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"I could smell one of them and it wrapped around a little tree thirty miles back," said Cael, "and the other one was dishonouring a bush ten miles behind that." "It is bad luck to be separated from the tails of your own coat," the Carl grumbled. "I'll have to go back for them. Wait here, beloved, and eat blackberries until I come back, and we'll both start fair."
Cael began to race then, and he was glad of the start, for his antagonist made so little account of him that he did not know what to expect when the Carl would begin to run. "Yet," said Cael to himself, "with an hour's start the beggarman will have to move his bones if he wants to catch on me," and he settled down to a good, pelting race. At the end of an hour the Carl awoke.
He cooked the beast over his bonfire and ate one half of it, leaving the other half for his breakfast. Then he lay down on the rushes, and in two turns he fell asleep. But Cael lay out on the side of the hill, and if he went to sleep that night he slept fasting. It was he, however, who awakened the Carl in the morning. "Get up, beggarman, if you are going to run against me."
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 his legs. He had a sword in his hand, and there was nothing in his face but redness and ferocity.
Some of these people are said to live to 150 years of age, and when they die their bodies are burned. Cael is a great city governed by Aster, one of the four brethren , who is very rich and kind to merchants. He is said to have three hundred concubines. All the people this country are continually chewing a leaf called Tembul , with lime and spices.
He ate of these until he was no more than a sack of juice, and when he heard the humming and buzzing of Cael of the Iron he mourned and lamented that he could not wait to eat his fill He took off his coat, stuffed it full of blackberries, swung it on his shoulders, and went bounding stoutly and nimbly for Ben Edair.
Yet their young love was not destined to meet the storms and frosts of the years; for Cael the gallant fell in battle, his melodious lips for ever stilled. Thus have these two become immortal in song.
Cael of the Iron came also on the scene, and he examined the stranger with close and particular attention. "What in the name of the devil is this thing?" he asked of Fionn. "Dear heart," said Fionn, "this is the champion I am putting against you in the race." Cael of the Iron grew purple in the face, and he almost swallowed his tongue through wrath.
"It is a small run," said the Carl, "but it will do. From this place to the Hill of the Rushes, Slieve Luachra of Munster, is exactly sixty miles. Will that suit you?" "I don't care how it is done," Cael answered. "Then," said the Carl, "we may go off to Slieve Luachra now, and in the morning we can start our race there to here." "Let it be done that way," said Cael.
He caught up on the Carl at last, for the latter had stopped to eat blackberries from the bushes on the road, and when he drew nigh, Cael began to jeer and sneer angrily at the Carl. "Who lost the tails of his coat?" he roared. "Don't ask riddles of a man that's eating blackberries," the Carl rebuked him. "The dog without a tall and the coat without a tail," cried Cael.
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