The Washer of the Ford: Legendary moralities and barbaric talesSharp, William
General
The Washer of the Ford: Legendary moralities and barbaric tales
Sharp, William
Mythology, Celtic -- Fiction; Scotland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
And with that the youth turned and moved haughtily away. She did not
know that the Etáin of whom Cuchullin dreamed was no woman that he had
seen in Eiré, but the wife of Mídir the King of Faerie, who was so
passing fair that Mac Greine, the beautiful god, had made for her a
grianan all of shining glass, where still she lives in a dream, and in
that sun-bower still is fed at dawn upon the bloom of flowers and at
dusk upon their fragrance. _O ogham mhic Gréine, tha e boidheach_,[15]
she sighs for ever in her sleep: and that sigh is in all sighs of love
for ever and ever.
[15] "O beauty of my love the Sun-lord" (_lit._ "O Youth, son of
the Sun, how fair he is!")
Scathach watched him till he was lost behind the flare of the
camp-fires of the rath. For long she stood there, brooding deep; till
the sickle of the new moon, which had been like a blown feather over
the sun as it sank, stood out in silvershine against the blue-black
sky, now like a wake in the sea because of the star-dazzle that was
there. And what the queen brooded upon was this: whether to send
emissaries to Eirèann, under bond to seek in that land till they found
Mídir and Etáin, and to slay Mídir and bring to her the corpse, for a
gift from her to lay before Cuchullin: or to bring Etáin to Skye,
where the Queen might see her lose her beauty and wane into death.
Neither way might win the heart of Cuchullin. The dark tarn of the
woman's mind grew blacker with the shadow of that thought.
Slowly she moved dûn-ward through the night. "As the moon sometimes is
seen rising out of the east," she muttered, "and sometimes, as now, is
first seen in the west, so is the heart of love. And if I go west, lo
the moon may rise along the sunway: and if I go east, lo the moon may
be a white light over the setting sun. And who that knoweth the heart
of man or woman can tell when the moon of love is to appear full-orbed
in the east or sickle-wise in the west?"
It was on the day following that tidings came out of Eirèann. An
Ultonian brought a sword to Cuchullin from Concobar the Ard-righ.
"The sword has ill upon it, and will die, unless you save it, Cuculain
son of Lerg," said the man.
"And what is that ill, Ultonian?" asked the youth.
"It is thirst."
Then Cuchullin understood.
On the night of his going none looked at Scathach. She had a flame in
her eyes.
At moonrise, she came back into the rath. No one, meeting her, looked
in her face. Death lay there, like the levin behind a cloud. But Maev
her chief captain sought her, for she had glad news.
"I would slay you for that glad news, Maev," said the Dark Queen to
the warrior-woman, "for there is no glad news unless it be that
Cuchullin is come again: only, I spare, for you saved my life that day
the summer-sailors burned my rath in the south."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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