Celtic Lore & Legend Read Online Free

agreed to it for there was a vexation on her that it was Findabair that Fraech wanted and not herself. So they went into the palace and Ailell said: “Let us go and seethe hounds hunting until mid-day.” So they did so, and at mid-day they were tired, and they all went to bathe in the river. And Fraech was swimming in the river and Ailell said to him, “Do not come back until you bring me a branch of the rowan tree there beyond, with the beautiful berries.” For he knew there was a prophecy that it was in a river that Fraech would get his death.
    So he went and broke a branch off the tree and brought it back over the water, and it is beautiful he looked over the black water, his body without fault and his face so nice, and his eyes very grey and the branch with the red berries between the throat and the white face. And he threw the branch to them out of the water.
    “It is ripe and beautiful the berries are,” said Ailell; “Bring us more of them.”
    So he went off again to the tree and the water-worm that guarded the tree caught a hold of him.
    “Let me have a sword,” he called out but there was not a man on the land would dare to give it to him for fear of Ailell and Maeve. But Findabair made a leap to go into the water with a gold knife she had in her hand, but Ailell threw a sharp pointed spear from above, through her plaited hair that held her, but she threw the knife to Fraech and he cut the head off the monster, and brought it with him to the land, but he himself got a deep wound. Then Ailell and Maeve went back to the house.
    “It is a great deed that we have done,” said Maeve.
    “It is a great pity indeed what we have done to the man,” said Ailell. “And let a healing-bath be made for him now,” he said, “of the marrow of pigs and of a heifer.” Fraech was put in the bath then, and pleasant music was played by the trumpeters and a bed was made for him.
    Then a sorrowful crying was heard of Cruachan, and they saw three times fifty women with purple gowns with green head-dresses and pins of silver on their wrists, and a messenger went and asked them who it was they were crying for. “For Fraech, son of Idath,” they said, “boy darling of the King of the Sidhe of Ireland.”
    Then Fraech heard their crying and said, “Lift me out of this, for that is the cry of my mother and of the women of Broann.” So they lifted him out and the women came round him and brought him away into the Hill of Cruachan.
    The next day he came out, and he was whole and sound, and fifty women with him, and they with the appearance of the women of the Sidhe. And at the door of the dun they left him, and they gave out their cry again, so that all the people that heard it could not but feel sorrowful. It is from this the musicians of Ireland learned the sorrowful cry of the women of the Sidhe.
    And when he went into the house, the whole household rose up before him and bade him welcome, as if from another world he was come. And there was shame and repentance on Ailell and on Maeve for trying to harm him, and a peace was made, and he went away to his own place.
    And it was after that he came to help Ailell and Maeve, and that he got his death in a river as was foretold at the beginning of the war for the Brown Bull of Cuailgne.
    And at one time the Hill was robbed by the men of Cruachan and this is the way it happened:
    One night at Samhain, Ailell and Maeve were in Cruachan with their whole household and the food was being made ready.
    Two prisoners had been hanged by them the day before and Ailell said: “Whoever will put a gad round the foot of wither of the two men on the gallows, will get a prize fromme.” It was a very dark night and bad things would always appear on that night of Samhain, and every man that went out to try came back very quickly into the house.
    “I will go if I get a prize,” said Nera, then.
    “I will give you this gold-hilted sword,” said Ailell.
    So Nera went out and he put a gad round