Fantasy fiction; Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Mythology, Celtic -- Fiction
They tied their horses to bushes, for the number so tied already showed
that the stables were full, and shoved their way through a crowd of
peasants who stood about the door, and went into the great hall where
the dance was. The labourer, the half-witted fellow, the farmer and
the two lads mixed with a group of servants who were looking on from an
alcove, and Duallach sat with the pipers on their bench, but Costello
made his way through the dancers to where Dermott of the Sheep stood
with Namara of the Lake pouring Poteen out of a porcelain jug into horn
noggins with silver rims.
'Tumaus Costello,' said the old man, 'you have done a good deed to
forget what has been, and to fling away enmity and come to the betrothal
of my daughter to Namara of the Lake.'
'I come,' answered Costello, 'because when in the time of Costello De
Angalo my forbears overcame your forbears and afterwards made peace, a
compact was made that a Costello might go with his body-servants and his
piper to every feast given by a Dermott for ever, and a Dermott with
his body-servants and his piper to every feast given by a Costello for
ever.'
'If you come with evil thoughts and armed men,' said the son of Dermott
flushing,' no matter how strong your hands to wrestle and to swing the
sword, it shall go badly with you, for some of my wife's clan have come
out of Mayo, and my three brothers and their servants have come down
from the Ox Mountains'; and while he spoke he kept his hand inside his
coat as though upon the handle of a weapon.
'No,' answered Costello, 'I but come to dance a farewell dance with your
daughter.'
Dermott drew his hand out of his coat and went over to a tall pale girl
who was now standing but a little way off with her mild eyes fixed upon
the ground.
'Costello has come to dance a farewell dance, for he knows that you will
never see one another again.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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