The Celtic Riddle

PROLOGUE

HERE'S a story attached to that, you know. It happened a long, long time ago, before mairgen and the Sons of Mil set foot on these shores, 'efore the children of the goddess Danu retreated to xe sidhe. Not so far back as the plague that killed the ons and daughters of Partholan. Not so far back as lat. But a long time ago, even so.

In those days, there were giants roamed the earth, nd creatures with one leg and one arm, like serpents, ame out of the sea. Back then, unsheathed weapons told tales, the sky could rain fire, and the shrieks of ie Hag would be heard in the night. And it was then tat the fiercest of battles, the struggle of light over drkness, were fought and won by the Tuatha de Da-aan. First they routed the Fir Bolg, then banished the readed Fomorians in the Battles of Mag Tuired.

The tales of their heroes, their leaders in battle, we tell to this day: Lugh, luminous, shining, destroyer of the Evil Eye; Diancecht, the healer; Nuada Silver land; and first and foremost, the Dagda.

Now there was a god! An excellent one, by his own description. A giant, with appetite to match. It was the Dagda had a cauldron in which pigs were cooked. This was no ordinary cauldron, nor ordinary pigs. Was always a pig ready, and the cauldron never empty, no matter how many came to dine. And, to top it all, the cauldron's contents were said to inspire the poet and revive the dead.

Anyway, one day the Dagda went to the camp of the Fomorians to ask for a truce, and also, for he was a crafty one, to spy on their camp. The Fomorians, some of them giants themselves, prepared for him a porridge of eighty gallons of milk, another eighty of meal and fat. Into this they put pigs and goats and sheep, then poured it all into an enormous hole in the ground.

"Eat all of it, " the Fomorians said, "or die."

"I will then," the Dagda replied, and taking his ladle, so big a man and a woman could lie down in its bowl together, he started to eat. As the Fomorians watched, he swallowed every last bit of it, scraping up the crumbs in the dirt with his massive hand where the ladle couldn't reach, then lay himself down to sleep.

"Look at his belly," the Fomorians cried, pointing at the sleeping Dagda, his gut rising like a mountain from where he lay. "He'll not be getting up from here."

And what do you think happened then? The Dagda awoke, grunted, hefted his huge bulk up and staggered away, his club dragging behind him, cutting a furrow the width of a boundary ditch. Even then he was not spent, for later that day, he lay with the Morrigan, the Crow, goddess of war. But anyway, that's another story.

I was there then, you know. Yes, I was. Who's to say that I wasn't?