Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, First Series
History
Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, First Series
Atlantic Coast (Ireland) -- Social life and customs; Folklore -- Ireland; Ireland -- Social life and customs
and they carried him to a house and to a bed and there he lay till
the next November came round. They were sitting about the bed when a
strange man came in and sat amongst them. It was the God, Ængus, and
he told how Cuchulain could be healed. A king of the other world,
Labraid, wished for Cuchulain's help in a war, and if he would give
it, he would have the love of Fand the wife of the sea god Manannan.
The women who gave him the strokes of the rods were Fand and her
sister Liban, who was Labraid's wife. They had sought his help as the
Connacht faeries will ask the help of some good hurler. Were they
too like our faeries "shadows" until they found it? When the god was
gone, Cuchulain awoke, and Conahar, the King of Ulster, who had been
watching by his bedside, told him that he must go again to the rock
where the enchantment was laid upon him. He goes there and sees the
woman with the green cloak. She is Liban and pleads with him that
he may accept the love of Fand and give his help to Labraid. If he
will only promise, he will become strong again. Cuchulain will not go
at once but sends his charioteer into the other world. When he has
his charioteer's good report, he consents, and wins the fight for
Labraid and is the lover of Fand. In the Connacht stories a wife can
sometimes get back her husband by throwing some spell-breaking object
over the heads of the faery cavalcade that keeps him spellbound.
Emir, in much the same way, recovers her husband Cuchulain, for she
and her women go armed with knives to the yew tree upon Baile's
strand where he had appointed a meeting with Fand and outface Fand
and drive her away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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