When a date for the autumn festival of the Paragon Muireall, was at last set, there was considereable relief. The date in question was that of the fourteenth of the ninth month of An t-Sultain. Years prior, it had been set a day prior which had not ended badly, with the date always moving forward by one year and a day. The difficulty lay in the druid’s frequent inability to remember to forego the unlucky number as a date, for the favourite festival of his flock.

  They had learnt to dread more than any other date, the thirteenth of the ninth month. For ‘twas upon that date that the worst storm they had ever borne witness to, struck the local coast. Glasvhail was ordinarily a peaceful place. ‘Dull’ some dubbed it ungenerously. However, for those who lived there, tending to the land and the local sheep or liked to fish nearby, so that it was as paradise to those who preferred a quieter sort of life. Not for seventy years had a single man been slain or been suffered to join in the once many wars of the lairds and kings of Caledonia. Therefore it was a place, of supreme quiet, joy and rich food. For this reason, the loss of Murchadh the fisherman, during a great storm nine years ago had quite naturally shocked a great many locals.

  None more so than Kenna the seamstress, who had been wife to the unfortunate fisherman. Such was her horror that she had been bedridden at the time, so intense was her grief. In time, she had awoken from her bed, if only to care for her son, whom she swore to make a finer man than his father. She had sworn to forge him, not into the sort of lackadaisical, easily distracted man that her husband had been but into a better man: Sadly for her, her efforts had long sinc been deemed a failure in the eyes of her neighbours. For Cormac was not only absent-minded, but where his father had appeared wise and genial, the son was so utterly absent in mind and in body when most had need of him that, he was believed to be empty-headed. Still, somehow he managed to figure into many more conversations than most other local lads had a tendency of doing, as was the case for those of the house of Conn, the local druid of Glasvhail.

  *****

  When Rothien was in the midst of spring, the whole of the hamlet of Glasvhail tended to rouse itself, from the stupor left behind by winter. Not simply because, it meant life was renewed, but because of the great ‘Spring-Solstice’ festival that all of the locals celebrated with an almost, manic glee. All save one man of course. This one was of course, the fifty-five year old druid of the village, and its surrounding farms, as he had the very difficult and wearisome task of organising the festival. Whereupon the whole of the land became frantic with activity as all sought to bring in as much agriculture and fish in preparation for the coming winter. In the year when this story begins, Conn, the druid in question was in particularly dire straits as he faced the coming of age of his second to youngest daughter, Helga. His favourite, he struggled to reconcile himself with the notion that he must marry her off. Sworn to Scota, the great goddess of the Caleds, he had as his father before him, managed the wooden shrine, dedicated to her, all his life since his predecessor had passed away. The expectation was that without a son, to succeed him he must either move to secure some other man to succeed him, or find himself a good-son or grandson to do so. His two eldest daughters had married well with one marrying a fisherman, a man of some means and gentility, who had inherited the finest boat in Glasvhail. As to the eldest daughter of the druid, she had wed a local laird, the laird of Bj?rndun, by the name of Lauchlan’s third son, Mungo. The laird of Bj?rndun had taken her into his house with the son she had married, succeeding his childless uncle as chief huscarl of the house of Bj?rndun. Therefore, it fell upon Helga to bring him a proper heir into his house. The trouble was as he was soon to discover, the lad whom she adored was the worst possible lad in the village in his eyes. For Conn respected hard-work, persistence and intelligence. All of which when he called her hither was to come out, doing so late one evening with beer made from local barley wheat flowing easily. With his wife Ainsley, his second eldest and two younger daughters all at hand, his good-son Bhàtair, and three of his wife’s friends, whom were all wealthy merchants’ wives that had grown up with Ainsley at hand to feast with him. Their table which stood proud in the midst of the small mead-hall was gay and full of laughter, with none more full of joy that day than Conn himself. There was to his mind, good, respectable company at hand, the harvest had been good, his sheep (for even a well-to do druid had to do sheepherding in those days) were fat this year and the preparations for the festival were coming along nicely.

  “Yes papa,” His dearest daughter responded as she took up a seat by his side, between him and his wife with a happy look in her eyes that pleased him.

  The fire was well-lit some way down from them, to the center of the building just below the chimney hole in the center of the large domicile next to the temple where he did much of his work. Bathed in the warmth and in the light of the fire, he almost dozed off only to rouse himself, as he questioned the young woman, regarding a subject he both dreaded and awaited anxiously.

  “I must ask you, though I am at some pains to do so, given the nature of this particular subject,” He prevaricated for some time, which inspired Ainsley to grow impatient with him where their daughter grew incredibly bemused herself with his discomfort.

  “Aye, father I do have a man in mind, though I am not so certain, you will take to him half so well as mother has,” Helga said stoutly, with a roll of her eyes in the direction of her sister, Doada who being the elder by eight years and having gone through the exact same conversation nigh on a decade prior, well-understood her exasperation. The slow-witted man was often the butt of jests however he was rarely if ever aware of it, in spite of this he was well-beloved in the locality. “What say you of Cormac, son of Murchadh the Fisherman?”

  At her words a tremendous choking sound resonated throughout the domicile, along with a series of chortles and snorts. The terrible gagging noise originated from Conn himself, whereas the chortle stemmed from his second eldest Doada and the snort her husband who appeared every bit as incredulously as his good-father. For several long minutes all that could be heard, were the patriarch’s attempts to swallow his beer, whilst his daughter stared askance and wife gave him a reproving look.

  “C-C-Cormac?!” He bellowed when he could speak again, his voice hoarse and hardly above a whisper. “Surely you jest!”

  His disgust towards the lad in question, who was fortunately absent to hear the man speak so poorly of him, was hardly welcomed by the lass of sixteen seasons. Her countenance changed from one of expectant yet that of a decidedly feminine joyous manner of a young maid in the full bloom of young love, to one of shocked outrage. She was quick to be enveloped in her mother’s arms, as she sunk into tears to his horror and her younger sister Eillidh’s great peals of laughter, as she hooted at the thought of the fisherman’s son.

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  “Really father, you should not speak so of Cormac- and do stop Eillidh!” the eldest of Conn’s daughters present in Glasvhail objected, ever quick to protect her sister as though, she were her own rather than but a younger sibling, one that she had once detested, ten years prior.

  It was however to her husband, she reserved her most piercing look. Her husband adopted the abashed expression of a well-nagged man, who knew his final hour had come upon him were he to continue, his present behaviour, whereupon he mumbled a swift apology. Still, his shoulders shook the moment her head and back were once more to him, as she turned her wroth upon the youngest of her sisters.

  “Really Conn, you asked her to name who she most desired, and Cormac is a respectable lad.” Ainsley defended with the sort of scowl that might otherwise have properly subdued, her fat boisterous husband, who so filled with contempt for the lad in question could not repress a snort.

  “Oh aye, aye if by respectable you mean layabout,” Grunted the druid who did not much like the fisherman’s son. “His is possibly the laziest youth in all of Glasvhail- nay let alone all of Rothien, nary has there ever been a more unsuitable man for my office.” He paused to take a sip before continuing. “All he does most days, is stare out at sea, or run about near the fairy-woods and avoid the sort of toil a lad his age, ought to be occupied with.”

  The woods he referred to were the Dyrkwoods, an infamous place to the south-west of the village, which was notable principally for the great big oak that appeared to stand guard just outside it. The oak was one that had been ancient, one that was said to stretched back into Conn’s great-grandfather’s time. It was a majestic thing that was a short distance from the woods. A sinister place, with a formidable reputation and legends of fairies living in it, it is said that it was there that the warrior Ciaran had fallen. From the spot that he had been struck by a pixie-dart, which had caused a wound that had not healed it is said, for nigh on twenty-years. Such was the force of their spite for his foolish, hot-tempered words against them, at one of their feasts when he spurned their Queen.

  The spot where he had fallen, it was said that the largest of all the oaks of Rothien had grown from, one that all the children and elders of the land tended to remark was destined to never fall. Conn had always spoken out against the oak, he had on many occasions refused to draw a single hatchet or allow others to do so, against this great oak. The reason for this, if he was ever honest was entirely due to his own fear, of the fey-folk whom he was convinced lived in the nearby woods.

  Cormac was along with the blacksmith’s daughter, the only one willing to approach the oak and the woods. This might well have seemed brave, were it not for the fact that he did so simply to snooze with his back against the tree, something that not only horrified many of the locals but disgusted the older members of the locality. For they felt this to be a wildly disrespectful deed, with these same members of the region likely to have preferred it, had he avoided the spot too with many prone to whispering that there was something very queer about the lad.

  However, when Conn brought up this very issue or more specifically the queer nature of the lad and some of the other peculiarities that haunted him, the women in his family objected. What was worse that wherever he wandered he was confronted by Helga’s passion which further bewildered him. “How can you love such a man, who is a layabout, who knows naught but to stare at woods, water and stars? He has accomplished so little, so that in this way he is no different from his father.” This led to Conn muttering without any real prompting, “His father Murchadh was mighty queer too. Had a tendency to take his boat out farther than others, to return either with no fish, other times with more salmon than any of us had ever seen. He also loved that accursed oak, and I could never quite tell what Kenna the weaver was thinking, when she accepted to be his. Or quite why, he insisted upon setting out to sea in the midst of a storm…” His words drifted off, as he became lost for a few moments in his own thoughts, quite what they were only he could have known.

  No sooner had he finished his grumbling, did Helga object in defence of the subject of her adoration, “Cormac is no fool, he is kind!”

  “And funny! He knows all sorts of funny jests, and tells the strangest fairy stories!” Eillidh piped up at last, seeing a chance to leap into the midst of the conversation between the adults that surrounded her.

  “He is more than that, he is peculiar, why Bhàtair, you have spoken to him in the past, and knew his father did you not?” Conn inquired sharply of his good-son, who in the midst of draining his drinking horn, was startled before he hurriedly confirmed that yes, he knew Cormac.

  “Why he is the son of mad old Murchadh!” Bhàtair called ignoring the sharp look his wife gave him.

  “Mad? Why do you call him that?” Helga queried irritably.

  “Because he was lass, he was the only man mad enough to embark on his fishing-boat in the midst of a storm, in spite of how all could see it was a fool’s errand.” Conn snorted disdainfully, utterly convinced of the rectitude of his own wisdom and that those of whom he spake lacked all semblance of it.

  “Regardless his madness, you asked who I would take for a husband, and I answered father,” His favourite daughter answered stiffly, much to his displeasure. He never liked to make her, or any others in his family wholly miserable.

  The insolence of his daughters persisted, were he but a little wiser, the druid might well have noticed that they were too united in their efforts. Yet he was not so, he fancied himself wise and cunning beyond comparison. With Bhàtair likewise falling into the trap for which the three ladies had prepared for the head of the family, “Bah, you are pretty enough Helga, and may have any other man, why request Murchadh’s son?”

  “Because, there is no other like him in the village,” Said Helga persistently to the dismay of the men and bemusement of her younger sister.

  “What of Daegan, the blacksmith’s daughter?” This time the question drew more than a scowl, with a flush flying across her fair cheeks up to her small ears.

  “Daegan’s funny also,” Eillidh hooted only to be shushed by her mother.

  The mention of the daughter of Corin, the smith was one that Conn had meant to bring up, if slightly more delicately. The difficulty lay in just how sensitive she could be, in marked contrast to the woman of whom they spoke. The suit presented by his child, was unlikely to proceed in his view, as the lass mentioned by his good-son was inseparable from Cormac. For reasons that escaped him, just as Kenna the seamstress’s union with Murchadh had been the subject of confusion nigh on a generation ago also.

  Conn’s next attempt some time later, to make her rethink her choice in partner was to end only in the young woman persisting, “Cormac or no one at all.”

  Her words served only to exacerbate, the heated atmosphere in the small mead-hall. Helga wept for a time, and entreated her mother to aid her, with the older woman and Doada scolding him all evening. Still he would not bend. He had made his decision. Why the thought of Cormac, inheriting his position was enough to send him into an apoplexy of shock and horror. Something that he was at great pains to inform, everyone he spoke to over the next several hours.

  It was the next morn’ when he conceded defeat, as they all knew he would; this in spite of his great dislike for the lad in question.

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