William Sharp

“ Who shall soon be more lost than a falling star,
And am now as a blown flame in the front of war!
Nathos was sad when he heard this lament from the mouth of Darthool, and Ailne and Ardan looked at each other and whispered that it was the beginning of the end. Nevertheless, they did not fear to confront the days to come, for whatsoever the decrees of Fate may be a brave man does not draw back, but goes forward upon the way set before him. But Nathos was in a dream, and so heeded little, content too to chide Darthool because that she laid so much stress on vain imaginings. ”

“ At that, Nathos lightly laughed.
“Truly, I am seeing Concobar as a man sees his own shadow in the water. He is a great king in Uladh, but he is no more in Alba than any hero of the Red Branch. Come, Darthool; across the Moyle are the pine-green shores of Alba. It is a fair, beautiful land. The sea-lochs reach far among pine-clad hills, and green pastures are on the slopes of the great mountains and around the shadowy, inland waters. The forests are full of deer and wild birds, the rivers and lochs of fish, the pastures of cattle and sheep and swift brown mares. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At that all were glad save Concobar. Two men was he, this king: a man who recked little of aught save his desire, and a man who had wisdom. Out of his wisdom he knew that Felim and the Red Branch lords spoke madness, for if it was ordained that the child of Elva should bring doom, that doom would surely come. Out of his longing he loved the beauty of which Cathba had spoken, and desired it against the years to come, and for the solace of his years when he had loved much and at the last was fain only of that which was the crown of life. ”

“ Let me not die as a pig, but as a man. I have dropped my magic wand; therefore, O Brian, I pray of thee to take thine, and with it restore me to mine own form.”
“That shall be done,” said the chief, adding scornfully, “for sure it is an easier thing for me to kill a man than a pig.”
But no sooner was Kian a man again than he laughed mockingly.
“Why do you laugh thus?” asked Ur.
“I laugh because I have outwitted ye at the last, ye sons of Turenn. What is death to me who have a dust of grey hairs over my once black locks, or is death indeed a thing at any time to fear overmuch? ”

“ I am no queen, Nathos, nor am I of the Tuatha-De-Danann, but am a woman as other women are. If I am beautiful in thine eyes, of that I am right glad, for thou art fairer to me than any man I have seen or dreamed of, and my pulse leaps when thine eyes look into mine. I am Darthool, the daughter of Felim the Harper ”

“ Fionula sang rejoicingly, “on the morrow we shall wing our way inland; for our hearts ache to see again our own country and our kindred, and the faces of Lir our father, and Bove Derg the king, and all whom we love. Great shall be the joy at Shee Finnaha when they behold us once more; but not more joyous shall their delight be than it will be for us to see the smoke rising from the fires of our people, and to see the greatness and beauty of Shee Finnaha.” ”

“ Have I forgotten that, ages ago, the children of Lir were changed into swans, and that they spoke with the human tongue, and sang songs so passing sweet that life and death became as the selfsame dream? Ah! that dream of dreams: fragrant it was as the breath of Moy Mell, the honey-sweet plain of Heaven; restful as the sound of the waves beating on the shores of Tir-fa-Tonn, where the dead dwell in youth and joy; strange and wild as the noise of invisible wings over the blessed isle that is Hy Brásil in the west. ”

“ Fionula saw that while they must ever return each night to the sea of Moyle till the three hundred years were over and done, they might fly as far and wide as they could between dawn and dusk. Mighty and strong were they now upon the wing, and fit to endure the slashing of rains, the buffetings of wild winds, the whirling briny sleet of the seas, and the cold of the high forlorn spaces of the lonely sky. ”

“ In a land of heroes and brave and beautiful women, how shall one name survive?178 Yet to this day and for ever, men will remember Deirdrê, the torch of men’s thoughts, and Grainne whom Diarmid loved and died for, and Maev who ruled mightily, and Fand whose white feet trod faery dew, and many another. For beauty is the most excellent sweet thing in all the world, and though of it a few perish, and a myriad die from knowing nothing of it, beneath it the nations of men move forward as their one imperishable star. Therefore he who adds to the beauty of the world is of the sons of God. ”

“ Fionula saw that a great tempest was nigh, so she called Aed, and Fiachra, and Conn, to come to her side.
“Dear brothers,” she exclaimed, “the storm that will soon be upon us will be worse than any we have yet known. Hardly can we hope not to be driven far apart. Let us agree, therefore, to meet somewhere, if so be that we are not utterly destroyed. For though Aeifa, our cruel stepmother, doomed us to these long ages of suffering, it may well be that even her potent spell is not strong enough against death: and death may come to us through famine, or cold, or in the drowning wave.” ”

“ Fionula looked with pity upon her two young brothers. It was hard for her to see their unmothered pain and weariness. So she spread out her broad white pinions, and gave the warmth of her body to the two drenched and shivering swans.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, as she crouched on the ledge, with Fiachra nestling by her right side and Conn by her left; “ah! if only Aed were here too, all might yet be well. And even if it be death, sweeter far that we might all perish together.” ”

“ With halting breath he bade his father hasten to Tara, and tell Lu Lamfada that now all the eric was paid at last; and then beseech him, by his honour and fair name, and for the glory of the old Dedannan faith, and by the invocation of the Sun and Moon and Wind, to lend to the three perishing sons of Turenn, the Skin of Healing, so that their lives might not flicker out as the flame of spent torches. ”

“ Let the child live. There is no good in idle blood, and if ye stain yourselves with it, there shall be greater loss and sorrow to follow. Ye are all grown men, and not boys who do not know our laws. Ye know the Law of the Eric. Well, I will free ye of all doom, for upon my head be it. To myself I will take this fair child, and upon me, and not upon the Ultonians, nor upon the Red Branch, nor upon any other whomsoever save Concobar MacNessa, the high king, be the penalty, if penalty there be. ”

“ Great shall be the welcome given to ye all, and sure it is a good thing to end a feud, and to put an unwaking sleep upon the sword and the spear.”
“That is a good word,” said Nathos, who was well pleased; but a sob was in the heart of Darthool, and her lips quivered as she spoke.
“Surely,” she said, “Concobar MacNessa forgets. The sons of Usna are no tributaries. Nathos is overlord now of a country greater in extent than all the province of Uladh over which Concobar is king. It ill befits a king of an isle to go as a forgiven guest to the lord of a rock.” ”

“ Otherwise it is never the waters of the Moyle that we shall see, but only the red flame in the eyes of Concobar.”220
Even while Nathos spoke his eyes grew hard, and his hands slipped to the javelin he had by his side. While Darthool watched him in amaze, he swung the iron-pointed shaft at a place where a bent bracken hung listless in the air.
“Is it a wolf?” cried Darthool, in sudden affright.
“It is worse than a wolf,” answered Nathos; “for if thou wilt go to that place thou wilt see either a slain man, or the form of a man, in the grass beneath the bracken.” ”

“ 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 ”

“ Well, in the ancient dim days when Emania was the capital of the Ultonians, the fair and wonderful capital of the kingdom of Ulster, and before Maev, the queen of the south, had buried the chivalry of the north in dust and blood, there came into the realm of Concobar the Ultonian king, whom some call Conor and some Connachar, three of the noblest and fairest of the youths of the world. ”

“ They were Dedannans, but they were of a clan at bitter feud with his own; and his heart quailed as he saw that in that lonely place he would have to meet face to face with Brian, Ur, and Urba, the sons of Turenn. Far better would it have been for him to ride forward fearlessly, and call upon the sons of Turenn to put all enmity aside in the face of the bitter danger to Erin because of Bras and his Fomorians. But a man born under a dark star must soon or late ride into the shadow of that star. ”

“ For the shining stars are her eyes, and the web of dusk is the flower-fragrant maze of her hair, that low tower of ivory is her fair, white, wonderful neck, and her white teeth are these pearls, and that strange crimson fruit is no other than her smiling mouth—a little smiling mouth with life and death upon it because of its laughter and grave stillness. ”

“ Kian laughed to himself at how he had outwitted the sons of Turenn, but oversoon did he laugh. After all he was sorrowful; for it was not seemly for a man to change himself into a pig, lest death or some disaster came upon him in that guise: for, according as a man’s doom came to him, so would he have to bear it.
Meanwhile the three sons of Turenn rode across the plain. Fair to see were they, these three comely lords: Brian, the eldest and strongest; Ur, the tallest and fairest; and Urba the swift. ”

“ Not vainly was he called Concobar of the Honeymouth.
“I will speak first to thee, Felim, son of Dall, my bard. It is not good to put death upon the fruit of one’s loins. Thine own child should not see death through thee. But even were it so, it is not meet for me or for any one to bring the shame and pain of death to the house of a friend. Therefore, do not speak of putting silence and darkness upon the child of Elva.”
Having spoken thus, the king turned to the lords of the Red Branch. ”

“ The hair of Lir and Bove Derg was long and white, and almost had the Dedannans and the Milesians forgotten their ancient enmity, when a day of the days came whereon Fionula called aside her three brothers.
“Dear brothers,” she said, as she looked sadly at the three beautiful white swans, and at the four drifting shadow-swans in the depths of the lake, “dear brothers, do you know that the time has come when we must put away our happiness as a dream that has been dreamed? ”

“ 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. ”