The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland Part 21

"A n.o.ble and ill.u.s.trious king a.s.sumed the sovranty and rule of Erinn, namely Cormac, grandson of Conn of the Hundred Battles. The world was full of all goodness in his time; there were fruit and fatness of the land, and abundant produce of the sea, with peace and ease and happiness. There were no killings or plunderings in his time, but everyone occupied his land in happiness.

"The n.o.bles of Ireland a.s.sembled to drink the Banquet of Tara with Cormac at a certain time.... Magnificently did Cormac come to this great a.s.sembly; for no man, his equal in beauty, had preceded him, excepting Conary Mor or Conor son of Caffa, or Angus og son of the Dagda.[34] Splendid, indeed, was Cormac's appearance in that a.s.sembly.

His hair was slightly curled, and of golden colour; a scarlet s.h.i.+eld he had, with engraved devices, and golden bosses and ridges of silver.

A wide-folding purple cloak was on him with a gem-set gold brooch over his breast; a golden torque round his neck; a white-collared s.h.i.+rt embroidered with gold was on him; a girdle with golden buckles and studded with precious stones was around him; two golden net-work sandals with golden buckles upon his feet; two spears with golden sockets and many red bronze rivets in his hand; while he stood in the full glow of beauty, without defect or blemish. You would think it was a shower of pearls that was set in his mouth, his lips were rubies, his symmetrical body was as white as snow, his cheek was ruddy as the berry of the mountain-ash, his eyes were like the sloe, his brows and eye-lashes were like the sheen of a blue-black lance."

[34] Angus og was really a deity or fairy king. He appears also in the story of Midir and Etain. _q.v._

X

THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF CORMAC

Strange was the birth and childhood of Cormac strange his life and strange the manner of his death and burial, as we now have to narrate.

Cormac, it is said, was the third man in Ireland who heard of the Christian Faith before the coming of Patrick. One was Conor mac Nessa, King of Ulster, whose druid told him of the crucifixion of Christ and who died of that knowledge.[35] The second was the wise judge, Morann, and the third Cormac, son of Art. This knowledge was revealed to him by divine illumination, and thenceforth he refused to consult the druids or to wors.h.i.+p the images which they made as emblems of the Immortal Ones.

[35] See the conclusion of the _Vengeance of Mesgedra_.

One day it happened that Cormac after he had laid down the kings.h.i.+p of Ireland, was present when the druids and a concourse of people were wors.h.i.+pping the great golden image which was set up in the plain called Moy Slaught. When the ceremony was done, the chief druid, whose name was Moylann, spoke to Cormac and said: "Why, O Cormac, didst thou not bow down and adore the golden image of the G.o.d like the rest of the people?"

And Cormac said: "Never will I wors.h.i.+p a stock[36] that my own carpenter has made. Rather would I wors.h.i.+p the man that made it, for he is n.o.bler than the work of his hands."

[36] The image was doubtless of wood overlaid with gold.

Then it is told that Moylann by magic art caused the image to move and leap before the eyes of Cormac. "Seest thou that?" said Moylann.

"Although I see," said Cormac, "I will do no wors.h.i.+p save to the G.o.d of Heaven and Earth and h.e.l.l."

Then Cormac went to his own home at Sletty on the Boyne, for there he lived after he had given up the kingdom to his son Cairbry. But the druids of Erinn came together and consulted over this matter, and they determined solemnly to curse Cormac and invoke the vengeance of their G.o.ds upon him lest the people should think that any man could despise and reject their G.o.ds, and suffer no ill for it.

So they cursed Cormac in his flesh and bones, in his waking and sleeping, in his down sitting and his uprising, and each day they turned over the Wis.h.i.+ng Stone upon the altar of their G.o.d,[37] and wove mighty spells against his life. And whether it was that these took effect, or that the druids prevailed upon some traitorous servant of Cormac's to work their will, so it was that he died not long thereafter; and some say that he was choked by a fish bone as he sat at meat in his house at Sletty on the Boyne.

[37] There are still Wis.h.i.+ng Stones, which are used in connexion with pet.i.tions for good or ill, on the ancient altars of Inishmurray and of Caher Island, and possibly other places on the west coast of Ireland.

But when he felt his end approaching, and had still the power to speak, he said to those that gathered round his bed:--"When I am gone I charge you that ye bury me not at Brugh of the Boyne where is the royal cemetery of the Kings of Erinn.[38] For all these kings paid adoration to G.o.ds of wood or stone, or to the Sun and the Elements, whose signs are carved on the walls of their tombs, but I have learned to know the One G.o.d, immortal, invisible, by whom the earth and heavens were made. Soon there will come into Erinn one from the East who will declare Him unto us, and then wooden G.o.ds and cursing priests shall plague us no longer in this land. Bury me then not at Brugh-na-Boyna, but on the hither-side of Boyne, at Ross-na-ree, where there is a sunny, eastward-sloping hill, there would I await the coming of the sun of truth."

[38] This famous cemetery of the kings of pagan Ireland lies on the north bank of the Boyne and consists of a number of sepulchral mounds, sometimes of great extent, containing, in their interior, stone walled chambers decorated with symbolic and ornamental carvings. The chief of these mounds, now known as Newgrange, has been explored and described by Mr George Coffey in his valuable work NEWGRANGE, published by the Royal Irish Academy. _Brugh_=mansion.

So spake Cormac, and he died, and there was a very great mourning for him in the land. But when the time came for his burial, the princes and lords of the Gael vowed that he should lie in Brugh with Art, his father, and Conn of the Hundred Battles, and many another king, in the great stone chambers of the royal dead. For Ross-na-ree, they said, is but a green hill of no note; and Cormac's expectation of the message of the new G.o.d they took to be but the wanderings of a dying man.

Now Brugh-na-Boyna lay at the farther side of the Boyne from Sletty, and near by was a shallow ford where the river could be crossed. But when the funeral train came down to the ford, bearing aloft the body of the King, lo! the river had risen as though a tempest had burst upon it at its far-off sources in the hills, and between them and the farther bank was now a broad and foaming flood, and the stakes that marked the ford were washed clean away. Even so they made trial of the ford, and thrice the bearers waded in and thrice they were forced to turn back lest the flood should sweep them down. At length six of the tallest and mightiest of the warriors of the High King took up the bier upon their shoulders, and strode in. And first the watchers on the bank saw the brown water swirl about their knees, and then they sank thigh-deep, and at last it foamed against their shoulders, yet still they braced themselves against the current, moving forward very slowly as they found foothold among the slippery rocks in the river-bed. But when they had almost reached the mid-stream it seemed as if a great surge overwhelmed them, and caught the bier from their shoulders as they plunged and clutched around it, and they must needs make back for the sh.o.r.e as best they could, while Boyne swept down the body of Cormac to the sea.

On the following morning, however, shepherds driving their flocks to pasture on the hillside of Ross-na-ree found cast upon the sh.o.r.e the body of an aged man of n.o.ble countenance, half wrapped in a silken pall; and knowing not who this might be they dug a grave in the gra.s.sy hill, and there laid the stranger, and laid the green sods over him again.

There still sleeps Cormac the King, and neither Ogham-lettered stone nor sculptured cross marks his solitary grave. But he lies in the place where he would be, of which a poet of the Gael in our day has written:--

"A tranquil spot: a hopeful sound Comes from the ever-youthful stream, And still on daisied mead and mound The dawn delays with tenderer beam.

"Round Cormac, spring renews her buds: In march perpetual by his side Down come the earth-fresh April floods, And up the sea-fresh salmon glide;

"And life and time rejoicing run From age to age their wonted way; But still he waits the risen sun, For still 'tis only dawning day."[39]

[39] These lines are taken from Sir S. Ferguson's n.o.ble poem, _The Burial of King Cormac_, from which I have also borrowed some of the details of the foregoing narrative.

Notes on the Sources

_The Story of the Children of Lir_ and _The Quest of the Sons of Turenn_ are two of the three famous and popular tales ent.i.tled "The Three Sorrows of Storytelling." The third is the _Tragedy of the Sons of Usna_, rendered by Miss Eleanor Hull in her volume CUCHULAIN. I have taken the two stories which are given here from the versions in modern Irish published by the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, with notes and translation. Neither of them is found in any very early MS., but their subject-matter certainly goes back to very primitive times.

_The Secret of Labra_ is taken from Keating's FORUS FEASA AR EIRINN, edited with translation by the Rev. P.S. Dineen for the Irish Texts Society, vol. i. p. 172.

_The Carving of mac Datho's Boar_. This is a clean, fierce, fighting story, notable both for its intensely dramatic _denouement_, and for the complete absence from it of the magical or supernatural element which is so common a feature in Gaelic tales. It has been edited and translated from one MS. by Dr Kuno Meyer, in _Hibernica Minora_ (ANECDOTA OXONIENSIA), 1894, and translated from THE BOOK OF LEINSTER (twelfth century) in Leahy's HEROIC ROMANCES.

_The Vengeance of Mesgedra_. This story, as I have given it, is a combination of two tales, _The Siege of Howth_ and _The Death of King Conor_. The second really completes the first, though they are not found united in Irish literature. Both pieces are given in O'Curry's MS. MATERIALS OF IRISH HISTORY, and Miss Hull has printed translations of them in her CUCHULLIN SAGA, the translation of the _Siege_ being by Dr Whitly Stokes and that of the _Death of Conor_ by O'Curry. These are very ancient tales and contain a strong barbaric element. Versions of both of them are found in the great MS. collection known as the BOOK OF LEINSTER (twelfth century).

_King Iubdan and King Fergus_ is a brilliant piece of fairy literature. The imaginative grace, the humour, and, at the close, the tragic dignity of this tale make it worthy of being much more widely known than it has yet become. The original, taken from one of the Egerton MSS. in the British Museum, will be found with a translation in O'Grady's SILVA GADELICA. For the conclusion, I have in the main followed another version (containing the death of Fergus only), given in the SEANCUS MOR and finely versified by Sir Samuel Ferguson in his POEMS, 1880.

_The Story of Etain and Midir_. This beautiful and very ancient romance is extant in two distinct versions, both of which are translated by Mr A.H. Leahy in his HEROIC ROMANCES. The tale is found in several MSS., among others, in the twelfth century BOOK OF THE DUN COW (LEABHAR NA H-UIDHRE). It has been recently made the subject of a dramatic poem by "Fiona Macleod."

_How Ethne quitted Fairyland_ is taken from D'Arbois de Jubainville's CYCLE MYTHOLOGIQUE IRLANDAIS, ch. xii. 4. The original is to be found in the fifteenth century MS., ent.i.tled THE BOOK OF FERMOY.

_The Boyhood of Finn_ is based chiefly on the MACGNIOMHARTHA FHINN, published in 1856, with a translation, in the _TRANSACTIONS OF THE OSSIANIC SOCIETY_, vol. iv. I am also indebted, particularly for the translation of the difficult _Song of Finn in Praise of May_, to Dr Kuno Meyer's translation published in _eriu_ (the Journal of the School of Irish Learning), vol. i. pt. 2.

_The Coming of Finn_, _Finns Chief Men_, the _Tale of Vivionn_ and _The Chase of the Gilla Dacar_, are all handfuls from that rich mine of Gaelic literature, Mr Standish Hayes O'Grady's SILVA GADELICA. In the _Gilla Dacar_ I have modified the second half of the story rather freely. It appears to have been originally an example of a well-known cla.s.s of folk-tales dealing with the subject of the Rescue of Fairyland. The same motive occurs in the famous tale called _The Sickbed of Cuchulain_. The idea is that some fairy potentate, whose realm is invaded and oppressed, entices a mortal champion to come to his aid and rewards him with magical gifts. But the eighteenth century narrator whose MS. was edited by Mr S.H. O'Grady, apparently had not the clue to the real meaning of his material, and after going on brilliantly up to the point where Dermot plunges into the magic well, he becomes incoherent, and the rest of the tale is merely a string of episodes having no particular connexion with each other or with the central theme. The latter I have here endeavoured to restore to view. The _Gilla Dacar_ is given from another Gaelic version by Dr P.W. Joyce in his invaluable book, OLD CELTIC ROMANCES.

_The Birth of Oisin_ I have found in Patrick Kennedy's LEGENDARY FICTIONS OF THE IRISH CELTS. I do not know the Gaelic original.

_Oisin in the Land of Youth_ is based, as regards the outlines of this remarkable story, on the LAOI OISiN AR TIR NA N-oG, written by Michael Comyn about 1750, and edited with a translation by Thomas Flannery in 1896 (Gill & Son, Dublin). Comyn's poem was almost certainly based on earlier traditional sources, either oral or written or both, but these have not hitherto been discovered.

_The History of King Cormac_. The story of the birth of Cormac and his coming into his kingdom is to be found in SILVA GADELICA, where it is edited from THE BOOK OF BALLYMOTE, an MS. dating from about the year 1400.