Donegal Fairy Tales - McManus Seumas (бесплатные серии книг txt) 📗

The Amadan rubbed his wounds with the iocshlainte, and he was as fresh and hale as when he began the fight; and then he set out, and when night was falling, he reached the hut that had no shelter within or without, only one feather over it, and the rough, red woman was standing in the door.

Right glad she was to see the Amadan coming back alive, and she welcomed him right heartily, and asked him the news.

He told her that he had killed the beggarman, and said he was now under geasa to meet and fight the Silver Cat of the Seven Glens.

“Well,” she said, “I’m sorry for you, for no one ever before went to meet the Silver Cat and came back alive. But,” she says, “you’re both tired and hungry; come in and rest and sleep.”

So in the Amadan went, and had a hearty supper and a soft bed; and in the morning she called him up early, and she gave him directions where to meet the cat and how to find it, and she told him there was only one vital spot on that cat, and it was a black speck on the bottom of the cat’s stomach, and unless he could happen to run his sword right through this, the cat would surely kill him. She said:

“My poor Amadan, I’m very much afraid you’ll not come back alive. I cannot go to help you myself or I would; but there is a well in my garden, and by watching that well I will know how the fight goes with you. While there is honey on top of the well, I will know you are getting the better of the cat; but if the blood comes on top, then the cat is getting the better of you; and if the blood stays there, I will know, my poor Amadan, that you are dead.”

The Amadan bade her good-by, and set out to travel to where the Seven Glens met at the sea. Here there was a precipice, and under the precipice a cave. In this cave the Silver Cat lived, and once a day she came out to sun herself on the rocks.

The Amadan let himself down over the precipice by a rope, and he waited until the cat came out to sun herself.

When the cat came out at twelve o’clock and saw the Amadan, she let a roar out of her that drove back the waters of the sea and piled them up a quarter of a mile high, and she asked him who he was and how he had the impudence to come there to meet her.

The Amadan said: “They call me the Amadan of the Dough, and I have killed Slat Mor, Slat Marr, Slat Beag, the Cailliach of the Rocks and her four badachs, the Black Bull of the Brown Woods, the White Wether of the Hill of the Waterfalls, and the Beggarman of the King of Sweden, and before night I will have killed the Silver Cat of the Seven Glens.”

“That you never will,” says she, “for a dead man you will be yourself.” And at him she sprang.

But the Amadan raised his sword and struck at her, and both of them fell to the fight, and a great, great fight they had. They made the hard ground into soft, and the soft into spring wells; they made the rocks into pebbles, and the pebbles into gravel, and the gravel fell over the country like hailstones. All the birds of the air from the lower end of the world to the upper end of the world, and all the wild beasts and tame from the four ends of the earth, came flocking to see the fight; and if the fights that the Amadan had had on the other days were great and terrible, this one was far greater and far more terrible than all the others put together, and the poor Amadan sorely feared that before night fell he would be a dead man.

The red woman was watching at the well in her garden, and she was sorely distressed, for though at one time the honey was uppermost, at another time it was all blood, and again the blood and the honey would be mixed; so she felt bad for the poor Amadan.

At length the blood and the honey got mixed again, and it remained that. way until night; so she cried, for she believed the Amadan himself was dead as well as the Silver Cat.

And so he was. For when the fight had gone on for long and long, the cat, with a great long nail which she had in the end of her tail, tore him open from his mouth to his toes; and as she tore the Amadan open and he was about to fall, she opened her mouth so wide that the Amadan saw down to the very bottom of her stomach, and there he saw the black speck that the red woman had told him of. And just before he dropped he drove his sword through this spot, and the Silver Cat, too, fell over dead.

It was not long now till the red woman arrived at the place and found both the Amadan and the cat lying side by side dead. At this the poor woman was frantic with sorrow, but suddenly she saw by the Amadan’s side the bottle of iocshlainte and the feather. She took them up and rubbed the Amadan with the iocshlainte, and he jumped to his feet alive and well, and fresh as when he began the fight.

He smothered her with kisses and drowned her with tears. He took the red woman with him, and set out on his journey back, and traveled and traveled on and on till he came to the Castle of Fire.

Here he met the three young princes, who were now living happily with no giants to molest them. They had one sister, the most beautiful young maiden that the Amadan had ever beheld. They gave her to the Amadan in marriage, and gave her half of all they owned for fortune.

The marriage lasted nine days and nine nights. There were nine hundred fiddlers, nine hundred fluters, and nine hundred pipers, and the last day and night of the wedding were better than the first.

Conal and Donal and Taig

ONCE there were three brothers named Conal, Donal and Taig, and they fell out regarding which of them owned a field of land. One of them had as good a claim to it as the other, and the claims of all of them were so equal that none of the judges, whomsoever they went before, could decide in favor of one more than the other.

At length they went to one judge who was very wise indeed and had a great name, and every one of them stated his case to him.

He sat on the bench, and heard Conal’s case and Donal’s case and Taig’s case all through, with very great patience. When the three of them had finished, he said he would take a day and a night to think it all over, and on the day after, When they were all called into court again, the Judge said that he had weighed the evidence on all sides, with all the deliberation it was possible to give it, and he decided that one of them hadn’t the shadow of a shade of a claim more than the others, so that he found himself facing the greatest puzzle he had ever faced in his life.

“But,” says he, “no puzzle puzzles me long. I’ll very soon decide which of you will get the field. You seem to me to be three pretty lazy-looking fellows, and I’ll give the field to whichever of the three of you is the laziest.”

“Well, at that rate,” says Conal, “it’s me gets the field, for I’m the laziest man of the lot.”

“How lazy are you?” says the Judge.

“Well,” said Conal, “if I were lying in the middle of the road, and there was a regiment of troopers come galloping down it, I’d sooner let them ride over me than take the bother of getting up and going to the one side.”

“Well, well,” says the Judge, says he, “you are a lazy man surely, and I doubt if Donal or Taig can be as lazy as that.”

“Oh, faith,” says Donal, “I’m just every bit as lazy.”

“Are you ?” says the Judge. “How lazy are you?”

“Well,” said Donal, “if I was sitting right close to a big fire, and you piled on it all the turf in a townland and all the wood in a barony, sooner than have to move I’d sit there till the boiling marrow would run out of my bones.”

“Well,” says the Judge, “you’re a pretty lazy man, Donal, and I doubt if Taig is as lazy as either of you.”