CHAPTER I
There are more worlds than one,and in many ways they are unlike each other.But joy and sorrow,or,in other words,good and evil,are not absent in their degree from any of the worlds,for wherever there is life there is action,and action is but the expression of one or other of these qualities.
After this Earth there is the world of the Shi'.Beyond it again lies the Many-Coloured Land.Next comes the Land of Wonder,and after that the Land of Promise awaits us.You will cross clay to get into the Shi';you will cross water to attain the Many-Coloured Land;fire must be passed ere the Land of Wonder is attained,hut we do not know what will be crossed for the fourth world.
This adventure of Conn the Hundred Fighter and his son Art was by the way of water,and therefore he was more advanced in magic than Fionn was,all of whose adventures were by the path of clay and into Faery only,but Conn was the High King and so the arch-magician of Ireland.
A council had been called in the Many-Coloured Land to discuss the case of a lady named Becuma Cneisgel,that is,Becuma of the White Skin,the daughter of Eogan Inver.She had run away from her husband Labraid and had taken refuge with Gadiar,one of the sons of Mananna'n mac Lir,the god of the sea,and the ruler,therefore,of that sphere.
It seems,then,that there is marriage in two other spheres.In the Shi'matrimony is recorded as being parallel in every respect with earth-marriage,and the desire which urges to it seems to he as violent and inconstant as it is with us;but in the Many-Coloured Land marriage is but a contemplation of beauty,a brooding and meditation wherein all grosser desire is unknown and children are born to sinless parents.
In the Shi'the crime of Becuma would have been lightly considered,and would have received none or but a nominal punishment,but in the second world a horrid gravity attaches to such a lapse,and the retribution meted is implacable and grim.
It may be dissolution by fire,and that can note a destruction too final for the mind to contemplate;or it may be banishment from that sphere to a lower and worse one.
This was the fate of Becuma of the White Skin.
One may wonder how,having attained to that sphere,she could have carried with her so strong a memory of the earth.It is certain that she was not a fit person to exist in the Many-Coloured Land,and it is to be feared that she was organised too grossly even for life in the Shi'.
She was an earth-woman,and she was banished to the earth.
Word was sent to the Shi's of Ireland that this lady should not be permitted to enter any of them;from which it would seem that the ordinances of the Shi come from the higher world,and,it might follow,that the conduct of earth lies in the Shi'.
In that way,the gates of her own world and the innumerable doors of Faery being closed against her,Becuma was forced to appear in the world of men.
It is pleasant,however,notwithstanding her terrible crime and her woeful punishment,to think how courageous she was.When she was told her sentence,nay,her doom,she made no outcry,nor did she waste any time in sorrow.She went home and put on her nicest clothes.
She wore a red satin smock,and,over this,a cloak of green silk out of which long fringes of gold swung and sparkled,and she had light sandals of white bronze on her thin,shapely feet.She had long soft hair that was yellow as gold,and soft as the curling foam of the sea.Her eyes were wide and clear as water and were grey as a dove's breast.Her teeth were white as snow and of an evenness to marvel at.Her lips were thin and beautifully curved:
red lips in truth,red as winter berries and tempting as the fruits of summer.The people who superintended her departure said mournfully that when she was gone there would be no more beauty left in their world.
She stepped into a coracle,it was pushed on the enchanted waters,and it went forward,world within world,until land appeared,and her boat swung in low tide against a rock at the foot of Ben Edair.
So far for her.
CHAPTER II
Conn the Hundred Fighter,Ard-Ri'of Ireland,was in the lowest spirits that can be imagined,for his wife was dead.He had been Ard-Ri for nine years,and during his term the corn used to be reaped three times in each year,and there was full and plenty of everything.There are few kings who can boast of more kingly results than he can,but there was sore trouble in store for him.
He had been married to Eithne,the daughter of Brisland Binn,King of Norway,and,next to his subjects,he loved his wife more than all that was lovable in the world.But the term of man and woman,of king or queen,is set in the stars,and there is no escaping Doom for any one;so,when her time came,Eithne died.
Now there were three great burying-places in Ireland--the Brugh of the Boyne in Ulster,over which Angus Og is chief and god;the Shi'mound of Cruachan Ahi,where Ethal Anbual presides over the underworld of Connacht,and Tailltin,in Royal Meath.It was in this last,the sacred place of his own lordship,that Conn laid his wife to rest.
Her funeral games were played during nine days.Her keen was sung by poets and harpers,and a cairn ten acres wide was heaved over her clay.Then the keening ceased and the games drew to an end;the princes of the Five Prov-inces returned by horse or by chariot to their own places;the concourse of mourners melted away,and there was nothing left by the great cairn but the sun that dozed upon it in the daytime,the heavy clouds that brooded on it in the night,and the desolate,memoried king.
For the dead queen had been so lovely that Conn could not forget her;she had been so kind at every moment that he could not but miss her at every moment;but it was in the Council Chamber and the Judgement Hall that he most pondered her memory.For she had also been wise,and lack-ing her guidance,all grave affairs seemed graver,shadowing each day and going with him to the pillow at night.