II

THE JUDGMENT OF CORMAC

Once upon a time it happened that Cormac was at play with the two sons of Luna, and the lads grew angry in their play and came to blows, and Cormac struck one of them to the ground.  “Sorrow on it,” cried the lad, “here I have been beaten by one that knows not his clan or kindred, save that he is a fellow without a father.”  When Cormac heard that he was troubled and ashamed, and he went to Luna and told him what had been said.

And Luna seeing the trouble of the youth, and also that he was strong and noble to look on, and wise and eloquent in speech, held that the time was now come to reveal to him his descent.  “Thou hadst indeed a clan and kindred,” he said, “and a father of the noblest, for thou art the son of Art, the High King of Ireland, who was slain and dispossessed by mac Con.  But it is foretold that thou shalt yet come to thy father’s place, and the land pines for thee even now, for there is no good yield from earth or sea under the unlawful rule of him who now sits on the throne of Art.”

“If that be so,” said Cormac, “let us go to Tara, and bide our time there in my father’s house.”

So the two of them set out for Tara on the morrow morn.  And this was the retinue they had with them:  a body-guard of outlawed men that had revolted against mac Con and other lords and had gathered themselves together at Corann under Luna, and four wolves that had been cubs with Cormac when the she-wolf suckled him.

When they came to Tara, the folk there wondered at the fierce-eyed warriors and the grey beasts that played like dogs around Cormac, and the lad was adopted as a pupil by the King, to be taught arms and poetry and law.  Much talk there was of his coming, and of his strange companions that are not wont to be the friends of man, and as the lad grew in comeliness and in knowledge the eyes of all were turned to him more and more, because the rule of mac Con was not good.

So the time wore on, till one day a case came for judgment before the King, in which the Queen sued a certain wealthy woman and an owner of herds named Benna, for that the sheep of Benna had strayed into the Queen’s fields and had eaten to the ground a crop of woad[26] that was growing there.  The King gave judgment, that the sheep which had eaten the woad were to be given to the Queen in compensation for what they had destroyed.  Then Cormac rose up before the people and said, “Nay, but let the wool of the sheep, when they are next shorn, be given to the Queen, for the woad will grow again and so shall the wool.”  “A true judgment, a true judgment,” cried all the folk that were present in the place; “a very king’s son is he that hath pronounced it.”  And they murmured so loudly against mac Con that his druids counselled him to quit Tara lest a worse thing befall him.  So he gave up the sovranty to Cormac and went southward into Munster to rally his friends there and recover the kingdom, and there he was slain by Cormac’s men as he was distributing great largesse of gold and silver to his followers, in the place called The Field of the Gold.