They spent that night in the wattled cote of a wood-cutter. Tamed wolves and great hounds slept on the straw beside them, making the air so foul that they were glad to leave at the first streak of dawn.
A lowering sky—dark and thunderous—shadowed the frowning wastes before him. Patches of white bog-cotton sprang here and there—ghastly in the early light; brimming pools flashed like dull steel around; the stretches of furze and heath held a dull crimson in their hue like the spent blood on a battle-field.
A sighing hermit—from his cell in a roadside cavern—aided them in their search for a horse for Cormac’s use; pointing with a fleshless hand, to a clough in a line of low barren hills, where sluggish runlets gleamed silvery, in the dank soil of a peat valley.
“In that peat morass,” the hermit told them, “a hundred stallions have been driven—as spoil in a feud between two kings, that is laying waste the country side. A score of them have foundered in the bog—and, I doubt not, will fall easy prey to any passer-by.”
There, knee-deep in slough and peat, Cormac found a beautiful creature; tired and spent with struggling in the bog—the veins under its satin skin netting its body like cord; its eyes strained and blood-shot. An animal so black and glossy that beside it the black peat looked as grey as ashes.
They found it a long, hard task to draw it from the bog; and only to be done by harnessing Ethne’s stallion to the struggling creature, and thus dragging it forth.
Whilst the animal rested and recovered its full strength the woman and boy disputed over the road they should travel on.
“Come with me first to Tara,” Ethne said. “Come and see the place where our ancestors reigned as gods and kings. Come and see the halls where Tuathal held his feasts—where, every day, three hundred cup-bearers handed golden goblets to the royal guests—and every king in Hibernia came and paid homage to their over-king.”
“I will not go to Tara!” said Cormac, firmly. He felt that it was too near the late scene of horror. It was near the Druids’ sacred place of fire.
“You will not!” cried Ethne, angrily. Then a change came over her face, and she grew as pale as death. “No—you had better not. You are a Christian, and even Christians feel shame when they look on Tara. For was not the curse that it is under laid on it by one of your saints?” She dropped her voice to sad, moaning tones like the wind among the branches overhead. “Yes, the feasts are no more and the golden roof is falling—the wind is sweeping through the sacred halls! Tara is deserted! Tara is accursed—and the evil was wrought by the Christians!”
Then she raised her voice in a scream, and looked at him with glaring eyes.
“And you, Cormac of Fail, you—and I also, forgive me, Sun in heaven—fought for the faith that cursed the home of our ancestors!”
Cormac looked at her with a frown for a time. Ethne’s sudden transports of emotion had enchanted him. Now he felt he could never look at them without conjuring up that dreadful scene when she had helped in the human sacrifice.
She read his thoughts and her fury increased. She knew that the last few days marked an era in Cormac’s life; he had passed, like lightning, from boyhood to manhood; in doing so the tie between them had changed—she had no longer the same power.
He had slipt upon the black stallion’s back, without saddle and without bridle, one hand grasping the creature’s tangled mane, the other urging it forward. The horse bounded and leapt furiously, but Cormac sat firm—a picture of youthful skill and ease.
“To the North!” he said, glancing back at Ethne. “To the North—where you have promised me warriors!”
So they went on day by day—over rich loam and peat and chalky marl—towards the wilds of the North.
To the steep and savage hills and cliffs of Tir Conall’s coast, to Tir Conall’s broad and treeless waste of moor and bog—everywhere and always the wild sea thrusting fierce arms into the jagged land; till Cormac felt there was less of land than of water in his path; for the rains of autumn had commenced—tarn, river and mountain stream were brimming. Far North they went, until the Ultima Thule of Hibernia—Innistrahul—lay before them. And then they turned westward; where the troubled sea, beating under beetling cliffs, sprang higher in the air than the highest tower of Hibernia.
The bittern and the white stork—coot and heron—were thick in the marshy land around him; from moor and heath came the weird cries of curlews, and the fallows were strewn with their egg-shells.
Here he discovered tribes that were sib to him in the country off Tir Conall. When the two sons of his ancestor, Niall of the Nine Hostages, made sword-land of so much of Ulster they gave to the northern lands beyond the country of The Waters, the names of Tir Eogan and Tir Conall—that is to say Tir Eogan or the Country of Eogan, and Tir Conall, or Country of Conall.
He found a warm welcome and many followers amongst his kith and kin; the young warrior, on his matchless steed, took the Hibernian hearts by storm. Hoary chieftains, weary of warring on each other, came at the call of one who bore the ancient name; huntsmen left the chase and armed their great wolfhounds for war; youths from schools and monasteries left parchment and vellum and took up pike and battle-axe again. And Cormac found smiles and favour from the daughters of the land; as he passed they would run and offer him mead and milk and apples; many a king’s daughter, in her sunny grianan with her carved work-box before her, busied herself embroidering saffron coloured crisses for the black-haired youth; many a maiden of less degree offered him simpler love-tokens; but, if here and there he dallied, he was never drawn from the great object of his ride—to gather warriors to do his father’s bidding.
From Druid and from Christian alike the same tale met his ear:
“The greater part of the noble youth of Hibernia become missionaries and monks—wandering often to the very limits of the earth. Of those left behind, the idle and careless join the bards; the rest turn pirates—plundering their own people as well as the Britons and Saxons. We need such as thee, Cormac of Fail, to strike once more the ancient chords, and rally our men around thee!”
All agreed it was among the bards he was to find warriors—that great and numerous company, comprising two thirds of the men of Hibernia—could he but rouse them from the enervating spirit that pervaded them. Ethne smiled to herself, well pleased, for it was from the bards or Filid, she herself had decided they should find followers; for, although Druidism was not always openly avowed by them, she knew at heart they retained the ancient faith she trusted to revive in Hibernia.
Hibernia needed him, Ethne told him often; and her words encouraged the wild hopes he cherished. Hibernia—with her gold and her learning, her intellect, her enterprise, her high spirit—might she not be mistress of the world, could she but send forth warriors as she sent missionaries?
The Christian zeal Ireland showed was the wonder of the age. Daily, from her shores, she saw her children depart to spread the gospel in the world. Kings and scholars—ardent and dauntless—bare foot and clothed in sack-cloth going forth to spend their lives in wattled cote by barren sea-shore, or to freeze in Alpine heights, or in open boats on the ocean. Giving their lives up gladly, that they might spread the Light in a world of darkness. There were others, spending lives of prayer, fast-bound in gray stone walls—fasting and lying in cold stone—and others again spending lives of toil in the monasteries, making copies of the gospels and the pentateuch for the use of men; covering coarse Irish vellum with hand-writing of the greatest beauty.
The two faiths—Christian and Pagan—were strangely mingled in these northern lands. Monastery rose within sight of Druid circle—cromlech and cross side by side; the Christian crosses often owed their beauty to the druidical symbols with which they were wreathed. One night Cormac would lodge with a Druid in the shadow of an ancient tower—on the next he would crouch on the cold clay of a hermit’s cave. At Derry, or the Place of Oaks, he stayed with the monks who were building the great monastery Columba had founded—then he passed to the palace of the northern kings and joined in its revelry; in the day-time sitting and watching the feats of the juggling Druids—and at night listening to their tales as he sat with the hounds and men by the hall fire. The spirit of early Christianity was to work by degrees amongst the heathen; it was difficult to wean the people entirely from the ancient superstitions; often the priests were content, for the time, if they could but abolish the cruel and evil rites of the Druids.
And Cormac—with a boy’s hopeful outlook—began to trust Ethne was in a state of transition from the pagan to the Christian faith; for she ceased to speak to him of the Druids and their religion; no longer seemed desirous of turning him towards it.
Cormac and his followers rode on—through boundless forests, marshy wilds, and high-lying pasture-lands; through a land without cities; over broad, unbridged rivers that they crossed at fords and shallows on their swimming horses, or by the aid of stepping stones and hurdles; by unpaved roads and bridle-paths; galloping through scattered hamlets of wattle and wicker-work; scaring the cotter’s children at play among the marsh mallows; sometimes slackening their speed amid pastures gray with sheep. Now pausing to exchange a word with some half-crazed swineherd; now bursting into wild Hibernian songs; and for days meeting no living creature save red-deer, wild boar, and swine.
Upon a wet and windy afternoon they reached the Rath of Cormac’s great kinsman, King Aedh, son of Ainmire—the friend and anointed of Saint Columba; and, like Columba of the tribe of that Conall Gulban, who had given its name to the land of Tir Conall.
In the marchland that now stretched before them lay a large village of wicker cabins. Through these buildings and their accompanying midden-heaps, they threaded their way till they reached the dun of the chieftain—King Aedh; a collection of cabins surrounded by a double wall with a ditch between the two walls. These cabins, although considerably larger, were built after the same pattern as the other bee-hive shaped dwellings of the village—by interweaving wattles on either side of a clay wall and thatching the conical roofs with rushes. A rude church in the group had hewn oak mingled with the wattled walls. Just upon the rampart—to escape the shadow thrown by other buildings, the sun-chamber or Grianan of the chieftain’s wife, was always placed; formed of white wattles—often polished and sweet scented.