One hardy raiding party, having sacked a monastery not far from the Mouth of the Shannon, found themselves in possession of a live, and not too badly crisped, Irish bard. And the bard, finding himself captive of the tor- mentors of, not just the neighboring Irish kingdoms, but of his own, too, schemed for escape.
The old Celtic bards, of course, were men of vast learning. They were founts of law and history, poetry and science, and of great magic, and rumor of their power and dread spread through many lands. Even the Vikings had heard.
Under the infulence of Christendom, the art of magic had dwindled, and the bard of my story had little more force than Penn or Teller might summon with the art of the day; but he knew the power of rumor. He turned to his unwashed (the other guy is always unwashed) captors.
"Best you leave now while you can, strangers," he warned, "for this is a land full of ancient magic, so potent that the trees walk and the animals talk! Begone, before this magic destroys you!"
The Vikings glanced about. Between the unsteadiness of their sea legs on solid ground, and the special magic of Irish mead, it was hard to tell about the walking trees; but they felt they were on firmer, or at least safer, ground, with the `talking animals' bit. They guffawed loudly and hooted in scorn, "Animals no talk!"
"Do they not?" the bard replied coolly. "Come, then--let us just go and ask...that cow, over there!"
They approached the cow and the bard stepping close, cried, "And a good evening to you, then, MIstress Cow! Tell me, how do things fare with you, in these troubled times we have? How, now, Brown Cow?" [This same cow is immortalized in a famous Irish book of the time, though the authors called her a Dun Cow; but that's OK, most things are brown when they're dun, except lobsters, which turn red.]
Now the bard was a gifted ventriloquist. And "Oh!" the cow seemed to moan, "'t is a dreadful time indeed we live in, with all these terrible Norsemen come a-viking, and burning my pasturelands and burning my byre, and as for my milkmaid--well, it goes without saying, you may be sure. And here am I, with none to pasture me and none to milk me and my poor udder swollen to bursting. Curst be the Vikings!"
The bard turned to the barbarians triumphantly. They fidgeted a bit; and then one bold lad sneered, "Ah, just cow talk. Vikings heed no cows!"
"So? Then let us go speak to that horse," retorted the bard, and they went to the horse.
"Good evening, Master! --If you expect animals to speak to such as you," the bard said loftily, "you must greet them with courtesy! --And, Son-of-the-Sea, how is it with you, these days?"
"Oo-o-o-o-oh, terrible it is!" the startled Vikings heard from the creature. "My stable burned, my stableboy mistook for a miss, no one to comb out my burrs or mend my split hoof. Aieee! Curst be the Vikings!"
Again the bard looked up, in greater triumph than before. The Vikings moved more edgily than before; but still seemed to doubt his magic. "Well, then," he said, "that flock of sheep yonder--"
The Vikings broke. "No, NO!" they wailed. "Sheep lie! Sheep LIE!"