Please find a quiet,
Comfortable place to sit or lie and relax as I read chapter two of The Wooing of Bekphola.
Chapter Two They were married in haste,
Which equaled the king's desire,
And as he did not again ask her name,
And as she did not volunteer to give it,
And as she brought no dowry to her husband and received none from him,
She was called Bekphola,
The dowerless.
Time passed,
And the king's happiness was as great as his expectation of it had promised,
But on the part of Bekphola no similar tidings can be given.
There are those whose happiness lies in ambition and station,
And to such a one the fact of being queen to the high king of Ireland is a satisfaction at which desire is sated.
But the mind of Bekphola was not of this temperate quality,
And lacking crimson it seemed to her that she possessed nothing.
For to her mind he was the sunlight in the sun,
The brightness in the moonbeam,
He was the saviour in fruit and the taste in honey,
And when she looked from crimson to the king she could not but consider that the right man was in the wrong place.
She thought that crowned only with his curls,
Crimson Mackay was more nobly dined than are the masters of the world,
And she told him so.
His terror on hearing this unexpected news was so great that he meditated immediate flight from Tara,
But when a thing has been uttered once it is easier said the second time,
And on the third repetition it is patiently listened to.
After no great delay Crimson Mackay agreed and arranged that he and Bekphola should fly from Tara,
And it was part of their understanding that they should live happily ever after.
One morning when not even a bird was astir the king felt that his dear companion was rising,
He looked with one eye at the light that stole grayly through the window and recognized that it could not in justice be called light.
There is not even a bird up,
He murmured,
And then to Bekphola.
What is the early rising for,
Dear heart?
An engagement I have,
She replied.
This is not a time for engagements,
Said the calm monarch.
Let it be so,
She replied,
And dressed rapidly.
And what is the engagement?
He pursued.
Rainment that I left at a certain place and must have,
Eight silken smocks embroidered with gold,
Eight precious brooches of beaten gold,
Three diadems of pure gold.
At this hour,
Said the patient king,
The bed is better than the road.
Let it be so,
Said she,
And moreover,
He continued,
A Sunday journey brings bad luck.
Let the luck come that will come,
She answered.
To keep a cat from cream or a woman from her gear is not work for a king,
Said the monarch severely.
The ardry could look on all things with composure and regard all beings with a tranquil eye,
But it should be known that there was one deed entirely hateful to him and he would punish its commission with the very last rigor this was,
A transgression of the Sunday.
During six days of the week all that could happen might happen,
So far as Dermod was concerned,
But on the seventh day nothing should happen at all if the high king could restrain it.
But had it been possible,
He would have tethered the birds to their own green branches on that day and forbidden the clouds to pack the upper world with stir and color.
These the king permitted with a tight lip,
Perhaps all else that came under his hand felt his control.
It was his custom when he arose from the morn of Sunday to climb to the most elevated point of Tara and gaze thence on every side,
So that he might see if any fairies or people of the Shee were disporting themselves in his lordship,
For he absolutely prohibited the use of the earth to these beings on the Sunday,
And woe's worth was it for the sweet being he discovered breaking his law.
We do not know what ill he could do to the fairies,
But during Dermod's reign the world said its prayers on Sunday and the shy folk stayed in their hills.
It may be imagined,
Therefore,
With what wrath he saw his wife's preparations for her journey,
But although a king can do everything,
What can a husband do?
He arranged himself for slumber.
I am no party to this untimely journey,
He said angrily.
Let it be so,
Said Bekphola.
She left the palace with one maid,
And as she crossed the doorway something happened to her,
But by what means it happened would be hard to tell,
For in the one pace she passed out of the palace and out of the world,
And the second step she trod was in fairy,
But she did not know this.
Her intention was to go to Cluane,
Dychalic,
To meet Crymthon,
But when she left the palace she did not remember Crymthon anymore.
To her eye and the eye of her maid the world was as it always had been,
And the landmarks they knew were about them,
But the object for which they were travelling was different,
Although unknown,
And the people they passed on the roads were unknown and were yet people that they knew.
They set outwards from Tara into the duffery of Leinster,
And after some time they came into wild country and went astray.
At last Bekphola halted,
Saying,
I do not know where we are.
The maid replied that she also did not know.
Yet,
Said Bekphola,
If we continue to walk straight on we shall arrive somewhere.
They went on,
And the maid watered the road with her tears.
Night drew on them a grey chill,
A grey silence,
And they were enveloped in that chill and silence,
And they began to go in unexpectation and terror.
For they both knew and did not know that which they were bound for.
As they toiled desolately up the rustling and whispering side of a low hill,
The maid chanced to look back,
And when she looked back she screamed and pointed and clung to Bekphola's arm.
Bekphola followed the pointing finger and saw below a large black mass that moved jerkily forward.
Wolves,
Cried the maid,
Run to the trees yonder,
Her mistress ordered.
We will climb them and sit among the branches.
They ran then,
The maid moaning and lamenting all the while.
I cannot climb a tree,
She sobbed.
I shall be eaten by the wolves.
And that was true,
But her mistress climbed a tree and drew by the hand's breath from the rap and snap and slaver of those still jaws.
Then sitting on a branch she looked with the angry woe at the straining and snarling horde below,
Seeing many a white fang in those grinning jowls and the smoldering red blink of those leaping and prowling eyes.
