Old Friends: The Lost Tales of Fionn Mac Cumhaill

by Tom O'Neill

  ‘From who, Mam?’ asked Arthur again. ‘Who has been giving you advice? It’s Trevor Saltee, isn’t it?’

  ‘That would free you and me up to go back living normal lives.’

  ‘I don’t want to live a normal life, whatever that is,’ said Arthur. ‘It’s him, isn’t it? I don’t want him around the place. He’s a sneak. Did you know he’s been snooping through Connie’s stuff?’

  ‘Trevor?’ She did sound a little surprised.

  ‘Yes. He was here the other day. Nosing around the tractor shed.’

  She paused for a minute. Then she switched to the autopilot voice she used whenever she didn’t want to think about something anymore.

  ‘I’m sure he meant no harm. He’s been very helpful to me. He probably…he maybe just wanted to see what new machinery he would need to put in, when he takes over the running of the place.’

  Take over. So that was it, that’s what Saltee had been after all along.

  ‘What does it mean, a lease? Does it mean he’ll have the yard and the milk quota and all?’

  ‘Yes. Well, he’d need it to be able to run the farm, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘And we’d only have the house here then?’

  ‘More or less, with a bit of garden, I suppose. But he’s a reasonable man. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind us using one or two sheds for storage or to keep your two calves in.’

  ‘What about the garden at the back where I keep Niamh?’

  ‘That’s a field, I’m afraid, Arthur, and so it goes with the farm.’

  Arthur felt like he was going to go mad. ‘What does Connie say? Have you even asked him? If you had to rent it out he would rather it be to anyone else in the county.’

  ‘It’s not really his call, Arty, since he’s not here to help,’ said his mother. ‘Trev says he’ll drain and level the lower bog, and make the whole place more productive, which he says Connie was advised to do years ago but never got around to.’

  ‘Where the rath is?’ Arthur asked. ‘You can’t do that. You can’t level a rath, Mam. It would... it would cause... great misfortune.’ He sounded, even to himself, like a helpless child.

  ‘Oh, those are only old pisreógs, Trevor says. I just need to get more on top of our situation. I have little enough time at home and I’m fed up of it being consumed with mountains of regulations, records, surveys, official paperwork and inspections from the department.’

  Arthur could see she had her jaw set and she was fixed on her course. She found decisions hard to reach and, when she had made them, hard to break.

  This was the worst thing yet; the worst possible thing. He just looked away from her. His anger was gone.

  She put her head on his shoulder the way he used to put his on hers when he was shorter.

  She said, ‘It’s the best thing, dear. You’ll see in time.’

  Arthur went over and lay down in front of the Aga, next to the dogs. He started rubbing Pumpkin.

  ‘Look, I can see you are not wanting to go to school today. How about I just give you a sick note for this one day. I’ll phone the secretary to say you’ve still got that cough. I can drop you over at your friend Cash’s place and you can hang out there for a while. That might do you good.’

  Arthur didn’t move. He just felt like he was going under water and a numb quietness was coming back over him. The same as before.

  ‘Well, look, love, we’ll talk about it more later then. I’ll just leave you to walk over to David Cash’s place when you’ve given the dogs a good mind. Maybe you could take them out for a walk first. You’ll still need to do all kinds of chores like that, you know.’

  When she left, he rolled over on the floor and stared at the smoky ceiling. He lay there for a long time. Then he headed out and went around the fields for a few hours. He stared for a long time into the Brown River. It looked cold and muddy after yesterday’s rain.

  His mother was home before five, long before he expected her. She had brought a stack of chocolate cookies, doughnuts and coke. The last time they had eaten this kind of grub together was the day she had had to tell him about moving from Cork. They ate in silence.

  He asked her later if he could borrow her laptop to play Fallout. When he brought it back, she was still sitting where he had left her, at the table with her head in her hands.

  She said, ‘I’m sorry, Arthur. It’s the only way.’

  Arthur said goodnight and leant over her chair to give her a kiss on the forehead.

  That was the first time since the Black Wind that he had no fear. In fact, he would even have welcomed any dark force he met there. Because the truth is, he started wishing, or maybe deciding, that when he entered the rath today, he would never come back out of it.

  The only force he met was a kindly one. He didn’t need to say anything. The Old Man put his great arm around Arthur’s shoulder again and Arthur felt that he was being lifted back into the clear air where he could breathe without feeling sick in his stomach.

  The Old Man said, ‘You don’t feel like talking today, but that’s alright.’

  Then he did a strange thing. He laid Arthur down on the thick layer of leaves that floored the rath. Etain arrived with a much larger chalice than usual and held it to his lips.

  Soon he was in another place, in an even more comfortable bed. He sat up and looked around him, confused. He was on a thick cushion of moss and heather. There were rocks all around him, giving shelter from a harsh wind. In every direction the ground fell away, covered in sheets of purple-flowering heather. He was just under the top of a mountain. Nothing in any direction seemed as tall. He knew it. Sliabh na mBan. He had been here once with Connie.

  Standing a distance away, at the very top of the mountain was the Old Man. His long robe and sheepskin shawl were pasted against him by the fierce wind. As well as the beautiful sword, he had the battered bronze shield with a ruby heart. He was surveying the terrain in every direction. When he came over to Arthur he sat next to him on the heather and started talking about a young soldier.

  On this day, his visits into the world of the Old Man and all his histories started to run together and the rest – school, home – disappeared altogether.

  The Bear Who Would Be King

  There once was another Art who left an impression on the Fianna. Regrettably, it wasn’t an exceptionally good one. He was a young fellow who came here to train with the Fianna for a while. Art meant ‘bear’ in his language and he was given that name because, from early on, he looked remarkably like a bear from the forests of Gaul. He was short, hairy and built like a boulder.

  The place that he came from was a small, isolated mountain domain within the land of Móna, not far across the water. That pocket of Móna was controlled by the great queen Angharad. Angharad had a gift for leading people. Her kindness and warm-heartedness had a way of opening people to her. She ruled by the consent of the majority of her own people. And she naturally forged friendships and trust with leaders in neighbouring territories, ensuring that Móna never had immediate enemies. In the peaceful situation she had created, she hadn’t seen a need for taking resources from her people to feed and equip an army.

  As with most people, her weakness was related to her strength. Her ability to find whatever bit of goodness lay in people’s hearts, and to nourish that, worked well generally. Most people, when they found someone who thought well of them, didn’t want to disappoint that person. And in that way Angharad would inspire people to rise above themselves. That’s all lovely and good. However, wasps can make their way into that particular churn of buttermilk. What Angharad was not able to understand was that there are some people who either possess no nugget of good nature at all or have it so well buried that it is unreachable. By not understanding that, Angharad was always exposed to treachery.

  Angharad, who was a cousin of Cormac’s mother, had sent a message to Cormac requesting that this young man, Art, be allowed to train with the Fianna. She made the request as a favour to the boy’s father, who was
a dear friend. The boy had his heart set on soldiering and had complained that he couldn’t learn much from Angharad’s small group of unarmed guards – men and women who had never seen combat.

  High-minded Angharad never even wondered whether there might be any reasons, other than youthful whim, that Art was so bent on training with men who were not so fortunate as Angharad’s defenders –the men of the Fianna had been led into many arguments that had been settled with blood and metal rather than talk and compromise, had partaken in wars with all manner of opponents.

  Art had some good in him. He was clever. He was a surprisingly good athlete for his short stature, mostly excelling at lifting and throwing heavy rocks. He had natural aggression and took easily to weapons both in training and in competitions.

  Very soon he was one of the best young men in the Fianna. What he lacked in deft defence with a shield he compensated for by being such a ferocious, roaring attacker, ensuring that his opponent was the one needing the shield. What he lacked in speed with a sword he made up for with the deadly force of his blow whenever he did make contact. He was fond of a hatchet, which was a terrible instrument in the hands of such a burly man. And with a spear he excelled in both accuracy and propulsion. In games of strategy, where the teams of young men were sent into the forest to try to outwit the others, he did very well too, coming up with some very cunning schemes to get to his goal first. Even if that meant crossing a river in flood, or spending several nights alone in a forest that was patrolled by a dangerous injured boar or a bad-tempered fear dearg, he would find a way to see it through.

  For all that time, he never showed any bad character. He was competitive, right enough. But so were many of his young colleagues in training. He was always friendly and cheerful with the other men, giving as much slagging as he got. With his trainers and the leadership of the Fianna, he was courteous and didn’t look for any favours on the basis of being Cormac’s guest.

  He only revealed other aspects to his character after the episode with Aoife.

  Cormac, though not a picturesque man, was in the habit of breeding exceptionally beautiful daughters. Aoife was one such person. She was a half-sister of Gráinne, who was better known. But Aoife and her full brothers and sisters were brought up in a place away from castles and fuss, in a fine dwelling that had been built for their mother on top of a fairy fort. This allowed the mother to easily spend time with her own people down below, when her children did not need her.

  Aoife was the eldest of that family and she was only barely out of childhood when Art first saw her, playing with the younger children on common grazing ground near her enclosure. He came that way regularly from then on. He found every kind of excuse to detour his errands and his training missions so they would run past the house next to the fairy fort. After some time he got the courage to talk to her. He called her over to the chariot track he was standing in. He had let his imaginings run so far ahead of him that in his own mind he was already virtually betrothed to her. He made the mistake of thinking that she had reached a similar stage in her thinking about him.

  In fact, of course, she had never seen or noticed Art before and she was very cautious when this rather hairy young man called her roughly over onto the track.

  She was timid.

  He was forward.

  He grabbed her hands and pulled her to him and said, ‘Aoife, my loved one, let us run away together, for I can’t bear one more day of looking at, but not touching, your beauty.’

  Aoife was more than mildly alarmed. She screamed and pulled away from him. She ran back to the field, gathered the younger ones, and headed straight into her house.

  For a clever man, Art was slow to appreciate what had happened. He confided in Mac Cumhaill that evening.

  ‘I don’t understand what was wrong with her. I offered her my love and she ran away without a word.’

  Mac Cumhaill spoke kindly, assuming it was just that the young man was inexperienced and therefore awkward in matters of the heart.

  ‘If you like her, you have to approach her kindly and let her get to know you. And then you have to hope that what she gets to know of you, she likes too. At that stage, you could be onto something grand. Just take it easy for now. Do you understand?’

  ‘I do,’ said Art, but in a slightly sullen tone that Mac Cumhaill wasn’t all that fond of.

  The very next day, Art went back and did the same again. This time he went to the back of the fairy fort and called. Aoife was not a cowardly person and she had been thinking that maybe she had judged this man harshly the previous time. She was worried that he might have thought the reason she ran from him was because of his brutal ugliness, whereas in fact she would talk to anyone as long as they were right and honest. She had decided she would hear what he had to say if he came again. So when she heard his call, she went to him again. Again, he grabbed her hand. But this time even harder so she wouldn’t be so easily able to run off when he said what he wanted to say. She was immediately frightened again, even before he opened his mouth.

  ‘You see Aoife, I love you. So that is what I needed to tell you. You are the one I have chosen for myself.’ He was smiling broadly, expecting her to be very pleased about this information.

  ‘Who are you, and what are you talking about?’ said Aoife.

  ‘I’m Art. I am going to be a very powerful man – a king, in fact, in my own country.’

  ‘Please let go of my hand. You are hurting me.’

  ‘First tell me you are not going to be a naughty little donkey and run away again while a man is only trying to talk to you.’

  ‘Let me go, please.’ Aoife was crying now.

  His heart didn’t soften at all for the one he claimed to love.

  ‘I just can’t do that until I get you to stop your womanly chattering and understand the importance of what I am saying to you.’

  This was a mistake. Aoife’s tears had sent the little ones fleeing to report to their mother. Before Aoife could say another thing to him, Art had been lifted off his feet almost as if the pull of the earth had reversed itself. He then floated a short distance and dropped heavily into a viciously thorny dog rose bush on the other side of the fairy fort.

  He was back talking to Mac Cumhaill that evening. Mac Cumhaill was less patient with him this time.

  ‘Did you not hear a thing I said to you yesterday?’

  ‘I did, but that’s not how I do things. I want her to hear what I have to say.’

  ‘I would think she has gathered by now what it is you want to say. You have to accept that she does not want to hear it again.’

  ‘It’s just because I’m a bit on the short side. Once she learns what a mighty warrior I am, she will see past that. Send a messenger down to tell her and sort it out.’

  ‘I don’t think your, ahem, minor height problem is the main thing to worry about here. It is said that Aoife’s eye has been caught by a gentleman from her mother’s world. And who could fault her indeed, as they are a far more beautiful people than us, and live longer, happier lives, and with much finer music. I am quite sure that next to that tiny buck you would not look so stunted at all.’

  Art reddened in anger. Maybe he had expected more tact from Mac Cumhaill about his height. Or maybe he was angered about the notion that he had of being jilted, made worse by the fact that his replacement was a fairy man.

  His anger only worsened when Mac Cumhaill continued.

  ‘Laughter aside, I am obliged to punish you for disregarding my advice and for causing upset to this young lady who has done no harm to you or yours. The punishment is that you are barred from the Lughnasa hoolies this year.’

  Mac Cumhaill knew that, to any young man, not being allowed to participate in the great harvest festivities was a sore thing. He didn’t intend it to be the special punishment it was for Art, who prayed to Lugh every day. To Art, Lughnasa was the only festival worth going to and he believed that every year he partied with Lugh, he got a little bit more of Lugh’s beauty.


  ‘That’s not just, Fionn’, said Art. ‘I did nothing that others haven’t done. Holding a girl’s hand.’

  Mac Cumhaill ignored this.

  ‘Maybe then, my son, this will help you to bear my advice in mind for the next young woman you fall for, because you are not going to get anywhere with your approach.’

  ‘I’m not interested in “the next young woman”,’ said Art angrily. ‘Don’t you hear what I’m saying?’

  Mac Cumhaill laughed. ‘Art, I know what I am talking about. Jealousy can poison a man’s heart faster and more completely than the extract of any plant. You need to walk away from this situation. You will need to start looking for another young woman, because, from what you tell me, any chance you had with this one is scattered, shall we say, to the sceach bushes!’

  ‘I won’t accept it,’ said Art, too blinded by anger to even notice Mac Cumhaill’s joke. ‘She will see me and if it is her family that tries to stand in her way, they will pay.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a family you want to get mixed up with,’ said Mac Cumhaill, still laughing. ‘Are you so stupefied by your anger and wounded pride that you have not realised what happened to you today? Do you not realise who Aoife is? Is the fact that she is a daughter of our king not enough for you to be persuaded that you should mind your mouth and your head? And the fact that she is the daughter of a woman of the little people, the very one who spared your life and kindly did no more than blow you into a thorny sceach bush today, is that also not enough to persuade you to swallow your false pride?’

  ‘How can this be?’ said Art, temporarily subdued. ‘Why is she not then in a castle with Cormac? How can she also be the daughter of a fairy? That is not natural. It must be what they give him in the goblet. But what kind of king is this Cormac? How can you respect a man who willingly imbibes some vile potion that causes him to become enchanted by a weasel woman? I refuse to believe it.’

  Mac Cumhaill now was silent for a few minutes. There was no more laughter.