Page:Book Of Halloween(1919).djvu/62

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
42
THE BOOK OF HALLOWE'EN
 

would go to the Otherworld. Cuchulain could not make up his mind to go, but sent Laeg, his charioteer. Such glorious reports did Laeg bring back from the Otherworld,

"If all Erin were mine,
And the kingship of yellow Bregia,
I would give it, no trilling deed,
To dwell for aye in the place I reached."

Cuchulain's Sick-bed. (Meyer trans.)

that Cuchulain went thither, and championed the people there against their enemies. He stayed a month with the fairy Fand. Emer, his wife at home, was beset with jealousy, and plotted against Fand, who had followed her hero home. Fand in fear returned to her deserted husband, Emer was given a Druidic drink to drown her jealousy, and Cuchulain another to forget his infatuation, and they lived happily afterward.

Even after Christianity was made the vital religion in Ireland, it was believed that places not exorcised by prayers and by the sign of the cross, were still haunted by Druids. As