Old Friends: The Lost Tales of Fionn Mac Cumhaill Read online

Mac Cumhaill’s heart was sore when he decided on a plan, because not far inside him he knew it was a trap. He knew it was going to go wrong and that the bad luck of Cóbh was about to become his own personal bad luck. But he had to try something. So he told Diarmuid and Conán to wade in under the tree and make ready to catch the boy. He himself got ready to lower the tree. He climbed as high as he could without the tree shaking, and tied a rope around the trunk. Then he got back down and started pulling the rope back in towards dry land, trying to pull the enormous tree towards him.

  ‘Wisha, Daghda love him,’ said an old woman, ‘Fionn Mac Cumhaill is gone soft in the head. We may as well pray for the boy now. That tree was three hundred years old when I was a child and stronger than a thousand men.’

  But Mac Cumhaill put his whole strength into it. A couple of other men tried to help, but their efforts made no difference in the contest between Mac Cumhaill and the great larch. Finally, a sigh of amazement went through the crowd as the roots started snapping and the tree started to creak and groan. Slowly at first, with Mac Cumhaill pulling harder than ever, it began to straighten. Then, as he pulled harder, gradually it bowed inwards and came closer to the ground. Soon Conán and Diarmuid were easily able to grab the little boy to safety.

  Then, just as Mac Cumhaill was going to let go, a massive, unnatural, black gust of wind came from nowhere. A main root snapped, the rope went slack, Mac Cumhaill fell on his back, and almost instantly the great tree pounced. It came crashing onto Mac Cumhaill. The crushing noise it made was so ferocious that few there had any doubt that instant but that Mac Cumhaill’s stay in this world had been brought to an end.

  The crowd had fallen silent, as everyone stared at the horrible scene.

  Conán started shouting at them: ‘Wake up you amadáns! Go and get axes. Go and get saws. Go to the neighbouring clans and get more men. We are going to cut this evil tree to smithereens and set Fionn free!’

  He was shouting like such a madman that the people thought it was better to do what he said than just to stand there gawking.

  Soon there were thirty or forty people chopping and hacking at the body of that dead tree. Even if they didn’t believe that Mac Cumhaill would come out alive, they were all infected by Conán’s frenzy of anger towards the tree and whatever evil had taken hold of it. There were young and old at it. Even the mother of the rescued boy, who was wrapped in blankets in the arms of an older woman, had taken an axe and was chopping more fiercely than any man. It was as if the whole village had suddenly erupted in rage at the merciless bad luck that had stalked their people for centuries. They were hacking and chopping at fortune.

  Eventually, the trunk was eaten away enough and started to give. The heavy roots tried to stand back up, bending the partially severed stump upwards like a broken arm. The body underneath was covered in stale blood. To the surprise of many, it groaned. Mac Cumhaill’s bronze shield with its dark ruby centrepiece was bent out of shape, but it had somehow protected his chest. He was still alive, but only barely. He was carefully edged onto a canvas-and-pole stretcher, and the family whose boy he had saved asked for him to be brought into their home. The little boy sat by his bedside, trying to get him to swallow a spoonful of warm porridge every time he came close to waking up.

  Dreoilín and a handywoman were sent for and they came with the best of herbs, splints and bandages. After a few weeks, Mac Cumhaill was starting to feel less pain and was trying to sit up in bed to play card games with the little boy. But he had two broken legs that were set in splints and they were going to take the whole winter to heal.

  When he finally left the house supporting his weight on hazel walking sticks, he thanked the family deeply for their warmth. The little boy still thought it was all his fault.

  ‘You don’t worry about anything in the world except enjoying your youth and looking affer your parents,’ said Mac Cumhaill. ‘It’s a miracle you’re alive, and you should make the most of every day you get from now on.’

  But as Mac Cumhaill set off on his crutches, he was a very worried man. He knew that there were other forces at work. The black gust that came and disappeared so suddenly, knocking the tree onto him, was no ordinary wind.

  Sure enough, it wasn’t long before his foreboding bore bitter fruit. Stories started coming from all over the country of terrible accidents and chaos being caused by mysterious gales coming from nowhere. Bridges were blown down when people were crossing them. Fishing boats were overturned by massive winds from the shore, even though the water had been completely calm minutes before and the thatch was being whipped clean off cabins without warning and dropped, point downwards, back in on top of them.

  Most of the bad events seemed to be happening to members of the Fianna. Lookout posts were demolished when Fianna soldiers were sleeping inside them. Horsemen were blown clear over a cliff in Scariff. Soldiers out guarding one of the king’s dwellings had a wall hurled on them by a gust. In all cases, people said the wind had a mysterious blackish tint to it.

  Mac Cumhaill went to Dreoilín and asked what he thought. Dreoilín went to Lough Garr to talk to his ancestors. He returned after three days with an account that had come to him – from more than three hundred years before – of a renegade god called Cass. He was a brother of Daghda but Daghda had told him never to darken the family door again. In ancient times, people knew Cass as the Black Wind. He had done enormous damage back then and eventually had been captured by a very powerful druid, and held inside the spirit of a young larch tree.

  ‘And where was that larch tree?’ asked Mac Cumhaill, already knowing the answer.

  ‘In the town where all bad luck seems to begin and end,’ sighed Dreoilín.

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Mac Cumhaill. ‘And I set it free.’

  ‘Cass must have drawn that little boy to the tree and then scared him up, hoping that someone would come and break down the tree to free him – and it,’ said Dreoilín.

  ‘Most importantly,’ asked Fionn, ‘what is our challenge now? What must be done to destroy him?’

  ‘Fionn, dear son,’ said Dreoilín with tiredness in his voice, ‘I truly don’t know. But he did call you specifically to that tree. And he does seem to be attacking the Fianna more than anyone else, as if he was trying to gain ground before you are fully recovered. So it’s possible you have something that he’s scared of.’

  Mac Cumhaill thought about it all that night and the next day. He was sure Dreoilín was wrong. This ferocious force, the Black Wind, had left him as good as dead and he was supposed to think that it feared him?

  Úna, who was always practical in her way of thinking about things, asked, ‘Well, what is it that he really likes?’

  ‘Spreading his own misery to all of humanity. That, it seems, is all it takes to put him in a pleasant mood,’ said Mac Cumhaill.

  ‘And you – are you not in his way?’ said Úna. ‘Do you think he doesn’t know you have some kind of blessing of the other gods?’

  ‘It didn’t feel like that when the tree was crushing my bones,’ said Mac Cumhaill.

  ‘Daghda between us and all harm!’ said Úna. ‘Aren’t you still alive when no one thought it possible? There are a thousand times you would have been dead by now, if their knowledge and the protective hand was not upon you.’

  ‘That is true.’

  ‘Well, then. Your very existence scalds him in two ways. The first is obviously that you represent a danger to him in his activities of torment. The second is that you have something he always wanted and can never have again – the approval of his brother. The fact that you survived the tree, which no other human would have been spared from, will only confirm that for him. He will do everything to get you. And now that you’re injured, he’s thinking it’s his best chance.’

  ‘Good enough,’ said Mac Cumhaill, ‘so he’s hitting lots of the Fianna to draw me into battle.’

  ‘Well, you just can’t go, you know,’ said Úna. ‘Not in that state.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mac Cumha
ill, not really listening.

  ‘Can’t you see that’s just what he wants?’ said Úna.

  ‘Yes, but I can’t let him carry on.’

  That night, there was another attack on a Fianna camp and an old man who cooked for the soldiers was strangled by the wind tightening like a bindweed around his neck. That decided Mac Cumhaill.

  He went back to Dreoilín and asked for some help with spells or potions. Dreoilín gave Mac Cumhaill an oyster shell, doubtfully.

  ‘It worked to contain a sea breeze once,’ said Dreoilín.

  Granted it was a west coast oyster shell, as big as Dreoilín’s two hands. But Mac Cumhaill looked at it with disbelief.

  ‘Is that all you can do? How am I expected to get a screeching hurricane into that?’

  ‘If you can get the head of the gale in, the rest will die, but I can’t tell you how you might lure it in.’

  Mac Cumhaill knew there was only one bait. That day, despite appeals from Diarmuid and Úna not to do it, Mac Cumhaill sent out word to all parts of the country that he would be waiting at Cashel to fight the weakling outcast, Cass.

  As the word went from mouth to mouth, other winds picked it up and carried it in whispers, far and wide, so that it was no time at all until the Black Wind knew it. Even though rattled at the insult it suspected a trick; that Mac Cumhaill would never be foolish enough to come out on his own to fight it when he wasn’t even able to stand without crutches. But it went to Cashel to look and sure enough saw Mac Cumhaill sitting with his back to the great rock, and a semicircle of people a good distance out from him, watching in fear.

  Fionn Mac Cumhaill was pale with pain and with cold. The wind wasted no time and went straight in for an attack. In a horrible dark whoooosh it swept through the crowd, knocking people in every direction, and whirled around Mac Cumhaill’s enormous chest. Mac Cumhaill groaned with agony as the wind tightened its grip. It was trying to squeeze so tight that Mac Cumhaill would not be able to breathe. At first it looked as though it had succeeded, as Mac Cumhaill’s face became red and then blue. But he sucked in with all his strength, and his chest filled with air, and he blew out in an enormous shout. The wind was furious and moved away with a phwaaaa sound. Mac Cumhaill knew there would be more.

  The second time it tried the same. This time Mac Cumhaill knew his chest was stronger than the wind, and he immediately breathed in and the wind retreated again, sweeping some of the spectators up into the sky and dropping them miles away in its anger.

  The third time it came at him, Mac Cumhaill guessed it would do now what he feared most: attack his neck and try to strangle him. If it got around his neck he feared there was nothing he could do to save himself. But for luck, in its rage, the wind rushed at him and picked leaves on its way. This allowed Mac Cumhaill to see it coming a split second before it arrived. He put up his arm and in its blind anger the wind missed Mac Cumhaill’s neck and wrapped itself around his arm instead. Not seeing its mistake until it was too late, the wind wound itself in such a tight bind that Fionn’s arm pained; his neck would surely have been broken had the wind found its target.

  But the wind’s mistake was Mac Cumhaill’s opportunity. With one sweep of his other hand, he clamped the shell onto the head of the tight wind. He slammed the shell shut before the thing knew what was happening. The rest of the wind fell off his arm. At first he wasn’t sure that he had Cass inside the shell. He waited for another attack. The whole crowd waited in silence. But after a few minutes Mac Cumhaill lifted the shell above his head and everyone knew it was over. A great cheer went up and the people came to carry Mac Cumhaill on their shoulders all the way back to Tara.

  Though Mac Cumhaill now had one arm in a splint as well as his two legs, the spring that followed was a beautiful and happy one for the people of the country.

  The shell was taken out into the bottomless parts of the ocean off the coast of Cóbh, where the dark water drags hard on the best boats. It was weighted down with stones so that it should sink forever and never be seen again. However, many people still believe that even from within its shell, deep under the water, its horrible anger sometimes stirs those seas into unexpected swells, tormenting and sometimes marking large and small boats passing these parts with a curse that draws them downwards.

  Everyone disappeared suddenly when the story finished, rather than fading out gradually as usual. The black darkness was restored in the centre of the rath. Dark got out of there as quick as he could, and although he was sure he heard a great storm brewing behind him again, he didn’t look back once as he headed back up the fields.

  Dark’s mother dropped him at the speed limit sign. She hadn’t ventured closer to the school since Magill had talked to her the last time. Dark waited for her to be gone around the turn on the road before he headed back the same way. The turn for the Drishna boreen was only half a mile out the main road. Connie used to call it the Famine Road, ‘built on crushed skeletons’. There was very little likelihood here of meeting anyone who would be curious at a lad with a school uniform walking away from the town.

  Cash lived about two miles out. Dark had gotten directions from Brian that morning.

  Dogs barked and five, of various shapes, wandered up to smell and inspect Dark as he approached the front door. A blonde woman opened the door almost immediately. There were two very small children looking out around her legs.

  ‘What do you want, sonny?’

  ‘Is David in?’

  ‘Are you a friend of his? Will you do me a favour and take him to school with you? He says he’s not bothered.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of going myself,’ said Dark.

  ‘Oh, right. Water always finds its own level I suppose. DAVEY! Come out here will you and see this man.’

  Cash was in a tracksuit and looked surprised and confused, as if he had just got out of bed. He was scratching the back of his head.

  ‘McLean? What has you here?’

  ‘I came to see about that pup,’ said Dark.

  Cash brightened up immediately. ‘Oh! I thought they might have sent you to call me down to school or something.’

  ‘Hardly,’ said Dark. ‘They’d hardly send me.’

  Cash thought about that and then laughed. ‘No. Hardly. Come on out here with me, then.’

  They went around to the back of the house. Dark had never in his life seen so many huts and cages and sheds in one garden. Cash must have seen Dark’s reaction.

  ‘Do you like animals and birds then? Here, I’ll give you the tour.’

  There were budgies, rabbits, coloured pheasants, ferrets, feather-footed bantams, ducks, a small horse, a black donkey and many, many dogs. By the time they were all fed and talked about, two hours had passed. The mother looked out the back door and said, ‘Davey, you and your father need to get rid of half of them animals, you have me broke feeding them.’

  There were two litters of pups to choose from. Dark knew his dog the minute he set eyes on her. She was about average size for her litter and not too shy and not too bold. She was white with brindle markings. And she was fat for a whippet. She came right up to him and licked his hand and eyed him.

  Cash said, ‘Looks like she’s picked you, buddy.’

  ‘OK,’ said Dark.

  ‘She should be a right lady after the rabbits seeing as her mother is one of the best.’

  Dark wasn’t concerned about that. Hunting rabbits with dogs had never interested him. But when he held her in his hands and felt her snuggling warmly into his stomach, he knew he was going to spend a lot of time with her.

  Cash brought him over to the two caravans at the side of the house. One was modern and looked ready for the road. The other looked like it hadn’t moved in a long while. It was on blocks and a climbing rose draped the roof.

  ‘This is where I stay, when we’re not away off,’ Cash said, ‘so as I can mind my gran. She never comes with us anymore because she says the way the country is gone these days pains her heart.’

  A small w
oman pushed the door open. Her face was brown as hillside bracken with deep gulleys running through it.

  ‘Who’s this, Davey?’ asked the woman in an ancient voice.

  ‘This is my friend, Arthur McLean, Nan,’ said Cash.

  The granny looked Dark up and down. ‘McLean? From the Killane Road out there?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dark.

  A toothless smile lightened her face. She gave him a pat on the shoulder.

  ‘God bless you, a mhic. I knew your grandmother and your grandfather well. The Lord rest their souls, two decenter people never walked on the face of this earth. In the summer time when we’d be stopped out that road, I used to call around there and they’d always buy whatever little things I’d be selling and there’d always be tea and great welcome. I knew their lads growing up too. Seán and Cornelius. Two fine boys. They often came up to the caravan to bring up a billy can of milk or some clothes or other things that their mother thought would be useful for me with all my childer. And they wouldn’t be afraid to sit around the fire with us and sing a song or listen to yarns. Where are they now?’

  Dark wasn't ready for that.

  She saw and changed the subject.

  ‘That’s a fine, fair name they put on you. It fits you just right. Arthur,’ she said, emphasising his name in a distant tone.

  He couldn’t say why, but it was as if she knew him before. It was the first time in a long while that he really liked the sound of that word again.

  Then she laughed and said, ‘You are growing into a great big man too, God love you. Look at the height of you already. Come in, come in.’

  Arthur and Davey came inside and sat on the chairs she pulled out at the table.

  Then she laughed and said, ‘So, you think school is only a cod too, Arthur McLean?’

  ‘Sort of,’ said Arthur.

  The old lady laughed harder. She brought out two bottles of orange and a packet of fig rolls for them. She left them to talk about the dog while she went back to watching Telly Bingo. When the biscuits were all gone, Arthur decided he would head on home. He said thanks to Cash’s grandmother.