The Fate of the Children of Tuireann

I The Silver Arm

In the days when the Tuatha Dé Danann held Ireland, their king was Nuada of the Silver Hand. He had an arm of silver, and the man who kept his door at Tara had one eye. ¹

One day the doorkeeper went out beyond the walls and saw two young men coming over the green. They were physicians, they said. Then put an eye in the place of my eye, said the doorkeeper. He had a cat in his lap, and one of them took the cat’s eye and set it in the doorkeeper’s head. When he wanted to sleep, it started open at the squeak of a mouse, the flight of a bird, the stirring of the reeds. When he wanted to watch a crowd, it slept.

The physicians were Miach and Oirmiach, and the king had them brought in. As they came into the hall they heard a deep groan of pain. They drew the silver arm away from the king’s side, and out of it sprang a black beetle, and the household hunted it down and killed it.

No arm among the Tuatha Dé was the match of the king’s own but the arm of Modhan the swineherd. They sent for its bones. Oirmiach set it in place, Miach went out for herbs, and the arm was set without a flaw.

It did not make him free. The Fomorians had laid a tax on his people: a tax on every kneading-trough, every quern and every baking-stone, and an ounce of gold for every nose. It was paid each year on the hill of Uisneach, and whoever refused it lost his nose.

So things stood when Nuada held a great gathering on that hill, and something came towards it out of the east.

II The Host from the East

They had not been long gathered when a company came riding towards them from the east, every horse in it white. At its head rode a young man with a face like the setting sun, so bright that no one could look at it. This was Lugh of the Long Arm, and behind him came the Fairy Host of the Land of Promise and his foster-brothers, the sons of Manannán mac Lir.

He came in Manannán’s gear: Aonbharr, Manannán’s mare, as swift as the cold wind of spring and as easy on sea as on land; Manannán’s mail, which no weapon could pass; and Manannán’s sword, the Answerer, whose wounds no one ever recovered from.

Then a second company came up the hill, grim and surly: the Fomorian tax-gatherers, nine nines of them. The whole gathering rose to its feet, the king with the rest.

Why do you stand for them, Lugh asked, when you did not stand for us? We dare not sit, said the king. If a child a month old stayed sitting, they would kill us all for it.

Lugh brooded. I have a great wish to kill these men, he said. He brooded again. I am strongly urged to kill them. Then he was on his feet. Long enough you have been oppressed! He cut them down until only nine were left, crouching at the king’s side. Those he sent home to tell it.

In Lochlann, Balor of the Evil Eye heard them out, and his queen Ceithleann knew who had done it. He is the Ildánach, she said, the son of your daughter and mine, and it was long foretold that when he came to Ireland our power there would end. ²

So Bres, son of Balor, sailed with seven battalions, and Balor gave him his orders at the harbour. Cut off the Ildánach’s head, he said. Then put your cables round that troublesome island, tie it to the sterns of your ships, and tow it to the north side of Lochlann, where none of the Dé Danann will ever follow it.

They came ashore at Eas Dara, in Sligo, and laid Connacht waste.

III The Pig on the Plain

Lugh asked the king for men to fight them. I will give no help, said the king, to avenge a deed that was not done against me. So Lugh rode west from Tara in anger, and on the road he met three brothers: Cú, Ceithen and Cian, the sons of Cáinte. Cian was Lugh’s father. ³

They offered to fight at his side, but Lugh sent them through Ireland to gather the Fairy Host instead, and Cian rode north onto the plain of Muirtheimhne.

There three armed men came riding towards him: Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba, the sons of Tuireann. There was an old feud between them and the sons of Cáinte, and wherever they met it was a fight to the death. Cian was one against three. A herd of pigs was rooting nearby. He struck himself with a druid’s wand of gold and went in among them as a pig.

Brian had seen. You keep poor watch in a time of war, he told his brothers. That man has put himself into a pig by draíocht, and whoever he is, he is no friend of ours. He struck the two with his own wand, and they were two lean hounds, yelping on the trail.

The druid’s pig broke from the herd and ran for a wood. Brian was there before it and drove his spear through its chest. The pig screamed. You have done an evil thing, it said. I am Cian, son of Cáinte. Give me quarter.

His brothers would have given it. Brian swore by the gods of the air that if Cian’s life came back to him seven times, he would take it seven times. Then let me take my own shape first, said Cian. It is easier to kill a man than a pig, said Brian, and he allowed it.

So Cian stood up a man. I have outwitted you all the same, he said. For a pig you would have paid the éiric of a pig. Now you will pay for a man, and no man was ever killed, or ever will be, for whom a greater price is paid. The weapons you kill me with will tell my son.

Then no weapon will kill you, said Brian. They laid down their arms and stoned him with the stones of the field until there was no shape left in him. They buried him a man’s height deep, and the earth threw him up. Six times they buried him, and six times it would not have him. ⁴ The seventh time it kept him, and the sons of Tuireann rode on to the war.

IV What the Earth Said

As Lugh came near the Fomorian camp, Bres son of Balor stood up and stared. A wonder, he said. The sun has risen in the west today. It is no sun, said his druids. It is the face of Lugh.

Lugh spoke them fair at first: he was their kinsman, the son of Balor’s daughter, and he asked them to give back the milch cows of Connacht. They cursed him for it, so he put a spell on the stolen herds and sent every milch cow home to her own door. After three days the Fairy Host came, and Bodb Dearg, son of the Dagda, with twenty-nine hundred men, and they broke the Fomorian army.

After the battle Lugh asked two of his kinsmen whether they had seen his father. They had not. Then he is dead, said Lugh, and no food or drink will pass my lips until I know how he died.

He followed his father’s road back to the plain of Muirtheimhne, to the very place, and the ground spoke under his feet. Great was your father’s danger here, Lugh, it said, when he saw the sons of Tuireann. He had to take the shape of a pig, and they killed him in his own.

Lugh had the grave opened. The body was all one wound. He kissed his father’s face three times. My ears hear nothing, he said. My eyes see nothing. There is not a living vein left in my heart. The Dé Danann have killed one of their own, and that fionnghal will follow them: brother will kill brother in Ireland for a long time to come.

They laid Cian in the earth again, raised a stone over him with his name cut in ogham, and sang his lament. Then Lugh sent his people on to Tara. Say nothing of this, he told them, until I have said it.

V The Price of a Father

At Tara the king seated Lugh at his side, for the news of the battle had gone ahead of him. The sons of Tuireann were in the hall, the best champions in Tara after Lugh himself.

Lugh had the chain of silence shaken, and stood. What vengeance, he asked, would each of you take on the man who killed your father?

Your father is not dead, said the king. He is, said Lugh, and the men who killed him are in this hall. The king said he would not kill such a man in one day, but cut a limb from him every day until he died. Every noble said the same, and so did the sons of Tuireann. They have judged themselves, said Lugh. They will not leave this hall until they pay me an éiric.

Brian gave way. It is of us you speak, he said. We did not kill your father, but we will pay for him as if we had.

Then here it is, said Lugh. Three apples. The skin of a pig. A spear. Two steeds and a chariot. Seven pigs. A hound’s whelp. A cooking-spit. And three shouts on a hill.

It is so small, said Brian, that we fear a trick in it. Lugh swore before the Dé Danann to ask no more, and made them swear to pay, and the king and Bodb Dearg stood surety. Then he told them what he meant. ⁵

The apples grow in the garden of Hisberna, in the east of the world, and heal any wound; but it was foretold that three young champions from the west would come for them, and the king keeps guards watching. The skin belongs to Tuis, king of Greece, and heals anyone who touches it with breath left in him. The spear is Pezar’s, king of Persia, and its blazing head is kept in a cauldron of water or it would burn his palace down. The steeds and chariot are Dobar’s, king of Sigar, and they run on sea as on land. The seven pigs are Asal’s, king of the Golden Pillars: kill them today and they are alive tomorrow. The whelp is Failinis, the king of Iroda’s hound, and every wild beast that sees it falls to the ground. The spit belongs to the women of the island of Fincara, thrice fifty of them, each one a match for three warriors. And the hill is Midkena’s, in the north of Lochlann. Midkena and his sons are under geasa to let no one shout on it, and they taught my father his feats of arms. If I forgave you, said Lugh, they would not.

The sons of Tuireann said not a word. They rose and walked out of the hall.

VI The Wave-sweeper

Their father, Tuireann, heard them to the end. You will die of this, he said, and the doom is just, for it was an evil thing to kill Cian. No living man can gather that éiric without the help of Lugh or of Manannán. Ask Lugh for Manannán’s mare. If he wants you to have the éiric, he will lend her. If he will not, ask for Manannán’s currach, the Wave-sweeper. He is forbidden to refuse a second request.

The mare is not mine, said Lugh, and I cannot lend what I have on loan. But the currach he lent them. It lay in the river at Brú na Bóinne.

Their sister Eithne went down to the river with them. Brian stepped into the boat and grumbled that it would hardly hold two. Hush, said Eithne: it will be big enough when it comes to it. It was. It held the three of them and their arms, and they left her weeping on the shore as they pulled out past the harbours of Ireland.

Currach of Manannán, said Brian, sweeper of the waves, take us to the garden of Hisberna. And it went, over the deep sea, faster than the cold wind of March.

The best champions of that country guarded the garden, with their king at their head. Brian would not have his brothers throw their lives away. He struck them and himself with his wand, and three hawks came circling down over the trees. The guards threw spears until they had none left, and the hawks swerved from every one. Then they dropped on the branches, took the apples, and were away over the sea.

The king’s three daughters had draíocht of their own. They took the shape of griffins and came after them, and flame poured from their eyes and beaks until the hawks were scorched and half blind. Brian struck once more, and three swans dropped onto the water. The griffins saw no hawks ahead of them, and turned for home.

That was the first part of the éiric paid.

VII Poets and Soldiers

In Greece they went as poets. Iuchar and Iucharba protested that they had no poem and could not make one, but they tied up their hair in the poets’ fashion and sat down to the king’s feast. When his own poets had finished, Brian stood and praised Tuis as the oak stands over the bushes, and hid a request in the praise, in words so dark that the king had to ask what they meant. They meant the skin. The king offered him three times its fill of red gold instead. Let me watch it measured, said Brian. The moment the skin was brought out he knocked the servant down, threw it over his shoulders, and fought his way back through the hall, and the king of Greece fell by his hand.

In Persia they were poets again, and this time Brian praised Pezar’s spear by name. The best reward for such a poem, said the king, is to be let live. Brian threw an apple of Hisberna and struck him on the forehead, and the king fell. They found the spear with its head sunk in a cauldron of water that hissed and seethed around it, and Brian drew it out.

In Sigar they took service as soldiers, and a month and a fortnight went by without a sight of the steeds. Then they told the king they were leaving, and to keep them he had the steeds yoked to the chariot. That is the pay we ask, said Brian. You will die for asking, said the king. Brian leapt into the chariot, threw the charioteer out, and killed the king with the burning spear.

By now their name had gone ahead of them. Asal of the Golden Pillars met them with his men under arms, heard them out, and gave them the pigs in friendship. He sailed with them to Iroda, whose king was his son-in-law, to beg the whelp for them. The king of Iroda would not hear of it, and there was a hard battle. Brian fought the king hand to hand and would not kill him, and at last lifted him off his feet and carried him to Asal. It would have been easier to kill him three times, said Brian, than to bring him to you once. So the whelp was given, and they parted friends.

VIII The Island under the Sea

Lugh knew what they had won: all he needed for the battle of Mag Tuired. So he sent a spell after them that wiped the rest of the éiric from their minds and filled them with longing for home. ⁶ They sailed for Ireland and came ashore at Brú na Bóinne.

Lugh left the gathering without a word, shut himself inside the fortress of Tara, and put on Manannán’s smooth Greek armour and the cloak of the daughter of Flidas. He is afraid, said Brian, that we will turn these weapons on him. So they gave everything to the king for him, and Lugh came out and looked it over. Here is éiric enough for anyone ever killed, he said, or ever to be. But an éiric must be paid to the last of it. Where is the spit? And I have not heard the three shouts on the hill.

The brothers fell down in a swoon.

Manannán’s currach was theirs no longer. In a ship of their own they searched the sea for Fincara for a quarter of a year, until a very old man told them the island lay not on the water but under it, sunk long ago by a spell. Brian put on his water-dress and a helmet of clear crystal and went over the side, and for a fortnight he walked the floor of the sea. At last he found the island, and a great house, and a room full of women at their embroidery, with a spit lying on a table among them. He picked it up and turned for the door.

Not one of them had stirred. Now they all laughed. There are thrice fifty of us, said the chief of them, and the weakest here could have stopped you. But take it, for your courage and your good looks. We have plenty of others.

His brothers had given him up for lost when they saw the glint of his crystal helmet rising through the green water.

IX Three Shouts on a Hill

They sailed north to the hill of Midkena, green above the shore. Midkena knew them. You killed Cian, my friend and my pupil, he said, and you will not leave here until you answer for it. He and Brian fought, and Midkena fell. Then his three sons came down to the shore, and it was three against three: men would have come from Hisberna at the eastern edge of the world to see that fight. At last the sons of Midkena fell with spears through them, and the sons of Tuireann lay down in their blood on the grass, and a darkness came over their eyes.

Brian lifted his head. Get up, he said, and give the three shouts while there is time. I feel the signs of death. His brothers could not rise. So Brian stood, with his own blood running, and held up one of them in each hand, and they gave three weak shouts on the hill.

They sailed for Ireland, and far out on the water Brian saw Binn Éadair rising, and his father’s fort, Dún Tuireann, beyond it to the north. Raise our heads on your breast, his brothers said, so that we can see Ireland; then let life or death come. He did, and they watched Binn Éadair all the slow way in. If Miach were here, they said, or Oirmiach, or Dian Cécht. If only we had not given away the skin.

At Dún Tuireann, Brian sent his father to Tara with the spit, to tell Lugh the éiric was paid and to beg the healing pigskin. Lugh refused him. Then Brian went to Tara himself. If you gave me the breadth of the earth in gold, said Lugh, I would not give it to you. You killed my father.

Brian went home and lay down between his brothers, and the life went out of the three of them at the one moment. ⁷ Tuireann made a lament over them. As long as ships sail the sea, he said, I will make no other song. Then he fell on his sons’ bodies and died, and they were buried together in the one grave.