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CHAPTER VIII
The Carl of the Drab Coat came bumping and stumping and clumping into the camp, and was surrounded by a multitude that adored him and hailed him with tears.
"Meal!" he bawled, "meal for the love of the stars!"
And he bawled, "Meal, meal!" until he bawled everybody into silence.
Fionn addressed him.
"What for the meal, dear heart?"
"For the inside of my mouth," said the Carl, "for the recesses and crannies and deep-down profundities of my stomach. Meal, meal!" he lamented.
Meal was brought.
The Carl put his coat on the ground, opened it carefully, and revealed a store of blackberries, squashed, crushed, mangled, democratic, ill-looking.
"The meal!" he groaned, "the meal!"
It was given to him.
"What of the race, my pulse?" said Fionn.
"Wait, wait," cried the Carl. "I die, I die for meal and blackberries."
Into the centre of the mess of blackberries he discharged a barrel of meal, and be mixed the two up and through, and round and down, until the pile of white-black, red-brown slibber-slobber reached up to his shoulders. Then he commenced to paw and impel and project and cram the mixture into his mouth, and between each mouthful he sighed a contented sigh, and during every mouthful he gurgled an oozy gurgle.
But while Fionn and the Fianna stared like lost minds upon the Carl, there came a sound of buzzing, as if a hornet or a queen of the wasps or a savage, steep-winged griffin was hovering about them, and looking away they saw Cael of the Iron charging on them with a monstrous extension and scurry of bis legs. He had a sword in his hand, and there was nothing in his face but redness and ferocity.
Fear fell llke night around the Fianna, and they stood with slack knees and hanging hands waiting for death. But the Carl lifted a pawful of his oozy slop and discharged this at Cael with such a smash that the man's head spun off his shoulders and hopped along the ground. The Carl then picked up the head and threw it at the body with such aim and force that the neck part of the head jammed into the neck part of the body and stuck there, as good a head as ever, you would have said, but that it bad got twisted the wrong way round. The Carl then lashed his opponent hand and foot.
"Now, dear heart, do you still claim tribute and lordship of Ireland?" said he.
"Let me go home," groaned Cael, "I want to go home."
"Swear by the sun and moon, if I let you go home, that you will send to Fionn, yearly and every year, the rent of the land of Thessaly."
"I swear that," said Cael, "and I would swear anything to get home."
The Carl lifted him then and put him sitting into his ship. Then he raised his big boot and gave the boat a kick that drove it seven leagues out into the sea, and that was how the adventure of Cael of the Iron finished.
"Who are you, sir?" said Fionn to the Carl.
But before answering the Carl's shape changed into one of splendour and delight.
"I am ruler of the Shi' of Rath Cruachan," he said.
Then Fionn mac Uail made a feast and a banquet for the jovial god, and with that the tale is ended of the King of Thessaly's son and the Carl of the Drab Coat.
