and my father.”

“But,” said she, “why are you asking after that? Do not take to heart the words of the proud warriors. I am your mother,” said she. “The love of the people of the earth for their sons is no greater than the love I bear to you.”

“That may be,” said he: “nevertheless, make known my parents to me.”

So his fostermother went with him, and delivered him into his mother’s hand; and thereafter he entreated his mother to declare his father to him.

“Silly,” said she, “is what you are doing, for if you should know your father you would have no good of him, and you will not be the gladder, for he died long ago.”

“It is the better for me to know it,” said he, “however it be.”

Then his mother told him the truth. “Ailill of the Edge of Battle was your father,” said she, “of the Eoganacht of Ninuss.”

Then Maelduin went to his fatherland and to his heritage, having his three fosterbrothers with him; and beloved warriors were they. And then his kindred welcomed him, and gave great courage there.

At a certain time afterwards there was a number of warriors in the graveyard of Dubcluain, putting stones. So Maelduin’s foot was planted on the scorched ruin, and over it he was flinging the stone. A certain poison-tongued man – Briccne was his name – said to Maelduin: “It were better,” said he, “to avenge the man who was burnt there than to cast stones over his bare burnt bones.”

“Who was that?” said Maelduin.

“Ailill,” said he, “your own father.”

“Who killed him?” asked Maelduin.

Briccne replied: “Raiders of Leix,” said he, “and they destroyed him on this spot.”

Then Maelduin threw away the stone which he was about to cast, and took his mantle round him, and his armour on him; and he was mournful. And he asked the way to go to Leix, and the guides told him that he could go only by sea.

So he went into the country of Corcomroe to seek a charm and a blessing of a wizard who lived there, to begin building a boat. Nuca was the wizard’s name, and it is from him that Boirenn Nuca is called. He told Maelduin the day on which he should begin the boat, and the number of the crew that should go in her, which was seventeen men, or sixty according to others. And he told him that no number greater or less than that should go; and he told him the day he should set to sea.

Then Maelduin built a three-skinned boat; and they who were to go in it in his company were ready. German was there and Diuran the Rhymer.

So then he went to sea on the day that the wizard had told him to set out. When they had gone a little from land, after hoisting the sail, then came into the harbour after them his three fosterbrothers, the three sons of his fosterfather and fostermother; and they shouted to them to come back again to them to the end that they might go with them.

“Get you home,” said Maelduin; “for even though we should return to land, only the number we have here shall go with me.”

“We will go after you into the sea and be drowned there, unless you come to us.”

Then the three of them cast themselves into the sea, and they swam far from land. When Maelduin saw that, he turned towards them so that they might not be drowned, and he brought them into the boat.

1

They rowed that day till evening, and the night after it till midnight, when they found two small bald islands, with two forts in them; and then they heard out of the forts the noise and outcry of the drunkenness, and the soldiers, and the trophies. And this is what one man said to the other: “Stay off from me,” said he, “for I am a better hero than you, for it is I that slew Ailill of the Edge of Battle, and burnt Dubcluain on him; and no evil has so far been done to me by his kindred for it; and you have never done the like of that!”

‘We have the victory in our hands!” said German, and said Diuran the Rhymer. “Let us go and wreck these two forts.”

As they were saying these words, a great wind came upon them, so that they were driven over the sea all that night until morning. And even after morning they saw neither earth nor land, and they knew not where they were going. Then said Maelduin: “Leave the boat still, without rowing.”

Then they entered the great, endless ocean; and Maelduin afterwards said to his fosterbrothers: “You have caused this to us, hurling yourselves upon us in the boat in spite of the words of the enchanter and wizard, who told us that on board the boat we should go only the number that we were before you came.”

They had no answer, save only to be in their little silence.

2

Three days and three nights were they, and they found neither land nor ground. Then on the morning of the third day they heard a sound from the north-east. “This is the voice of a wave against a shore,” said Maelduin. Now when the day was bright they made towards land. As they were casting lots to see which of them should go on shore, there came a great swarm of ants, each of them the size of a foal, down to the strand towards them, and into the sea. What the ants desired was to eat the crew and their boat: so the sailors fled for three days and three nights; and they saw neither land nor ground.

3

On the morning of the third day they heard the sound of a wave against a beach, and with the daylight they saw an island high and great; and banks of earth all round about it. Lower was each of them than the other, and there was a row of trees around it, and many great birds on these trees. And they were taking counsel as to who should go to explore the island and see whether the birds were gentle. “I will go,” said Maelduin. So Maelduin went, and warily searched the island, and found nothing evil there. And they ate their fill of the birds, and brought some of them on board their boat.

4

Three days and three nights were they at sea after that. But on the morning of the fourth day they saw another great island. Sandy was its soil. When they came to the shore of the island they saw there a beast like a horse. The legs of a hound he had, with rough, sharp nails; and huge was his joy at seeing them. And he was prancing before them, for he longed to devour them and their boat. “He is not sorry to meet us,” said Maelduin; “let us go back from the island.” That was done; and when the beast saw them fleeing, he went down to the strand and began digging up the beach with his sharp nails, and pelting them with the pebbles, and they did not expect to escape from him.

5

When they went from the island they were a long while voyaging, without food, hungrily, till they found another island, with a great cliff round it on every side, and therein was a long, narrow wood, and great was its length and its narrowness. When Maelduin reached that wood he took from it a rod in his hand as he passed it. Three days and three nights the rod remained in his hand, while the boat was under sail, coasting the cliff, and on the third day he found a cluster of three apples at the end of the rod. For forty nights each of these apples fed them.

6

Then afterwards they found another island, with a fence of stone around it. When they drew near it a huge beast sprang up in the island, and raced round about the island. To Maelduin it seemed swifter than the wind. And then it went to the height of the island, and there it performed the trick known as “straightening of body”, that is, its head below and its feet above; and so it continued; it turned in its skin, that is, the flesh and bones revolved, but the skin outside was unmoved. Or at another time the skin outside turned like a mill, the bones and the flesh unmoved.

When it had been doing this for a long while, it sprang up again and raced about the island, as it had done at first. Then it returned to the same place; and that time the lower half of its skin stayed still, and the other half above ran round and round like a millstone. That, then, was its practice when it was going round the island. Maelduin and his people fled with all their might, and the beast saw them fleeing, and it went into the beach to seize them, and began to hit them with stones of the harbour. Now one of these stones came into their boat, and pierced through Maelduin’s shield, and lodged in the keel of the boat.

7

Now their hunger and thirst were great, and when their noses were full of the stench of the sea they sighted an island which was not large, and therein a fort surrounded by a white, high rampart as if it were built of burnt lime, or as if it were all one rock of chalk. Great was the height from the sea: it all but reached the clouds.

The fort was open wide. Round the ramparts were great, snow-white houses. When the warriors entered the largest of these they saw no one there, save a small cat which was in the midst of the house, playing on the four stone pillars that were there. It was leaping from each pillar to the other. It looked a little at the men, and did not stop itself from its play. After that they saw three rows on the wall of the house round about, from one doorpost to the other. A row there, first, of brooches of gold and of silver, with their pins in the wall, and a row of necktorques of gold and of silver; like hoops of a vat was each of them. The third row was of great swords, with hilts of gold and of silver.

The rooms were full of white quilts and shining garments. A roasted ox, moreover, and a flitch in the midst of the house, and great vessels with good intoxicating drink.

“Has this been left for us?” said Maelduin to the cat. It looked at him suddenly, and began to play again. Then Maelduin recognised that it was for them that the dinner had been left. So they dined and drank and slept. They put the leavings of the drink into the pots, and stored up the leavings of the food.

Now when they proposed to go, Maelduin’s third fosterbrother said: “Shall I take with me a necklace of these necklaces?”

“No,” said Maelduin. “Not without a guard is this house.”

Howbeit the fosterbrother took it as far as the middle of the enclosure. The cat followed them, and leapt through him like a fiery arrow, and burnt him so that he became ashes, and went back till it was on its pillar.

Then Maelduin soothed the cat with words, and set the necklace in its place, and cleansed the ashes from the floor of the enclosure, and cast them on the shore of the sea.

Then they went on board their boat.

8

Early on the morning of the third day after that they espied another island, with a brazen palisade over the midst of it which divided the island into two, and they espied great flocks of sheep therein, a black flock on this side of the fence and a white flock on the far side. And they saw a big man separating the flocks. When he used to fling a white sheep over the fence from this side to the black sheep it became black at once. So, when he used to cast a black sheep over the fence to the far side, it became white at once. The men were adread at seeing that.

“This were well for us to do,” said Maelduin. “Let us cast two rods into the island. If they change colour, we shall change if we land on it.”

So they flung a rod with black bark on the side where were the white sheep, and it became white at once. Then they flung a peeled, white rod on the side where were the black sheep, and it became black at once.

“Not encouraging was that experiment,” said Maelduin. “Let us not land on the island. Doubtless our colour would have fared no better than the rods.”

They went back from the island in terror.

9

On the third day afterwards they saw another island, great and wide, and a great mountain in the island, and they proposed to go and view the island from it. Now when Diuran the Rhymer and German went to visit the mountain they found before them a broad river which was not deep. Into this river German dipped the handle of his spear, and at once it was consumed, as if fire had burnt it. And they went no further.

10

They found a large island, and a great multitude of human beings therein. Black were these, both in bodies and raiment. Bands round their heads, and they rested not from wailing.

An unlucky lot fell to one of Maelduin’s two fosterbrothers to land on the island. When he went to the people who were wailing he at once became a comrade of theirs, and began to weep along with them. Two were sent to bring him back, and they did not recognise him amongst the others, and they themselves turned to lament.

Then said Maelduin, “Let four go,” said he, “with your weapons, and bring you the men by force, and look not at the land nor the air, and put your garments round your noses and round your mouths, and breathe not the air of the land, and take not your eyes off your own men.”

The four went, and brought back with them by force the other two, but not the fosterbrother. When they were asked what they had seen in the land, they would say, “Indeed, we know not; but what we saw others doing, we did.”

Thereafter they came rapidly from the island.

11

Thereafter they came to another lofty island, wherein were four fences, which divided it into four parts. A fence of gold, first: another of silver: the third of brass: and the fourth of crystal. Kings in the fourth division, queens in another, warriors in another, maidens in the other. A maiden went to meet them, and brought them on land, and gave them food. They likened it to cheese; and whatever taste was pleasing to anyone he would find it there. And she poured to them out of a little vessel, so that they slept a drunkenness of three days and three nights. All this time the maiden was tending them. When they awoke on the third day they were in their boat on sea. Nowhere did they find their island or their maiden.

Then they rowed away.

12

They heard in the north-east a great cry and chant. That night and the next day they were rowing that they might know what cry or what chant they heard. They beheld a high, mountainous island, full of birds, black and dun and speckled, shouting and speaking loudly.

13

They rowed a little from that island, and found another island that was not large. There were many trees, and on them many birds. And after that they saw in the island a man whose clothing was his hair. So they asked him who he was, and from where his kindred.

“Of the men of Ireland am I,” said he. “I went on my pilgrimage in a small boat, and when I had gone a little from land my boat split under me. I went again to land,” said he, “and I put under my feet a sod from my country, and on it I got me up to the sea. And that sod is established here for me in this place, and a foot is added to its breadth each year from that time to this, and a tree every year to grow therein. You shall all,” said he, “reach your country save one man.”

14

After that they voyaged till they entered a sea that resembled green glass. Such was its purity that the gravel and the sand of the sea were clearly visible through it; and they saw no monsters nor beasts therein among the crags, but only the pure gravel and the green sand. For a long space of the day they were voyaging in that sea, and great was its splendour and its beauty.

15

They afterwards put forth into another sea like a cloud, and it seemed to them that it would not support them or the boat. Then they beheld under the sea down below them roofed strongholds and a beautiful country. And they saw a beast huge, awful, monstrous, in a tree there, and a drove of herds and flocks round about the tree, and beside the tree an armed man, with shield and spear and sword.

When he beheld yon huge beast that abode in the tree he went from there in flight immediately. The beast stretched forth its neck out of the tree, and set his head into the back of the largest ox of the herd, and dragged it into the tree and devoured it in the twinkling of an eye. The flocks and the herdsmen fled away at once; and when Maelduin and his people saw that, greater terror and fear seized them, for they supposed that they would never cross that sea without falling down through it, by reason of its tenuity like mist.

So after much danger, they passed over it.

16

Thereafter they found another island, and up around it rose the sea, making vast cliffs of water all about it. As the people of that country perceived them, they set to screaming at them, and saying, “It is they! It is they!” till they were out of breath.

Then Maelduin and his men beheld many human beings, and great herds of cattle, and troops of horses, and many flocks of sheep. Then there was a woman pelting them from below with large nuts which remained floating on the waves above them. Much of these nuts they gathered and took with them. They went back to the island, and thereat the screams ceased.

“Where are they now?” said the man who was coming after them at the scream.

“They have gone away,” said another group of them.

“They are not so,” said another group.

Now it is likely that there was someone concerning whom the islanders had a prophecy that he would ruin their country and expel them from their land.

17

They got them to another island, wherein a strange thing was shown to them, to wit, a great stream rose out of the island, and went, like a rainbow, over the whole island, and descended into the other strand of the island on the other side thereof. And they were going under the stream without being wet. And they were piercing with their spears the stream above; and great, enormous salmon were tumbling from above out of the stream down upon the soil of the island. And all the island was full of the stench of fish.

18

Thereafter they voyaged till they found a great silvern column. It had four sides, and the width of each of these sides was two oarstrokes of the boat, so that in its whole circumference there were eight oarstrokes of the boat. And not a single clod of earth was about it, but only the boundless ocean. And they saw not how its base was below, or – because of its height – how its summit was above. Out of its summit came a silvern net far away from it; and the boat went under sail through a mesh of that net. And Diuran gave a blow of the edge of his spear over the mesh.

“Destroy not the net,” said Maelduin, “for what we see is the work of mighty men.”

“I do this that my tidings may be the more believed,” said Diuran.

And they heard a voice then from the summit of yonder pillar, mighty, and clear, and distinct. But they knew not the tongue it spoke, or the words it uttered.

19

Then they saw another island, standing on a single pedestal, to wit, one foot supporting it. And they rowed round it to seek a way into it, and they found no way thereinto; but they saw down in the base of the pedestal a closed door under lock. They understood that that was the way by which the island was entered. And they saw a plough on the top of the island; but they held speech with no one, and no one held speech with them. Then they went away back to sea.

20

They found a large island, with a great level plain therein. A great multitude was on that plain, playing and laughing without any cessation. Lots were cast by Maelduin and his men to see unto whom it should fall to enter the island and explore it. The lot fell to the first of Maelduin’s fosterbrothers. When he went he at once began to play and laugh continually along with the islanders, as if he had been with them all his life. His comrades stayed for a long, long space expecting him, and he came not to them. So they left him.

21

After that they sighted another island, which was not large; and a fiery rampart was round it; and that rampart kept turning about the island. There was an open doorway in the side of that rampart. Now, whenever the doorway would come opposite to them, they would see through it the whole island, and all that was therein, and all its indwellers, even human beings, beautiful, abundant, wearing adorned garments, and feasting with golden vessels in their hands. And the wanderers heard their ale-music. And for a long space were they seeing the marvel they beheld, and they judged it delightful.

22

Now, after they had gone from there they came to an island with abundant cattle, and with oxen and kine and sheep. There were no houses nor forts therein, and so they ate the flesh of the sheep. Then said some of them, seeing a large falcon there, “The falcon is like the falcons of Ireland!”

“That is true, indeed,” said some of the others.

“Watch,” said Maelduin, “and see how the bird will go from us.”

They saw that it flew from them to the south-east. So they rowed after the bird in the direction in which it had gone from them. At nightfall they saw land like the land of Ireland. They rowed towards it. They found a small island, and it was from this very island that the wind had snatched them into the ocean when they first went to sea.

Then they put their prow to the shore, and they went to the fortress that was in the island, and they were listening, and the inhabitants of the fortress were then dining.

They heard some of them saying, “It is well for us if we should not see Maelduin.”

“That Maelduin has been drowned,” said another man to them.

“Perhaps it is he who shall wake you from your sleep,” said another.