“Come back to us, for we love thee—come back to us! For art thou not of us, brother of Ethne? Brother of Ethne, Ethne, our Druidess!”
Again they broke into wild battle-cries. Some of them, leaping on their horses, galloped in a ring around Cormac, followed by their great barking hounds.
Darkness was falling on the land; but the lurid light of the myriad fires lit it in a strange, unearthly fashion. The noise, the glare, the mad movement of the circling horsemen confused Cormac.
The frenzy of their sacred rites was upon the Druids. Golden sickles flashed on high. A storm of song and shouting followed the battle-cries. Sharp chords came, crashing from fiercely smitten harps.
The band led Cormac, with horse and hound, towards one of the blazing fires; the horses shying and leaping, terrified at the blaze, and smoke, and moving shadows; the dogs showed their white teeth as they snarled with fear of the fires.
The clamour increased. Cormac’s heart beat harder; his face burned.
On the heights above the simple folk were driving their cattle through the fires—they received the stir and spirit of the movement; and, flocking forward, soon swelled Cormac’s little band to a frenzied host. They stripped themselves of their garments, and thrust them before the young man’s horse.
Every step of his advance added fresh satellites to the ring in which he moved; as they circled about him with wild faces and frenzied shouts, they sprang through fire and the mazes of sword-dances till their bodies were singed and bleeding.
Cormac was ascending one of the hills that dot here and there Ireland’s stretch of central plain. From far and wide the people were flocking to a long, sloping hill-side, leading to the great Dun of Tlachtga that his ancestor had erected near Athboy. It was the holy place of the Druids where, on all great festivals, the sacred fire was made from which all the hearths in Munster were lit.
On the hill-side the flocks and herds mingled with the people; driven through and through the smoke and between the fires, till half mad with fear. A thousand beast-eyes caught the red of the flames, and added to the glitter of the scene; the jagged horns of oxen bristled in the close masses; the wind from their nostrils played a full accompaniment to the babel of tongues. Night seemed lighter than day in the full glare of the fires—and the moving black shadows seemed full of points of light, in glittering pike and knife.