Royal Retainer from Beyond the Veil
The Legends Reborn
It is said in one account: among the royal retainers was a household servant who kept no name – a somewhat difficult fellow wearing a maroon cap whose hands were cleverer than his temper was long. Despite the pointy cap, he was much shorter than the others, but he carried himself with a sharper, more precise tone that made his presence hard to ignore.
In the highlands and along the northern reaches of Ériu, such beings were long remembered. In one place they were called the Gruagach, in another the Grogan – spirits of hearth and holding, seldom seen, yet seldom wholly absent. These hidden folk, often named brownies, were said to labour in quiet ways, tending to the needs of those among whom they dwelt.
Yet their nature was never held to be simple.
In the later tellings the nameless servant is drawn into matters beyond the keeping of hearth and hall. When the queen was brought low in the pains of labour and no aid at hand could ease her passing, it was he who crossed into the hinterland and returned with a wisewoman, whose knowledge lay beyond the common arts. By her hand the child was safely brought forth – Ruadhán, youngest of Macha’s sons – and from that hour the servant was bound more closely to the fate of that line.
He kept close thereafter to Prince Ruadhán, serving him through trials that led even to Dunadd where war pressed hard upon the land and the fate of kindreds hung in the balance. Nor was he absent when the sacred heart was under siege, for alongside the eldest, Cathal, he played his part in the breaking of that encirclement.
Thus he is remembered – not only as a servant of the household, but as one who moved between places and purposes, whose presence lay as much in the unseen as in the seen.
For all their seeming goodwill, such beings were never held to be without danger. It was said that if they were wronged, or driven beyond what they would bear, they did not remain as they had been. What had once laboured in quiet service might become something altered, its nature turned and its form no longer easily known.
Whether such a fate lay before the servant of Ruadhán was never plainly told. Some held that though his fate took hold, it did not wholly unmake what he had been. Others spoke more cautiously and left the matter unsettled.
