Collected Folk Tales. Alan Garner

      They found a large island, with a great level plain therein. A great multitude was on that plain, playing and laughing without any cessation. Lots were cast by Maelduin and his men to see unto whom it should fall to enter the island and explore it. The lot fell to the first of Maelduin’s fosterbrothers. When he went he at once began to play and laugh continually along with the islanders, as if he had been with them all his life. His comrades stayed for a long, long space expecting him, and he came not to them. So they left him.

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      After that they sighted another island, which was not large; and a fiery rampart was round it; and that rampart kept turning about the island. There was an open doorway in the side of that rampart. Now, whenever the doorway would come opposite to them, they would see through it the whole island, and all that was therein, and all its indwellers, even human beings, beautiful, abundant, wearing adorned garments, and feasting with golden vessels in their hands. And the wanderers heard their ale-music. And for a long space were they seeing the marvel they beheld, and they judged it delightful.

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      Now, after they had gone from there they came to an island with abundant cattle, and with oxen and kine and sheep. There were no houses nor forts therein, and so they ate the flesh of the sheep. Then said some of them, seeing a large falcon there, “The falcon is like the falcons of Ireland!”

      “That is true, indeed,” said some of the others.

      “Watch,” said Maelduin, “and see how the bird will go from us.”

      They saw that it flew from them to the south-east. So they rowed after the bird in the direction in which it had gone from them. At nightfall they saw land like the land of Ireland. They rowed towards it. They found a small island, and it was from this very island that the wind had snatched them into the ocean when they first went to sea.

      Then they put their prow to the shore, and they went to the fortress that was in the island, and they were listening, and the inhabitants of the fortress were then dining.

      They heard some of them saying, “It is well for us if we should not see Maelduin.”

      “That Maelduin has been drowned,” said another man to them.

      “Perhaps it is he who shall wake you from your sleep,” said another.

      “If he should come now, what should we do?”

      “That is not hard to say,” said the chief of the house. “Great welcome to him if he should come, for he has been a long time in trouble.”

      Thereat Maelduin struck the clapper against the door-valve.

      “Who is there?” said the doorkeeper.

      “Maelduin is here,” said he himself.

      “Then open!” said the chief. “Welcome is your coming.”

      So they entered the house, and great welcome was made to them, and new garments were given them.

      Maelduin then went to his own district, and Diuran the Rhymer took the five half-ounces of silver he had brought from the net. And they declared their adventures from beginning to end, and all the dangers and perils they had found on sea and land.

      Now Aed the Fair, chief sage of Ireland, arranged this story as it stands here; and he did it so for delighting the mind and for the people of Ireland after him.

      

      The fort over against the oak-wood,

      Once it was Bruidge’s, it was Cathal’s,

      It was Aed’s, it was Ailill’s,

      It was Conaing’s, it was Cuilne’s,

      And it was Maelduin’s;

      The fort remains after each in his turn—

      And the kings asleep in the ground.

      Translated by Kuno Meyer

      

      n a village in Japan there stood a green willow tree. For centuries the people loved it. In summer it was a place where villagers could meet after work and the heat of the day, and talk there till the moonlight fell through the branches. In winter it was a half-opened umbrella covered with snow.

      A young farmer named Heitaro lived near the tree, and he, more than any other, loved the huge willow. It was the first thing he saw on waking, and the last at sleeping. Its shape greeted him when he returned from the fields, and all day he could see its crest. Sometimes he would burn a joss-stick beneath its branches and kneel down and pray.

      One day an old man of the village came to Heitaro and explained to him that the people were anxious to build a bridge over the river, and that they particularly wanted the willow tree for timber.

      “My dear willow for a bridge?” said Heitaro, covering his face. “Planks below feet? No! Take my own trees first, and spare the willow.”

      The villagers accepted Heitaro’s trees, and the willow stood.

      One night, while Heitaro was sitting under the tree he saw a beautiful woman close beside him. She stood, and looked at him shyly, as if she wanted to speak.

      “Honourable lady,” said Heitaro, “I shall go home. I see you wait for somebody you love, and my presence here is uncouth.”

      “He will not come now,” said the woman.

      “Has he grown cold?” said Heitaro. “It is terrible when a mock love woos and leaves ashes.”

      “He has not grown cold,” she said.

      “And yet he does not come?” said Heitaro. “What strangeness is this?”

      “He has come! His heart has been always here, here under this willow tree.” And the woman smiled, and left him.

      Night after night they met there. The woman’s shyness disappeared, and it seemed that she could not hear too much praise of the willow tree from Heitaro’s lips.

      One night he said to her, “Little one, will you be my wife?”

      “Yes,” she said. “Call me Higo, and ask no questions, for love of me.”

      Heitaro and Higo were married, and they had a son called Chiyodo, and they were happy.

      Great news came to the village, and it was not long before Heitaro learnt it. The Emperor wished to build a temple in Kyoto, and his ministers were searching the land for the best of timber. It would be an eternal honour to have given even a fragment of that holy shrine, and the villagers looked around them for a sacrifice that would be worthy.

      There was only the willow.

      Heitaro offered every tree on his land, and the price of his farm, but only the willow had the quality that was sought.

      “Oh, wife, my Higo,” he said that evening, “they are going to cut down the willow. Before I married you I could not have endured it. But, having you, perhaps I shall get over it some day.”

      The same night, Heitaro held his wife close for comfort in his sorrow, but he was woken by a loud cry.

      “It grows dark!” said Higo. “The room is full of whispers. Are you there, Heitaro? Listen! They are cutting the willow tree!”

      “Hush, my love, hush. I am here.”

      “They are cutting me! Look how the shadow trembles in the moonlight! They are killing me! Oh, how they cut and tear! The pain, the pain! Put your hands here, and here. Surely the blows cannot fall now!”

      Heitaro