“True, child!” exclaimed the mother. “Sure the mountain is there to this very hour. And besides, Saint Columbkille talks about it in his prophecies.”
“Then the White Horsemen will come out again?”
“They’ll come out when the great war comes,” said the mother. “And that will be when there are roads round every mountain like the frills round the cap of an old woman. It will start, the great war, when the nights lengthen and the year grows brown, between the seasons of scythe and sickle; murder and slaughter, madder than cattle in the heat of summer, will run through the land, and the young men will be killed and the middle-aged men and the old. The very crutches of the cripples will be taken out to arm the fighters, and the bed-ridden will be turned three times three in their beds to see if they are fit to go into the field of battle. Death will take them all, for that is how it is to be; that way and no other. And when they’re all gone it will be the turn of the White Horsemen, who have been waiting for the great war ever since they chased the red-haired strangers from the country. They’ll come out from under Aileach when the day arrives, ten score and ten of them with silver shields and spears, bright as stars on a frosty night. They’ll fight the foe and win and victory will come to Ireland. These are the words of the great saint, Columbkille.”
“Are the White Horsemen very tall, mother?” asked Norah, her eyes alight with enthusiastic interest.
“Tall is not the word!”
“High as a hill?”
“Higher!”
“As Sliab a Tuagh?”
“It’s as nothing compared to one of the men of Maanan MacLir.”
“Then I’ll marry one of the White Horsemen,” said Norah, decision in her clear voice. “I’ll live in a castle, polish his lance and shield, and—Who will that be at the door?”