THE STORY OF TUAN MAC CAIRILL 01
CHAPTER I
From Irish Fairy Tales by James Stephens
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Finnian, the Abbott of Moville, went southwards and eastwards in great
haste. News had come to him in Donegal that there were yet people in his
own province who believed in gods that he did not approve of, and the
gods that we do not approve of are treated scurvily, even by saintly
men.
He was told of a powerful gentleman who observed neither Saint’s day nor
Sunday.
“A powerful person!” said Finnian.
“All that,” was the reply.
“We shall try this person’s power,” said Finnian.
“He is reputed to be a wise and hardy man,” said his informant.
“We shall test his wisdom and his hardihood.”
“He is,” that gossip whispered--“he is a magician.”
“I will magician him,” cried Finnian angrily. “Where does that man
live?”
He was informed, and he proceeded to that direction without delay.
In no great time he came to the stronghold of the gentleman who followed
ancient ways, and he demanded admittance in order that he might preach
and prove the new God, and exorcise and terrify and banish even the
memory of the old one; for to a god grown old Time is as ruthless as to
a beggarman grown old.
But the Ulster gentleman refused Finnian admittance. He barricaded
his house, he shuttered his windows, and in a gloom of indignation and
protest he continued the practices of ten thousand years, and would
not hearken to Finnian calling at the window or to Time knocking at his
door.
But of those adversaries it was the first he redoubted.
Finnian loomed on him as a portent and a terror; but he had no fear of
Time. Indeed he was the foster-brother of Time, and so disdainful of the
bitter god that he did not even disdain him; he leaped over the scythe,
he dodged under it, and the sole occasions on which Time laughs is when
he chances on Tuan, the son of Cairill, the son of Muredac Red-neck.