The second text describes how King Conaire, in riding along a road
toward Tara, saw in front of him three strange horsemen, three men of
the _Sidhe_:--'Three red frocks had they, and three red mantles: three
red steeds they bestrode, and three red heads of hair were on them. Red
were they all, both body and hair and raiment, both steeds and men.'
'Who is it that fares before us?' asked Conaire. 'It was a taboo of mine
for those Three to go before me--the three Reds to the house of Red. Who
will follow them and tell them to come towards me in my track?' 'I will
follow them,' says Lé fri flaith, Conaire's son. 'He goes after them,
lashing his horse, and overtook them not. There was the length of a
spearcast between them: but they did not gain upon him and he did not
gain upon them.' All attempts to come up with the red horsemen failed.
But at last, before they disappeared, one of the Three said to the
king's son riding so furiously behind them, 'Lo, my son, great the news.
Weary are the steeds we ride. We ride the steeds of Donn Tetscorach (?)
from the elfmounds. Though we are alive we are dead. Great are the
signs: destruction of life: sating of ravens: feeding of crows, strife
of slaughter: wetting of sword-edge, shields with broken bosses in hours
after sundown. Lo, my son!' Then they disappear. When Conaire and his
followers heard the message, fear fell upon them, and the king said:
'All my taboos have seized me to-night, since those Three [Reds] [are
the] banished folks (?).' In this passage we behold three horsemen of the
_Sidhe_ banished from their elfmound because guilty of falsehood.
Visible for a time, they precede the king and so violate one of his
taboos; and then delivering their fearful prophecy they vanish. These
three of the Tuatha De Danann, majestic and powerful and weird in their
mystic red, are like the warriors of the 'gentry' seen by contemporary
seers in West Ireland. Though dead, that is in an invisible world like
the dead, yet they are living. It seems that in all three of the textual
examples already cited, the scribe has emphasized a different element in
the unique nature of the Tuatha De Danann. In the _Colloquy_ it is their
eternal youth and beauty, in the _Echtra Nerai_ it is their supremacy
over ghosts and demons on _Samain_ and their power to steal mortals away
at such a time, and in this last their respect for honesty. And in each
case their portrayal corresponds to that of the 'gentry' and _Sidhe_ by
modern Irishmen; so that the old Fairy-Faith and the new combine to
prove the People of the God whose mother was Dana to have been and to be
a race of beings who are like mortals, but not mortals, who to the
objective world are as though dead, yet to the subjective world are
fully living and conscious.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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