Conal Yellowclaw

Conal Yellowclaw was a sturdy tenant farmer in Ireland, and he had three sons. In those days there was a king over every fifth of Ireland. It happened that the children of the king who lived near Conal came to blows with Conal’s sons. Conal’s sons got the better of the fight, and they killed the king’s eldest son.

The king sent for Conal. “Oh, Conal, why did your sons attack mine until my eldest was killed? But I can see that taking revenge on you would do me little good. So I will set you a task, and if you do it, I will not seek revenge. If you and your sons bring me the brown horse of the King of Lochlann, you shall have your sons’ lives.”

“Why should I not do the king’s pleasure?” said Conal. “It is a hard thing you ask, but I will do it, or lose my own life and my sons’ lives trying.”

Conal went home troubled and worried, and when he lay down that night he told his wife what the king had demanded. She was full of sorrow that he must leave her, not knowing whether she would see him again. “Oh, Conal, why didn’t you let the king do as he liked with your sons, instead of going off now when I may never see you more?”

In the morning he made himself and his three sons ready, and they set out for Lochlann, and they did not stop but tore across the ocean until they reached it. Once there, they did not know what to do. “Wait,” said the old man to his sons. “We will look for the house of the king’s miller.”

The miller invited them to stay the night. Conal told him that his sons had killed his own king’s son, and that nothing would satisfy that king but the brown horse of the King of Lochlann. “If you would do me a kindness and show me a way to get him, I will certainly pay you for it.”

“It’s a foolish thing you’ve come for,” said the miller. “The king has set his heart on that horse so much that you will never get him unless you steal him. But if you can find a way, I’ll keep your secret.”

“This is my idea,” said Conal. “You work for the king every day. You and your lads could put me and my sons into four sacks of bran.”

“That’s not a bad plan,” said the miller. He told his lads to do it, and they put the four of them into four sacks. The king’s stable lads came for the bran, carried the sacks off and emptied them in front of the horses, then locked the door and left.

When the sons were about to seize the brown horse, Conal said, “Not yet. It will be hard to get out of here. Let us make four hiding holes, so that if they hear us we can hide.” They dug the holes and then laid hands on the horse. But the horse was still fairly wild, and he made a terrible racket all through the stable.

The king heard it. “That must be my brown horse,” he said to his lads. “Find out what’s wrong with him.” When Conal and his sons saw the lads coming, they slipped into their hiding holes. The lads searched among the horses, found nothing wrong and told the king so, and he sent them to bed.

When the lads had had time to go, Conal and his sons took hold of the horse a second time, and if the noise had been loud before, now it was seven times louder. The king sent the stable lads out, certain something was troubling the horse, but they searched thoroughly and found nothing. “That is a wonder to me,” said the king. “Go to bed, and if I hear it a third time, I’ll go out myself.”

As soon as the lads were gone, Conal and his sons seized the horse yet a third time, and this time he made more noise than ever. “Be it on my head,” said the king, “someone must be meddling with my brown horse.” He rang his bell in a hurry and told his servant to rouse the stable lads, and he went out with them himself. When Conal and his sons saw the crowd coming, they hid in their holes. But the king was a wary man, and he saw where the horses were stirring. “Careful,” he said. “There are men in this stable. Let’s find them.” He followed their tracks and found them.

Everyone knew Conal, for he was a valued tenant of the king of Ireland, and when the king pulled them out of the holes he said, “Oh, Conal, is it you?”

“It is, O king, and need drove me here. I put myself under your pardon, your honour and your mercy.” He told the king everything: that he had to bring the brown horse to the king of Ireland or his sons would be put to death. “I knew I could not get him by asking, so I was going to steal him.”

“Very well, Conal, but come inside,” said the king. He told his watchmen to guard Conal’s sons and give them food, and a double guard was set on them that night.

“Now, Conal,” said the king, “were you ever in a tighter spot than this, with your sons to be hanged tomorrow? But you have put yourself at my mercy and said it was need that drove you, so I must not hang you. Tell me of a time when you were in as hard a case as this, and if you can, you shall have your youngest son’s life.”

“I will tell you of a time as hard,” said Conal. “When I was a young lad, my father had a great deal of land and fields of yearling cows. One of them had just calved, and my father sent me to bring her home. I found her and was bringing her along when a snowstorm came on, so we went into the herdsman’s hut, taking the cow and calf in with us, to wait for it to pass.

“Who should come in but one cat and ten more, with a great one-eyed, fox-coloured cat at their head as chief bard. I can tell you I had no liking for their company. ‘Strike up,’ said the chief bard. ‘Why should we sit silent? Sing a cronan, a crooning song, to Conal Yellowclaw.’ I was amazed that even the cats knew my name. When they had sung, the chief bard said, ‘Now, Conal, pay the cats their reward for the song.’

“‘I have nothing to give you,’ I said, ‘unless you go and take that calf.’ No sooner had I said it than all the cats fell on the calf, and it did not last them long. ‘Play up! Why are you silent? Make a cronan for Conal Yellowclaw,’ said the chief bard. I had no liking at all for their song, but up they came and sang it anyway. ‘Pay them now,’ said the great fox-coloured cat.

“‘I’m sick of you and your rewards,’ I said. ‘I have nothing for you unless you take that cow.’ They went at the cow, and she did not last them long either.

“‘Why are you silent? Go and sing a cronan to Conal Yellowclaw,’ said the chief bard. And truly, O king, I cared nothing for them or their song, for I could see they were bad company. When they had sung, they went back to their chief. ‘Pay their reward,’ said he, and I told them I had nothing more for them. Then, O king, there was such a caterwauling among them!

“So I leaped out through a small window at the back of the hut and ran as hard as I could into the wood. I was fast and strong in those days, and when I heard the cats rushing after me, I climbed the highest tree I could see, one with a thick top, and hid myself as well as I could. The cats searched the wood for me and could not find me, and when they were tired, they agreed to turn back.

“‘But,’ said the one-eyed fox-coloured cat who commanded them, ‘you didn’t see him with your two eyes, and though I have only one, there’s the rascal up in the tree.’ At that one of them climbed the tree, and as he came near me I drew a weapon I had and killed him. ‘Be it on my head!’ said the one-eyed one. ‘I mustn’t lose my company like this. Gather round the foot of the tree, dig round it and bring that villain down.’ They gathered round and dug at the roots, and when they cut the first big root the tree shook, and I gave a shout, which is no wonder.

“Near the wood lived a priest who had ten men digging with him, and he said, ‘That’s the shout of a man in great danger, and I must answer it.’ But the wisest of the men said, ‘Leave it until we hear it a second time.’ The cats dug wildly and broke the next root, and I gave my second shout, and it was no weak one. ‘Surely,’ said the priest, ‘that is a man in deadly danger. Let us go.’ They got ready to go. Then the cats broke the third root, and the tree tipped over onto its elbow, and I gave my third shout. The strong men hurried up, and when they saw what the cats were doing to the tree, they set about them with their spades, until the cats ran off. And truly, O king, I did not move until I had seen the last of them go. Then I went home. That is the hardest case I was ever in, and it seems to me that being torn apart by cats would be worse than being hanged tomorrow by the King of Lochlann.”

“Och, Conal,” said the king, “you are full of words. With your tale you have freed your son. Now tell me of a harder case still, and you shall have your second youngest, and then you will have two sons.”

“Then I will tell you,” said Conal, “of a time when I was in a harder case than being your prisoner tonight. I was still quite a young lad when I went out hunting. My father’s land ran down to the sea, and the shore was rough with rocks, caves and clefts. As I walked along the top of the shore, I saw what looked like smoke rising between two rocks, and while I was staring at it, I fell in. The place was so thick with heather that I broke neither bone nor skin, but I could see no way out. I kept gazing up at the way I had come, thinking I would never climb back up there, and it was a terrible thing to think I would be there till I died.

“Then I heard a great clattering, and in came a huge giant with two dozen goats and a buck at their head. When he had tied up the goats, he came over and said, ‘Hao O! Conal, my knife has been rusting in my pouch for a long time, waiting for your tender flesh.’

“‘Och,’ I said, ‘you won’t gain much by me, even if you tear me to pieces. I’ll make only one meal for you. But I see you have only one eye. I am a good doctor, and I will give you sight in your other eye.’ The giant dragged his great cauldron onto the fire, and I told him how to heat the water so that I could cure him. I made a scrubbing brush out of heather and stood him up in the cauldron. I started on his good eye, pretending to heal the bad one, until I had left them both as bad as each other; and certainly it was easier to spoil the good eye than to cure the bad one.

“When he found he could not see a glimmer, and I told him I would get out in spite of him, he leaped out of the water and planted himself in the mouth of the cave, swearing he would have revenge for his sight. I had to stay crouched there all night, holding my breath so he could not tell where I was.

“When he heard the birds calling and knew it was morning, he said, ‘Are you asleep? Wake up and let out my goats.’ I killed the buck. He cried, ‘I believe you’re killing my buck.’

“‘I’m not,’ said I, ‘but the ropes are so tight they take a long time to untie.’ I let out one goat, and he stroked her and said, ‘There you are, you shaggy, hairy white goat. You can see me, but I can’t see you.’ I kept letting them out one by one while I skinned the buck, and before the last goat was out, I had skinned it whole, like a bag. Then I put my legs where its hind legs had been, my arms where its forelegs had been and my head where its head had been, with the horns on top, so that the brute would think I was the buck. As I went out, the giant put his hand on me and said, ‘There you are, my pretty buck. You can see me, but I can’t see you.’ When I was outside and saw the world around me, O king, I was full of joy. I shook off the skin and called to the brute, ‘I’m out now, in spite of you!’

“‘Aha!’ said he. ‘So that’s what you’ve done to me. Since you were bold enough to get out, I’ll give you a ring I have here. Keep it, and it will do you good.’

“‘I won’t take it from your hand,’ said I, ‘but throw it, and I’ll take it.’ He threw it onto the flat ground, and I picked it up and put it on my finger. ‘Does the ring fit you?’ he asked, and I said it did. Then he called, ‘Where are you, ring?’ and the ring answered, ‘I am here.’ The brute came striding towards the voice, and I saw I was in a worse fix than ever. I drew a dagger, cut off my finger and flung it as far as I could out into the loch, where the water was very deep. ‘Where are you, ring?’ he shouted, and the ring said, ‘I am here,’ though it was at the bottom of the sea. He sprang after it, out into the sea. And I was as glad to see him drown as I would be now if you spared my life and my two sons’ lives and troubled me no further.

“When the giant was drowned, I went into the cave and took all his gold and silver, and went home, and my people were overjoyed to see me. And as proof, look: the finger is gone.”

“Indeed, Conal, you are wordy and wise,” said the king. “I see the finger is missing. You have won your two sons. But if you can tell me of a plight worse than watching your son hanged tomorrow, your eldest son’s life shall be yours too.”

“After that my father found me a wife, and I was married,” said Conal. “One day I went hunting along the shore and saw an island out in the middle of the loch. I came to a boat tied with a rope at the bow and a rope at the stern, full of precious things. I looked at it, wondering how I could get some of them, and I put one foot in the boat, keeping the other on land. When I raised my head, the boat was out in the middle of the loch, and it did not stop until it reached the island. When I stepped out, it went straight off to where it came from.

“I did not know what to do. The island had no food, no shelter and no sign of a house. I climbed to the top of a hill and came down into a glen, and at the bottom of a hollow I saw a woman with a naked baby on her knee and a knife in her hand. She tried to put the knife to the baby’s throat, but the baby laughed up into her face, and she burst into tears and threw the knife behind her.

“I thought to myself that I was near my enemy and far from my friends, and I called to her, ‘What are you doing here?’

“‘What brought you here?’ she asked. I told her, word for word, how I had come. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that is how I came too.’ She showed me the way in to where she was, and I asked her why she had been putting the knife to the child’s neck. ‘He must be cooked for the giant who lives here,’ she said, ‘or my life is over.’

“Just then we heard the giant’s footsteps. ‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’ cried the woman. I ran to the cauldron, and by luck it was not hot, so I climbed in just as the brute came in. ‘Have you boiled that youngster for me?’ he roared.

“‘He isn’t done yet,’ said she, and I called out from the cauldron, ‘Mammy, mammy, I’m boiling!’ The giant laughed, ‘Hai, haw, hogaraich!’ and piled more wood under the pot.

“Now I was sure I would be scalded to death before I could escape. As luck would have it, the brute fell asleep beside the cauldron, though by then its bottom was burning me. When the woman saw he was asleep, she put her mouth softly to the hole in the lid and asked if I was alive. I said I was. I pushed my head up, and the hole was big enough for my head to pass easily. All went well until I came to my hips, and I left the skin of my hips behind me, but I got out.

“The woman told me nothing could kill the giant but his own spear. I began to pull it from him, and every time he breathed in, I thought I would be sucked down his throat, and every time he breathed out, I was blown just as far away. But in spite of everything, I got the spear free. Then I was like a man under a bundle of straw in a gale, for I could hardly manage the spear. It was a fearful thing to look at the brute, with his single eye in the middle of his face, and no pleasant thing for someone like me to attack him. But I lifted the spear as well as I could and drove it into his eye. When he felt it, he jerked up his head, and the other end of the spear struck the roof of the cave and drove right through to the back of his head. He fell down stone dead, and you may be sure, O king, I was overjoyed. The woman and I went out into the open and spent the night there. Then I fetched the boat that had brought me, still as full of treasure as ever, carried the woman and child over to the mainland, and went home.”

The King of Lochlann’s mother was making up the fire just then, listening as Conal told about the child. “Is it you who were there?” she asked.

“It was,” said Conal.

“Och, och!” said she. “I was the woman there, and the king is the child whose life you saved. It is you we must thank for his life.” Then there was great rejoicing.

“Oh, Conal, you have come through great hardships,” said the king. “Now the brown horse is yours, and a sack filled with the most precious things in my treasury.” They went to bed that night, and early as Conal rose, the queen was up even earlier getting things ready. He was given the brown horse and a sack full of gold, silver and costly jewels, and Conal and his three sons set off for joyful Ireland.

At home he left the gold and silver in his house and took the horse to the king, and the two of them were good friends for evermore. Then Conal went to his wife, and they held a feast, and that was a feast if ever there was one, oh son and brother.

About this telling

Jacobs took “Conal Yellowclaw” from J. F. Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands, where it is called “Conall Cra Bhuidhe.” He says he translated Cra Bhuidhe as Yellowclaw following Campbell, and that he softened the third episode, which is “somewhat too ghastly” in the original. Lochlann denotes Norway or Scandinavia in this story’s setting. The cited text says Conal has three sons but then mentions five sacks and hiding places; this retelling makes those counts four to match the travelling party.

Jacobs notes that the story was widespread in Gaelic Scotland and appeared in Ireland as “The Black Thief and the Knight of the Glen,” which the novelist Thackeray thought as wild and odd as anything in the Arabian Nights. He also links the blinding of the one-eyed giant with the Polyphemus (Cyclops) episode, which turns up in other Highland tales too.

Read the original: Joseph Jacobs, Celtic Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg ebook #7885, Conal Yellowclaw)

For older readers: a fatal fight, threatened execution, cannibal threats against an infant, blinding, loss of a finger and a violent killing. The nested adventures remain graphic despite Jacobs’s own softening of his source.

Reading the story closely

Each story buys a son’s life, but the third does more than meet a bargain. The king’s mother recognizes herself and reveals that Conal once saved the king as a baby. The audience changes from a judge measuring someone else’s danger to a family discovering its own debt. Track what the king knows before and after each interruption, and explain why the last recognition also wins the horse that storytelling alone had not yet secured.

Conal survives through different forms of help and deception: workers drive off the cats, a goat skin conceals him from touch, and the captive mother explains the giant’s vulnerability. His missing finger supports the second account; the woman’s recognition supports the third. Neither success erases the killing that began the frame story. The tale resolves a cycle of threats through remembered care rather than by establishing that Conal’s sons were innocent.

Talk about it

• Why did Conal and his sons hide in sacks of bran?
• How did Conal escape from the blinded giant’s cave?
• Why was the king’s mother so moved by Conal’s last story?

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