Irish Fairy Tales | Page 9

of the shields. And
at the end I saw that the victory was with Iarbonel. And from his people
the Tuatha De' and the Ande' came, although their origin is forgotten,
and learned people, because of their excellent wisdom and intelligence,
say that they came from heaven.
"These are the people of Faery. All these are the gods.
"For long, long years I was a hawk. I knew every hill and stream; every
field and glen of Ireland. I knew the shape of cliffs and coasts, and how
all places looked under the sun or moon. And I was still a hawk when
the sons of Mil drove the Tuatha De' Danann under the ground, and
held Ireland against arms or wizardry; and this was the coming of men
and the beginning of genealogies.
"Then I grew old, and in my Ulster cave close to the sea I dreamed my
dream, and in it I became a salmon. The green tides of ocean rose over
me and my dream, so that I drowned in the sea and did not die, for I
awoke in deep waters, and I was that which I dreamed. "I had been a
man, a stag, a boar, a bird, and now I was a fish. In all my changes I
had joy and fulness of life. But in the water joy lay deeper, life pulsed
deeper. For on land or air there is always something excessive and
hindering; as arms that swing at the sides of a man, and which the mind

must remember. The stag has legs to be tucked away for sleep, and
untucked for movement; and the bird has wings that must be folded and
pecked and cared for. But the fish has but one piece from his nose to
his tail. He is complete, single and unencumbered. He turns in one turn,
and goes up and down and round in one sole movement.
"How I flew through the soft element: how I joyed in the country where
there is no harshness: in the element which upholds and gives way;
which caresses and lets go, and will not let you fall. For man may
stumble in a furrow; the stag tumble from a cliff; the hawk, wing-weary
and beaten, with darkness around him and the storm behind, may dash
his brains against a tree. But the home of the salmon is his delight, and
the sea guards all her creatures."


CHAPTER IX
"I became the king of the salmon, and, with my multitudes, I ranged on
the tides of the world. Green and purple distances were under me: green
and gold the sunlit regions above. In these latitudes I moved through a
world of amber, myself amber and gold; in those others, in a sparkle of
lucent blue, I curved, lit like a living jewel: and in these again, through
dusks of ebony all mazed with silver, I shot and shone, the wonder of
the sea.
"I saw the monsters of the uttermost ocean go heaving by; and the long
lithe brutes that are toothed to their tails: and below, where gloom
dipped down on gloom, vast, livid tangles that coiled and uncoiled, and
lapsed down steeps and hells of the sea where even the salmon could
not go.
"I knew the sea. I knew the secret caves where ocean roars to ocean;
the floods that are icy cold, from which the nose of a salmon leaps back
as at a sting; and the warm streams in which we rocked and dozed and
were carried forward without motion. I swam on the outermost rim of

the great world, where nothing was but the sea and the sky and the
salmon; where even the wind was silent, and the water was clear as
clean grey rock.
"And then, far away in the sea, I remembered Ulster, and there came on
me an instant, uncontrollable anguish to be there. I turned, and through
days and nights I swam tirelessly, jubilantly; with terror wakening in
me, too, and a whisper through my being that I must reach Ireland or
die.
"I fought my way to Ulster from the sea.
"Ah, how that end of the journey was hard! A sickness was racking in
every one of my bones, a languor and weariness creeping through my
every fibre and muscle. The waves held me back and held me back; the
soft waters seemed to have grown hard; and it was as though I were
urging through a rock as I strained towards Ulster from the sea.
"So tired I was! I could have loosened my frame and been swept away;
I could have slept and been drifted and wafted away; swinging on
grey-green billows that had turned from the land and were heaving and
mounting and