The Coming of Cuculain Read online

  CHAPTER VII

  SETANTA AND THE SMITH'S DOG

  "How he fell From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove Sheer o'er the crystal battlements; from morn To noon, from noon to dewy eve, A Summer's day, he fell; and with the setting sun Dropped from the zenith like a falling star, On Lemnos."

  MILTON.

  When Culain saw far away the tall figures of the Ultonians against thesunset, and the flashing of their weapons and armour, he cried out witha loud voice to his people to stop working and slack the furnacesand make themselves ready to receive the Red Branch; and he bade thehousehold thralls prepare the supper, roast, boiled and stewed, whichhe had previously ordered. Then he himself and his journeymen andapprentices stripped themselves, and in huge keeves of water filled bytheir slaves they washed from them the smoke and sweat of their labourand put on clean clothes. The mirrors at which they dressed themselveswere the darkened waters of their enormous tubs.

  Culain sent a party of his men and those who were the best dressedand the most comely and who were the boldest and most eloquent in thepresence of strangers, to meet the high King of the Ultonians on themoor, but he himself stood huge in the great doorway just beyond thethreshold and in front of the bridge over which the Red Branch party wasto pass. He had on him over his clothes a clean leathern apron which wasnot singed or scored. It was fastened at his shoulders and half coveredhis enormous hairy chest, was girt again at his waist and descendedbelow his knees. He stood with one knee crooked, leaning upon a longash-handled sledge with a head of glittering bronze. There he gave afriendly and grave welcome to the King and to all the knights one byone. It was dusk when Concobar entered the dun.

  "Are all thy people arrived?" said the smith.

  "They are," said Concobar.

  Culain bade his people raise the drawbridge which spanned the deepblack moat surrounding the city, and after that, with his own hands heunchained his one dog. The dog was of great size and fierceness. It wassupposed that there was no man in Ireland whom he could not drag down.He had no other good quality than that he was faithful to his masterand guarded his property vigilantly at night. He was quick of sight andhearing and only slept in the daytime. Being let loose he sprang overthe moat and three times careered round the city, baying fearfully.Then he stood stiffly on the edge of the moat to watch and listen, andgrowled at intervals when he heard some noise far away. It was thenprecisely that Setanta set forth from Emain Macha. Earth quaked to thegrowling of that ill beast.

  In the meantime the smith went into the dun, and when he had commandedhis people to light the candles throughout the chamber, he slammed tothe vast folding doors with his right hand and his left, and drew forththe massy bar from its place and shot it into the opposing cavity. Therewas not a knight amongst the Red Branch who could shut one of thosedoors, using both hands and his whole strength. Of the younger knights,some started to their feet and laid their hands on their sword hiltswhen they heard the bolt shot.

  The smith sat down on his high seat over against Concobar, with hisdusky sons and kinsmen around him, and truly they contrasted strangelywith the bravery and beauty of the Ultonians. He called for ale, andholding in his hands a huge four-cornered mether of the same, rimmedwith silver and furnished with a double silver hand-grip, he pledgedthe King and bade him and his a kindly welcome. He swore, too, that nogeneration of the children of Rury, and he had wrought for many, haddone more credit to his workmanship than themselves, nor had he evermade the appliances of war for any of the Gael with equal pleasure.Concobar, on the other hand, responded discreetly, and praisedthe smith-work of Culain, praising chiefly the shield called Ocean[Footnote: Concobar's shield. When Concobar was in danger the shieldroared. The sea, too, roared responsive.], which was one of the wondersof the north-west of Europe. The smith and all his people were wellpleased at that speech, and Culain bade his thralls serve supper, whichproved to be a very noble repast. There was enough and to spare forall the Ultonians. When supper was ended, the heroes and the artificerspledged each other many times and drank also to the memory of famous menof yore and their fathers who begat them, as was right and customary;and they became very friendly and merry without intoxication, forintoxication was not known in the age of the heroes.

  Then said Concobar: "We have this night toasted many heroes who aregone, and, as it is not right that we should praise ourselves, I proposethat we drink now to the heroes that are coming, both those unborn, andthose who, still being boys, are under tutors and instructors; and forthis toast I name the name of my nephew Setanta, son of Sualtam, who,if any, will one day, O Culain, if I mistake not, illustrate in anunexampled manner thy skill as an artificer of weapons and armour."

  "Is he then a boy of that promise, O Concobar?" said the smith, "for ifhe is I am truly rejoiced to hear it."

  "He is all that I say," answered the King somewhat hotly, "and of abeauty corresponding. And of that thou shalt be the judge to-night, forhe is coming, and indeed I am momentarily expecting to hear the loudclamour of his brazen hurle upon the doors of the dun, after his havingleapt at one bound both thy moat and thy rampart."

  The smith started from his high seat uttering a great oath, such as menused then, and sternly chid Concobar because he had said that all hispeople had arrived. "If the boy comes now," he said, "ere I can chainthe dog, verily he will be torn into small pieces."

  Just then they heard the baying of the dog sounding terribly in thehollow night, and every face was blanched throughout the vast chamber.Then without was heard a noise of trampling feet and short furious yellsand sibilant gaspings, as of one who exerts all his strength, afterwhich a dull sound at which the earth seemed to shake, mingled with anoise of breaking bones, and after that silence. Ere the people in thedun could do more than look at each other speechless, they heard a clearbut not clamorous knocking at the doors of the dun. Some of the smith'syoung men back-shot the bolt and opened the doors, and the boy Setantastepped in out of the night. He was very pale. His scarlet mantle was inrags and trailing, and his linen tunic beneath and his white knees redwith blood, which ran down his legs and over his bare feet. He made areverence, as he had been taught, to the man of the house and tohis people, and went backwards to the upper end of the chamber. TheUltonians ran to meet him, but Fergus Mac Roy was the first, and he tookSetanta upon his mighty shoulder and bore him along and set him down atthe table between himself and the King.

  "Did the dog come against thee?" said Culain.

  "Truly he came against me," answered the boy.

  "And art thou hurt?" cried the smith.

  "No, indeed," answered Setanta, "but I think he is."

  At that moment a party of the smith's people entered the dun bearingbetween them the carcass of the dog from whose mouth and white crookedfangs the blood was gushing in red torrents; and they showed Culainhow the skull of the dog and his ribs had been broken in pieces by somemighty blow, and his backbone also in divers places. Also they said:"One of the great brazen pillars which stand at the bridge head is bentawry, and the clean bronze denied with blood, and it was at the foot ofthat pillar we found the dog." So saying, they laid the body upon theheather in front of Culain's high seat, that it might be full in hiseye, and when they did so and again sat down, there was a great silencein the chamber.