The High Deeds of Finn MacCool Read Online Free PDF

upon you? And what thing can I be doing about it?’
    â€˜As to both these questions, they can wait. Believe only – for it is true – that you and only you can save this third child for me and my wife.’
    â€˜And how if I refuse to go on a blind errand?’ Finn said.
    â€˜Then I lay this geise upon you, that before you eat or drink or sleep, you follow me,’ said the stranger. And turning, he strode away down to the shore.
    His crew saw him coming, and before he reached it they had run the war-boat down into the shallows once more. He sprang in, the rowers after him; they bent to their oars and the galley drew away from the shore, becoming first a nut-shell boat, then a splinter of darkness far out on the bright water, then gone as though it had never been.
    And Finn turned from looking after it and said,‘Since I may neither eat nor drink nor sleep until I follow, it is in my mind that now I had best be following.’
    â€˜We will come with you,’ said his companions, but Finn refused and bade them carry the kill back to the hunting camp, and he went down to the shore alone.
    Among the rocks and the spray-wet shingle he met seven men, who might almost have been waiting for him. ‘Greetings to you, Finn Mac Cool,’ said the first. ‘The sun and the moon on your path. Is there a service that we can be doing you?’
    â€˜Greetings to you,’ said Finn Mac Cool. ‘What thing can you do best in all the world?’
    â€˜I am a shipwright,’ said the man.
    â€˜How good a shipwright are you?’
    â€˜With three strokes of my axe I can fell the alder tree that grows yonder where the stream comes down, and cut it into planks and build a ship of them.’
    â€˜That is a good skill,’ said Finn, and he turned to the second man. ‘What thing can you do best in all the world?’
    â€˜I am a tracker,’ said the man. ‘I can track the wild-duck over the nine waves in nine days.’
    â€˜And you?’ said Finn to the third man. ‘What thing can you do best?’
    â€˜I am a gripper. When I grip I never let go until my arms tear their roots out of my shoulders as the thing I have in my grip comes to me.’
    â€˜And what is your skill?’ said Finn to the fourth man.
    â€˜I am a climber. I can climb a single thread of silk whose other end is fastened to the third star of Orion’s Belt.’
    â€˜And yours?’ said Finn to the fifth man.
    â€˜I am a thief. I can steal a heron’s egg from the nest while the mother bird stands by and watches.’
    â€˜And yours?’ said Finn to the sixth man.
    â€˜I am a listener. I can hear what people whisper to each other, lip to ear, at the other end of the world.’
    â€˜And yours?’ said Finn Mac Cool to the seventh man, the last man of all.
    â€˜I am a marksman. I can pierce an egg thrown into the sky as far as the strongest bow can send an arrow.’
    â€˜Then indeed you can be of service to me,’ said Finn Mac Cool, and gave each man his orders.
    So the Shipwright felled the alder tree and cut it into planks and built a ship, with three blows of his axe. And they ran it down into the shallows, and Finn took the steering oar, for that was always the place of the leader. And the Tracker went and stood in the bow to guide them in the wake of the other vessel that nobody else could see or smell. And the rest pulled at the oars, and helped by the square sail they sped through the water with the speed of one of Manannan the Sea God’s white-maned horses.
    And at sunset they came to land.
    They ran their ship up on to the shingle, where the stranger-chief’s war-boat already lay at rest, and made towards the place, far up the glen that opened to that part of the shore, where they could see hearth smoke rising among the hazel and alder woods.
    They came to a fine house in a clearing, with a level green all about it, and out strode the