The Enchanted Cave of Keshcorran.
It was a
great and general hunting match that by Finn son of Cumall
son of Art son of Trenmor grandson of Baeiscne, with the
brave and comely Fianna of the Gael, was convened through
out the Corran’s fair borders; among the beautiful tuatha
of Leyny; within the confines of Brefny; in the trackless
fast nesses of Glendallan; in the nut- and mast-abundant
regions of Carbury; in the strong coverts of Kyleconor’s
woods, and over the wide plane expanse of Moyconall.
Then Finn sat upon his hunting mound on the top of high
Keshcorran; at which instant there tarried by him none but
his two wolf-dogs: Bran and Sceolaing, and Conan Mael mac
Morna. Now was it sweet to Finn to look on; to listen to
the hounds’ music, to the young men’s clear joyous
cheering, to utterance of athletic warriors and deep voices
of mighty men, to various whistling of the Fianna, in all
the wild and desert forests of the land; for even in the
bordering countries those hunting cries which they emitted
were freely heard: these being such that deer were roused
out of their wilds, brocks banished from their brock-holes,
birds driven to take wing; and at this point each wrathful
and eagerly fierce wolf-dog was slipped from his leash to
course the tulack.
Howbeit the ruler that at such time had sway in Keshcorran
was Conaran son of Imidel, a chief of the tuatha dé danann;
and so soon as he perceived that the hounds’ cry now
sounded deviously, he bade his three daughters (that were
full of sorcery) to go and take vengeance of Finn for his
hunting. The women sought the entrance of the cave that was
in the tzdack, and there sat beside each other. Upon three
crooked and wry sticks of holly they hung as many
heathenish bewitched hasps of yarn, which they began to
reel off left-handwise in front of the cave. They had not
been long so when Finn and Conan reached the cavern’s edge,
and so perceived the three hideous hags thus busied sit at
its entrance: their three coarse heads of hair all
dishevelled; their eyes rheumy and redly bleared; their
three mouths black and deformed, and in the gums of each
evil woman of them a set of sharpest venomous and curved
fangs; their three bony-jointed [i.e. scraggy] necks
maintaining their heads upon those formidable beldames;
their six arms extraordinarily long, while the hideous and
brutish nail that garnished every finger of them resembled
the thick-butted sharp-tipped ox-horn six bandy legs
thickly covered with hair and fluff supported them, and in
their hands they had three hard and pointed distaffs.
In order to view the harridans Finn and Conan passed
through the hasps; whereupon a deathly tremor occupied them
and presently they lost their strength, so that by those
valiant hags they were fast bound indissolubly. Another
pair of the Fianna came, and with them the Sons of
Nemhnann: through the yarn they passed to where Finn and
Conan were; they too lost their power, and by the same hags
were lashed down in rigid bonds. These warriors then they
carried away into the cave.
But a little time they had been thus when Oscar and mac
Lugach came upon the ground, having along with them the
gentles and chief nobles of clan-Baeiscne; clan-Morna as
well was on the spot and, when they had looked upon the
hanks, there was not in any one man of them all so much as
a newly delivered woman’s strength. The children of Corcran
appeared and, when they saw the yarns, their pith and
valour likewise was abolished. In short, the children of
Smól and the Fianna all, both gentle and simple, were
bound; so that as helplessly pinioned and tightly tethered
culprit prisoners the hags transported them into black
mysterious holes, into dark perplexing labyrinths.
Howbeit at the cave’s mouth was great baying of wolfdogs
that, after their lords’ and their owners’ departure and
excursion away from them, demanded them there. Many a deer
full of hurts, bone-cleft, many a wild pig killed outright,
and mortally mangled brocks, with hares that had suffered
much, lay on the hill-side after the binding of them that
hitherto and thus far had carried them.
Now came those huge daring warrior-women, and they hold ing
in their hands three wide-channelled hard-tempered swords,
to the spot in which the Fianna lay tied. Round about them
on every side they looked abroad if perchance they might
spy any individual or straggler of the Fianna to whom they
might administer death and everlasting destruction; and
when they failed of this, would have entered into the fort
with intent to have unsparingly dismembered and hewn the
Fianna all in pieces.
But anon they did see a single tall warrior, martial and
valiant of aspect, white-toothed, that bore him as one
skilled in arms; none other indeed than the raging lion,
the ‘rabies of battle,’ the torch that flamed in the day of
onset: the great-sou led Goll son of Morna son of Cormac
son of Mahon son of Garadh Black-knee son of Aedh of the
Poems son of Aedh of cenn claire son of Conall son of . . .
son of Cet son of Magach son of Cairbre king of Connacht.
Whom when the three sable uncanny mis begotten witches
perceived, incontinently they went to meet him and the two
sides [he and they] fought a fight of extremity, keen and
cruel. At all events the hero’s wrath kindled exceedingly,
and upon those rude, raging, utterly hideous dames he
rained mortal blows and ungentle strokes, until at last he
raised the straight sword and to the brace of monstrosities
that happened to be right in front of him: Caemhóg to wit,
and Cullenn Red head, dealt one mighty cut whereby of
either one he made two accurately even and equal-sized
portions. Which cut was one of the three greatest that ever
was delivered in ireland, as: the stroke stricken by Fergus
son of Ros Rua in the final battle of the great raid for
the kine of Cuailgne, with which at a sweep he shore off
‘the three Maels of Meath’; that which by Conall Cernach
was given to Cet mac Magach; and this stroke of Goll mac
Morna’s, with which he slew Caemog and Cuillenn Red head,
two daughters of Conaran mac Imidel.
Then from behind him the senior one of Conaran’s children:
Iaran ní Chonaráin, clasped her arms round Goll as he be
headed the other twain; but in her despite Goll forced
himself round to face her, and in his turn locked his long
arms about her. Thus they wrestled: bravely, with strength
of grip and with savage effort, until Goll gave the hag one
mighty twist and so hurled her to earth. With the straps of
a shield he bound her fast, and he bared his sword to cut
her in pieces, but she spoke:
“warrior that never wast worsted, man of might that whether
in battle or in single fight never hast blenched, my body
and life I commit to the safeguard of thy generosity and
valour! surely it were better for thee to have the Fianna
whole, without blood drawn on any one of them; and by the
gods that I adore I swear that all that which I hold forth
I will fulfil to thee.”
Then the kingly hero loosed her bonds; and they both went
on, to the hill in which the Fianna (Finn with them) lay
tied hard and fast. Here Goll said: “be their fastenings
cast off from Fergus Truelips and from the Fianna’s men of
science first of all; after which, be the same done in
order for Finn, for Ossian, for the nine-and~twenty sons of
Morna, and for the Fianna generally.” In this wise then the
witch freed them; the Fianna promptly rising emerged from
the cave and sat down beside the tulach; then Fergus
Truelips, poet of the Fianna, looked upon Goll and fell to
laud him for the deed which he had done.
Soon they saw towards them yet another weird evil-fashioned
creature and irrational-looking deformity, in the shape of
a gnarled hag full of knotted veins and sinews, upon every
hair’s point of whose shaggy grey eye-brows and -lashes
that garnished her either a small apple or a large sloe
would have stuck fast. A pair of serous eyes nevertheless
blazed in her head; a huge blueish flattened nose
surmounted the precinct of her black and distorted wrinkled
mouth, while in that gaping orifice a hideous ragged set of
masticators stood; arms she had thin, but tough of muscle,
nails long and formidable as a wolfdog’s; a strong and
infrangible armature clothed her; at her thigh was a wide-
channelled straight-bladed sword, and a great shield of the
warrior s pattern hung on her back’s upper part [i.e. on
her shoulders].
In this semblance she came into Finn’s presence, and she
laid him under bonds to provide her from among his men with
her fill of single combat. Said Finn to Ossian; “go, my
son, and rid us of yon prodigious hag.” But Ossian
answered: “after all that from the others I have had of
ill-treatment and of contumely, I am not able; and this is
Conaran’s daughter Iarnan, coming to avenge her sisters.”
Thus then Ossian, and Oscar, and Conan, mac Lugach and
Dermot, Caeilte mac Ronan and Cairell, with the remaining
chief men of the Fianna, declined to encounter with the
witch; so that Finn said he would himself tackle her. Here
however Goll mac Mama said: “Finn, combat with a crone
beseems thee not; I therefore will fight with her, for:
‘when the need is greatest, ‘tis then the friend is
proven.’”
Promptly now Goll went to meet her; and between them was
fought a brave bout, a desperate fight, during which
neither discerned in the other any note of weakness or of
fainting. At all events Goll passed his right band to the
strap of his shield and thence drew his deadly blade, with
which he made a cast free of all swerve or deviation, and
drove it through the boss of the hag’s shield and so
through her heart, that it shewed out on her far side. In
this wise then she perished presently.
Next, after the slaughter of Conaran mac Imidel’s three
daughters Goll proceeded to Keshcorran, and of the bruiden
or ‘fort’ made a red glowing pile of flame; while all the
wealth that he found within it he turned over to the
Fianna. Which done, Finn bestowed on Goll his own daughter:
Caemh or ‘the slender,’ called cneisghel or ‘the
white-skinned.’ She it was that bore him a famous son: Fed
son of Goll mac Morna, who at his seven teen years
completed was by the Fianna killed upon that same rath.
So far then the Enchanted Cave of Keshcorran.