One woman said: "'I must have a bird of these birds on each of my two shoulders.' 'We must all have the same,' said the other women. 'If any one is to get them, it is I that must first get them,' said Eithne Inguba, who loved Cuchulain. 'What shall we do?' said the women. 'It is I will tell you that,' said Levarcham, 'for I will go to Cuchulain from you to ask him to get them.'"
So she went to Cuchulain and said: '"The women of Ulster desire that you will get these birds for them.' Cuchulain put his hand upon his sword as if to strike her, and he said: 'Have the idle women of Ulster nothing better to do than to send me catching birds today?' 'It is not for you,' said Levarcham, 'to be angry with them; for there are many of them are half blind today with looking at you, from the greatness of their love for you.'"
After this Cuchulain catches the birds and divides them amongst the women, and to every woman there are two birds, but when he comes to his mistress, Eithne Inguba, he has no birds left. '"It is vexed you seem to be,' he said, 'because I have given the birds to the other women.' 'You have good reason for that,' she said, 'for there is not a woman of them but would share her love and her friendship with you; while as for me no person shares my love but you alone.'" Cuchulain promises her whatever birds come, and presently there come two birds who are linked together with a chain of gold and "singing soft music that went near to put sleep on the whole gathering." Cuchulain went in their pursuit, though Eithne and his charioteer tried to dissuade him, believing them enchanted. Twice he casts a stone from his sling and misses, and then he throws his spear but merely pierces the wing of one bird. Thereupon the birds dive and he goes away in great vexation, and he lies upon the ground and goes to sleep, and while he sleeps two women come to him and put him under enchantment. In the Connacht stories the enchantment begins with a stroke, or with a touch from some person of faery and it is so the women deal with Cuchulain. "The woman with the green cloak went up to him and smiled at him and she gave him a stroke of a rod. The other went up to him then and smiled at him and gave him a stroke in the same way; and they went on doing this for a long time, each of them striking him in turn till he was more dead than alive. And then they went away and left him there." The men of Ulster found him and they carried him to a house and to a bed and there helay till the next November came round. They were sitting about the bed when a strange man came in and sat amongst them. It was the God, Ængus, and he told how Cuchulain could be healed. A king of the other world, Labraid, wished for Cuchulain's help in a war, and if he would give it, he would have the love of Fand the wife of the sea god Manannan. The women who gave him the strokes of the rods were Fand and her sister Liban, who was Labraid's wife. They had sought his help as the Connacht faeries will ask the help of some good hurler. Were they too like our faeries "shadows" until they found it? When the god was gone, Cuchulain awoke, and Conahar, the King of Ulster, who had been watching by his bedside, told him that he must go again to the rock where the enchantment was laid upon him. He goes there and sees the woman with the green cloak. She is Liban and pleads with him that he may accept the love of Fand and give his help to Labraid. If he will only promise, he will become strong again. Cuchulain will not go at once but sends his charioteer into the other world. When he has his charioteer's good report, he consents, and wins the fight for Labraid and is the lover of Fand. In the Connacht stories a wife can sometimes get back her husband by throwing some spell-breaking object over the heads of the faery cavalcade that keeps him spellbound. Emir, in much the same way, recovers her husband Cuchulain, for she and her women go armed with knives to the yew tree upon Baile's strand where he had appointed a meeting with Fand and outface Fand and drive her away.
We have here certainly a story of trance and of the soul leaving the body, but probably after it has passed through the minds of story-tellers who have forgotten its original meaning. There is no mention of any one taking Cuchulain's place, but Prof. Rhys in his reconstruction of the original form of the story of "Cuchulain and the Beetle of Forgetfulness," a visit also to the other world, makes the prince who summoned him to the adventure take his place in the court of Ulster. There are many stories belonging to different countries, of people whose places are taken for a time by angels or spirits or gods, the best known being that of the nun and the Virgin Mary, and all may have once been stories of changelings and entranced persons. Pwyll and Arawyn in the Mabinogion change places for a year, Pwyll going to the court of the dead in the shape of Arawyn to overcome his enemies, and Arawyn going to the court of Dyved. Pwyll overcomes Arawyn'senemies with one blow and the changeling's rule at Dyved was marvellous for its wisdom. In all these stories strength comes from men and wisdom from among gods who are but shadows. I have read somewhere of a Norse legend of a false Odin that took the true Odin's place, when the sun of summer became the wintry sun. When we say a man has had a stroke of paralysis or that he is touched we refer perhaps to a once universal faery belief.
Note40. I suppose this woman who was glad to "pick a bit of what was in the pigs' trough" had passed along the roads in a state of semi-trance, living between two worlds. Boehme had for seven days what he called a walking trance that began by his gazing at a gleam of light on a copper pot and in that trance truth fell upon him "like a bursting shower."
Note41. A village beauty of Bally Lee. Raftery praised her in lines quoted in myCeltic Twilight, and Lady Gregory speaks of her in her essay on Raftery inPoets and Dreamers.
Note42. An old, second-sighted servant to an uncle of mine used to say that dreams were no longer true "when the sap began to rise" and when I asked her how she knew that, she said; "What is the use of having an intellect unless you know a thing like that."
Note43. "In the faeries" is plainly a misspeaking of the old phrase "in faery" that is to say "in glamour" "under enchantment." The word "faery" as used for an individual is a modern corruption. The right word is "fay."
Note44. The sudden filling of the air by a sweet odour is a common event of the Séance room. It is mentioned several times in the "Diary" of Stanton Moses.
FOOTNOTES:[1]I have modernized the old lowland Scotch in these quotations fromPitcairn's Criminal Trials.[2]Since writing the above the authors ofAn Adventurehave shown me a mass of letters proving that they spoke of the visions to various correspondents before the corroboration, and showing the long and careful research that the corroboration involved.W. B. Y.October, 1918.
[1]I have modernized the old lowland Scotch in these quotations fromPitcairn's Criminal Trials.
[1]I have modernized the old lowland Scotch in these quotations fromPitcairn's Criminal Trials.
[2]Since writing the above the authors ofAn Adventurehave shown me a mass of letters proving that they spoke of the visions to various correspondents before the corroboration, and showing the long and careful research that the corroboration involved.W. B. Y.October, 1918.
[2]Since writing the above the authors ofAn Adventurehave shown me a mass of letters proving that they spoke of the visions to various correspondents before the corroboration, and showing the long and careful research that the corroboration involved.
W. B. Y.
October, 1918.
Transcriber's Notes:Obvious punctuation and spelling errors have been fixed throughout.Inconsistent hyphenation is as in the original.