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Of the many killers of deer in Ireland, the great chieftain of the halls of Almhuin, living on the heights of Binn Eadair, the mighty Fionn mac Cumhail was the most prolific. This, then, was the manner of his birth, the greatest of our enemies.
When Muirne of the Fair Neck was stolen away by Cumhail from her father, a great battle and slaughter of men occurred because of her abduction, and the deers of Ireland hid in the forests and gave thanks the hunting on that day was of humans and not of them. The child already in Muirne's belly, however, was foretold to be the cause of her father leaving his fair halls of Almhuin and the grave of his wife of the same name, and he greatly wished to destroy the baby before it would ever draw its first breath. His daughter thinking to return to her home, he told his men to seize her and roast her on the fire as if she were a haunch of venison. Finding no refuge with her own clan – for humans have no family feeling as do deer – Muirne fled to the clan of Cumhail and was delivered there of a boy she named Demne.
Fearing still the wrath of her father, a druid of renown, she gave the baby at once to the care of Cumhail's sister Bodhmall and her companion Liath Luachra, women warriors and druids of skill. No more she saw of the baby, and under the women warriors he grew into a lad tall for his years, and eager for the blood of the animals, both mortal and sídhe, of Ireland. No further care did clan Uí Baiscne take of Muirne, leaving her to wander like a doe without a herd until she came to Kerry and there married a chieftain, far from the lands of her father and her first husband and safe at last from all their kin. She saw her little son Demne but once more, when she came all alone to the forest in which he dwelt with his tutors, and found him so soundly asleep she could not wake him. Like a doe without her fawn she returned to the far off home she had made for herself. So much then for Muirne, who had no joy from her association with the clan of her son but rather only pains and sorrow. The deer of Ireland have no quarrel with her, but only pity.
Of what use is it to enumerate the many deeds of the lad as a boy and a youth? When he was not casting throws that brought down many a water-bird, or catching sídhe-salmon, was he not doing as all the human heroes do when they are youths, and playing hurley in a manner that leaves half the players dead upon the field? The deer of Ulster can attest that it is the same for young men in that kingdom as well. But this is the true sorrow of the deer-folk, that Demne – now called Fionn because of his fair hair – could outrun any of them no matter how fleet of foot. This the deer discovered because Bodhmall, Fionn's foster-mother, saw a herd of deer in the forest and cried out,
"Oh, how I would like to feast upon venison tonight, myself and Liath Luachra, but we are old now and cannot hunt as once we did."
"I will fetch one of those fleet-footed deer for you, mother," Fionn said and away with him faster than a hound in the chase until he had run down the deer and brought one back for his foster mothers' dinner.
From that time on, not a deer in the kingdom was safe from him, and all started running long before he ever came in sight, in the hopes they might survive his onslaught.
So far then, the first sorrow of the deer folk.
* * *
It was on one such day, when he had far outrun the men of the Fianna, that Fionn came upon his hounds holding at bay a fine doe. Her hide was of the palest tawny gold, and her eyes large and dark.
"You are a fine beast," Fionn said, lifting his spear, but his hounds – and of their story let the dogs of Ireland speak – rushed forward and danced about him like ill-trained puppies, whining and putting him off the throw entirely.
"Well, now," Fionn said, "it seems that you have found protectors in my hounds, little deer."
"There is no surprise in that, for we were in conversation before you arrived, and I put them under geas that I should not die before I spoke with you also," the deer replied.
At this Fionn made at first no answer, for the animals he hunted were not given to conversing with him. Then he drew himself up and said, "I am Fionn, the son of Cumhail, the leader of the Fianna. What is your name, little deer?"
"I am Sadhbh, the daughter of Bodhbh Dearg, the king of the sídhe of Munster," she said.
"A fair lineage," said Fionn, calculating her hostage-price.
"A terrible curse is upon me," she said, "for a druid of the de Danann loved me and wooed me, though I did not love him."
"Ah!" cried Fionn, his heart full of pity. "Is that how it is? And when you refused him, he turned you into a deer, to wander the woods of Ireland and you are fled from Munster to Leinster to be free of him? You are safe with me, Sadhbh daughter of Bodhbh, I will care for you!"
Sadhbh shook her fine-boned head in surprise, and flicked her delicate ears. "That is not it at all! He cursed me to assume the form of - " and if deers could blush, she would have, lowering her muzzle in shame " – a woman. Once within the walls of my husband's dún, I would walk on two legs, and be in all matters a human by appearance."
Fionn considered this, clearly taken aback, but the more he looked at her, the more he knew he loved Sadhbh for her beauty and her sad grace, for never had he been able to resist taking the woman sought by another man. And Sadhbh, for her part, looked on Fionn, a tall man, well made and fair of hair whose fame and generosity was known throughout Ireland and into all the halls of the sídhe, and she loved him. And the deer who had followed her from her own lands looked on from the woods and would have wept, if they could, for the sorrow of losing Sadhbh to such a killer of their kind, for they could see that nothing would satisfy Fionn but that she would become his wife.
"Come to Almhuin, out on Binn Eadair," Fionn said. "It is true your form will change, but you will be safe there, and this druid will not find you."
"Why should my shape change?" Sadhbh said, looking at him fearlessly. "Is that my husband's dún?"
"Yes, if you will be my wife," Fionn said, and he laughed loudly with pleasure as Sadhbh walked up to him and laid her fine-boned head under his heavy, deer-killing hand.
"Yes, husband," she said.
Now, while Fionn's heart was filled with love for his beautiful wife, and his eyes had never seen a creature as delicate and graceful as Sadhbh, still, he took thought of how some of the men of the Fianna would look at him sidelong when they returned to Almhuin, and how his enemies would laugh. He would be killing men from morning to night all the days of the year for laughing that his wife was a deer, and never would he have time to spend with her. As he thought so, he put his thumb into his mouth, that he had burnt whilst he cooked the salmon of knowledge, and the answer came to him at once.
"We will hide your coming from this druid by giving out that a different curse is on you," he said. "You will not be a deer cursed to be a woman, but a woman cursed to be a deer. While you are in Almhuin, the curse will be lifted – he will think you a different person, you see?"
"That seems somewhat insulting, to call being a deer a curse," she said, "and the ruse seems a little thin. Nevertheless, it is true that as a man you may be better fitted to understand the intellectual capacities of men, so let the story be as you say."
So Sadhbh and Fionn returned to Almhuin, and once she stepped through the gates she was no more a deer, but a tall and slender woman with skin the pale colour of a hind's breast and hair the colour of tawny gold, and a fine deer-skin cloak slung across her shoulders. She stepped in, with the high, nervous steps of a deer that scents danger, but her head was high and her large, dark eyes proud, and all the deer of Munster that had followed her in her exile came to the edge of the woods and bowed their heads down to the ground and would have wept to see her go from them, if tears were allowed the animals of the world.
The loss of Sadhbh, then, was the second sorrow of the deer of Ireland, and it grew greater day by day, for although it was clear to all that Sadhbh and Fionn loved each other dearly, still the deer looked up at Almhuin and saw Sadhbh watching them, her eyes sad and unaccustomed tears gathering in them that only the presence of her husband could banish. Then one day they looked up and she was happy entirely, her hand resting on her belly as she smiled at Fionn, and they knew she carried his child, and would never return to them again.
At once all the deer fled – bad was the hunting in Leinster that season – and did not stop running until they reached the sídhe halls of Munster, where they bowed their heads before Bodhbh Dearg, Sadhbh's father. No mortal stag in Ireland could match him for speed or strength or the breadth of his antlers, and the hoofprints of him caused rock to splinter.
"Sídhe-king, we bring word of your daughter," the deer cried, and fell silent from fear as Bodhbh's followers stepped forward in interest. Many sídhe were in his halls and the shape on some was of deer and on others of fierce warriors with spears and on yet other of wolves and other beasts that make short work of the mortal deer of Ireland.
"I have heard," Bodhbh said, "that my daughter has married a chieftain of the land of Leinster, a kingly man, a rich warrior who provides for her as befits the daughter of a king."
"It is Fionn Deer-Killer!" the deer cried.
Bodhbh sighed. "The man's name is known to me. Do not fear, Sadhbh will see sense."
"She carries his child, she will not return to us, she will not return to you," the deer said.
"Better if you had given her to the de Danann druid," another of the sídhe remarked.
"She would have a man of her own choosing, what can I do?" Bodhbh said, though it was clear to all that he longed for his daughter to return to him.
"But Fionn is your enemy, he has stolen her!" the deer cried in desperation. "Save your daughter, king!"
"It is true this man is no friend to the sídhe," the wolf curled by Bodhbh's feet remarked. "Wasn't it him that killed Áillen at Tara? And that slew men of the sídhe mound at Cruachán and many other places? Have his men not violated sídhe-women?"
"Are you saying to me that he has forced my daughter?" Bodhbh said in anger.
The wolf shrugged. "Is it not a reason for war?"
"Indeed," Bodhbh said, "and yet, am I to go to Leinster with all my warriors to start such a war? Cormac mac Airt has put a geas on all to have no wars for seven years and it may be that the sídhe of Leinster think we have come to raid their halls. I will not start a war between the sídhe-kingdoms and have it said we have less self-control than the men of Ireland. My warriors cannot come to Leinster." His gaze fell then upon the deer and they shrank back, for the sum of their courage had been to enter his halls in the first place.
Greatly skilled in shapeshifting was Bodhbh and a great leader of warriors, and it would indeed have been a cause for war and slaughter had he led raiding parties from his lands. Better by far to use the ways of the sídhe, which are the magical arts and deception. And so it was that Sadhbh looked out from Almhuin and saw Fionn and the Fianna returning from patrolling the lands, and Fionn called out to her to come and meet him. Sadhbh, almost forgetting who she had been, hurried out holding up her pregnant belly with her hands, joyful to see her husband. But as she approached she saw that the men of the Fianna milled about uneasily like nervous animals of the woods, and Fionn's eyes were dark with no white to them. Then the man who was not Fionn took from beneath his cloak a hazel-wood rod and touched it to her.
"Daughter, remember who you are," he said.
At once Sadhbh's deer-skin cloak covered her and she fell to four legs, and the people of Almhuin called out in wonder to see what they had supposed to be their returned chieftain and his people rush away, a herd of deer, and a huge stag with branching antlers and a fine-skinned, pregnant doe at their head.
This sorrow of the deer was not past, however, for although Fionn never found Sadhbh again, he never stopped looking, and seven years later, he came across a boy in the woods that greatly resembled his lost wife. The child wore a deer-skin cloak, and his eyes were large and dark.
"What is your name, lad?" Fionn asked.
"Fawn," the boy said.
Fionn nodded, and took the boy home, and called him Oisín. No sooner were they through the gates of Almhuin than he ordered the deer-skin cloak burnt. And so a prince of the deer-folk was lost to them, though Fionn gained his son. Whether Sadhbh left her son in the woods by chance or design that day no one can say, for no man has seen her outside her father's lands since, and what the deer have seen, they do not tell to their slayers.
So far, then, the second sorrow of the deer of Ireland.
* * *
"That man leads Oisín further into the paths of men," the deer said to each other, and, with much fear and trembling, "let us go and speak to Bodhbh Dearg, the father of Sadhbh the mother of Oisín."
So the deer went to Bodhbh Dearg's halls, and found him that day in the form of a kingly chieftain, bedecked in finest linen and scarlet-dyed wool and a good weight of gold about his neck.
"Has not dinner come to serve itself to us?" the wolf at his feet said, and all the deer shivered.
"Do not be so hasty, these are the followers of my daughter and so my guests this evening," Bodhbh said.
"The deer of Ireland ask a boon," the deer said. "Recall your grandson Oisín to himself – he acts more as a man every day."
Bodhbh stroked his beard and regarded them. "What is that to me?" he said at last. "It is how his father wished him to be raised and my daughter has not raised her voice to object."
"He is your grandson – a prince of your people is lost to you if he stays with his father!"
"I don not think his parentage unworthy, there is hardly a man of the Fianna who does not have kin in some sídhe-clan or other. It is our blood in their veins that makes them noble."
"But he kills us, day by day!" the deer cried.
"That is the nature of deer," Bodhbh said, and he laughed. "To run and to be hunted."
The deer wept as Bodhbh's followers laughed, and they cried out bitterly, "Oh, behold the might of the de Danann, who have retreated from before men into the sídhe-mounds and are satisfied for their deeds of honour to satirise the deer-folk of Ireland."
The deer drew together as all before them cried out in anger, and Bodhbh stood up from his seat, the brightness of his hall dimming with his fury.
"You think me soft?" he said, "I tell you this, deer of Ireland, if Oisín mac Fhionn wishes to live as a human then so be it. I will set him a test, but it will be his choice."
So it was on a day not long after that Fionn and all the Fianna with him were hunting the deer, and their quarry, a fine stag, knew his end was upon him when a voice said, unheard to all but him,
"Go but a few steps more, little cousin, and they will leave you in peace."
With a last effort, the heart fit to burst inside him, the stag leapt to the side where he heard the voice and crouched down trembling like a fawn in the grass as the Fianna and their dogs came into sight. From beside him, the air drawing back as if it were a curtain concealing her, came out a woman of the de Danann upon a great, white horse. Her unbound golden hair gleamed like metal freshly burnished, catching the light more brightly than her many jewels. She pulled the horse up in front of the Fianna, and not one look did a man of them spare for the stag from that moment on.
"I greet you," she said. "I am Niamh, daughter of Manannán mac Lír, the king of Tír na nÓg."
"Greetings, Niamh," Fionn said. "You are far from home, it seems to me."
"I am at that," she said. "As my father and the father of Sadhbh who was your wife are kin, we are kin too, are we not? I would ask a favour of you, kinsman, that I might return home in safety and happiness."
"Anything that is mine to give you I will give," Fionn said at once, for his open-handedness was known to all.
"Give me your son Oisín to be my husband, to come back to Tír na nÓg with me and live there by my side," she said, and smiled as Fionn's face fell.
"Oisín is not a bondsman, to be given away," Fionn said, "if he goes with you it will be by his will." He went to Oisín and said to him, "My son, I have given this woman my word to give her what she wants, but you are not to consider yourself bound by this. Let it be as you wish."
Oisín turned to Caílte mac Rónáin and asked, "Caílte, what should I do? I do not remember my mother's kin at all – why should one of them now come asking for me as a husband?"
Caílte, being a hasty young man, laughed and said, "Why should she not? You are the son of Fionn, the leader of the Fianna! And this Niamh is very good to look at – I tell you, Oisín, if I had not just been married this last year myself, I would ask her to consider me as a husband!" He elbowed Oisín slyly, saying, "Maybe I still will – you can have my wife, what do you say?"
"It is true that my father has spoke of seeking out a bride for me," Oisín mused, "and Niamh is of a good family."
"A queen of the de Danaan!" Caílte said. "You are in luck!"
"And she is very beautiful," Oisín said, calling out then, "Niamh, I will be your husband, and gladly."
She held out her hand to him and he leapt up behind her on the horse. She turned its head and they trotted away, the air concealing them again like the curtains had swung closed once more, and that was the last that was seen of Oisín the son of Fionn by man or deer in Ireland for many a season.
The years passed, and men and deer lived and died. Even Fionn died at last, and the Fianna were no more. The men of Ireland fought, and hunted and still Oisín was not seen, and of all the Fianna, only Caílte mac Rónáin still lived, an old, old man when one of the new chiefs of the land, Niall of the Nine Hostages, went across the sea to Britain and took slaves. Strange was it, Caílte said, when one of those bondsmen fled only to return to tell all Ireland of the new gods of the Romans. Stranger still that honourable men should listen to a slave and to his slavish words, but even chiefs such as Laoghaire paid heed to Pádraig, so now and then Caílte also spoke with him. Besides, all other men in Ireland had long since tired of his tales of life with the Fianna.
It was shortly after such a conversation, in which neither man had had much joy, that Caílte's tired old eyes saw a great, white horse come down the road, with a kingly young man astride it, his long hair bound back with ribbons of gold, and his clothing all of brightly coloured wool and linen of a quality such as Caílte had not seen since his youth. The young man looked about him in consternation and confusion, and called out to one of Pádraig's followers, who was engaged in futilely attempting to shift a large rock from the side of the path.
"Is this not Binn Eadair? Where is Almhuin of the white ramparts?"
"I don't know where you mean," the man said, wiping the sweat from his shaved brow. "Are you a Christian, sir? Have you come to hear the Word of God?"
Caílte mac Rónáin stepped forward, straining his ears. "Oisín?" he cried in shock. "Is it yourself, Oisín?"
"Your pardon, old man," Oisín said, "I have been away some little while, and I do not know you."
"It's Caílte! Your kinsman, Caílte mac Rónáin!" When Oisín laughed, Caílte clung to his bridle, weeping, "I said I would not die until I had seen your face again! Do you not remember how I said you could have my wife and I would marry Niamh, and then you rode away?"
"Is it really you, Caílte?" Oisín said, "Where is Almhuin? By all the gods by whom we swear, what has happened?"
"Do not invoke such demons!" Pádraig's man said.
"Don't listen to this fool," Caílte said. "It has been hundreds of years, Oisín. Almhuin is long since deserted, all this is a wilderness but for these new followers of the Roman gods, and that cesspit of a settlement, the Town of the Ford of Hurdles in the distance, may it be abandoned within ten years. All the Fianna have gone but me – no doubt my oath was strong enough to keep me living until today. I'm glad to have seen you. Now I can die in peace and leave these snivelling modern men to their pursuits of ruining life. No one today knows how to live, not like we did. Are they not smaller, weaker and uglier to boot?" He indicated the man by their side, who reddened in shame.
"Why has he shaved his hair like that?" Oisín said.
"He's a Christian druid."
"What's a Christian –"
"Don't ask, don't ask, or he'll never stop telling you. Ah, Oisín, all the heroes are gone, the sídhe-mounds are shut tight, there isn't a deed of fame to be done in the entire country any more. I'll welcome death."
"You have been saying that for years, but there is breath in you yet," muttered Pádraig's man.
"I had thought to see my father again," Oisín said sadly, looking around him. "Now I find I have neither home nor kin bar you, Caílte. If Ireland is as you say, there is no place for either of us here – come up behind me on the horse, and let us both return to Tír na nÓg, where my wife waits for me. We will have no more sadness there."
"Gladly," Caílte said.
Oisín swung the horse's head round, and looked with some contempt at the man still trying to move the rock. "You are making a meal of that task, man," he said. "Why, any man in my father's day could move such a pebble. "I will help you before I return to my wife."
He leant down from the saddle, and easily pushed the rock aside, but as he did so the saddle-girth slipped and he tumbled down, landing hard on the path beside the man and Caílte. Even as he reached back up for the reins, his hands lost the firmness of youth, and his back stooped with age, his hair thinned and greyed. The horse shied and cantered away, to be lost to their sight. All that was left was Caílte and Oisín clinging together and weeping, two old relics of a lost age, and Pádraig's man singing a hymn in the language of the Romans in praise of his god who confounded the pride of the pagans.
This then was the third sorrow of the deer-folk of Ireland, that the world became smaller and no more did we have cause to walk from the mortal woods to those of the sídhe-lands, and never again did we see Oisín the son of Sadhbh in the glory of his youth.