Irish Fairy Tales | Page 6

there
Partholon rested with his twenty-four couples, and made a city and a
livelihood.
"There were fish in the rivers of Eire', there were animals in her coverts.
Wild and shy and monstrous creatures ranged in her plains and forests.
Creatures that one could see through and walk through. Long we lived
in ease, and we saw new animals grow, --the bear, the wolf, the badger,
the deer, and the boar.
"Partholon's people increased until from twenty-four couples there
came five thousand people, who lived in amity and contentment
although they had no wits."
"They had no wits!" Finnian commented.
"They had no need of wits," Tuan said.
"I have heard that the first-born were mindless," said Finnian.
"Continue your story, my beloved."
"Then, sudden as a rising wind, between one night and a morning, there
came a sickness that bloated the stomach and purpled the skin, and on
the seventh day all of the race of Partholon were dead, save one man
only." "There always escapes one man," said Finnian thoughtfully.
"And I am that man," his companion affirmed.
Tuan shaded his brow with his hand, and he remembered backwards

through incredible ages to the beginning of the world and the first days
of Eire'. And Finnian, with his blood again running chill and his scalp
crawling uneasily, stared backwards with him.


CHAPTER V
"Tell on, my love," Finnian murmured
"I was alone," said Tuan. "I was so alone that my own shadow
frightened me. I was so alone that the sound of a bird in flight, or the
creaking of a dew-drenched bough, whipped me to cover as a rabbit is
scared to his burrow.
"The creatures of the forest scented me and knew I was alone. They
stole with silken pad behind my back and snarled when I faced them;
the long, grey wolves with hanging tongues and staring eyes chased me
to my cleft rock; there was no creature so weak but it might hunt me,
there was no creature so timid but it might outface me. And so I lived
for two tens of years and two years, until I knew all that a beast
surmises and had forgotten all that a man had known.
"I could pad as gently as any; I could run as tirelessly. I could be
invisible and patient as a wild cat crouching among leaves; I could
smell danger in my sleep and leap at it with wakeful claws; I could bark
and growl and clash with my teeth and tear with them."
"Tell on, my beloved," said Finnian, "you shall rest in God, dear heart."
"At the end of that time," said Tuan, "Nemed the son of Agnoman
came to Ireland with a fleet of thirty-four barques, and in each barque
there were thirty couples of people."
"I have heard it," said Finnian.
"My heart leaped for joy when I saw the great fleet rounding the land,

and I followed them along scarped cliffs, leaping from rock to rock like
a wild goat, while the ships tacked and swung seeking a harbour. There
I stooped to drink at a pool, and I saw myself in the chill water.
"I saw that I was hairy and tufty and bristled as a savage boar; that I
was lean as a stripped bush; that I was greyer than a badger; withered
and wrinkled like an empty sack; naked as a fish; wretched as a
starving crow in winter; and on my fingers and toes there were great
curving claws, so that I looked like nothing that was known, like
nothing that was animal or divine. And I sat by the pool weeping my
loneliness and wildness and my stern old age; and I could do no more
than cry and lament between the earth and the sky, while the beasts that
tracked me listened from behind the trees, or crouched among bushes to
stare at me from their drowsy covert.
"A storm arose, and when I looked again from my tall cliff I saw that
great fleet rolling as in a giant's hand. At times they were pitched
against the sky and staggered aloft, spinning gustily there like
wind-blown leaves. Then they were hurled from these dizzy tops to the
flat, moaning gulf, to the glassy, inky horror that swirled and whirled
between ten waves. At times a wave leaped howling under a ship, and
with a buffet dashed it into air, and chased it upwards with thunder
stroke on stroke, and followed again, close as a chasing wolf, trying
with hammering on hammering to beat in the wide-wombed bottom
and suck out the frightened lives through one black gape. A wave fell
on a ship and sunk it down with a thrust, stern as though a whole sky
had tumbled at