The Bitter Minstrels

The Iermðu brothers were notorious throughout their village as great performers. As Byldu Iermðu played his violin Dysig and Geap Iermðu would weave around each other, constructing dances so entrancing to the eye. The pace at which the dance moved would keep the viewer fixated until the dance had been completed in its entirety. Their names soon spread by word of mouth to other nearby villages and they started to tour around the other settlements. As they received more and more praise for their performances they became more and more arrogant. They were so sure of themselves that they felt they had a right to be treated with utmost respect. They soon left their homes and families in order to take their show to settlements further a field. They performed in many foreign lands and soon became very rich, they no longer played for simply food and lodge but were receiving large amounts of money from the villages they performed for. They became so arrogant they frequently slandered the villages they performed in before and after their performances. After one such rendition of unrepeatable curses namely against an old man in the audience and the local farmer’s eldest daughter, the village of Leasærdæg refused to stand for the arrogance. The old man stood up amongst the crowd and his greying red beard swayed in the breeze.1

“You will regret these words you have spoken Iermðu brothers! You will regret these words for tens of years!”2

As the old man stood there his eyes blazing the brothers continued to mock him until he strode off into the night his cloak billowing behind him.3

That night the people of the village forced the lock on the Iermðu brothers’ inn room door. The brothers were dragged to the village centre where a large metal bowl thirty inches high and forty inches diameter had been filled with water and heated above a fire. One by one the Iermðu brothers were boiled alive until the flesh floated from their frames.4

The flesh water was poured out onto the ground and the village dogs ate the flesh whilst it was discussed what to do with the skeletons of the Iermðu brothers. It was eventually decided they would take the skeletons and all the brothers’ possessions and throw them down the well of the next village. A subtle group of three men snuck into the neighbouring village of Liormungbeorn with the bodies and possessions of the brothers and slid them down the well before retreating to their own village.5

The old man had followed them there and walked towards the well, removing a leather bag from his shoulder. He burnt dried herbs in a small stone cup he placed upon the well, and the smell of it was truly pungent as the great curls of smoke floated into the nighttime air. Then he began to utter such dark curses that shall not be repeated here, and the air around the well began to buzz with ethereal excitement. The next morning there was nothing in the village to suggest anything but the norm, besides a funny smell that clung around the well, something between a summer meadow and a crematorium. It was ten years from this date when the Fir Rinceacha Dhamnaithe first appeared to enact their macabre ritual. And the villagers watched in amazement. Little did the people of Liormungbeorn know, but due to the previous mortal charm of the brothers’ dances the villagers would be unable to resist watching the dance, entranced, unable to ask whether they wanted to or not, until the dance had ended. Little is known of what happened to the Iermðu brothers, as many generations have passed and the people of Leasærdæg never discussed the deaths, even between themselves. And so the brothers were forgotten in time, and now nobody knows of them or of their dances. The bearded old man, so long gone in his grave, is the only person who could explain the brothers’ current situation.6