Flann’s heart, I tell you, sank, when he saw the bull that guarded Crom
Duv’s house. They went through the deep wood then, and came to the gate
of the Giant’s Keep. Only a chain was across it, and Crom Duv lifted
up the chain. The courtyard was filled with cattle black and red and
striped. The Giant tied Flann to a stone pillar. “Are you there, Morag,
my byre-maid?” he shouted.
“I am here,” said a voice from the byre. More cattle were in the byre
and someone was milking them.
There was straw on the ground of the courtyard and Crom Duv lay down on
it and went to sleep with the cattle trampling around him. A great stone
wall was being built all round the Giant’s Keep--a wall six feet thick
and built as high as twenty feet in some places and in others as high
as twelve. The wall was still being built, for heaps of stones and great
mixing-pans were about. And just before the door of the Keep was a
Rowan Tree that grew to a great height. At the very top of the tree were
bunches of red berries. Cats were lying around the stems of the tree and
cats were in its branches--great yellow cats. More yellow cats stepped
out of the house and came over to him. They looked Flann all over and
went back, mewing to each other.
The cattle that were in the courtyard went into the byre one by one as
they were called by the voice of the byre-maid. Crom Duv still slept. By
and by a little red hen that was picking about the courtyard came near
him and holding up her head looked Flann all over.
When the last cow had gone in and the last stream of milk had sounded in
the milking-vessel the byre-maid came into the courtyard. Flann thought
he would see a long-armed creature like Crom Duv himself. Instead he saw
a girl with good and kind eyes, whose disfigurements were that her face
was pitted and her hair was bushy. “I am Morag, Crom Duv’s byre-maid,”
said she.
“Will Crom Duv kill me?” said Flann.
“No. He’ll make you serve him,” said the byre-maid.
“And what will he make me do for him?”
“He will make you help to build his wall. Crom Duv goes out every
morning to bring his cattle to pasture on the plain. And when he comes
back he builds the wall round his house. He’ll make you mix mortar and
carry it to him, for I heard him say he wants a servant to do that.”
“I’ll escape from this,” said Flann, “and I’ll bring you with me.”
“Hush,” said Morag, and she pointed to seven yellow cats that were
standing at Crom Duv’s door, watching them. “The cats,” said she,
“are Crom Duv’s watchers here and the Bull of the Mound is his watcher
out-side.”
“And is this Little Red Hen a watcher too?” said Flann, for the Little
Red Hen was watching them sideways. “The Little Red Hen is my friend and
adviser,” Morag, and she went into the house with two vessels of milk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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