Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/227

Rh champions rise up whole, and the house is hidden from them, and every one of the household is hidden.—In the later Fenian saga (later that is as far as the form in which it has come down to us is concerned) the story closely resembles Thor's visit. Kennedy (Bardic Stories, pp. 132, et seq.) has a good version. —Fionn and his comrades follow a giant, on his shoulders an iron fork with a pig screeching between the prongs, behind him a damsel scourging him. They follow them to a house wherein is an aged hoary-headed man and a beautiful maid, a rough giant cooking the hog, and an old man having twelve eyes in his head, a white-haired ram, and a hag clad in dark ash coloured garment. Two fountains are before the house: Fionn drinks of one which at first tastes sweet, but afterwards bitter to death; from the other, and though he never suffered as much as while drinking, when he puts the vessel from his lips he is as whole as ever he was. The hog is then shared; the ram left out of count revenges itself by carrying out the guest's share, and smite it with their swords as they may, they cannot hurt it. The hag then throws her mantle over the guests, and they become four withered drooping-headed old men; on the mantle being removed they resume their first shape. These wonders are explained. The giant is sloth, urged on by energy; the twelve-eyed old man is the world; and the ram the guilt of man; the wells are truth and falsehood; the hag old age. The warriors sleep and in the morning find themselves on the summit of Cairn Feargaill with their hounds and their arms by them.

This tale betrays its semi-literary origin at once; and, though there is no reason to doubt that the Irish Celts had a counterpart to Thor's journey to Giantland, I am inclined to look upon the version just summarised as influenced by the Norse saga. Certain it is that the popular version of Fionn's visit to Giantland is much more like the eleventh century poem, preserved in the Book of Leinster, than it is like the late mediæval, "How Fionn fared in the House of Cuana." I have already alluded (supra, p. 186)