He learned to jump by chasing hares in a bumpy field.Up went the hare and up went Fionn,and away with the two of them,hopping and popping across the field.If the hare turned while Fionn was after her it was switch for Fionn;so that in a while it did not matter to Fionn which way the hare jumped for he could jump that way too.Long-ways,sideways or baw-ways,Fionn hopped where the hare hopped,and at last he was the owner of a hop that any hare would give an ear for.
He was taught to swim,and it may be that his heart sank when he fronted the lesson.The water was cold.It was deep.One could see the bottom,leagues below,millions of miles below.A small boy might shiver as he stared into that wink and blink and twink of brown pebbles and murder.And these implacable women threw him in!
Perhaps he would not go in at first.He may have smiled at them,and coaxed,and hung back.It was a leg and an arm gripped then;a swing for Fionn,and out and away with him;plop and flop for him;down into chill deep death for him,and up with a splutter;with a sob;with a grasp at everything that caught nothing;with a wild flurry;with a raging despair;with a bubble and snort as he was hauled again down,and down,and down,and found as suddenly that he had been hauled out.
Fionn learned to swim until he could pop into the water like an otter and slide through it like an eel.
He used to try to chase a fish the way he chased hares in the bumpy field--but there are terrible spurts in a fish.It may be that a fish cannot hop,but he gets there in a flash,and he isn't there in another.Up or down,sideways or endways,it is all one to a fish.He goes and is gone.He twists this way and disappears the other way.He is over you when he ought to be under you,and he is biting your toe when you thought you were biting his tail.
You cannot catch a fish by swimming,but you can try,and Fionn tried.He got a grudging commendation from the terrible women when he was able to slip noiselessly in the tide,swim under water to where a wild duck was floating and grip it by the leg.
"Qu--,"said the duck,and he disappeared before he had time to get the "-ack"out of him.
So the time went,and Fionn grew long and straight and tough like a sapling;limber as a willow,and with the flirt and spring of a young bird.One of the ladies may have said,"He is shaping very well,my dear,"and the other replied,as is the morose privilege of an aunt,"He will never be as good as his father,"but their hearts must have overflowed in the night,in the silence,in the darkness,when they thought of the living swiftness they had fashioned,and that dear fair head.
CHAPTER V
ONE day his guardians were agitated:they held confabulations at which Fionn was not permitted to assist.A man who passed by in the morning had spoken to them.They fed the man,and during his feeding Fionn had been shooed from the door as if he were a chicken.When the stranger took his road the women went with him a short distance.As they passed the man lifted a hand and bent a knee to Fionn.
"My soul to you,young master,"he said,and as he said it,Fionn knew that he could have the man's soul,or his boots,or his feet,or anything that belonged to him.
When the women returned they were mysterious and whispery.They chased Fionn into the house,and when they got him in they chased him out again.They chased each other around the house for another whisper.They calculated things by the shape of clouds,by lengths of shadows,by the flight of birds,by two flies racing on a flat stone,by throwing bones over their left shoulders,and by every kind of trick and game and chance that you could put a mind to.
They told Fionn he must sleep in a tree that night,and they put him under bonds not to sing or whistle or cough or sneeze until the morning.
Fionn did sneeze.He never sneezed so much in his life.He sat up in his tree and nearly sneezed himself out of it.Flies got up his nose,two at a time,one up each nose,and his head nearly fell off the way he sneezed.
"You are doing that on purpose,"said a savage whisper from the foot of the tree.
But Fionn was not doing it on purpose.He tucked himself into a fork the way he had been taught,and he passed the crawliest,tickliest night he had ever known.After a while he did not want to sneeze,he wanted to scream:and in particular he wanted to come down from the tree.But he did not scream,nor did he leave the tree.His word was passed,and he stayed in his tree as silent as a mouse and as watchful,until he fell out of it.
In the morning a band of travelling poets were passing,and the women handed Fionn over to them.This time they could not prevent him overhearing.
"The sons of Morna!"they said.
And Fionn's heart might have swelled with rage,but that it was already swollen with adventure.And also the expected was happening.Behind every hour of their day and every moment of their lives lay the sons of Morna.Fionn had run after them as deer:he jumped after them as hares:he dived after them as fish.
They lived in the house with him:they sat at the table and ate his meat.One dreamed of them,and they were expected in the morning as the sun is.They knew only too well that the son of Uail was living,and they knew that their own sons would know no ease while that son lived;for they believed in those days that like breeds like,and that the son of Uail would be Uail with additions.
His guardians knew that their hiding-place must at last be discovered,and that,when it was found,the sons of Morna would come.They had no doubt of that,and every action of their lives was based on that certainty.For no secret can remain secret.