Retells the early exploits of the legendary Finn MacCool before he went on to become a great Irish hero.
He was determined to bring these men home safely or die himself. They were sailing northward again, and on the third day came in sight of land, low-lying, heavily wooded, with a good sheltering harbor. Although they had met terrible treatment everywhere they had landed since leaving Troy, they we...
He drew a golden cloud about them, and his rain started children in the cave of her womb. “Oh, my Lord,” she cried, “these blessed babes of ours shall be the first born of love’s embrace—creatures so wondrously beautiful that all must worship them.” “Beautiful, eh?” snarled Uranus to himself. “Th...
Unlike the other gods he had held himself aloof from this war. He had preened himself on being so far above the affairs of petty mortals that he might not stoop to take a hand in their quarrels. This was a unique position in the Pantheon; all the other gods had lined up one way or the other. And,...
He had been taught to play the lyre by Apollo, god of music, and there were those who said that the pupil played better than the teacher. Orpheus wrote his own songs, both words and music. The fishermen used to coax him to go sailing with them, for the fish would come up from the depths of the se...
Fields and orchards gave way to a wide, dark plain cut by weed-choked rivers. This was the Land Beyond, called Hyperboreas, meaning behind the North Wind. It was neither earth nor sea but something less than both, a foul marshland from which animals departed, and where no travelers came. Here, Pe...
Everything is larger for them. Their days are our years. So, while Hera did not forget Hercules, she had other grudges to settle. And when she turned her attention to him again a few weeks later—in her time—he was almost sixteen years old, an enormous youth, bigger and stronger than any man in Th...
They lived separately and followed their own ways and were very fruitful. About two hundred years had passed since Joseph had brought his brothers down into Egypt, and now they were a mighty horde, a nation within a nation. And the Egyptians began to fear that the Israelites would grow mightier y...
In the libraries to read the ancient writings; in the bars to recover from the books and listen to the conversation; along miles and miles of misty country road to find the old storytellers who still spun their tales in occasional cottages, and who, I had been assured, could tell me stories never...
He did this when he was hungry, and he was always hungry. He’d grown so fat he couldn’t see his feet; it made him wheeze and pant just to climb the three steps to his throne. For the past few days he had been in an ugly mood. An oracle had told him that an enemy was coming. I tried to explain to ...