Now the king of the Shi’ of Cesh Corran, Conaran, son of Imidel, was also
watching the hunt, but Fionn did not see him, for we cannot see the people
of Faery until we enter their realm, and Fionn was not thinking of Faery
at that moment. Conaran did not like Fionn, and, seeing that the great
champion was alone, save for Cona’n and the two hounds Bran and Sceo’lan,
he thought the time had come to get Fionn into his power. We do not know
what Fionn had done to Conaran, but it must have been bad enough, for the
king of the Shi’ of Cesh Cotran was filled with joy at the sight of Fionn
thus close to him, thus unprotected, thus unsuspicious.
This Conaran had four daughters. He was fond of them and proud of them,
but if one were to search the Shi’s of Ireland or the land of Ireland, the
equal of these four would not be found for ugliness and bad humour and
twisted temperaments.
Their hair was black as ink and tough as wire: it stuck up and poked out
and hung down about their heads in bushes and spikes and tangles. Their
eyes were bleary and red. Their mouths were black and twisted, and in each
of these mouths there was a hedge of curved yellow fangs. They had long
scraggy necks that could turn all the way round like the neck of a hen.
Their arms were long and skinny and muscular, and at the end of each
finger they had a spiked nail that was as hard as horn and as sharp as a
briar. Their bodies were covered with a bristle of hair and fur and fluff,
so that they looked like dogs in some parts and like cats in others, and
in other parts again they looked like chickens. They had moustaches poking
under their noses and woolly wads growing out of their ears, so that when
you looked at them the first time you never wanted to look at them again,
and if you had to look at them a second time you were likely to die of the
sight.
They were called Caevo’g, Cuillen, and Iaran. The fourth daughter,
Iarnach, was not present at that moment, so nothing need be said of her
yet.
Conaran called these three to him.
“Fionn is alone,” said he. “Fionn is alone, my treasures.”
“Ah!” said Caevo’g, and her jaw crunched upwards and stuck outwards, as
was usual with her when she was satisfied.
“When the chance comes take it,” Conaran continued, and he smiled a black,
beetle-browed, unbenevolent smile.
“It’s a good word,” quoth Cuillen, and she swung her jaw loose and made it
waggle up and down, for that was the way she smiled.
“And here is the chance,” her father added.
“The chance is here,” Iaran echoed, with a smile that was very like her
sister’s, only that it was worse, and the wen that grew on her nose
joggled to and fro and did not get its balance again for a long time.
Then they smiled a smile that was agreeable to their own eyes, but which
would have been a deadly thing for anybody else to see.
“But Fionn cannot see us,” Caevo’g objected, and her brow set downwards
and her chin set upwards and her mouth squeezed sidewards, so that her
face looked like a badly disappointed nut.
“And we are worth seeing,” Cuillen continued, and the disappointment that
was set in her sister’s face got carved and twisted into hers, but it was
worse in her case.
“That is the truth,” said Iaran in a voice of lamentation, and her face
took on a gnarl and a writhe and a solidity of ugly woe that beat the
other two and made even her father marvel.
“He cannot see us now,” Conaran replied, “but he will see us in a minute.”
“Won’t Fionn be glad when he sees us!” said the three sisters.
And then they joined hands and danced joyfully around their father, and
they sang a song, the first line of which is:
Lots of the people in the Shi’ learned that song by heart, and they
applied it to every kind of circumstance.
