The Lad with the Goatskin

Long ago there was a poor woman and she worked at scrubbing but she was so poor she had no clothes to put on her son Eamonn, so what she did was to stick him down in the ash hole near the fire, and pile the ashes around him to keep him warm. As he began to grow she sunk the pit deeper and deeper until he was in the ashes up to his shoulders. Well, at any rate the work got a bit better because a big family came to live in the neighbourhood and one day when they were throwing things out didn’t the widow woman get a nice dappled goat skin. She brought it home, she picked her son up out of the ashes and fastened it around his waist. He was much taller than she thought and as he was about eighteen years she decided to put him to work. She handed him a bit of rope and told him to go into the woods and bring back some kindling and some firewood.

When Eamonn had gathered as much wood as he wanted up comes a big giant nine foot high and takes a lick at him with a club. Eamonn jumped aside, picked up a log himself and gave the giant such a blow that he was kissing a clod of earth against his will.

‘If you have a prayer,’ said Eamonn, ‘now is the time to utter it before I make a brisce5 of you.‘

‘I’ll tell you what,’ said the giant, ‘if you save my life, I’ll give you my club and you’ll win every battle you’ll fight with it.’

Soon as the giant had gone Eamonn struck the pile of wood with the club and said, ‘I had a great bother getting you. Carry me home.’

Even as he said it he was swept up and carried through the air with the wood as his rocking horse.

‘What will you give me?’ said Eamonn. The giant produced a magic fife and said that nobody could help dancing when they heard it so Eamonn danced home with the wood dancing along beside him.

The third time Eamonn went into the woods he met a giant with three heads and after beating him he received a jar of green ointment that wouldn’t let you be burned or scalded or bitten or wounded. However, he learned from this giant that there were no more of them in the woods and that he would receive no more booty.

Some time after, a man passed their gate blowing a big bugle and he proclaimed that the King of Dublin’s daughter was so melancholy that she hadn’t laughed for seven years and that her father would grant her in marriage to whoever could make her laugh three times.

‘That’s something for me to try,’ said Eamonn and he kissed his mother, picked up his club and his life and his green ointment and set off along the high road to Dublin.

At last Eamonn came to one of the city gates and the guards refused to let him in. He stood there and one of the guards drew a bayonet and drove it into his side. Eamonn did nothing except take the fellow by the scruff of his neck and toss him into the canal. Some of the guards ran to rescue their comrade while others tackled Eamonn with their daggers. A tap from his club sent them tumbling to the ground and they were soon begging him to pass on, to go into the city and to leave them alone. Now Eamonn made his way to the palace yard and there he saw the King and the Queen and the Princess, up in a gallery looking down at some entertainments. There was wrestling and sword playing and dancing and mumming, all to please the Princess, but not a smile bore down on her serious face.

‘My business,’ said Eamonn, ‘is to make the beautiful Princess laugh three times.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Fiac and pointed to the clowns and jugglers and swordsmen who had not got a laugh out of her for seven years.

‘I’ll make her laugh,’ said Eamonn and by now a crowd had gathered around him to taunt him about his boast.

‘You’re an impostor,’ they said.

‘I don’t care a pinch of snuff for any of you,’ Eamonn said and put out his hands to box them.

Now the King called across to enquire what the stranger wanted.

‘He wants,’ said Fiac, ‘to make pulp of your best men.’

‘Tackle him,’ said the King, annoyed at the audacity of the interloper. A knight came forward with his sword, using a pot lid as a shield and he took a swipe at Eamonn. Eamonn just struck the knight with his club and away flew the sword and down went the knight, much to the surprise of all. Another took his place and another and another but each time Eamonn sent swords and helmets and pot lids flying about and fellows were stretched on the floor crying that they were ‘moidered’. The way they bawled like babies made the princess laugh, as she had always seen them full of airs and graces.

‘King of Dublin,’ said Eamonn. ‘I have a quarter of your daughter.’

The King looked stern but the daughter was amused. The sunlight was falling on her so that her gold hair shone brightly and as she thumbed at one of her long plaits she asked her father a favour.

‘Might the stranger have dinner with the royal family?’

The next day the wolf came into the palace yard and Eamonn took a step or two towards him as casually as if he was meeting a sheep. All the other people, including the King, the Queen and the Prin­cess, were sheltering up in the gallery. The wolf snapped and slavered and gave a leap as if he was going to tear Eamonn to pieces. Everyone expected that it was with his club Eamonn would defend himself but not a bit of it. He took the fife from his pocket and began to play a jig. The minute the music started the wolf got on his hind legs and danced about. First he was dancing slowly but as Eamonn increased the pitch he began to dance wildly and had the most audacious steps. Now Fiac who did not know any of this came wandering through the front door and didn’t the wolf petition him to a dance. Fiac had no choice. There they were, cheek to cheek and bosom to bosom doing a highland fling. One leg up and the other leg down, hold your partner and don’t let go.

The Princess was in stitches and Eamonn took the flute from his mouth to tell the King of Dublin that he now owned half his daughter.

‘Half or no half,’ said the King, ‘get rid of that wolf because it’s the hoight of trepidation we’re all in.’ So Eamonn put the fife in his pocket and said to the beast who was still careering around, ‘Get off you curra­bingo and hie to the Sugarloaf Mountains, and live like a respectable baste.’ He gave the wolf a blow of his club and off he went, as meek as a lamb.

Everyone rejoiced except of course Fiac who was jealous.

‘What next your lordship,’ said Eamonn to the King. The King told him that his next task was to find a flail hanging on a beam in hell. It was the only flail that could keep the Danes away.

‘What will you give me if I bring the flail to you?’

‘I’ll give you my daughter,’ said the King.

The Princess did not want Eamonn to risk his life by going to hell but he told her not to worry as he’d be back in no time, as right as rain. It was a long journey through lonely country and he was glad when he came in sight of the wobbly bridge that stretched over miles and miles of black puddle. He saw the towering flames in the distance and as he got nearer he saw the guards with mangy dogs on leads. He pulled off his goatskin, rubbed himself from head to toe with the green ointment and proceeded on. When he knocked on the door a score of black-faced imps poked their heads through the bars and asked him what he wanted.

‘I want to speak with the Devil, I have good news for him,’ he said. The gates were pulled back and he was allowed in. He saw the Devil in his black robe, his face covered in a black caul and his eyes like two red cinders. The poor inmates were bound to pillars with flames leaping up to their cheeks and haloes of fire all around their hair.

‘What do you want?’ asked the Devil.

‘I want the loan of that flail that I see hanging on the collar beam. It’s for the King of Dublin to thrash the Danes.’

‘What will I get in return?’ asked the Devil.

‘You’ll get a lot of dead Danes,’ said Eamonn.

The Devil ordered his men to hand over the flail knowing that it was boiling hot. He grinned at the prospect of Eamonn burning his hands off. Of course, because of the ointment the burning flail did him no harm.

‘Much obliged,’ said Eamonn and he proceeded to go out. Now the imps had locked the door and another batch of imps were coming at him with pots of boiling oil. Eamonn raised his club and tore into them. Such shouting and clobbering and hussaing you never heard. So much so that the Devil ordered to let him go because he was bringing nothing but havoc.

‘Throw it off,’ said Eamonn .

’It’s sthuck to me,’ said Fiac.

‘Oh, the devil must like you’ said Eamonn.

­‘No he doesn’t,’ said Fiac in a whimper.

‘Why did you catch it?’ said Eamonn.

‘Curiosity,’ said Fiac

‘You’re lying,’ said Eamonn.

‘I’m not,’ said Fiac.

‘Then why does the Devil like you?’ said Eamonn.

‘I don’t know,’ said Fiac.

‘You’re a mean, lying, crooked, jealous, spineless, scut of a fellow,’ said Eamonn lifting off the flail. Fiac looked at his two fingers that had been skinned.

‘I want the skin of my fingers back,’ said he.

‘Go to hell for them,’ said Eamonn, turning away, and everyone laughed but the Princess laughed louder than anyone. Eamonn did not have to ask the King again, because the Princess herself made her decision by walking towards him, placing her hands in his and telling the assembled company that she had never met anyone so brave and so funny.

‘I have never larned the rules of etiket,’ said Eamonn, going down on one knee, ‘so give me a thrifle of directions.’ The Princess laughed again and the company could see that now she was most cer­tainly his. They were betrothed there and then, and not only that but when the Danes learned that the King had got the flail out of hell they fled the country and took to their ships. Before he married, Eamonn insisted on learning the principles of politeness, flux­ions, gunnery, decimal fractions, chess, science and haute couture.

5 brisce – a blob