THE ADVENTURES OF ART, SON OF CONN

This interesting imram combines, in a way, the type of tale wherein a fairy woman comes from the Otherworld to our world–though in this tale she is banished from there–and the type of tale wherein the Otherworld is found through adventure:–

Bécuma Cneisgel, a woman of the Tuatha De Danann, because of a transgression she had committed in the Other-world with Gaidiar, Manannan’s son, was banished thence. She came to Conn, high king of Ireland, and she bound him to do her will; and her judgement was that Art, the son of Conn, should not come to Tara until a year was past. During the year, Conn and Bécuma were together in Tara, ‘and there was neither corn nor milk in Ireland during that time.’ The Tuatha De Danann sent this dreadful famine; for they, as agricultural gods, thus showed their displeasure at the unholy life of Ireland’s high king with the evil woman whom they had banished. The Druids of all Ireland being called together, declared that to appease the Tuatha De Danann ‘the son of a sinless couple should be brought to Ireland and slain before Tara, and his blood mingled with the soil of Tara’ (cf. p. 436). It was Conn himself who set out for the Otherworld and found there the sinless boy, the son of the queen of that world, and he brought him back to Tara. A strange event saves the youth:–’Just then they (the assembly of people and Druids, with Conn, Art, and Finn) heard the lowing of a cow, and a woman wailing continually behind it. And they saw the cow and the woman making for the assembly.’ The woman had come from the Otherworld to save Segda; and the cow was accepted as a sacrifice in place of Segda, owing to the wonders it disclosed; for its two bags when opened contained two birds–one with one leg and one with twelve legs, and ‘the one-legged (p. 352) bird prevailed over the bird with twelve legs’. Then rising up and calling Conn aside, the woman declared to him that until he put aside the evil woman Bécuma ‘a third of its corn, and its milk, and its mast’ should be lacking to Ireland. ‘And she took leave of them then and went off with her son, even Segda. And jewels and treasures were offered to them, but they refused them.’

In the second part of this complex tale, Bécuma and Art are together playing a game. Art finally loses, because’ the men of the sidh (like invisible spirits) began to steal the pieces ‘with which he and the woman play; and, as a result, Bécuma put on him this taboo:–’Thou shalt not eat food in Ireland until thou bring with thee Delbchaem, the daughter of Morgan.’ ‘Where is she?’ asked Art. ‘In an isle amid the sea, and that is all the information that thou wilt get.’ ‘And he put forth the coracle, and travelled the sea from one isle to another until he came to a fair, strange island,’ the Otherworld. The blooming women of that land entertain the prince of Ireland during six weeks, and instruct him in all the dangers he must face and the conquests he must make.

Having successfully met all the ordeals, Art secures Delbchaem, daughter of Morgan the king of the ‘Land of Wonders’, and returns to Ireland. ‘She had a green cloak of one hue about her, with a gold pin in it over her breast, and long, fair, very golden hair. She had dark-black eyebrows, and flashing grey eyes in her head, and a snowy-white body.’ And upon seeing the chaste and noble Delbchaem with Art, Bécuma, the banished woman of the Tuatha Dc Danann, lamenting, departs from Tara for ever. 1

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