Collected Folk Tales. Alan Garner

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СКАЧАТЬ went, and warily searched the island, and found nothing evil there. And they ate their fill of the birds, and brought some of them on board their boat.

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      Three days and three nights were they at sea after that. But on the morning of the fourth day they saw another great island. Sandy was its soil. When they came to the shore of the island they saw there a beast like a horse. The legs of a hound he had, with rough, sharp nails; and huge was his joy at seeing them. And he was prancing before them, for he longed to devour them and their boat. “He is not sorry to meet us,” said Maelduin; “let us go back from the island.” That was done; and when the beast saw them fleeing, he went down to the strand and began digging up the beach with his sharp nails, and pelting them with the pebbles, and they did not expect to escape from him.

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      When they went from the island they were a long while voyaging, without food, hungrily, till they found another island, with a great cliff round it on every side, and therein was a long, narrow wood, and great was its length and its narrowness. When Maelduin reached that wood he took from it a rod in his hand as he passed it. Three days and three nights the rod remained in his hand, while the boat was under sail, coasting the cliff, and on the third day he found a cluster of three apples at the end of the rod. For forty nights each of these apples fed them.

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      Then afterwards they found another island, with a fence of stone around it. When they drew near it a huge beast sprang up in the island, and raced round about the island. To Maelduin it seemed swifter than the wind. And then it went to the height of the island, and there it performed the trick known as “straightening of body”, that is, its head below and its feet above; and so it continued; it turned in its skin, that is, the flesh and bones revolved, but the skin outside was unmoved. Or at another time the skin outside turned like a mill, the bones and the flesh unmoved.

      When it had been doing this for a long while, it sprang up again and raced about the island, as it had done at first. Then it returned to the same place; and that time the lower half of its skin stayed still, and the other half above ran round and round like a millstone. That, then, was its practice when it was going round the island. Maelduin and his people fled with all their might, and the beast saw them fleeing, and it went into the beach to seize them, and began to hit them with stones of the harbour. Now one of these stones came into their boat, and pierced through Maelduin’s shield, and lodged in the keel of the boat.

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      Now their hunger and thirst were great, and when their noses were full of the stench of the sea they sighted an island which was not large, and therein a fort surrounded by a white, high rampart as if it were built of burnt lime, or as if it were all one rock of chalk. Great was the height from the sea: it all but reached the clouds.

      The fort was open wide. Round the ramparts were great, snow-white houses. When the warriors entered the largest of these they saw no one there, save a small cat which was in the midst of the house, playing on the four stone pillars that were there. It was leaping from each pillar to the other. It looked a little at the men, and did not stop itself from its play. After that they saw three rows on the wall of the house round about, from one doorpost to the other. A row there, first, of brooches of gold and of silver, with their pins in the wall, and a row of necktorques of gold and of silver; like hoops of a vat was each of them. The third row was of great swords, with hilts of gold and of silver.

      The rooms were full of white quilts and shining garments. A roasted ox, moreover, and a flitch in the midst of the house, and great vessels with good intoxicating drink.

      “Has this been left for us?” said Maelduin to the cat. It looked at him suddenly, and began to play again. Then Maelduin recognised that it was for them that the dinner had been left. So they dined and drank and slept. They put the leavings of the drink into the pots, and stored up the leavings of the food.

      Now when they proposed to go, Maelduin’s third fosterbrother said: “Shall I take with me a necklace of these necklaces?”

      “No,” said Maelduin. “Not without a guard is this house.”

      Howbeit the fosterbrother took it as far as the middle of the enclosure. The cat followed them, and leapt through him like a fiery arrow, and burnt him so that he became ashes, and went back till it was on its pillar.

      Then Maelduin soothed the cat with words, and set the necklace in its place, and cleansed the ashes from the floor of the enclosure, and cast them on the shore of the sea.

      Then they went on board their boat.

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      Early on the morning of the third day after that they espied another island, with a brazen palisade over the midst of it which divided the island into two, and they espied great flocks of sheep therein, a black flock on this side of the fence and a white flock on the far side. And they saw a big man separating the flocks. When he used to fling a white sheep over the fence from this side to the black sheep it became black at once. So, when he used to cast a black sheep over the fence to the far side, it became white at once. The men were adread at seeing that.

      “This were well for us to do,” said Maelduin. “Let us cast two rods into the island. If they change colour, we shall change if we land on it.”

      So they flung a rod with black bark on the side where were the white sheep, and it became white at once. Then they flung a peeled, white rod on the side where were the black sheep, and it became black at once.

      “Not encouraging was that experiment,” said Maelduin. “Let us not land on the island. Doubtless our colour would have fared no better than the rods.”

      They went back from the island in terror.

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      On the third day afterwards they saw another island, great and wide, and a great mountain in the island, and they proposed to go and view the island from it. Now when Diuran the Rhymer and German went to visit the mountain they found before them a broad river which was not deep. Into this river German dipped the handle of his spear, and at once it was consumed, as if fire had burnt it. And they went no further.

      10

      They found a large island, and a great multitude of human beings therein. Black were these, both in bodies and raiment. Bands round their heads, and they rested not from wailing.

      An unlucky lot fell to one of Maelduin’s two fosterbrothers to land on the island. When he went to the people who were wailing he at once became a comrade of theirs, and began to weep along with them. Two were sent to bring him back, and they did not recognise him amongst the others, and they themselves turned to lament.

      Then said Maelduin, “Let four go,” said he, “with your weapons, and bring you the men by force, and look not at the land nor the air, and put your garments round your noses and round your mouths, and breathe not the air of the land, and take not your eyes off your own men.”

      The four went, and brought back with them by force the other two, but not the fosterbrother. When they were asked what they had seen in the land, they would say, “Indeed, we know not; but what we saw others doing, we did.”

      Thereafter they came rapidly from the island.

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      Thereafter they came to another lofty island, wherein were four fences, which divided it into four parts. A fence of gold, first: another of silver: the third of brass: and the fourth of crystal. Kings СКАЧАТЬ