Celtic Myths

by Flame Tree Studio

  Now there were near the march of the kingdom of the Knight of Riddles three giants, and they were always murdering and slaying some of the knight’s people, and taking spoil from them. On a day of days the Knight of Riddles said to his son-in-law, that if the spirit of a man were in him, he would go to kill the giants, as they were always bringing such losses on the country. Well, so it was, he went and he met the giants, and he came home with the three giants’ heads, and he threw them at the knight’s feet. “Thou art an able lad doubtless, and thy name hereafter is the Hero of the White Shield.” The name of the Hero of the White Shield went far and near.

  Meanwhile the brother of the Hero of the White Shield had wandered afar in many countries, and after long years had come to the land of the giants where the Hero of the White Shield was now dwelling, and the knight’s daughter with him. His brother came and he asked to make a covrag or fight as a bull with him. The men began at each other, and they took to wrestling from morning till evening. At last and at length, when they were tired, weak, and spent, the Hero of the White Shield jumped over a great rampart, and he asked the stranger to meet him in the morning. This leap put the other to shame, and he said to him, “Well may it be that thou wilt not be so supple about this time tomorrow.” The young brother now went to a poor little bothy that was near to the house of the Hero of the White Shield, tired and drowsy, and in the morning they dared the fight again. And the Hero of the White Shield began to go back, till he went backwards into a river. “There must be some of my blood in thee before that was done to me.” “Of what blood art thou?” said the youngest. “’Tis I am son of Ardan, great King of the Albann.” “’Tis I am thy brother.” It was now they knew each other. They gave luck and welcome to each other, and the Hero of the White Shield now took him into the palace, and she it was that was pleased to see him – the knight’s daughter. He stayed a while with them, and after that he thought that he would go home to his own kingdom; and when he was going past a great palace that was there he saw twelve men playing at shinny over against the palace. He thought he would go for a while and play shinny with them; but they were not long playing shinny when they fell out, and the weakest of them caught him and shook him as he would a child. He thought it was no use for him to lift a hand amongst these twelve worthies, and he asked them to whom they were sons. They said they were children of the one father, the brother of the Hero of the White Shield, who had not been heard of for many years. “I am your father,” said he; and he asked them if their mother was alive. They said that she was. He went with them till he found the mother, and he took her home with him and the twelve sons; and I don’t know but that his seed are kings on Alba till this very day.

  Tales of Fairies & Sea-folk

  Introduction

  When darkness fell across the land, and the hush of evening brought sounds that belonged to no mortal man, the time was ripe for fairies and other wee folk to leave their realm and enter our own. Anything strange, complex or perhaps a little frightening must have a cause, and it was these creatures who were held responsible for acts for which no one else would take the blame. The mischievous deeds of the fairies and their compatriots were the cause of much illness and heartache, but by the same token, they could make a hero of a man, and bring roses to the face of a sickly baby. Fairies were dangerous, and folk from the sea could be fierce and unfamiliar, but the infinite battle to live with them provided a formula, a structure for daily existence, when life and death and nature held all the fear of the unknown, and a crying baby, that tapping on the window, the light that glinted over the treetops meant something altogether different.

  MacCodrum’s Seal Wife

  Deep in the cold sea, long before men chanced the waves for the first time, there lived a king and his queen, and their lovely sea-children. The children were elegant, graceful creatures, with deep brown eyes and voices that filled the sea with laughter and song. They dwelt deep in that sea, in happiness and in comfort, and spent days chasing one another through the schools of fish, catching a ride on a tail, hiding in a murky cave, frolicking in the waves that caressed their young bodies and made them strong.

  And so their days were spent, and they were fed and loved by the kindly queen and her husband, who brushed their hair, and stroked their heads, and gave them a home like none other. Until the sad day when the queen became ill and died, and left her children forlorn and lonely, but still with the sea as their home, and the fish, and the warm waves to comfort them. Their voices were softer now, and their music still sweet, but the king was concerned about their uncombed hair, and their unstroked heads, and he began to search for a mother for the sea-children.

  The king found them a mother in a darker part of the sea, where the sun could not light the coral reefs, or dance upon the weeds and the shimmering scales of the fish. The mother was in fact a witch, and she charmed the king with a magic potion that put him under her spell. She came with him to the lighter part of the sea, where the sun kissed the elegant bodies of the sea-children, glowed in their soft brown eyes, and she made her home there, combing their hair, and stroking their heads, but never loving them, and so the friendly waters grew cold, and although the light continued to dance, and the waves lapped at their bodies, the children were sad and downcast.

  And so it was that the witch decided to dispose of these sea-children, and from the depths of her wicked being she created a cruel spell that would rid the sea-children of their elegance and their beauty. She turned them to seals, who could live no longer in the marine palace of their father the king, their graceful limbs replaced by heavy bodies and sleek dark fur. They were to live in the sea for all but one day each year when they could find a secluded shore and transform, for just that day, into children once more.

  But the witch could not rob the children of everything, and although their bodies were ungainly, and they were beautiful children no longer, they re-tained their soft brown eyes, and their music was as pure and mellifluous as the wind in the trees, as the birds who flew above the water.

  Time went on, and the seals grew used to their shiny coats, and to the sea, where they played once again in the waves, and fished, and sang, but they loved too becoming children again, that one day each year, and it was when they had shed their coats, beautiful children once more, that they were seen for the first time by human eyes, those belonging to a fisherman who lived on an isolated rock, a man called Roderic MacCodrum, of the Clan Donald, in the Outer Hebrides.

  On this fateful day he walked to the beach to rig his boat when he heard the sound of exquisite singing, and he hid himself behind some driftwood and watched the delightful dance of the sea-children, who waved arms that were no longer clumsy seal flippers, and who ran with legs that were long and lean. Their soft brown eyes were alight with happiness and never before had Roderic MacCodrum seen such a sight.

  His eyes sparkled. He must have one. And so it was that Roderic MacCodrum stole one of the glistening pelts that lay cast to the side of the beach, and put it above the rafters in his barn, safe from the searching eyes of the young seal woman who came to call.

  The seal woman was elegant and beautiful, her long hair hiding her comely nakedness. She implored him to return her coat to her, but he feigned concern and told her that he knew not where it was. In despair she sat down on his doorstep, her head in her hands, and it was then that he offered her a life on land, as his wife and lover. Because she had no seal skin like her brothers and sisters, and no place to go, she agreed, and so it was that the seal woman came to live with Roderic MacCodrum, where she lived happily, or so it was thought, and bore him many children.

  But the seal woman, or Selkie as she came to be called, had a cold, lonely heart, and although she loved and nurtured her children, and grew to find a kind of peace with her husband, she longed for the waves, for the cold fresh waters of the sea. And she would sit on its shores and she would sing a song that was so haunting, so melancholy that the seals would
come to her here and cease their frolicking to return her unhappy song, to sing with her of times gone by when the waves and the water comforted them and made them strong, when the sun in the lighter part of the sea kissed their elegant bodies and made them gleam with light.

  And then at night she would return to her cottage, and light the peat in the hearth, and make a home for her family, all the while living her life in her dreams of the sea.

  It was her unknowing child who found the beautiful fur coat, fallen from its hiding place in the rafters, where it had remained unseen for all those years, and she brought it to her mother whose eyes glowed with a warmth that none had seen before. Her mother kissed her then, and all her brothers and sisters, and whispered that they must look out for her, for she would be back.

  Roderic MacCodrum of the Seals, as he had come to be known, returned to his cottage that night to find it empty and cold, like the heart of the seal woman he had married, and his children were lined on the beaches, bereft and alone, for their mother had left for the chill waters and she had not come back.

  Their mother never came back, for she had gone with that lustrous fur coat, that gleamed in the light like her soft brown eyes when she saw it. They heard her, though, for from the sea came those same lilting melodies, happier now, to be sure. And they often saw a graceful seal, who came closer to shore than the others, and who seemed to beckon, and in whose presence they felt a strange comfort, a familiar warmth, especially when the sun caught those soft brown eyes they knew so well.

  The Fairies and the Blacksmith

  There once was a blacksmith by the name of Alasdair MacEachern, and he lived in a cottage on the Isle of Islay with his son Neil. They lived alone for the blacksmith’s poor wife had breathed no more than once or twice when Neil was born to them, but Alasdair MacEachern, or Alasdair of the Strong Arm, as he came to be known, found great comfort in his son and they lived contentedly, with familiar habits and routines that brought them much happiness.

  Neil was a slim youth, with unruly hair and eyes that shone with dreams. He was quiet, but easy, and his slight, pale frame gave him the countenance of one weaker than he was. When Neil was but a child the neighbours of Alasdair MacEachern had warned the blacksmith of the fairies who lived just over the knoll, the fairies who would find one so slight and dreamy a perfect prize for their Land of Light. And so it was that each night Alasdair MacEachern hung above the door to his cottage a branch of rowan, a charm against the fairies who might come to steal away his son.

  They lived many years this way, until the day came when Alasdair MacEachern had to travel some distance, sleeping the night away from his cottage and his son. Before he left, he warned his son about the rowan branch, and Neil agreed to put it in its place above the door that night. Neil loved the green grass of the hills, and to breathe in the crisp, sunlit air of the banks of the streams that trickled through their land, but he loved more his life with his father and his work on the forge. He had no wish for a life of dancing and eternal merriment in the Land of Light.

  And so it was that Neil wished his father a fond farewell, swept the cottage, tended to the goats and to the chickens, and made himself a feast of corn-bread and oatcakes, and goat’s cheese and milk, and took himself to the soft green grass of the hills, and walked there by the sunlit banks of the streams until dark fell upon him. And then Neil returned to his cottage next to the forge, and he swept the crumbs from his pockets, and tended to the goats and to the chickens, and laid himself in his tiny box-bed in the corner of the room, by the roaring hearth, and fell fast asleep. Not once had the thought of the branch of rowan crept across his sleepy mind.

  It was late in the afternoon when Alasdair of the Strong Arm returned to his cottage, and he found the hearth quite cold, and the floor unswept, and the goats and the chickens untended. His son was there, for he answered his father’s call, but there was no movement from his box-bed in the corner and Alasdair crossed the room with great concern.

  “I am ill, Father,” said a small, weak voice, and there laid the body of Neil, yellowed and shrunk, hardly denting his meagre mattress.

  “But how ... how could, in just one day ...” Alasdair stared with shock at his son, for he smelled old, of decay, and his skin was like charred paper, folded and crisp and creased. But it was his son, no doubt, for the shape and the face were the same. And Neil laid like this for days on end, changing little, but eating steadily, his appetite strange and fathomless. And it was because of this strange illness that Alasdair MacEachern paid a visit to a wiseman, who came at once to the bedside of Neil, for he was a boy well regarded by his neighbours.

  The wiseman looked only once at Neil, and drew the unhappy blacksmith outside the cottage. He asked many questions and then he was quiet. When he finally spoke his words were measured, and his tone quite fearful. The blood of Alasdair MacEachern ran cold.

  “This is not your son Neil,” said the man of knowledge. “He has been carried off by the Little People and they have left a changeling in his place.”

  “Alas, then, what can I do?” The great blacksmith was visibly trembling now, for Neil was as central to his life as the fiery heat of the forge itself. And then the wiseman spoke, and he told Alasdair MacEachern how to proceed.

  “You must first be sure that is a changeling lying in the bed of Neil, and you must go back to the cottage and collect as many egg shells as you can, filling them with water and carrying them as if they weighed more than ten tons of iron and bricks. And then, arrange them round the side of the fire where the changeling can see you. His words will give him away.”

  So Alasdair MacEachern gathered together the shells of twenty eggs and did as he was bidden, and soon a thin voice called out from his son’s bed, “In all of my eight hundred years I have never seen such a sight.” And with a hoot and a cackle, the changeling sank back into the bed.

  Alasdair returned to the wiseman and confirmed what had taken place. The old man nodded his head.

  “It is indeed a changeling and he must be disposed of, before you can bring back your son. You must follow these steps: light a large, hot fire in the centre of the cottage, where it can be easily seen by the changeling. And then, when he asks you “What’s the use of that”, you must grab him by the shirtfront, and thrust him deep into the fire. Then he’ll fly through the roof of the cottage.”

  Alasdair of the Strong Arm did as requested, certain now that that wizened, strange creature was not his son, and as the fire began to roar, the voice called out, reedy and slim, “What’s the use of that?” at which the brave blacksmith seized the body that lay in Neil’s bed and placed it firmly in the flames. There was a terrible scream, and the changeling flew straight through the roof, a sour yellow smoke all that remained of him.

  And so Alasdair MacEachern cleared away the traces of the fire, and returned once more to the man of knowledge, for it was time to find his son, and he could delay no longer.

  The wiseman bade him go to fetch three things: a Bible, a sword, and a crow-ing cock. He was to follow the stream that trickled through their land to the grassy green knoll where the fairies danced and played eternally. On the night of the next full moon, that hill would open, and it was through this door that Alasdair must go to seek his son.

  It was many days before the moon had waned, and then waxed again, but it stood, a gleaming beacon in the sky at last, and Alasdair MacEachern collected together his sword and his Bible and his crowing cock and set out for the green knoll where the fairies danced. And as the moon rose high in the sky, and lit the shadowy land, a door burst open in the hill, spilling out laughter and song and a bright light that blazed like the fire in the hearth of the blacksmith’s cottage. And it was into that light and sound that the courageous Alasdair MacEachern stepped, firmly thrusting his sword into the frame of the door to stop it closing, for no fairy can touch the sword of a mortal man.

  There, at a steaming forge, stood h
is son, as small and as wild-looking as the little folk themselves. He worked silently, absorbed in his labours, and started only when he heard the voice of his father.

  “Release my son from this enchantment,” shouted Alasdair MacEachern, holding the Bible high in the air, for fairies have no power over mortals who hold the good Lord’s book, and they stood back now, cross and foiled.