Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/67

 Schoepperle ^ The Washer of the Ford appears in the Destruction ofDaChocha's Hostel, a tale composed, in its original form, before the tenth cen- tury. The story is of the unfortunate Cormac Conlingas, a hero with whose tragic fate, by the way, William Sharp was familiar. 4 The omens follow one another thick and fast as Cormac presses on to his doom. When his army is about to Cross the Ford of Athlone on the way to the battle, they saw a red woman on the edge of the ford, washing her chariot and its cushions and its harness. When she lowered her hand, the bed of the river became red with gore and blood. But when she raised her hand over the river's edge, not a drop therein but was lifted on high; so that they went dry- foot over the bed of the river. "Most horrible is what the woman does!" says Cormac. "Let one of you go and ask her what she is doing." Then someone goes and asked her what she did. And then, standing on one foot, and with one eye closed, she chanted to them, saying: "I wash the harness of a king who will perish," etc. The messenger came to Cormac and told him the evil prophecy which the Badb had made for him. "Apparently thy coming is cause of great evil, " says Cormac. Then Cormac goes to the edge of the ford to have speech with her, and asked her whose was the harness she was a- washing. And then he uttered this lay: "O woman, what harness washest thou?" etc. The Badb: "Thine own harness, O Cormac, And the harness of thy men of trust, " etc. "Evil are the omens thou askest for us," says Cormac. "Grimly thou chantest to us." 5 In this account we have practically all the typical features of the Celtic superstition as they recur in less complete form in later writings. The Washer of the Ford is a "Badb, " a Celtic war god- dess whose office it is to warn the hero when his hour is come.* She is a "red woman," 7 symbol of bloody death. She stands at the ford washing gore from a chariot and cushions and harness. The prince does not recognize that it is a phantom chariot, his own. Fascinated by horror he goes to her and asks her whose is 4 Cf. Fiona Macleod, The Harping of Cravetheen in Tfa Sin-Eater, The House of Usna in Poems and Dramas. 6 Revue Celtique XXI, 157. 6 Loc. cit. t p. 395, notes to 15-17. Cf. also Rev. Celt. I, 32-55. 7 Cf. "the three reds" in the Togail Bruidne Dd Chocha, Destruction of Da Choca's Hostel, loc. cit.