Page:Celtic Stories by Edward Thomas.djvu/42

 forests echoing with the horns of his companions, and so it wandered until he heard the words, 'They are good at slaughter.' At this he cried, as if he had been thinking of nothing else, 'Then let them know their better', and he lifted his sword and made strokes in the air such as might have drawn blood from the wind, or made a sunbeam shriek out, and the singer fled away. Or if the wine calmed him, he felt himself going off into useless sloth, and shame roused him to think of action; no enemy appearing then could have escaped him.

It was not only his own love of battle and hate of idleness that had to be overcome by song and dance and poem, and the presence of friend and lover. Often when he seemed to be swooning pleasantly in the music, like a wasp in honey, he could hear noises of battle. These were not sounds recalled by memory, for clear as these often were, there was a difference between them and the real clamour of swords on shields, of chariot wheels and trumpets, and men in fury or agony. He thought that the kings were ravaging Ulster. Those thunders were their chariots—he leapt to the door. There they were, burning the houses and crops of the men of Ulster, carrying off their cattle. 'Why do you stay here?' he cried to those around him. 'Yonder is the enemy! Charge, men of Ulster!' and he charged out into the midst of the host that he saw, and slew right and left. But he drew no blood, and left not a corpse on the earth. 'They are the enchantments of Calatin's children,' said his friends. 'The King of Tara would never venture so near. These are fairy warriors, made by incantation out of thistle-down, puff-balls, and withered leaves. They are nothing, and they can do nothing. Shall they alarm Cohoolin? Is Ulster afraid of thistle-down? Will Cohoolin go out to fight with puff-balls, and waste his strength