The King of Ireland's Son, Illustrated Edition (Yesterday's Classics) (26 page)

The next day when they were walking with the Queen one of the King's foster-daughters said, "Did you know of a maid named Morag? I have heard that she has been away and has come back."

"How did she fare?" said the Queen.

"We have not heard that," said the maiden who spoke.

The Queen went to where Baun and Deelish were and from them she heard that Morag had been put into the Stone House on the charge that she had broken the King's dish when she had been in the Castle before. Now the Queen knew that the dish had been safe after Morag had left. She went to the King's Steward and accused him of having broken it and Breas admitted that it was so. Thereupon he lost his rank and became the meanest and the most despised servant in the Castle.

The Queen went to the Stone House and took Morag out. She asked her how she had fared and thereupon Morag put the Rowan Berry in the Queen's hand. She hastened to her own chamber and ate it, and her youth and beauty came back to her, and the King who had grown solitary, loved the Queen again.

Then Morag came to great honor in the Castle and the Queen asked her to name the greatest favor she could think of. And the favor that Morag named was marriages for her foster-sisters with the two youths they loved, Downal and Dermott from the court of the King of Ireland.

The Queen, when she heard this, brought fine clothes out of her chests and gave them to Baun and Deelish. When they had dressed in these clothes the Queen made them known to the two youths. Downal and Dermott fell in love with Morag's foster-sisters, and the King named a day for the pairs to marry.

Morag waited to see the marriages, and the King and Queen made it a grand affair. There were seven hundred guests at the short table, eight hundred at the long table, nine hundred at the round table, and a thousand in the great hall. I was there, and I heard the whole story. But I got no present save shoes of paper and stockings of butter-milk and these a herdsman stole from me as I crossed the mountains.

But Morag got better presents, for the Queen gave her three gifts—a scissors that cut cloth of itself, a ball of thread that went into the needle of itself, and a needle that sewed of itself.

M
ORAG,
with the three gifts that the Queen of Senlabor gave her, came again to the Spae-Woman's house. Her Little Red Hen was in the courtyard, and she fluttered up to meet her. But there was no sign of any other life about the place. Then, below at the washing-stream she found the Spae-Woman rinsing clothes. She was standing on the middle-stones, clapping her hands as if in great trouble. "Oh, Morag, my daughter Morag," cried the Spae-Woman, "there are signs on the clothes—there are signs on the clothes!"

After a while she ceased crying and clapping her hands and came up from the stream. She showed Morag that in all the shifts and dimities she washed for her, a hole came just above where her heart would be. Morag grew pale when she saw that, but she stood steadily and she did not wail. "Should I go to the King's Castle, fosterer?" said she. "No," said the Spae-Woman, "but to the woodman's hut that is near the King's Castle. And take your Little Red Hen with you, my daughter," said she, "and do not forget the three presents that the Queen of Senlabor gave you." Then the Spae-Woman stood up and said the blessing of the journey over Morag:—

      May the Olden

       One, whom Fairy

       Women nurtured

       Through seven ages,

       Bring you seven

       Waves of fortune.

Morag gave her the clasp of farewell then, and went on her way with the Little Red Hen under her arm and the three presents that the Queen of Senlabor gave her in her pouch.

M
ORAG
was going and ever going from the blink of day to the mouth of dark and that for three crossings of the sun, and at last she came within sight of the Castle of the King of Ireland. She asked a dog-boy for the hut of MacStairn the Woodman and the hut was shown to her. She went to it and saw the wife of MacStairn. She told her she was a girl traveling alone and she asked for shelter. "I can give you shelter," said MacStairn's wife, "and I can get you earnings too, for there is much sewing-work to be done at this time." Morag asked her what reason there was for that, and the woodman's wife told her there were two couples in the Castle to be married soon. "One is the youth whom we have always called the King of Ireland's Son. He is to be married to a maiden called Fedelma. The other is a youth who is the King's son too, but who has been away for a long time. Flann is his name. And he is to be married to a damsel called Gilveen."

When she heard that, it was as if a knife had been put into and turned in her heart. She let the Little Red Hen drop from her arm. "I would sew the garments that the damsel Gilveen is to wear," said she, and she sat down on the stone outside the woodman's hut. MacStairn's wife then sent to the Castle to say that there was one in her hut who could sew all the garments that Gilveen would send her.

The next day, with a servant walking behind, Gilveen came to the woodman's hut with a basket of cloths and patterns. The basket was left down and Gilveen began to tell MacStairn's wife how she wanted them cut, stitched and embroidered. Morag took up the crimson cloth and let her scissors—the scissors that the Queen of Senlabor gave her—run through it. It cut out the pattern exactly. "What a wonderful scissors," said Gilveen. She stooped down to where Morag was sitting on the stone outside of the woodman's house and took up the scissors in her hand. She examined it. "I cannot give it back to you," said she. "Give it to me, and I will let you have any favor you ask." "Since you want me to ask you for a favor," said Morag, "I ask that you let me sit at the supper-table to-night alone with the youth you are to marry." "That will do me no harm," said Gilveen. She went away, taking the scissors and smiling to herself.

That night Morag went into the Castle and came to the supper-table where Flann was seated alone. But Gilveen had put a sleeping-draught into Flann's cup and he neither saw nor knew Morag when she sat at the table. "Do you remember, Flann," said she, "how we used to sit at the supper-board in the house of Crom Duv?" But Flann did not hear her, nor see her, and then Morag had to go away.

T
HE
next day Gilveen came to where Morag sat on the stone outside the woodman's hut to watch her stitch the garment she had cut out. The thread went into the needle of itself. "What a wonderful ball of thread," said Gilveen, taking it up. "I cannot give it back to you. Ask me for a favor in place of it." "Since you would have me ask a favor," said Morag, "I ask that you let me sit at the supper-table alone with the youth you are going to marry." "That will do me no harm," said Gilveen. She took the ball of thread and went away smiling.

That night Morag went into the Castle and came to the supper-table where Flann was seated alone. But Gilveen again had put a sleeping-draught into his cup, and Flann did not see or know Morag. "Do you not remember, Flann," said she, "the story of Morag that I told you across the supper-board in the House of Crom Duv?" But Flann gave no sign of knowing her, and then Morag had to go away.

The next day Gilveen came to watch Morag make the red embroideries upon the white garment. When she put the needle into the cloth it worked out the pattern of itself. "This is the most wonderful thing of all," said Gilveen. She stooped down and took the needle in her hand. "I cannot give this back to you," she said, "and you will have to ask for a favor that will recompense you." "If I must ask for a favor," said Morag, "the only favor I would ask is that you let me sit at the supper-table to-night alone with the youth you are to marry." "That will do me no harm," said Gilveen, and she took the needle and went away smiling.

Morag went to the Castle again that night, but this time she took the Little Red Hen with her. She scattered grains on the table and the Little Red Hen picked them up. "Little Hen, Little Red Hen," said Morag, "he slept too when I gave the seven drops of my heart's blood for his mother's sake." The Little Red Hen flew into Flann's face. "Seven drops of heart's blood, seven drops of heart's blood," said the Little Red Hen, and Flann heard the words.

He opened his eyes and saw the Little Red Hen on the table and knew that she belonged to one that he had known. Morag, at the other side of the table, looked strange and shadowy to him. But he threw crumbs on the table and fed the Little Red Hen, and as he watched her picking up the crumbs the memory of Morag came back to him. Then he saw her. He knew her for his sweetheart and his promised wife and he went to her and asked her how it came that she had not been in his mind for so long. "I will tell you how you came to forget me," said she, "it was because of the kiss you gave Gilveen, and the enchantment she was able to put on you because of that kiss."

There was sorrow on Morag's face when she said that, but the sorrow went as the thin clouds go from before the face of the high-hung moon, and Flann saw her as his kind comrade of Crom Duv's and as his beautiful friend of the Spae-Woman's house. They kissed each other then, and every enchantment went but the lasting enchantment of love, and they sat with hands joined until the log in the fire beside them had burnt itself down into a brand and the brand had burnt itself into ashes, and all the time that passed was, as they thought, only while the watching-gilly outside walked from one side of the Castle Gate to the other.

G
ILVEEN
had come into the room and she saw Flann and Morag give each other a true-lover's kiss. She went away. But the next day she came to the King's Steward, Art, who at one time wanted to marry her, and whom she had refused because Aefa, her sister, had married one of a higher degree—she came to Art and she told him that she would not marry Flann because she had found out that he had a low-born sweetheart. "And I am ready to marry you, Art," she said. And Art was well pleased, and he and Gilveen left the Castle to be married.

Then the day came when Fedelma and the King of Ireland's Son, and Morag and Flann were married. They were plighted to each other in the Circle of Stones by the Druids who invoked upon them the powers of the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, and the Air. They were married at the height of the day and they feasted at night when the wax candles were lighted round the tables. They had Greek honey and Lochlinn beer; ducks from Achill, apples from Emain and venison from the Hunting Hill; they had trout and grouse and plovers' eggs and a boar's head for every King in the company. And these were the Kings who sat down to table with the King of Eirinn: the King of Sorcha, the King of Hispania, the King of Lochlinn and the King of the Green Island who had Sunbeam for his daughter. And they had there the best heroes of Lochlinn, the best story-tellers of Alba, the best bards of Eirinn. They laid sorrow and they raised music, and the harpers played until the great champion Split-the-Shields told a tale of the realm of Greece and how he slew the three lions that guarded the daughter of the King. They feasted for six days and the last day was better than the first, and the laugh they laughed when Witless, the Saxon fool, told how Split-the-Shield's story should have ended, shook the young jackdaws out of every chimney in the Castle and brought them down fluttering on the floors.

The King of Ireland lived long, but he died while his sons were in their strong manhood, and after he passed away the Island of Destiny came under the equal rule of the two. And one had rule over the courts and cities, the harbors and the military encampments. And the other had rule over the waste places and the villages and the roads where masterless men walked. And the deeds of one are in the histories the shanachies have written in the language of the learned, and the deeds of the other are in the stories the people tell to you and to me.

      When I crossed the Ford

       They were turning the Mountain Pass;

       When I stood on the Stepping-stones

       They were travelling the Road of Glass.