Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

CHAPTER VI: TALES OF THE OSSIANIC CYCLE 251and put them all under its feet. Then the old man bade thecat lead the wether back and fasten it up, and it did so easily. [292]The four champions, overcome with shame, were for leaving thehouse at once; but the old man explained that they had sufferedno discredit—the wether they had been fighting with was theWorld, and the cat was the power that would destroy the worlditself, namely, Death.At night the four heroes went to rest in a large chamber, andthe young maid came to sleep in the same room; and it is saidthat her beauty made a light on the walls of the room like acandle. One after another the Fianna went over to her couch, butshe repelled them all. “I belonged to you once,” she said to each,“and I never will again.” Last of all Dermot went. “O Dermot,”she said, “you, also, I belonged to once, and I never can again,for I am Youth; but come here and I will put a mark on you sothat no woman can ever see you without loving you.” Then shetouched his forehead, and left the Love Spot there; and that drewthe love of women to him as long as he lived.The Chase of the Hard GillyThe Chase of the Gilla Dacar is another Fian tale in whichDermot plays a leading part. The Fianna, the story goes, werehunting one day on the hills and through the woods of Munster,and as Finn and his captains stood on a hillside listening to thebaying of the hounds, and the notes of the Fian hunting-hornfrom the dark wood below, they saw coming towards them ahuge, ugly, misshapen churl dragging along by a halter a greatraw-boned mare. He announced himself as wishful to takeservice with Finn. The name he was called by, he said, was theGilla Dacar (the Hard Gilly), because he was the hardest servantever a lord had to get service or obedience from. In spite ofthis unpromising beginning, Finn, whose principle it was never [293]to refuse any suitor, took him into service; and the Fianna nowbegan to make their uncouth comrade the butt of all sorts of roughjokes, which ended in thirteen of them, including Conan the Bald,