Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

210 Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race[246]unperceived to the pool and to measure the distance from it tothe shore of the mainland. Then he went back to Emania, wherehe measured out the distance thus obtained, and placing an appleon a pole at one end he shot at it continually with a sling until hegrew so good a marksman at that distance that he never missedhis aim. Then one day, watching his opportunity by the shores ofLoch Ryve, he saw Maev enter the water, and putting a bullet inhis sling he shot at her with so good an aim that he smote her inthe centre of the forehead and she fell dead.The great warrior-queen had reigned in Connacht, it was said,for eighty-eight years. She is a signal example of the kind ofwomen whom the Gaelic bards delighted to portray. Gentlenessand modesty were by no means their usual characteristics, butrather a fierce overflowing life. Women-warriors like Skatha andAifa are frequently met with, and one is reminded of the Gaulishwomen, with their mighty snow-white arms, so dangerous toprovoke, of whom classical writers tell us. The Gaelic bards,who in so many ways anticipated the ideas of chivalric romance,did not do so in setting women in a place apart from men.Women were judged and treated like men, neither as drudges noras goddesses, and we know that well into historic times they wentwith men into battle, a practice only ended in the sixth century.Fergus mac Leda and the Wee FolkOf the stories of the Ultonian Cycle which do not centre onthe figure of Cuchulain, one of the most interesting is that ofFergus mac Leda and the King of the Wee Folk. In this taleFergus appears as King of Ulster, but as he was contemporarywith Conor mac Nessa, and in the Cattle Raid of Quelgny isrepresented as following him to war, we must conclude that hewas really a sub-king, like Cuchulain or Owen of Ferney.The tale opens in Faylinn, or the Land of the Wee Folk, a raceof elves presenting an amusing parody of human institutions on areduced scale, but endowed (like dwarfish people generally in the