![]() ![]() ![]() While they were chatting about one thing and another, says the Goban, "Young girls, if I'd wish to be young again, it would be for the sake of getting one of you for a wife but I think very few old people that do be thinking at all of the other world, ever wish to live their lives over again. The next night they slept at another farmer's house, where there were two young daughters-one with black hair, very industrious the other with fair complexion, and rather liking to sit with her hands across, and listen to the talk round the fire, than to be doing any work. Now," says he, "tie up the horses if you can." "Oh! by my word, here's a thistle strong enough this time." "That will do." So they entered one field, and says Goban, "Tie the bastes up for the night." "Why?" says the son "I can't find anything strong enough." "Well, then, let us try the next field. The farmer told them they might leave their beasts to graze all night in any of his fields they pleased. He took his son along with him, and the first night they got lodging at a farmer's house. Goban knew that, in other times far back, the King of Ireland killed the celebrated architects, Rog, Robog, Rodin, and Rooney, the way they would never build another palace equal to his, and so he mentioned something to his wife privately before he set out. When he wanted to drive big nails into beams that were ever so high from the ground, he would pitch them into their place, and, taking a fling of the hammer at their heads, they would be drove in as firm as the knocker of Newgate, and he would catch the hammer when it was falling down.Īt last it came to the King of Munster's turn to get his castle built, and to Goban he sent. He could fashion a spear-shaft while you'd count five, and the spear-head at three strokes of a hammer. If he didn't build Ferns, he built other castles for some of the five kings or the great chiefs. Maybe it was him that built the Castle of Ferns part of the walls are thick enough to be built by any goban, or gow, that ever splintered wood, or hammered red-hot iron, or cut a stone. It is a long time since the Goban Saor was alive. He cuts off horses' legs to shoe them with the greater ease to himself, and sets an old woman in his furnace, in the vague hope that he may hammer her into a fresh young lass when she is hot enough. Asbjornsen and Moë is altogether unprincipled. Voelund returns evil for evil, and the master smith of MM. Our smith is a more moral, as well as a more fortunate man, than the Voelund of the Northern saga. All that remains to us is to make the most we can of our materials. These old-world legends have reached our time and our province in an unsatisfactory and degraded state. Vulcan or Prometheus was the original craftsman perhaps Daedalus might dispute the honour with them. It is probable that a more complete legend concerning this celebrated gow (Smith) would be met with in Mayo or Kerry. Unconnected adventures of this character are met with in every country of Europe. The Goban Saor, pronounced Gubawn Seer (free smith, free mason, or free carpenter, in fact), is a relative of Wayland Smith, or Voelund, in the Voelundar Quida but with equal skill he is endowed with more mother wit than the Northern craftsman.
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