Now the king of the Shi’ of Cesh Corran, Conaran, son of Imidel, was also watching the hunt, but Fionn did not see him, for we cannot see the people of Faery until we enter their realm, and Fionn was not thinking of Faery at that moment. Conaran did not like Fionn, and, seeing that the great champion was alone, save for Cona’n and the two hounds Bran and Sceo’lan, he thought the time had come to get Fionn into his power. We do not know what Fionn had done to Conaran, but it must have been bad enough, for the king of the Shi’ of Cesh Cotran was filled with joy at the sight of Fionn thus close to him, thus unprotected, thus unsuspicious.
This Conaran had four daughters. He was fond of them and proud of them, but if one were to search the Shi’s of Ireland or the land of Ireland, the equal of these four would not be found for ugliness and bad humour and twisted temperaments.
Their hair was black as ink and tough as wire: it stuck up and poked out and hung down about their heads in bushes and spikes and tangles. Their eyes were bleary and red. Their mouths were black and twisted, and in each of these mouths there was a hedge of curved yellow fangs. They had long scraggy necks that could turn all the way round like the neck of a hen. Their arms were long and skinny and muscular, and at the end of each finger they had a spiked nail that was as hard as horn and as sharp as a briar. Their bodies were covered with a bristle of hair and fur and fluff, so that they looked like dogs in some parts and like cats in others, and in other parts again they looked like chickens. They had moustaches poking under their noses and woolly wads growing out of their ears, so that when you looked at them the first time you never wanted to look at them again, and if you had to look at them a second time you were likely to die of the sight.
They were called Caevo’g, Cuillen, and Iaran. The fourth daughter, Iarnach, was not present at that moment, so nothing need be said of her yet.
Conaran called these three to him.
“Fionn is alone,” said he. “Fionn is alone, my treasures.”
“Ah!” said Caevo’g, and her jaw crunched upwards and stuck outwards, as was usual with her when she was satisfied.
“When the chance comes take it,” Conaran continued, and he smiled a black, beetle-browed, unbenevolent smile.
“It’s a good word,” quoth Cuillen, and she swung her jaw loose and made it waggle up and down, for that was the way she smiled.
“And here is the chance,” her father added.
“The chance is here,” Iaran echoed, with a smile that was very like her sister’s, only that it was worse, and the wen that grew on her nose joggled to and fro and did not get its balance again for a long time.
Then they smiled a smile that was agreeable to their own eyes, but which would have been a deadly thing for anybody else to see.
“But Fionn cannot see us,” Caevo’g objected, and her brow set downwards and her chin set upwards and her mouth squeezed sidewards, so that her face looked like a badly disappointed nut.
“And we are worth seeing,” Cuillen continued, and the disappointment that was set in her sister’s face got carved and twisted into hers, but it was worse in her case.
“That is the truth,” said Iaran in a voice of lamentation, and her face took on a gnarl and a writhe and a solidity of ugly woe that beat the other two and made even her father marvel.
“He cannot see us now,” Conaran replied, “but he will see us in a minute.”
“Won’t Fionn be glad when he sees us!” said the three sisters.
And then they joined hands and danced joyfully around their father, and they sang a song, the first line of which is:
“Fionn thinks he is safe. But who knows when the sky will fall?”
Lots of the people in the Shi’ learned that song by heart, and they applied it to every kind of circumstance.
