Connla and the Fairy Maiden

Connla of the Fiery Hair was the son of Conn of the Hundred Fights. One day, standing beside his father on the hill of Usna, he saw a maiden in strange clothes coming towards him.

“Where have you come from, maiden?” asked Connla.

“I come from the Plains of the Ever-Living,” she said, “where there is no death and no sin. There every day is a holiday, and we need nobody’s help to be happy. In all our pleasures there is no quarrelling. Because our homes are in the round green hills, people call us the Hill Folk.”

The king and everyone with him were amazed to hear a voice and see no one, for only Connla could see the Fairy Maiden.

“Who are you talking to, my son?” asked King Conn.

The maiden answered, “Connla is talking to a fair young maiden whom neither death nor old age will ever touch. I love Connla, and I am calling him away to Moy Mell, the Plain of Pleasure, where Boadag is king for ever. Since he began to rule there, no one in that land has known sorrow or complaint. Oh, come with me, Connla of the Fiery Hair, rosy as the dawn! A fairy crown is waiting for your handsome face and royal form. Come, and your beauty and your youth will never fade until the last great Day of Judgement.”

The king was frightened by what he heard, though he could not see the speaker. He called aloud for his Druid, whose name was Coran. “Coran of the many spells and the clever magic, help me! I face a task too great for all my skill and wit, greater than any since I took the throne. An unseen maiden has come to us and means to take my dear, handsome son away by her power. Unless you help, a woman’s charms and witchcraft will steal him from your king.”

Coran the Druid stepped forward and chanted his spells towards the place the voice had come from. After that nobody heard the maiden, and Connla could no longer see her. But as she faded away before the Druid’s powerful spell, she tossed Connla an apple.

For a whole month Connla would eat and drink nothing but that apple. However much he ate, it grew back and stayed whole. And all that time a great yearning for the maiden grew inside him.

On the last day of that month, Connla stood beside his father on the Plain of Arcomin, and he saw the maiden coming towards him, and she spoke to him. “A fine place Connla holds among short-lived mortals waiting for death! But now the Ever-Living folk beg you to come to Moy Mell, the Plain of Pleasure, for they have come to know you, watching you at home among your loved ones.”

When the king heard her voice, he shouted to his men, “Quick, fetch my Druid Coran, for I can tell she has the power of speech today.”

“Mighty Conn, fighter of a hundred fights,” said the maiden, “the Druid’s power is little loved and little honoured in the great land peopled by so many of the righteous. When the Law comes, it will sweep away the Druid’s magic spells, which come from the lips of a false demon.”

Then the king noticed that ever since the maiden had come, his son had not answered anyone who spoke to him. “Is your heart set on what this woman says, my son?” asked Conn.

“It is hard for me,” said Connla. “I love my own people more than anything. And yet, and yet, I long for the maiden.”

Hearing this, the maiden said, “The ocean is not as strong as the waves of your longing. Come with me in my curragh, my gleaming, straight-gliding crystal boat. We can soon reach Boadag’s kingdom. I can see the bright sun sinking, but far as it is, we can get there before dark. There is another land, too, worth the journey, a land of joy to all who seek it, where only wives and maidens live. If you like, we can go there and live in happiness, just the two of us.”

As soon as she stopped speaking, Connla of the Fiery Hair broke away from them all and leapt into the curragh, the gleaming crystal boat. The king and all his court watched it glide away over the shining sea towards the setting sun, on and on, until no eye could follow it. Connla and the Fairy Maiden sailed away across the sea, and nobody ever saw them again or knew where they went.

Where this story comes from

Jacobs placed this tale first in Celtic Fairy Tales. His notes say it comes from an old Irish text in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, the “Book of the Dun Cow,” which must have been written before 1106, and that he worked from Professor Zimmer’s translation. He identifies Zimmer’s translation as his main source and also acknowledges borrowing touches from Dr Joyce. His claim about making only one addition describes his own adaptation; this page is a further retelling.

Conn of the Hundred Fights is a legendary high king of Ireland; Jacobs notes that the Annals of the Four Masters date his reign to A.D. 123–157. He thought a Christian hand had touched up the old story, adding the Day of Judgement and the waning power of the Druids, and called it the earliest fairy tale of modern Europe. That superlative is Jacobs’s historical judgment, not an established ranking offered by this page.

Read the original: Joseph Jacobs, Celtic Fairy Tales (Gutenberg ebook 7885)

Best for ages 9–12 — a short, haunting Irish legend about the pull of the Otherworld and a hard choice.

Reading the story closely

The maiden promises freedom from sorrow, but the ending never shows that country. It shows a father and court watching a boat disappear. The apple makes longing seem both nourishing and consuming: it stays whole while Connla gives up all other food. The reader cannot easily separate his choice from the enchantment shaping it.

Divide a page into what Connla sees, what the court hears, and what the narrator finally confirms. Put the promise of everlasting happiness in the right column—or explain why it belongs outside all three as something still unverified.

Questions to ask

• Why could nobody but Connla see the Fairy Maiden?
• What was magical about the apple she gave him?
• Why do you think Connla chose to leave with her?

You may also like

• Beth Gellert — another legend retold by Joseph Jacobs
• How Cormac Mac Art Went to Faery — the fairyland journey of Cormac, Connla’s nephew
• Guleesh — an Irish lad swept into the world of the fairies