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Few definite facts are related of Partholon, a rebel prince of Dahaut, who
after killing his father fled to Leinster. The Fomoire derived from North
Ulfland, then known as Fomoiry. King Nemed, arriving with his folk from
Norway, fought three great battles with the Fomoire near Donegal. The Ska, as
the Neme-dians called themselves, were fierce warriors; the Fomoire, defeated
twice, gained final victory only through the magic of three one-legged
witches: Cuch, Gadish and Fehor: a battle in which Nemed was killed.
The Ska had fought with honor and valor; even in defeat they commanded the
respect of the victors, so that they were allowed a year and a day to make
their black ships ready for an onward voyage. At length, after three weeks of
banquets, games, songs and the drinking of mead, they set sail from Ireland
with Starn, first son of Nemed, as their king. Starn led the surviving Ska
south to Skaghane, northernmost of the Hesperians, at the western verge of the
Elder Isles.
Nemed's second son, Fergus, sailed to Amorica and assembled an army of a
Celtic people known as the Firbolg, which he led back to Ireland. Along the
way the Firbolg put into Fflaw at the tip of Wysrod, but so vast an army came
to confront them that they left without a battle and continued to Ireland,
where they became preeminent across the land.
A century later the Tuatha de Danaan, after an epic migration from central
Europe through Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain, crossed the Cantabrian Gulf to
the Elder Isles, and established themselves in Dascinet, Troicinet and
Lyonesse. Sixty years later the Tuatha split into two factions, one of which
moved on to Ireland, to fight the Firbolg at the First and Second Battles of
Mag Tuired. The second Celtic surge which propelled the Milesians into Ireland
and the Brythni into Britain bypassed the Elder Isles_ C s
nonethelessLgrated into Hybras in sman groups and and established the Celtic
kingdom Godelia.
GLOSSARY II:
THE FAIRIES
Fairies are halflings, like trolls, falloys, ogres and goblins, and unlike
merrihews, sandestins, quists and darklings. Merrihews and sandestins both may
manifest human semblance, but the occasion is one of caprice and always
fugitive. Quists are always as they are, and darklings prefer only to hint of
their presence.
Fairies, like the other halflings, are functionally hybrids, with varying
proportions of earth-stuff. With the passage of time the proportion of
earth-stuff increases, if only through the ingestion of air and water, though
occasional coition of man and halfling hastens the process. As the halfling
becomes "heavy" with earth-stuff it converges toward humanity and loses some
or all of its magic.
The "heavy" fairy is abusively ejected from the shee as a boor and lummox, to
wander the countryside and eventually merge into the human community, where it
lives disconsolately and only rarely exercises its fading magic. The offspring
of these creatures are peculiarly sensitive to magic, and often become witches
or wizards: so with all the magicians of the Elder Isles.
Slowly, slowly the halflings dwindle; the shees grow dark, and the halfling
life-stuff dissipates into the human race. Every person alive inherits more or
less halfling-stuff from thousands of quiet infusions. In human
inter-relationships the presence of this quality is a matter of general
knowledge, but sensed sub-liminally and seldom accurately identified.
The fairy of the shee often seems childlike by reason of intemperate acts. His
character varies of course from individual to individual, but is always
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capricious and often cruel. Similarly, the fairy's sympathies are quickly
aroused, whereupon he becomes extravagantly generous. The fairy is inclined to
be boastful; he is given to dramatic postures and quick sulks. He is sensitive
in regard to his self-knage and cannot tolerate ridicule, which prompts him to
a prancing demonstrative fury. He admires beauty and also grotesque oddity in
the same degree; to the fairy these are equivalent attributes.
The fairy is erotically unpredictable and often remarkably promiscuous. Charm,
youth, beauty are not cogent considerations; above all the fairy craves
novelty. His attachments are seldom lasting, in common with all his moodsT He
quickly shifts from joy to woe; from wrath through hysteria to laughter, or
any of a dozen other affections unknown to the more stolid human race.
Fairies love tricks. Woe to the giant or ogre the fairies decide to molest!
They give him no peace; his own magic is of a gross sort, easily evaded. The
fairies torment him with cruel glee until he hides in his den, or castle. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]