“Now the woman I had just married noticed that I kept smiling, and she
questioned me. ‘Why do you keep smiling to yourself?’ I would not tell
her. ‘Is that not the truth? ‘“ said the Enchanter to a woman who sat
beside him. “It is the truth,” said she.
“On the third day I was still smiling to myself, and my wife questioned
me, and when I did not answer threw dish-water into my face. ‘May
blindness come upon you if you do not tell me why you are smiling,’ said
she. Then I told her why I smiled to myself. I had heard what the birds
said. The blackbird said to the robin, ‘Do you know that just under
where we are sitting are three rods of enchantment, and if one were to
take one of them and strike a man with it, he would be changed to any
creature one named?’ That is what I had heard the birds say and I smiled
because I was the only creature who knew about the rods of enchantment.
“My wife made me show her where the rods were. She cut one of them when
I went away. That evening she came behind me and struck me with a rod.
‘Go out now and roam as a wolf,’ she said, and there and then I was
changed into a wolf. ‘Is that not true?’” said he to the woman. “It is
true,” she said.
“And being changed into a wolf, I went through the woods seeking wolf’s
meat. And now you must ask my wife to tell you more of the story.” The
King of Ireland’s Son turned to the woman who sat on the seat next the
Enchanter, and asked her to tell him more of the story. And thereupon
she began
Before all that happened I was known as the Maid of the Green Mantle.
One day a King rode up a mountain with five score followers and a mist
came on them as they rode. The King saw his followers no more. He called
out after a while and four score answered him. And he called out again
after another while and two score answered him. And after another while
he called out again and only a score answered him through the mist, and
when he called out again no one answered him at all.
“The King went up the mountain until he came to the place where I lived
with the Druids who reared me. He stayed long in that place. The King
loved me for a while and I loved the King, and when he went away I
followed him.
“Because he would not come back to me I enchanted him so that there
were times when he was left between life and death. Once when he was
seemingly dead a girl watched by him, and she followed his spirit into
many terrible places and so broke my enchantment.”
“Sheen was the girl’s name,” said the King of Ireland’s Son.
“Sheen was her name,” said the woman. “He brought her to his Kingdom,
and made her his queen. After that I married the man who is here
now--the Enchanter of the Black Back-Lands, the Son of the Druid of the
Gray Rock. Ask him now to tell you the rest of the story.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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