them. The hero starts out on the morrow alone against these enemies, and he did not leave a head on a trunk of theirs, and he overcame the Son of Darkness himself. But he is so spoilt and torn he cannot leave the battle-field, and he lays himself down amongst the dead the length of the day. "There was a great strand under him below; and what should he hear but the sea coming as a blazing brand of fire, as a destroying serpent, as a bellowing bull; he looked from him, and what saw he coming on the shore of the strand, but a great toothy carlin . . . there was the tooth that was longer than a staff in her fist, and the one that was shorter than a stocking wire in her lap." She puts her finger in the mouth of the dead, and brings them alive. She does this to the hero, and he bites off the finger at the joint, and then slays her. She is the mother of the Son of Darkness, and she has a vessel of balsam wherewith the hero's foster-brothers anoint and make him whole, and her death frees them from her spells for ever.[1] This "toothy carlin" is a favourite figure in Celtic tradition. She re-appears in the ballad of the Muilearteach (probably Muir Iarteach, i.e., Western Sea), Campbell, iii., pp. 122, et seq., and is there described as "the bald russet one," "her face blue black, of the lustre of coal, her bone tufted tooth like rusted bone, one deep pool-like eye in her head, gnarled brushwood on her head like the clawed-up wood of the aspen root." In another version of the ballad, printed in the Scottish Celtic Review, No. 2, pp. 115, et seq., the monster is "bald red, white maned, her face dark grey, of the hue of coal, the teeth of her jaw slanting red, one flabby eye in her head, her head bristled dark and grey, like scrubwood before hoar."[2] The editor of this version, the Rev. J. G. Campbell, interprets the ballad, and correctly, no doubt, "as an inroad of the
- ↑ I must refer to my Mabinogion Studies, I. Branwen for a discussion of the relation of this tale with Branwen and with the Teutonic Heldensage.
- ↑ Another parallel is afforded by the tale of Conall Gulban (Campbell, III., 274). Conall, stretched wounded on the field, sees "when night grew dark a great Turkish carlin, and she had a white glaive of light with which she could see seven miles behind her and seven miles before her; and she had a flask of balsam carrying it." The dead men are brought to life by having three drops of balsam put into their mouths. The hero wins both flask and glaive.
