Part 10 (2/2)
”This is an unlucky matter,” said they; ”for as these pigs belong to one of the Dedannans, it would be wrong for us to kill them; and even if we should do so, the enchanted pig might escape after all.”
”But,” answered Brian, ”I think I can manage to distinguish any druidical beast from a natural one; and if you had attended well to your learning, you would be able to do the same.”
Saying this, he struck his brothers one after the other with his golden druidical wand, and turned them into two fleet, slender, sharp-nosed hounds. The moment he had done so they put their noses to the earth, and, yelping eagerly, set off towards the herd on the trail of their enemy. When they had come near, the druidical pig fell out from the herd, and made towards a thick grove that grew hard by; but Brian was there before him, and drove his spear through his chest.
The pig screamed and said, ”You have done an ill deed to cast your spear at me, for you know well who I am.”
”Your voice, methinks, is the voice of a man,” said Brian; ”but I know not who you are.”
And the pig answered, ”I am Kian, the son of Canta; and now I ask you to give me quarter.”
Ur and Urcar, who had regained their shape and come up, said, ”We will give you quarter indeed, and we are sorry for what has happened to you.”
But Brian, on the other hand, said, ”I swear by the G.o.ds of the air, that if your life returned to you seven times, I would take it from you seven times.”
”Then,” said Kian, ”as you will not grant me quarter, allow me first to return to my own shape.”
”That we will grant you,” said Brian; ”for I often feel it easier to kill a man than to kill a pig.”
Kian accordingly took his own shape; and then he said, ”You indeed, ye sons of Turenn, are now about to slay me; but even so, I have outwitted you. For if you had slain me in the shape of a pig, you would have to pay only the eric-fine[10] for a pig; whereas, now that I am in my own shape, you shall pay the full fine for a man. And there never yet was killed, and there never shall be killed, a man for whom a greater fine shall be paid, than you will have to pay for me. The weapons with which I am slain shall tell the deed to my son; and he will exact the fine from you.”
”You shall not be slain with the weapons of a warrior,” said Brian; and so saying, he and his brothers laid aside their arms, and smote him fiercely and rudely with the round stones of the earth, till they had reduced his body to a disfigured ma.s.s; and in this manner they slew him.
They then buried him a man's height in the earth; but the earth, being angry at the fratricide,[x.x.xVI.] refused to receive the body, and cast it up on the surface. They buried him a second time, and again the body was thrown up from beneath the clay. Six times the sons of Turenn buried the body of Kian a man's height in the earth, and six times did the earth cast it up, refusing to receive it. But when they had buried him the seventh time, the earth refused no longer, and the body remained in the grave.
Then the sons of Turenn prepared to go forward after Luga of the Long Arms to the battle. But as they were leaving the grave, they thought they heard a faint, m.u.f.fled voice coming up from the ground beneath their feet--
The blood you have spilled, The hero you've killed, Shall follow your steps till your doom be fulfilled!
FOOTNOTES:
[x.x.xI.] Eas-Dara, now Ballysodare, in the county Sligo.
[x.x.xII.] See page 1.
[x.x.xIII.] Tara, in Meath, the chief seat of the kings of Ireland.
[x.x.xIV.] Fairy Host, _i.e._ the Dedannans. (See notes 1 and 8 at end.)
[x.x.xV.] Moy Murthemna, a plain in the county of Louth.
[x.x.xVI.] Fratricide; Gaelic, _fionghal_, the murder of a relative. (See note, page 7.) The sons of Turenn and the sons of Canta appear to have been related to each other (see the third stanza of the poem, page 94).
CHAPTER III.
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