Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

272 Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race[317]when they turned and swam inward again till vespers, and ate theapples all night.Maeldūn and his comrades landed at night, and felt the soil hotunder their feet from the fiery swine in their caverns underground.They collected all the apples they could, which were good bothagainst hunger and thirst, and loaded their boat with them andput to sea once more, refreshed.The Island of the Little CatThe apples had failed them when they came hungry andthirsting to the eleventh island. This was, as it were, a tall whitetower of chalk reaching up to the clouds, and on the rampartabout it were great houses white as snow. They entered thelargest of them, and found no man in it, but a small cat playing onfour stone pillars which were in the midst of the house, leapingfrom one to the other. It looked a little on the Irish warriors, butdid not cease from its play. On the walls of the houses therewere three rows of objects hanging up, one row of brooches ofgold and silver, and one of neck-torques of gold and silver, eachas big as the hoop of a cask, and one of great swords with goldand silver hilts. Quilts and shining garments lay in the room, andthere, also, were a roasted ox and a flitch of bacon and abundanceof liquor. “Hath this been left for us?” said Maeldūn to the cat.It looked at him a moment, and then continued its play. So therethey ate and drank and slept, and stored up what remained of thefood. Next day, as they made to leave the house, the youngestof Maeldūn's foster-brothers took a necklace from the wall, andwas bearing it out when the cat suddenly “leaped through himlike a fiery arrow,” and he fell, a heap of ashes, on the floor.Thereupon Maeldūn, who had forbidden the theft of the jewel,soothed the cat and replaced the necklace, and they strewed theashes of the dead youth on the sea-shore, and put to sea again.The Island of the Black and the White SheepThis had a brazen palisade dividing it in two, and a flock ofblack sheep on one side and of white sheep on the other. Between