THE DEATH OF COHOOLIN
Three monstrous brothers and their three crooked sisters, all of the same age, travelled over the world between Ireland and Babylon, learning magic to destroy Cohoolin. He had killed Calatin their father and their twenty-seven hideous brothers, in battle; they wanted revenge, and it was Queen Maeve of Connaught who counselled them to study magic in order to obtain it. They listened to the spells and read the books of all the wizards who lived in the forests and caves and cities of the world. They went down to Hell itself, and brought back with them three swords, three knives, and three spears, the most poisonous that ever were; and it was said that with these they would destroy three kings.
While these brothers and sisters blinked in the darkness, thinking and thinking how to fight Cohoolin by magic, Queen Maeve set against him others who fought with swords. There were the kings of North Munster, of Tara, and of Leinster, and many others whose fathers he had slain. They invaded Ulster at a time when all its warriors except Cohoolin lay under enchantment, and could not fight. His friends begged him to wait, but he was not willing, because he knew that he was a match for any of the kings, and as for poisonous Calatin's poisonous brood of monsters he feared them no more than toads or bats. He did not know, what his friends knew, that if he fought now he was certain to die. He knew that he could only die once, and that was on the day appointed by fate; until then he could go on conquering. Nevertheless, the men and women who loved him pleaded and implored him, and for two days they kept him from fighting, but only with difficulty. They had the help of the sweetest singers and the most noble poets. The women danced in their loveliest dresses before him; the poets chanted for him poems that made words stronger and more beautiful than anything else in the world of men or Nature; the melodies of the singers must have been woven by magic, because they were as pure and sweet as flowers, and yet they were full of the feeling which is in the speech of mothers, of children, of friends, and of lovers, So Cohoolin sat down, and they tempted him with wine and delicious food. But they could never be sure that the dance, or poem, or song, or wine would not excite him to do exactly what they wished him not to do. At one moment these things soothed him, at another they stirred him. He listened to a song, and his thoughts became happy, but gradually floated away altogether from the cause of the song, and he would stand and look as if King Ere of Tara were within a sword's length of him.
One maiden sang about the hosts of faery. They carry white shields with devices of silver, glittering swords and mighty blue horns. Their bands of pale curly-headed warriors march amid blue spears before their fair chieftain. They scatter their enemies, and every land they invade they leave desolate. It is no wonder their strength is great, for they are all sons of queens and kings; they have manes of beautiful golden-yellow upon their heads, smooth comely bodies, teeth like crystal, and fine red lips. They are good at slaughter; they make good songs, and sing them sweetly; and they are clever at games of skill. At the sound of the word 'horns', Cohoolin's mind began to travel joyfully through forests echoing with the horns of his companions, and so it wandered until he heard the words, 'They are good at slaughter.' At this he cried, as if he had been thinking of nothing else, 'Then let them know their better', and he lifted his sword and made strokes in the air such as might have drawn blood from the wind, or made a sunbeam shriek out, and the singer fled away. Or if the wine calmed him, he felt himself going off into useless sloth, and shame roused him to think of action; no enemy appearing then could have escaped him.
It was not only his own love of battle and hate of idleness that had to be overcome by song and dance and poem, and the presence of friend and lover. Often when he seemed to be swooning pleasantly in the music, like a wasp in honey, he could hear noises of battle. These were not sounds recalled by memory, for clear as these often were, there was a difference between them and the real clamour of swords on shields, of chariot wheels and trumpets, and men in fury or agony. He thought that the kings were ravaging Ulster. Those thunders were their chariots—he leapt to the door. There they were, burning the houses and crops of the men of Ulster, carrying off their cattle. 'Why do you stay here?' he cried to those around him. 'Yonder is the enemy! Charge, men of Ulster!' and he charged out into the midst of the host that he saw, and slew right and left. But he drew no blood, and left not a corpse on the earth. 'They are the enchantments of Calatin's children,' said his friends. 'The King of Tara would never venture so near. These are fairy warriors, made by incantation out of thistle-down, puff-balls, and withered leaves. They are nothing, and they can do nothing. Shall they alarm Cohoolin? Is Ulster afraid of thistle-down? Will Cohoolin go out to fight with puff-balls, and waste his strength on withered leaves? As to the children of Calatin, thou canst no more fight with them than with gnats.'
'Fight with the children of Calatin?' he exclaimed. 'There are but six of them, all born at one birth, like rats, and did I not fight against their twenty-seven brothers and their father all together?'
He was ashamed when he knew that he had been valiant against phantoms, and he turned from these enchantments to those of singers and poets. He heard them singing and chanting of men who were now, as he would be some day, kept alive on the lips of men by fame after death. He tried to think what it would be like to be dead, and to be known only in a song or poem. But when he had thought how glorious to have beautiful maidens singing, and noble poets writing poems about him, he could think no further, and therefore it seemed to him as good to be famous after death as it was to do deeds worthy of fame. Yet to sit there, listening to music, was not worthy of fame, and up he leapt in a rage that the trumpets of the three kings should be sounding just outside. They were about to attack this very house when Cohoolin emerged. At sight of him they turned their chariots, and drove away. Furiously he pursued them until he came in sight of a far larger army beyond a river. This was the real army of the three hostile kings, and in an hour he would have been amongst them had he continued the chase. Now, however, he saw a small band of Ulster men approaching him on their way to Conachoor, and they were right in the path of the flying enemy. Yet neither did these few men slip aside out of the way of the host, nor did the host take notice of the men, but kept on in its flight. The Ulster men were hid among them for a moment, and then reappeared as if they had passed through smoke. Cohoolin shouted to them, 'Follow them, follow!' but they took no notice, and when he came nearer they asked in astonishment, 'Is it thy shadow thou art chasing, Cohoolin, for lack of an enemy?'
'I chase the host which ye have passed through.'
'We have seen no one for an hour, Cohoolin. Thou hast been listening too much to the poets and singers, so that thou canst not tell the difference between a few words and a man with a sword.'
He returned to the house. Once again he tried to look out, because the enemy seemed to be whispering at every inch of the walls and roof in the darkness; but the venerable druids surrounded him, and told him that it was magic only, and that there was not enough of the enemy to shake the bee out of the blossom.
Early on the next morning, Conachoor called together the druids and singers and poets, and the friends and lovers of Cohoolin, and asked them how they were going to keep him from the fight that day, and, still weary from the past day, all of them answered that they knew no way. Wherefore Conachoor advised them to take the hero into the Deaf Glen, where he could escape the sounds of enchantment. This was a glen so cut off from the remainder of the earth, that if all the men of Ireland were gathered close to it and yelled their war cries no one within could hear anything. They had already tried to persuade him into the glen, but in vain. Cathbad the Druid stood close to Cohoolin, and invited him to come to a feast in the Deaf Glen. Niav the golden-haired knelt beside him and kissed him and asked him to come; and she was one whom he never used to refuse. Again Cathbad spoke, and Cohoolin said:
'Shall I be feasting while all Ireland is preparing against Ulster, and I alone of the chiefs am free from the magic? If ye had not spoilt me, I would have killed those kings and scattered their armies before now.'
As he spoke he seemed to be listening to something. Then his wife Emer said to him:
'O my first love and all men's darling, favourite of the poets of Erin, come with me and with Niav and Cathbad to the feast.'
Cathbad reminded him that it was unlucky for him not to accept an invitation to a feast. He rose up, therefore, but with a sick heart, and went in with them to the Deaf Glen.
'The enemy,' he moaned, 'will say that I came hitherto escape from them.'
'But they will not believe it,' said Cathbad.
He had got ready a vast mansion within the glen. At one end sat Cohoolin, with the poets on his right and Niav and the other women on his left; at the opposite end the singers and harpers and dancers performed; and it was full of laughter and music and glad faces. Outside stood Cohoolin's two horses, the Grey of Macha and the black, tended by his charioteer, Laegh the son of Riangabar.
At daybreak the daughters of Calatin came looking for Cohoolin; but they could not find him anywhere in Emania. Then they rose up into the air and flew this way and that like buzzards, their wings moaning and making a wind that supported them. They flew for a long time until the two horses standing in the glen betrayed Cohoolin. As on the day before, the witches took thistle-down and puff-balls and dead leaves and made them into an army covering the hills and valleys round about. Where a moment before there had been nothing, now armed men were swarming. It was as when a man turns up a spadeful of earth and suddenly all is alive with ants. This multitude shrieked and made all the sounds of battle, of men conquering and being conquered, of the angry and the wretched, of horns and trumpets, of women weeping over the horrible things they saw or dreaded, of children sobbing, of goblins and all inhuman things that haunt wild places and neighbourhoods of war and death. The glen was as full of this tumult as water is of wetness, and the women in the hall raised their voices to keep it from Cohoolin. Nevertheless he heard it and deemed it the triumphant enemy and his dying countrymen; surely now the time of battle had come. But Cathbad told him these noises were mockeries made by Calatin's children. The singers sang, the poets chanted, the dancers danced. The witches grew weary of their useless enchantments, and one of them named Bibe thought of another deceit. Changing herself into the form of one of Niav's attendants she called to her mistress and, when Niav came out with her women, lured them away and bewitched them and lost them in the glen. Next she took the shape of Niav herself, for she knew that it was Niav who had made Cohoolin promise not to attack the men of Erin without her permission.
'Cohoolin,' she said, 'Ulster is being laid waste and the people will blame me because thou gavest me a promise not to go out against the enemy. I release thee. Go quickly and scatter them.'
'It is hard to know what a woman means,' said Cohoolin, ' but a little time past and what thou desiredst above all other things was that I should not fight.'
As he rose up the edge of his mantle was under one foot and he was jerked back again into his seat. Red with shame he sprang up a second time, and the force of the spring shot his gold mantle pin up to the roof, and falling down it entered his foot. 'The pin is a foe,' he said, 'but the cloak was a friend, warning me. I know what is to happen.' He stepped swiftly outside into the air. The women and the poets crowded round him, but no one could stop him now. He called to Laegh and bade him make ready the chariot. The witch disappeared. Now Niav herself spoke to him, saying: 'I would not have given thee leave to go, not for the world; it was one of Calatin's daughters who took my shape and deceived thee. O Cohoolin, stay with us, stay with me.' He could not believe her, and he repeated his orders to Laegh. The horses knew better; they refused to be caught. The Grey of Macha, who used always to come up at the shaking of the reins, now ran away, shedding tears of blood. Cohoolin himself ran after him, but not until Laegh had come round on the other side could he be caught.
Cohoolin would not stay for farewells. He leapt into his chariot and at once set out, though it seemed to him a sign of evil that his weapons fell down from their places when he mounted. Among the weapons were the three spears brought up from Hell by Calatin's children.
On the green of Emania he saw horses and armed men in thousands equipped for battle. He could hear the shouting of plunderers, and saw smoke darkening the sky, and flames making a witches' daylight. Presently he saw foemen upon the roof of the palace itself—they were murdering Emer—they tossed her out—everywhere there were flames, and he cried out bitterly because he had been kept back. Cathbad caught him up and told him that these men were made out of an old woman's apronful of dead leaves. 'But I also am enchanted,' muttered Cohoolin. 'Was I myself made out of more than a dead leaf? O Cathbad, go and preach to the unenchanted.' He hastened to Emer's bower. There she sat, as fresh and quiet as a newly opened flower, but shedding tears for him. She asked him to enter, but he would not.
'Look at the enemy!' he said, 'and there is only me to oppose them.'
'They are phantoms, Cohoolin, such as even I could oppose.'
'Girl, I will never stop until I have assaulted the enemy.'
His mother, Dectora, tried to keep him back, or at least to wait until his cousin Conall the Victorious could join him.
'No,' he said, 'if I am to die then I cannot hide away from death. If I am not to die nothing can hurt me. In any case, what is there to fear? I have been through more than I believe I shall ever see again, and I never feared it nor do I now think that there was cause to fear. If my time has come it is not friendly to keep me back to die under a roof. And fame outlives life.'
All wailed for him as he departed with only Cathbad in his company.
At the first ford they saw a slender maiden with yellow hair and body as white as milk bending over the water. She was weeping as she washed and wrung out the blood from garments that were all crimson.
'Do you see that, Cohoolin?' said Cathbad. 'That is Bibe's daughter. It is thy garments she is washing out, and by that thou mayst know what will be the end of fighting for thee to-day.'
'Be not troubled, Cathbad. What if this daughter of a witch be washing blood out of those garments? Maybe they belong to those who are to perish by this sword and spear. But whatever be the truth, do not strive to make me as unhappy as thou art at my going. For if unhappiness makes me dull I shall get no glory, and still I must die. Cathbad, I know as well as thou, that today I shall die. Now farewell. Carry my salutes to Ulster, to the King and to Emer. Long life and health to them! I shall never see them again. This parting is a pitiful thing, and I think now of the many joyful days on foreign hills after long fighting when I have turned my face homeward towards Emer.'
Leaving Cathbad behind, Cohoolin drove alone into the midst of the enemy on the plain of Muirhevna. They saw him coming from afar off, bright like a little cornfield which the sun singles out from all others on a grey day. His sword shone bright, and a light hovered over his head. With spear and sword he reaped his way among the enemy like a reaper who is paid by the acre. The plain was covered with dead men.
The sons of Calatin had prophesied that Cohoolin's spears should slay three kings, and this made King Erc of Tara think of a trick to play on him. When Cohoolin had been lured to cast his spear at a common man, one of the enemy named Lugaid seized it.
'What shall this kill?' he asked the sons of Calatin.
'A king,' they said.
Then he hurled it and it struck Laegh, the charioteer, so that he died.
Cohoolin hurled the second spear and it was caught by Erc after it had passed through ten men.
'What shall this kill?' he asked the sons of Calatin.
'A king,' they said.
'Did ye not say the other would kill a king?'
'Yes, and it was true. It killed the king of the charioteers of Ireland.'
Then Erc threw it and struck the grey horse so that never would it again pull the chariot. Cohoolin drew out the spear, bidding his friend farewell, and the Grey went away down into the Grey Pool near by.
A third time Cohoolin hurled a spear and Lugaid caught it.
'What shall this kill?' he asked the sons of Calatin.
'A king,' they said.
' Did ye not say it would kill a king this morning when Erc threw it?'
'And so it did. The king was the Grey of Macha, king of the horses of Erin,' they answered.
Lugaid took aim with the third spear at Cohoolin and the aim was true, so that the black horse took flight, knowing that his master would certainly die. He got down from his chariot to drink at the lake, and when he had drunk he bound himself with his belt to a stone pillar, to make sure that he would be standing up when he died. In a little while there he died, but so quietly that his enemies did not know. They found him standing there horribly wounded but calm-faced, and they dared not approach him. For a time also the Grey of Macha protected him; roaming about while dying he had returned and taken his stand beside the pillar; and he slew many men with teeth and hoofs. But the birds were not afraid of him, and they perched on his master's shoulder.
'Aha!' said Erc, 'that used not to be a perching place for birds, but for Emer's head,' and Lugaid knowing now that his life was gone, smote his head off and bore it homeward. But the army of Ulster was not far behind. The magic sleep had left them and they were ready for battle. Conall the Victorious was hurrying before them to help Cohoolin, when he met the Grey of Macha, and the horse led him to the hero's body. At sight of the horse weeping he could not keep back his tears. Then he rode away, and before that day was over he fulfilled his vow that he would avenge Cohoolin's death, for he took away from Lugaid both his head and his kingdom.