第11章 THE BOYHOOD OF FIONN(5)

There was the marsh too;a whole new life to be learned;a complicated,mysterious,dank,slippery,reedy,treacherous life,but with its own beauty and an allurement that could grow on one,so that you could forget the solid world and love only that which quaked and gurgled.

In this place you may swim.By this sign and this you will know if it is safe to do so,said Fiacuil mac Cona;but in this place,with this sign on it and that,you must not venture a toe.

But where Fionn would venture his toes his ears would follow.

There are coiling weeds down there,the robber counselled him;there are thin,tough,snaky binders that will trip you and grip you,that will pull you and will not let you go again until you are drowned;until you are swaying and swinging away below,with outstretched arms,with outstretched legs,with a face all stares and smiles and jockeyings,gripped in those leathery arms,until there is no more to be gripped of you even by them.

"Watch these and this and that,"Fionn would have been told,"and always swim with a knife in your teeth."He lived there until his guardians found out where he was and came after him.Fiacuil gave him up to them,and he was brought home again to the woods of Slieve Bloom,but he had gathered great knowledge and new supplenesses.

The sons of Morna left him alone for a long time.Having made their essay they grew careless.

"Let him be,"they said."He will come to us when the time comes."But it is likely too that they had had their own means of getting information about him.How he shaped?what muscles he had?and did he spring clean from the mark or had he to get off with a push?Fionn stayed with his guardians and hunted for them.He could run a deer down and haul it home by the reluctant skull.

"Come on,Goll,"he would say to his stag,or,lifting it over a tussock with a tough grip on the snout,"Are you coming,bald Cona'n,or shall I kick you in the neck?"The time must have been nigh when he would think of taking the world itself by the nose,to haul it over tussocks and drag it into his pen;for he was of the breed in whom mastery is born,and who are good masters.

But reports of his prowess were getting abroad.Clann-Morna began to stretch itself uneasily,and,one day,his guardians sent him on his travels.

"It is best for you to leave us now,"they said to the tall stripling,"for the sons of Morna are watching again to kill you."The woods at that may have seemed haunted.A stone might sling at one from a tree-top;but from which tree of a thousand trees did it come?An arrow buzzing by one's ear would slide into the ground and quiver there silently,menacingly,hinting of the brothers it had left in the quiver behind;to the right?to the left?how many brothers?in how many quivers .Fionn was a woodsman,but he had only two eyes to look with,one set of feet to carry him in one sole direction.But when he was looking to the front what,or how many whats,could be staring at him from the back?He might face in this direction,away from,or towards a smile on a hidden face and a finger on a string.A lance might slide at him from this bush or from the one yonder.In the night he might have fought them;his ears against theirs;his noiseless feet against their lurking ones;his knowledge of the wood against their legion:but during the day he had no chance.

Fionn went to seek his fortune,to match himself against all that might happen,and to carve a name for himself that will live while Time has an ear and knows an Irishman.

CHAPTER VIII

Fionn went away,and now he was alone.But he was as fitted for loneliness as the crane is that haunts the solitudes and bleak wastes of the sea;for the man with a thought has a comrade,and Fionn's mind worked as featly as his body did.To be alone was no trouble to him who,however surrounded,was to be lonely his life long;for this will be said of Fionn when all is said,that all that came to him went from him,and that happiness was never his companion for more than a moment.

But he was not now looking for loneliness.He was seeking the instruction of a crowd,and therefore when he met a crowd he went into it.His eyes were skilled to observe in the moving dusk and dapple of green woods.They were trained to pick out of shadows birds that were themselves dun-coloured shades,and to see among trees the animals that are coloured like the bark of trees.The hare crouching in the fronds was visible to him,and the fish that swayed in-visibly in the sway and flicker of a green bank.

He would see all that was to be seen,and he would see all that is passed by the eye that is half blind from use and wont.

At Moy Life'he came on lads swimming in a pool;and,as he looked on them sporting in the flush tide,he thought that the tricks they performed were not hard for him,and that he could have shown them new ones.

Boys must know what another boy can do,and they will match themselves against everything.They did their best under these observing eyes,and it was not long until he was invited to compete with them and show his mettle.Such an invitation is a challenge;it is almost,among boys,a declaration of war.But Fionn was so far beyond them in swimming that even the word master did not apply to that superiority.

While he was swimming one remarked:"He is fair and well shaped,"and thereafter he was called "Fionn"or the Fair One.His name came from boys,and will,perhaps,be preserved by them.