Balor, by his incantations, raised a great storm to drown them; but Manannán, whose druidism was greater, stilled it. Then Balor turned the sea into fire, to burn them; but Manannán put it out with a stone.
When they were safe back in Ireland, Manannán asked Cian for his promised reward.
“I have gained nothing but the boy, and I cannot cut him in two, so I will give him to you whole,” he replied.
“That is what I was wanting all the time,” said Manannán; “when he grows up, there will be no champion equal to him.”
So Manannán baptized the boy, calling him “the Dul-Dauna”. This name, meaning “Blind-Stubborn”, is certainly a curious corruption of the original Ioldanach[[268]] “Master of all Knowledge”. When the boy had grown up, he went one day to the sea-shore. A ship came past, in which was a man. The traditions of Donnybrook Fair are evidently prehistoric, for the boy, without troubling to ask who the stranger was, took a dart “out of his pocket”, hurled it, and hit him. The man in the boat happened to be Balor. Thus, in accordance with the prophecy, he was slain by his grandson, who, though the folktale does not name him, was obviously Lugh.
Another version of the same legend, collected by the Irish scholar O’Donovan on the coast of Donegal, opposite Balor s favourite haunt, Tory Island, is interesting as completing the one just narrated.[[269]] In this folk-tale, Goibniu is called Gavida, and is made one of three brothers, the other two being called Mac Kineely and Mac Samthainn. They were chiefs of Donegal, smiths and farmers, while Balor was a robber who harassed the mainland from his stronghold on Tory Island. The gray cow belonged to Mac Kineely, and Balor stole it. Its owner determined to be revenged, and, knowing the prediction concerning Balor’s death at the hands of an as yet unborn grandson, he persuaded a kindly fairy to spirit him in female disguise to Tor Mor, where Balor’s daughter, who was called Ethnea, was kept imprisoned. The result of this expedition was not merely the one son necessary to fulfil the prophecy, but three. This apparent superfluity was fortunate; for Balor drowned two of them, the other being picked out of the sea by the same fairy who had been incidentally responsible for his birth, and handed over to his father, Mac Kineely, to be brought up. Shortly after this, Balor managed to capture Mac Kineely, and, in retaliation for the wrong done him, chopped off his head upon a large white stone, still known locally as the “Stone of Kineely”. Satisfied with this, and quite unaware that one of his daughter’s children had been saved from death, and was now being brought up as a smith by Gavida, Balor went on with his career of robbery, varying it by visits to the forge to purchase arms. One day, being there during Gavida’s absence, he began boasting to the young assistant of how he had compassed Mac Kineely’s death. He never finished the story, for Lugh—which was the boy’s name—snatched a red-hot iron from the fire, and thrust it into Balor’s eye, and through his head.
Thus, in these two folk-tales,[[270]] gathered in different parts of Ireland, at different times, by different persons, survives quite a mass of mythological detail only to be found otherwise in ancient manuscripts containing still more ancient matter. Crystallized in them may be found the names of six members of the old Gaelic Pantheon, each filling the same part as of old. Goibniu has not lost his mastery of smithcraft; Balor is still the Fomorian king of the cold regions of the sea; his daughter Ethniu becomes, by Cian, the mother of the sun-god; Lugh, who still bears his old title of Ioldanach, though it is strangely corrupted into a name meaning almost the exact opposite, is still fostered by Manannán, Son of the Sea, and in the end grows up to destroy his grandfather by a blow in the one vulnerable place, his death-dealing eye. Perhaps, too, we may claim to see a genuine, though jumbled tradition, in the Fomor-like deformities of Gobhan’s wife and child, and in the story of the gray cow and her byre-rope, which recalls that of the Dagda’s black-maned heifer, Ocean.
The memories of the peasantry still hold many stories of Lugh, as well as of Angus, and others of the old gods. But, next to the Gobhan Saer, the one whose fame is still greatest is that ever-potent and ever-popular figure, the great Manannán.
The last, perhaps, to receive open adoration, he is represented by kindly tradition as having been still content to help and watch over the people who had rejected and ceased to worship him. Up to the time of St. Columba, he was the special guardian of Irishmen in foreign parts, assisting them in their dangers and bringing them home safe. For the peasantry, too, he caused favourable weather and good crops. His fairy subjects tilled the ground while men slept. But this is said to have come to an end at last. Saint Columba, having broken his golden chalice, gave it to a servant to get repaired. On his way, the servant was met by a stranger, who asked him where he was going. The man told him, and showed him the chalice. The stranger breathed upon it, and, at once, the broken parts reunited. Then he begged him to return to his master, give him the chalice, and tell him that Manannán son of Lêr, who had mended it, desired to know in very truth whether he would ever attain paradise. “Alas,” said the ungrateful saint, “there is no forgiveness for a man who does such works as this!” The servant went back with the answer, and Manannán, when he heard it, broke out into indignant lament. “Woe is me, Manannán mac Lêr! for years I’ve helped the Catholics of Ireland, but I’ll do it no more, till they’re as weak as water. I’ll go to the gray waves in the Highlands of Scotland.”[[271]]
And there he remained. For, unless the charming stories of Miss Fiona Macleod are mere beautiful imaginings and nothing more, he is not unknown even to-day among the solitary shepherds and fishers of “the farthest Hebrides”. In the Contemporary Review for October, 1902,[[272]] she tells how an old man of fourscore years would often be visited in his shieling by a tall, beautiful stranger, with a crest on his head, “like white canna blowing in the wind, but with a blueness in it”, and “a bright, cold, curling flame under the soles of his feet”. The man told him many things, and prophesied to him the time of his death. Generally, the stranger’s hands were hidden in the folds of the white cloak he wore, but, once, he moved to touch the shepherd, who saw then that his flesh was like water, with sea-weed floating among the bones. So that Murdo MacIan knew that he could be speaking with none other than the Son of the Sea.