Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/244

 182 hammer. With this he strikes three blows on the table, and forces the inmates to come to him. Had they not done so the castle would have fallen into ruins. Other parallels from the same romances are less close; thus, when Perceval came to the castle of his enemy, Partinal, he defies him by throwing down his shield, which hangs up on a tree outside the castle (v. 44,400, et seq.). It is well known that the recognised method of challenging in tournaments was for the challenger to touch his adversary's shield with the lance. This may possibly be the origin of the "shield-clashing" challenge which occurs several times in Conall Gulban; or, on the other hand, the mediæval practice may be a knightly transformation of an earlier custom. In the thirteenth century prose Perceval le Gallois, when the hero comes to the Turning Castle and finds the door shut, he strikes such a blow with his sword that it enters three inches deep into a marble pillar (Potvin's edition, p. 196). These mediæval instances do not seem sufficient to explain the incident in our text, and I incline to think that our tale has preserved a genuine trait of old Irish knightly life. In Kennedy's "Jack the Master, and Jack the Servant" (Fictions, p. 32), the hero takes hold of a "club that hangs by the door "and uses it as a knocker.—A.N.]

Page 29. They spent the night, &c. This brief run resembles very much a passage in the story of Iollan Arm-dearg, which runs, i.e., they made three-thirds of the night; the first third with drink and play, the second third with music and melody and (feats of) science, and the third third with slumber and gentle sleep, and they passed away that night.

Page 33, line 28. This allusion to the horse and the docking is very obscure and curious. The old fellow actually blushed at the absurdity of the passage, yet he went through with it, though apparently unwillingly. He could throw no light upon it, except to excuse himself by saying that "that was how he heard it ever."

Page 37, line 4. The sword of three edges is curious; the third edge would seem to mean a rounded point, for it can hardly mean triangular like a bayonet. The sword that "never leaves the leavings of a blow behind it," is common in Irish literature. In that affecting story of Deirdre, Naoise requests to have his head struck off with such a sword, one that Mananan son of Lir, had long before given to himself.