We do not know where Becfola came from. Nor do we know for certain where
she went to. We do not even know her real name, for the name Becfola,
“Dowerless” or “Small-dowered,” was given to her as a nickname. This only
is certain, that she disappeared from the world we know of, and that she
went to a realm where even conjecture may not follow her.
It happened in the days when Dermod, son of the famous Ae of Slane, was
monarch of all Ireland. He was unmarried, but he had many foster-sons,
princes from the Four Provinces, who were sent by their fathers as tokens
of loyalty and affection to the Ard-Ri, and his duties as a foster-father
were righteously acquitted. Among the young princes of his household there
was one, Crimthann, son of Ae, King of Leinster, whom the High King
preferred to the others over whom he held fatherly sway. Nor was this
wonderful, for the lad loved him also, and was as eager and intelligent
and modest as becomes a prince.
The High King and Crimthann would often set out from Tara to hunt and
hawk, sometimes unaccompanied even by a servant; and on these excursions
the king imparted to his foster-son his own wide knowledge of forest
craft, and advised him generally as to the bearing and duties of a prince,
the conduct of a court, and the care of a people.
Dermod mac Ae delighted in these solitary adventures, and when he could
steal a day from policy and affairs he would send word privily to
Crimthann. The boy, having donned his hunting gear, would join the king at
a place arranged between them, and then they ranged abroad as chance might
direct.
On one of these adventures, as they searched a flooded river to find the
ford, they saw a solitary woman in a chariot driving from the west.
“I wonder what that means?” the king exclaimed thoughtfully.
“Why should you wonder at a woman in a chariot?” his companion inquired,
for Crimthann loved and would have knowledge.
“Good, my Treasure,” Dermod answered, “our minds are astonished when we
see a woman able to drive a cow to pasture, for it has always seemed to us
that they do not drive well.”
Crimthann absorbed instruction like a sponge and digested it as rapidly.
“I think that is justly said,” he agreed.
“But,” Dermod continued, “when we see a woman driving a chariot of two
horses, then we are amazed indeed.”
When the machinery of anything is explained to us we grow interested, and
Crimthann became, by instruction, as astonished as the king was.
“In good truth,” said he, “the woman is driving two horses.”
“Had you not observed it before?” his master asked with kindly malice.
“I had observed but not noticed,” the young man admitted.
“Further,” said the king, “surmise is aroused in us when we discover a
woman far from a house; for you will have both observed and noticed that
women are home-dwellers, and that a house without a woman or a woman
without a house are imperfect objects, and although they be but half
observed, they are noticed on the double.”
“There is no doubting it,” the prince answered from a knitted and
thought-tormented brow.
“We shall ask this woman for information about herself,” said the king
decidedly.
“Let us do so,” his ward agreed
“The king’s majesty uses the words ‘we’ and ‘us’ when referring to the
king’s majesty,” said Dermod, “but princes who do not yet rule territories
must use another form of speech when referring to themselves.”
“I am very thoughtless,” said Crimthann humbly.
The king kissed him on both cheeks.
“Indeed, my dear heart and my son, we are not scolding you, but you must
try not to look so terribly thoughtful when you think. It is part of the
art of a ruler.”
“I shall never master that hard art,” lamented his fosterling.
“We must all master it,” Dermod replied. “We may think with our minds and
with our tongues, but we should never think with our noses and with our
eyebrows.”
The woman in the chariot had drawn nigh to the ford by which they were
standing, and, without pause, she swung her steeds into the shallows and
came across the river in a tumult of foam and spray.
“Does she not drive well?” cried Crimthann admiringly.
“When you are older,” the king counselled him, “you will admire that which
is truly admirable, for although the driving is good the lady is better.”
He continued with enthusiasm.
“She is in truth a wonder of the world and an endless delight to the eye.”
She was all that and more, and, as she took the horses through the river
and lifted them up the bank, her flying hair and parted lips and all the
young strength and grace of her body went into the king’s eye and could
not easily come out again.
Nevertheless, it was upon his ward that the lady’s gaze rested, and if the
king could scarcely look away from her, she could, but only with an equal
effort, look away from Crimthann.
“Halt there!” cried the king.
“Who should I halt for?” the lady demanded, halting all the same, as is
the manner of women, who rebel against command and yet receive it.
“Halt for Dermod!”
“There are Dermods and Dermods in this world,” she quoted.
“There is yet but one Ard-Ri’,” the monarch answered.
She then descended from the chariot and made her reverence.
“I wish to know your name?” said he.
But at this demand the lady frowned and answered decidedly:
“I do not wish to tell it.”
“I wish to know also where you come from and to what place you are going?”
“I do not wish to tell any of these things.”
“Not to the king!”
“I do not wish to tell them to any one.”
Crimthann was scandalised.
“Lady,” he pleaded, “you will surely not withhold information from the
Ard-Ri’?”
But the lady stared as royally on the High King as the High King did on
her, and, whatever it was he saw in those lovely eyes, the king did not
insist.
He drew Crimthann apart, for he withheld no instruction from that lad.
“My heart,” he said, “we must always try to act wisely, and we should only
insist on receiving answers to questions in which we are personally
concerned.”
Crimthann imbibed all the justice of that remark.
“Thus I do not really require to know this lady’s name, nor do I care from
what direction she comes.”
“You do not?” Crimthann asked.
“No, but what I do wish to know is, Will she marry me?”
“By my hand that is a notable question,” his companion stammered.
“It is a question that must be answered,” the king cried triumphantly.
“But,” he continued, “to learn what woman she is, or where she comes from,
might bring us torment as well as information. Who knows in what
adventures the past has engaged her!”
And he stared for a profound moment on disturbing, sinister horizons, and
Crimthann meditated there with him.
“The past is hers,” he concluded, “but the future is ours, and we shall
only demand that which is pertinent to the future.”
He returned to the lady.
“We wish you to be our wife,” he said. And he gazed on her benevolently
and firmly and carefully when he said that, so that her regard could not
stray otherwhere. Yet, even as he looked, a tear did well into those
lovely eyes, and behind her brow a thought moved of the beautiful boy who
was looking at her from the king’s side.
But when the High King of Ireland asks us to marry him we do not refuse,
for it is not a thing that we shall be asked to do every day in the week,
and there is no woman in the world but would love to rule it in Tara.
No second tear crept on the lady’s lashes, and, with her hand in the
king’s hand, they paced together towards the palace, while behind them, in
melancholy mood, Crimthann mac Ae led the horses and the chariot.
