Emerald Magic_ Great Tales of Irish Fantasy - Andrew M. Greeley [119]
At length Oisin managed to master himself, although his voice was hoarse. “It is a good thing they don’t tell those stories anymore,” he said with vehemence. “They are lies. I am Fionn’s son, Oisin, and I was a member of the Fianna myself.”
The men’s doubt showed plainly on their faces, and the first one said,“That is hard to believe, for how could you still be young and living?”
“Believe it,” said Oisin passionately. “There never was Fionn’s equal for strength or bravery or a great name. There ought to be many a book written down,” he said, “by the sweet poets of the Gael, about his doings and the doings of the Fianna, and it would be hard for me to tell you all of them. And Fionn had a son, and there came a faerie princess looking for him, and he went away with her to the Land of Youth, and that man is myself.”
“It cannot be so,” said the second fellow, “for if the Fianna ever existed, which is unlikely, then surely they were brutish ogres.”
Anger welled up in Oisin, on hearing Fionn and the Fianna being spoken of so disrespectfully, and by weaklings such as these. “We were not giants,” the young man said, contemptuous in his wrath, “but any one of us could have picked up that rock with one hand, and the strongest among us could have hurled it across the valley.”
Overcome with loathing for their ignorant sneering he spoke no other word, but turned his horse’s head toward the west and Tír na Nóg.As he wheeled about, one of the men yelled,“Prove what you say is true by lifting this rock for us, then we’ll listen to your stories of Fionn and the Fianna!”
“I’ll do that,” shouted Oisin fiercely, “to put right the facts of his tory. Then I’ll go back to Tír na Nóg, for there’s nought left for me in this country.”
Recalling Niamh’s warning about dismounting, he leaned down from the saddle and slid his hand under the huge boulder. However, when he began to lift it the girth of the saddle broke under the strain, and Oisin toppled to the ground. Capall Bán shied and galloped away, leaving him there—maybe in fright, or maybe because the faerie horse knew that now Oisin could never return to Tír na Nóg.
In that moment three centuries caught up with Oisin. He lay on the ground, an old man, weak and spent, wasted, blind, bereft of comeliness, deprived of strength and mental alertness. The glossy filaments of his sloe-black hair fell out of his scalp and shriveled as if torched. His teeth darkened to brown, as if baked in an oven, and several of them dribbled like stones from his puckering lips. The clear lines of his bone structure lost beneath a mass of sagging flesh; jowls, lids, and eye pouches. A wattle like that of a turkey wobbled at his throat. His skin, once pale bronze and flawless, turned freckled with splatters and spots of discoloration.Vacant grew his eyes, and as shallow as muddy puddles. No longer were his shoulders broad, his spine erect; his back was curved like the crescent moon, and skinny wrists stuck out from the sleeves of his rich raiment.
His sunken chest appeared motionless. It seemed he breathed no longer.
The men were terrified. They believed Oisin was dead, until they heard him muttering “Tír na Nóg!” upon which they lifted him up and carried him from the valley of Glenasmole.
“This is no ordinary man!” they said amongst themselves. “What shall we do with him?”
“It is not up to common folk like ourselves to decide such matters. We must take him to the wisest of the wise.”
“Saint Patrick?”
“The very one.”
Saint Patrick was dwelling in Ireland in those days, and his shelter was a cottage on a hillside, near the place where a church was being built. It was for the purpose of fashioning this church that the stones in Glenasmole were being removed.Already the bell tower had been completed, and the bells installed. Bell ringers hauled on the ropes several times a day, swinging the mighty domes