Collected Folk Tales. Alan Garner

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.

      9

      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.

      11

      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 in the fourth division, queens in another, warriors in another, maidens in the other. A maiden went to meet them, and brought them on land, and gave them food. They likened it to cheese; and whatever taste was pleasing to anyone he would find it there. And she poured to them out of a little vessel, so that they slept a drunkenness of three days and three nights. All this time the maiden was tending them. When they awoke on the third day they were in their boat on sea. Nowhere did they find their island or their maiden.

      Then they rowed away.

      12

      They heard in the north-east a great cry and chant. That night and the next day they were rowing that they might know what cry or what chant they heard. They beheld a high, mountainous island, full of birds, black and dun and speckled, shouting and speaking loudly.

      13

      They rowed a little from that island, and found another island that was not large. There were many trees, and on them many birds. And after that they saw in the island a man whose clothing was his hair. So they asked him who he was, and from where his kindred.

      “Of the men of Ireland am I,” said he. “I went on my pilgrimage in a small boat, and when I had gone a little from land my boat split under me. I went again to land,” said he, “and I put under my feet a sod from my country, and on it I got me up to the sea. And that sod is established here for me in this place, and a foot is added to its breadth each year from that time to this, and a tree every year to grow therein. You shall all,” said he, “reach your country save one man.”

      14

      After that they voyaged till they entered a sea that resembled green glass. Such was its purity that the gravel and the sand of the sea were clearly visible through it; and they saw no monsters nor beasts therein among the crags, but only the pure gravel and the green sand. For a long space of the day they were voyaging in that sea, and great was its splendour and its beauty.

      15

      They afterwards put forth into another sea like a cloud, and it seemed to them that it would not support them or the boat. Then they beheld under the sea down below them roofed strongholds and a beautiful country. And they saw a beast huge, awful, monstrous, in a tree there, and a drove of herds and flocks round about the tree, and beside the tree an armed man, with shield and spear and sword.

      When he beheld yon huge beast that abode in the tree he went from there in flight immediately. The beast stretched forth its neck out of the tree, and set his head into the back of the largest ox of the herd, and dragged it into the tree and devoured it in the twinkling of an eye. The flocks and the herdsmen fled away at once; and when Maelduin and his people saw that, greater terror and fear seized them, for they supposed that they would never cross that sea without falling down through it, by reason of its tenuity like mist.

      So after much danger, they passed over it.

      16

      Thereafter they found another island, and up around it rose the sea, making vast cliffs of water all about it. As the people of that country perceived them, they set to screaming at them, and saying, “It is they! It is they!” till they were out of breath.

      Then Maelduin and his men beheld many human beings, and great herds of cattle, and troops of horses, and many flocks of sheep. Then there was a woman pelting them from below with large nuts which remained floating on the waves above them. Much of these nuts they gathered and took with them. They went back to the island, and thereat the screams ceased.

      “Where are they now?” said the man who was coming after them at the scream.

      “They have gone away,” said another group of them.

      “They are not so,” said another group.

      Now it is likely that there was someone concerning whom the islanders had a prophecy that he would ruin their country and expel them from their land.

      17

      They got them to another island, wherein a strange thing was shown to them, to wit, a great stream rose out of the island, and went, like a rainbow, over the whole island, and descended into the other strand of the island on the other side thereof. And they were going under the stream without being wet. And they were piercing with their spears the stream above; and great, enormous salmon were tumbling from above out of the stream down upon the soil of the island. And all the island was full of the stench of fish.

      18

      Thereafter they voyaged till they found a great silvern column. It had four sides, and the width of each of these sides was two oarstrokes of the boat, so that in its whole circumference there were eight oarstrokes of the boat. And not a single clod of earth was about it, but only the boundless ocean. And they saw not how its base was below, or – because of its height – how its summit was above. Out of its summit came a silvern net far away from it; and the boat went under sail through a mesh of that net. And Diuran gave a blow of the edge of his spear over the mesh.

      “Destroy not the net,” said Maelduin, “for what we see is the work of mighty men.”

      “I do this that my tidings may be the more believed,” said Diuran.

      And they heard a voice then from the summit of yonder pillar, mighty, and clear, and distinct. But they knew not the tongue it spoke, or the words it uttered.

      19

      Then they saw another island, standing on a single pedestal, to wit, one foot supporting it. And they rowed round it to seek a way into it, and they found no way thereinto; but they saw down in the base of the pedestal a closed door under lock. They understood that that was the way by which the island was entered. And they saw a plough on the top of the