The Boy Who Knew What the Birds SaidColum, Padraic
Science
The Boy Who Knew What the Birds Said
Colum, Padraic
Birds -- Fiction; Fairy tales
She wanted to go from him, but where was she to go to? All the country
was strange to her. And so, if she made two steps away from him she
soon made two steps back to him. And the end of this part of the story
is that Bright Brow became friendly to the Hen-wife's Son.
He gathered fruits off trees and he snared birds and he took the fish
out of rivers and he found sheltered places to sleep in. And often the
Princess Bright Brow was good and kind to him. And Mell the Hen-wife's
son was now as happy as anyone in the world. "Since we are so friendly
to each other now," said Bright Brow to him one day, "will you not
tell me how you were able to come here and bring me with you?"
"It was because of the jewel I wear at my breast," said Mell. And then
he told how he had found the green mantle on the ground and how the
Fairy Woman gave him the jewel and what power the jewel had.
If Mell was content to be on the Island, Bright Brow was not. And so
one evening when he was asleep she lifted up the mantle and took the
jewel that was on his breast. Then holding it in her hand she said "I
wish I was back in my father's Castle." In an instant she was back
there. Now all her maids were around her and all of them were crying
"Where have you been, King's daughter, where have you been?" And
Bright Brow told them that the King of the Fairy Riders had taken her
away to show her all the great heroes of the world so that when the
time came for her to choose a husband she could make her choice of the
best amongst them.
As for Mell, the Hen-wife's son: when he wakened up and found that
Bright Brow had gone and that the jewel was gone there was no one in
the world more sad and lonely than he was. He thought that she might
come back to him, but the moon came and the sun came and Bright Brow
came not. He longed to be a bird that he might fly after her to her
father's Castle.
He stayed on the Island of the Shadow of the Stars for a long time
for, now that the jewel was gone from him, there was no way of getting
from the Island. Then a King who had built a high tower went to the
top of it one day and saw the Island of the Shadow of the Stars. He
sent out his long ships and his leathern-jerkined men to it. They
found Mell and they brought him to the King. Then Mell became one of
the King's men and he went into battle and he learnt the use of all
arms.
III
The Hen-wife's son went through the Eastern and the Western Worlds and
he came back to where his mother's hut was. He rode round the walls of
the King's Castle. Everything that he thought was magnificent before
seemed small to him now. The trees that grew within the walls seemed
not much bigger than the bushes the old women put clothes to dry on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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