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Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic

T >> Thomas Wentworth Higginson >> Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic




She left them, and ere long their father, King Lir, came to the shore and
heard their singing. He asked how they came to have human voices. "We are
thy four children," said Finola, "changed into swans by our stepmother's
jealousy." "Then come and live with me," said her sorrowing father. "We
are not permitted to leave the lake," she said, "or live with our people
any more. But we are allowed to dwell together and to keep our reason and
our speech, and to sing sweet music to you." Then they sang, and the king
and all his followers were at first amazed and then lulled to sleep.

Then King Lir returned and met the cruel stepmother at her father's
palace. When her father, King Bove, was told what she had done, he was hot
with anger. "This wicked deed," he said, "shall bring severer punishment
on thee than on the innocent children, for their suffering shall end, but
thine never shall." Then King Bove asked her what form of existence would
be most terrible to her. She replied, "That of a demon of the air." "Be it
so," said her father, who had also Druidical power. He struck her with his
wand, and she became a bat, and flew away with a scream, and the legend
says, "She is still a demon of the air and shall be a demon of the air
until the end of time."

After this, the people of all the races that were in Erin used to come
and encamp by the lake and listen to the swans. The happy were made
happier by the song, and those who were in grief or illness or pain forgot
their sorrows and were lulled to rest. There was peace in all that region,
while war and tumult filled other lands. Vast changes took place in three
centuries--towers and castles rose and fell, villages were built and
destroyed, generations were born and died;--and still the swan-children
lived and sang, until at the end of three hundred years they flew away, as
was decreed, to the stormy sea of Moyle; and from that time it was made a
law that no one should kill a swan in Erin.

Beside the sea of Moyle they found no longer the peaceful and wooded
shores they had known, but only steep and rocky coasts and a wild, wild
sea. There came a great storm one night, and the swans knew that they
could not keep together, so they resolved that if separated they would
meet at a rock called Carricknarone. Finola reached there first, and took
her brothers under her wings, all wet, shivering, and exhausted. Many such
nights followed, and in one terrible winter storm, when they nestled
together on Carricknarone, the water froze into solid ice around them, and
their feet and wings were so frozen to the rock that when they moved they
left the skin of their feet, the quills of their wings, and the feathers
of their breasts clinging there. When the ice melted, and they swam out
into the sea, their bodies smarted with pain until the feathers grew once
more.

One day they saw a glittering troop of horsemen approaching along the
shore and knew that they were their own kindred, though from far
generations back, the Dedannen or Fairy Host. They greeted each other with
joy, for the Fairy Host had been sent to seek for the swans; and on
returning to their chiefs they narrated what had passed, and the chiefs
said, "We cannot help them, but we are glad they are living; and we know
that at last the enchantment will be broken and that they will be freed
from their sorrows." So passed their lives until Finola sang, one day,
"The Second Woe has passed--the second period of three hundred years,"
when they flew out on the broad ocean, as was decreed, and went to the
island of Inis Glora. There they spent the next three hundred years, amid
yet wilder storms and yet colder winds. No more the peaceful shepherds and
living neighbors were around them; but often the sailor and fisherman, in
his little coracle, saw the white gleam of their wings or heard the sweet
notes of their song and knew that the children of Lir were near.

But the time came when the nine hundred years of banishment were ended,
and they might fly back to their father's old home, Finnahà. Flying for
days above the sea, they alighted at the palace once so well known, but
everything was changed by time--even the walls of their father's palace
were crumbled and rain-washed. So sad was the sight that they remained one
day only, and flew back to Inis Glora, thinking that if they must be
forever solitary, they would live where they had lived last, not where
they had been reared.

One May morning, as the children of Lir floated in the air around the
island of Inis Glora, they heard a faint bell sounding across the eastern
sea. The mist lifted, and they saw afar off, beyond the waves, a vision of
a stately white-robed priest, with attendants around him on the Irish
shore. They knew that it must be St. Patrick, the Tailkenn, or Tonsured
One, who was bringing, as had been so long promised, Christianity to
Ireland. Sailing through the air, above the blue sea, towards their native
coast, they heard the bell once more, now near and distinct, and they knew
that all evil spirits were fleeing away, and that their own hopes were to
be fulfilled. As they approached the land, St. Patrick stretched his hand
and said, "Children of Lir, you may tread your native land again." And the
sweet swan-sister, Finola, said, "If we tread our native land, it can only
be to die, after our life of nine centuries. Baptize us while we are yet
living." When they touched the shore, the weight of all those centuries
fell upon them; they resumed their human bodies, but they appeared old and
pale and wrinkled. Then St. Patrick baptized them, and they died; but,
even as he did so, a change swiftly came over them; and they lay side by
side, once more children, in their white night-clothes, as when their
father Lir, long centuries ago, had kissed them at evening and seen their
blue eyes close in sleep and had touched with gentle hand their white
foreheads and their golden hair. Their time of sorrow was ended and their
last swan-song was sung; but the cruel stepmother seems yet to survive in
her bat-like shape, and a single glance at her weird and malicious little
face will lead us to doubt whether she has yet fully atoned for her sin.



IV

USHEEN IN THE ISLAND OF YOUTH


The old Celtic hero and poet Usheen or Oisin, whose supposed songs are
known in English as those of Ossian, lived to a great old age, surviving
all others of the race of the Feni, to which he belonged; and he was asked
in his last years what had given him such length of life. This is the tale
he told:--

After the fatal battle of Gavra, in which most of the Feni were killed,
Usheen and his father, the king, and some of the survivors of the battle
were hunting the deer with their dogs, when they met a maiden riding on a
slender white horse with hoofs of gold, and with a golden crescent between
his ears. The maiden's hair was of the color of citron and was gathered in
a silver band; and she was clad in a white garment embroidered with
strange devices. She asked them why they rode slowly and seemed sad, and
not like other hunters; and they replied that it was because of the death
of their friends and the ruin of their race. When they asked her in turn
whence she came, and why, and whether she was married, she replied that
she had never had a lover or a husband, but that she had crossed the sea
for the love of the great hero and bard Usheen, whom she had never seen.
Then Usheen was overcome with love for her, but she said that to wed her
he must follow her across the sea to the Island of Perpetual Youth. There
he would have a hundred horses and a hundred sheep and a hundred silken
robes, a hundred swords, a hundred bows, and a hundred youths to follow
him; while she would have a hundred maidens to wait on her. But how, he
asked, was he to reach this island? He was to mount her horse and ride
behind her. So he did this, and the slender white horse, not feeling his
weight, dashed across the waves of the ocean, which did not yield beneath
his tread. They galloped across the very sea, and the maiden, whose name
was Niam, sang to him as they rode, and this so enchantingly that he
scarcely knew whether hours passed or days. Sometimes deer ran by them
over the water, followed by red-eared hounds in full chase; sometimes a
maiden holding up an apple of gold; sometimes a beautiful youth; but they
themselves rode on always westward.

At last they drew near an island which was not, Niam said, the island
they were seeking; but it was one where a beautiful princess was kept
under a spell until some defender should slay a cruel giant who held her
under enchantment until she should either wed him or furnish a defender.
The youth Usheen, being an Irishman and not easily frightened, naturally
offered his services as defender, and they waited three days and nights to
carry on the conflict. He had fought at home--so the legend says--with
wild boars, with foreign invaders, and with enchanters, but he never had
quite so severe a contest as with this giant; but after he had cut off his
opponent's head and had been healed with precious balm by the beautiful
princess, he buried the giant's body in a deep grave and placed above it a
great stone engraved in the Ogham alphabet--in which all the letters are
given in straight lines.

After this he and Niam again mounted the white steed and galloped away
over the waves. Niam was again singing, when soft music began to be heard
in the distance, as if in the centre of the setting sun. They drew nearer
and nearer to a shore where the very trees trembled with the multitude of
birds that sang upon them; and when they reached the shore, Niam gave one
note of song, and a band of youths and maidens came rushing towards them
and embraced them with eagerness. Then they too sang, and as they did it,
one brought to Usheen a harp of silver and bade him sing of earthly joys.
He found himself chanting, as he thought, with peculiar spirit and melody,
but as he told them of human joys they kept still and began to weep, till
at last one of them seized the silver harp and flung it away into a pool
of water, saying, "It is the saddest harp in all the world."

Then he forgot all the human joys which seemed to those happy people only
as sorrows compared with their own; and he dwelt with them thenceforward
in perpetual youth. For a hundred years he chased the deer and went
fishing in strangely carved boats and joined in the athletic sports of the
young men; for a hundred years the gentle Niam was his wife.

But one day, when Usheen was by the beach, there floated to his feet what
seemed a wooden staff, and he drew it from the waves. It was the battered
fragment of a warrior's lance. The blood stains of war were still on it,
and as he looked at it he recalled the old days of the Feni, the wars and
tumult of his youth; and how he had outlived his tribe and all had passed
away. Niam came softly to him and rested against his shoulder, but it did
not soothe his pain, and he heard one of the young men watching him say to
another, "The human sadness has come back into his eyes." The people
around stood watching him, all sharing his sorrow, and knowing that his
time of happiness was over and that he would go back among men. So indeed
it was; Niam and Usheen mounted the white steed again and galloped away
over the sea, but she had warned him when they mounted that he must never
dismount for an instant, for that if he once touched the earth, she and
the steed would vanish forever, that his youth too would disappear, and
that he would be left alone on earth--an old man whose whole generation
had vanished.

They passed, as before, over the sea; the same visions hovered around
them, youths and maidens and animals of the chase; they passed by many
islands, and at last reached the shore of Erin again. As they travelled
over its plains and among its hills, Oisin looked in vain for his old
companions. A little people had taken their place,--small men and women,
mounted on horses as small;--and these people gazed in wonder at the
mighty Usheen. "We have heard," they said, "of the hero Finn, and the
poets have written many tales of him and of his people, the Feni. We have
read in old books that he had a son Usheen who went away with a fairy
maiden; but he was never seen again, and there is no race of the Feni
left." Yet refusing to believe this, and always looking round for the
people whom he had known and loved of old, he thought within himself that
perhaps the Feni were not to be seen because they were hunting fierce
wolves by night, as they used to do in his boyhood, and that they were
therefore sleeping in the daytime; but again an old man said to him, "The
Feni are dead." Then he remembered that it was a hundred years, and that
his very race had perished, and he turned with contempt on the little men
and their little horses. Three hundred of them as he rode by were trying
to lift a vast stone, but they staggered under its weight, and at last
fell and lay beneath it; then leaning from his saddle Usheen lifted the
stone with one hand and flung it five yards. But with the strain the
saddle girth broke, and Usheen came to the ground; the white steed shook
himself and neighed, then galloped away, bearing Niam with him, and Usheen
lay with all his strength gone from him--a feeble old man. The Island of
Youth could only be known by those who dwelt always within it, and those
mortals who had once left it could dwell there no more.



V

BRAN THE BLESSED


The mighty king Bran, a being of gigantic size, sat one day on the cliffs
of his island in the Atlantic Ocean, near to Hades and the Gates of Night,
when he saw ships sailing towards him and sent men to ask what they were.
They were a fleet sent by Matholweh, the king of Ireland, who had sent to
ask for Branwen, Bran's sister, as his wife. Without moving from his rock
Bran bid the monarch land, and sent Branwen back with him as queen.

But there came a time when Branwen was ill-treated at the palace; they
sent her into the kitchen and made her cook for the court, and they caused
the butcher to come every day (after he had cut up the meat) and give her
a blow on the ear. They also drew up all their boats on the shore for
three years, that she might not send for her brother. But she reared a
starling in the cover of the kneading-trough, taught it to speak, and told
it how to find her brother; and then she wrote a letter describing her
sorrows and bound it to the bird's wing, and it flew to the island and
alighted on Bran's shoulder, "ruffling its feathers" (says the Welsh
legend) "so that the letter was seen, and they knew that the bird had been
reared in a domestic manner." Then Bran resolved to cross the sea, but he
had to wade through the water, as no ship had yet been built large enough
to hold him; and he carried all his musicians (pipers) on his shoulders.
As he approached the Irish shore, men ran to the king, saying that they
had seen a forest on the sea, where there never before had been a tree,
and that they had also seen a mountain which moved. Then the king asked
Branwen, the queen, what it could be. She answered, "These are the men of
the Island of the Mighty, who have come hither to protect me." "What is
the forest?" they asked. "The yards and masts of ships." "What mountain is
that by the side of the ships?" "It is Bran my brother, coming to the
shoal water and rising." "What is the lofty ridge with the lake on each
side?" "That is his nose," she said, "and the two lakes are his fierce
eyes."

Then the people were terrified: there was yet a river for Bran to pass,
and they broke down the bridge which crossed it, but Bran laid himself
down and said, "Who will be a chief, let him be a bridge." Then his men
laid hurdles on his back, and the whole army crossed over; and that saying
of his became afterwards a proverb. Then the Irish resolved, in order to
appease the mighty visitor, to build him a house, because he had never
before had one that would hold him; and they decided to make the house
large enough to contain the two armies, one on each side. They accordingly
built this house, and there were a hundred pillars, and the builders
treacherously hung a leathern bag on each side of each pillar and put an
armed man inside of each, so that they could all rise by night and kill
the sleepers. But Bran's brother, who was a suspicious man, asked the
builders what was in the first bag. "Meal, good soul," they answered; and
he, putting his hand in, felt a man's head and crushed it with his mighty
fingers, and so with the next and the next and with the whole two hundred.
After this it did not take long to bring on a quarrel between the two
armies, and they fought all day.

After this great fight between the men of Ireland and the men of the
Isles of the Mighty there were but seven of these last who escaped,
besides their king Bran, who was wounded in the foot with a poisoned dart.
Then he knew that he should soon die, but he bade the seven men to cut off
his head and told them that they must always carry it with them--that it
would never decay and would always be able to speak and be pleasant
company for them. "A long time will you be on the road," he said. "In
Harlech you will feast seven years, the birds of Rhiannon singing to you
all the while. And at the Island of Gwales you will dwell for fourscore
years, and you may remain there, bearing the head with you uncorrupted,
until you open the door that looks towards the mainland; and after you
have once opened that door you can stay no longer, but must set forth to
London to bury the head, leaving it there to look toward France."

So they went on to Harlech and there stopped to rest, and sat down to eat
and drink. And there came three birds, which began singing a certain song,
and all the songs they had ever heard were unpleasant compared with it;
and the songs seemed to them to be at a great distance from them, over the
sea, yet the notes were heard as distinctly as if they were close by; and
it is said that at this repast they continued seven years. At the close of
this time they went forth to an island in the sea called Gwales. There
they found a fair and regal spot overlooking the ocean and a spacious hall
built for them. They went into it and found two of its doors open, but the
third door, looking toward Cornwall, was closed. "See yonder," said their
leader Manawydan; "that is the door we may not open." And that night they
regaled themselves and were joyful. And of all they had seen of food laid
before them, and of all they had heard said, they remembered nothing;
neither of that, nor of any sorrow whatsoever. There they remained
fourscore years, unconscious of having ever spent a time more joyous and
mirthful. And they were not more weary than when first they came, neither
did they, any of them, know the time they had been there. It was not more
irksome for them to have the head with them, than if Bran the Blessed had
been with them himself. And because of these fourscore years, it was
called "The Entertaining of the Noble Head."

One day said Heilwyn the son of Gwyn, "Evil betide me, if I do not open
the door to know if that is true which is said concerning it." So he
opened the door and looked towards Cornwall. And when they had looked they
were as conscious of all the evils they had ever sustained, and of all the
friends and companions they had ever lost, and of all the misery that had
befallen them, as if all had happened in that very spot; and especially of
the fate of their lord. And because of their perturbation they could not
rest, but journeyed forth with the head towards London. And they buried
the head in the White Mount.

The island called Gwales is supposed to be that now named Gresholm, eight
or ten miles off the coast of Pembrokeshire; and to this day the Welsh
sailors on that coast talk of the Green Meadows of Enchantment lying out
at sea west of them, and of men who had either landed on them or seen them
suddenly vanishing. Some of the people of Milford used to declare that
they could sometimes see the Green Islands of the fairies quite
distinctly; and they believed that the fairies went to and fro between
their islands and the shore through a subterranean gallery under the sea.
They used, indeed, to make purchases in the markets of Milford or
Langhorne, and this they did sometimes without being seen and always
without speaking, for they seemed to know the prices of the things they
wished to buy and always laid down the exact sum of money needed. And
indeed, how could the seven companions of the Enchanted Head have spent
eighty years of incessant feasting on an island of the sea, without
sometimes purchasing supplies from the mainland?



VI

THE CASTLE OF THE ACTIVE DOOR

Perfect is my chair in Caer Sidi;
Plague and age hurt not who's in it--
They know, Manawydan and Pryderi.
Three organs round a fire sing before it,
And about its points are ocean's streams
And the abundant well above it--
Sweeter than white wine the drink in it.


Peredur, the knight, rode through the wild woods of the Enchanted Island
until he arrived on clear ground outside the forest. Then he beheld a
castle on level ground in the middle of a meadow; and round the castle
flowed a stream, and inside the castle there were large and spacious halls
with great windows. Drawing nearer the castle, he saw it to be turning
more rapidly than any wind blows. On the ramparts he saw archers shooting
so vigorously that no armor would protect against them; there were also
men blowing horns so loud that the earth appeared to tremble; and at the
gates were lions, in iron chains, roaring so violently that one might
fancy that the castle and the woods were ready to be uprooted. Neither the
lions nor the warriors resisted Peredur, but he found a woman sitting by
the gate, who offered to carry him on her back to the hall. This was the
queen Rhiannon, who, having been accused of having caused the death of her
child, was sentenced to remain seven years sitting by the gate, to tell
her story to every one, and to offer to carry all strangers on her back
into the castle.

But so soon as Peredur had entered it, the castle vanished away, and he
found himself standing on the bare ground. The queen Rhiannon was left
beside him, and she remained on the island with her son Pryderi and his
wife. Queen Rhiannon married for her second husband a person named
Manawydan. One day they ascended a mound called Arberth which was well
known for its wonders, and as they sat there they heard a clap of thunder,
followed by mist so thick that they could not see one another. When it
grew light again, they looked around them and found that all dwellings and
animals had vanished; there was no smoke or fire anywhere or work of human
hands; all their household had disappeared, and there were left only
Pryderi and Manawydan with their wives. Wandering from place to place,
they found no human beings; but they lived by hunting, fishing, and
gathering wild honey. After visiting foreign lands, they returned to their
island home. One day when they were out hunting, a wild boar of pure white
color sprang from a bush, and as they saw him they retreated, and they saw
also the Turning Castle. The boar, watching his opportunity, sprang into
it, and the dogs followed, and Pryderi said, "I will go into this castle
and get tidings of the dogs." "Go not," said Manawydan; "whoever has cast
a spell over this land and deprived us of our dwelling has placed this
castle here." But Pryderi replied, "Of a truth I cannot give up my dogs."
So he watched for the opportunity and went in. He saw neither boar nor
dogs, neither man nor beast; but on the centre of the castle floor he saw
a fountain with marble work around it, and on the margin of the fountain a
golden bowl upon a marble slab, and in the air hung chains, of which he
could see no end. He was much delighted with the beauty of the gold and
the rich workmanship of the bowl and went up to lay hold of it. The moment
he touched it, his fingers clung to the bowl, and his feet to the slab;
and all his joyousness forsook him so that he could not utter a word. And
thus he stood.

Manawydan waited for him until evening, but hearing nothing either of him
or of the dogs, he returned home. When he entered, Rhiannon, who was his
wife and who was also Pryderi's mother, looked at him. "Where," she said,
"are Pryderi and the dogs?" "This is what has happened to me," he said;
and he told her. "An evil companion hast thou been," she said, "and a good
companion hast thou lost." With these words she went out and proceeded
towards the Castle of the Active Door. Getting in, she saw Pryderi taking
hold of the bowl, and she went towards him. "What dost thou here?" she
said, and she took hold of the bowl for herself; and then her hands became
fast to it, and her feet to the slab, and she could not speak a word. Then
came thunder and a fall of mist; thereupon the Castle of the Active Door
vanished and never was seen again. Rhiannon and Pryderi also vanished.

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