(The First Sorrow Of Irish Storytelling)

It happened that at this time Ireland was frequently raided by the Fo­morians, who swept down from their land in the northern mists and drove away cattle and pillaged the country. They put heavy taxes on the People of Dana. Each year a tax had to be paid on every quern stone, on every kneading-trough, on every baking-flag. In addition to these there was a poll tax amounting to one ounce of gold on each man, and anyone neglecting to pay this tribute had the nose cut from his face without mercy.

Balor of the Evil Eye was King of the Fomorians, and the people of Ireland held him in the greatest dread. His one eye, which was all he had, had but to glance at an enemy for him to drop dead as if struck by a thunder­bolt. But as Balor grew old, the great, flabby eyelid drooped over the deadly eye, and it had to be hoisted up by pulleys and ropes, and the eye directed by his men on the one he wished to destroy. There was no weapon made which could kill Balor, so the people of Ireland, under their King Nuada of the Silver Hand, decided to pay their taxes and give tribute, instead of trying to resist such a powerful enemy. But every day they grew impatient of the tyranny of their oppressors, and longed for a brave leader who would lead them to victory against the invaders.

At this time a young warrior called Lugh of the Long Arm appeared to give service to Nuada, bringing with him ‘Wave-Sweeper’, the boat of Manannán Mac Lir, the sea-god. This knew its owner’s mind and could go over the land as readily as it could go on the water. He also had a powerful sword called 'Freagarthach' [‘The Answerer’], and that could cut its way through iron of any thickness. His face shone like the setting sun, and he walked the earth like a god.

Now, when Lugh’s name was on every lip it happened that the yearly tribute to the Fomorians fell due. As was usual, King Nuada and his nobles waited on the Hill of Usnach near Tara, the residence of the High Kings, for the tax-gatherers from Balor to arrive. Lugh was among them.

The Fomorians arrived, nine times nine of them. But Lugh fell upon them, killing all but a few, whom he sent back to Balor with insolent messages and without their taxes.

Balor then prepared his armies and his ships to make dreadful war on the people of Banba, and, calling together his captains, he gave them their orders:

‘Give battle to Lugh of the Long Arm, and cut off his head, and tie that island that is called Banba to the stern of your ships and, letting the dense, verging waters close over it, tow it northwards to the cold, dark regions where none of the people of Dana will ever find it again.’

In the meantime news was brought to King Nuada that the Fomorians had landed in the west. Lugh incited the King to resist them and drive them out of the land forever. Then he himself rode westward out of Tara, to gather the people out of their raths and duns, to help him in the coming war. On his way he met his own father Cian with his two brothers, Cu and Ceithne. They offered to help him to muster the warriors of the land, so Cu and Ceithne went to the south, while Lugh’s father, Cian, took the road to the north.

Crossing the plain of Muirthemne, Cian saw three warriors in full battle array coming towards him. As they came closer he saw that they were the three Sons of Tuireann, with whom his family had an old feud. Cian knew that if they recognised him he could not avoid a contest with them, and as he was single-handed against three, he made up his mind to retreat.

Looking around he saw a herd of swine grazing near him, so, striking himself with a druidic wand, he changed himself into a pig and began to root the ground with the rest.

Brian, the eldest of the Sons of Tuireann, asked his brothers if they knew what had happened to the warrior who, but a little while ago, had been riding towards them.

‘We do not know,’ they replied.

‘It is a shame for you not to keep your eyes open in times like these,’ said Brian, and then he told them that the warrior had turned himself into a pig and was hiding him­self among the herd.

‘That puts us into a dilemma,’ said the brothers, ‘for we cannot tell which is the enchanted pig, and even if we kill them all, the one we want may escape us in the end.’

‘Badly have you learned your lesson in the City of Learn­ing,’ said Brian, ‘to say you cannot tell a druidical pig from a natural one,’ and he struck them with a wand and turned his brothers into two swift hounds, which ran after the enchanted pig at once, and began to yelp madly at him.

The pig made for a little wood, with the hounds after him, but just as he reached it Brian, casting his spear after him, drove it clean through his body. The wounded pig then spoke in a human voice and asked for quarter, and Brian refused. Then the pig asked to be allowed to resume his human shape before being killed, and this Brian granted. Then, having taken his own shape, Cian said:

‘Now I ask for quarter as a man, for if you kill me now you will pay the blood fine on a man, and not on a pig. And I warn you that the blood fine that you will pay on me will be heavier than was ever paid before on any living person. And whatever arms you may use to kill me will cry out and tell of your crime to my son, Lugh of the Long Arm.’

‘It is not with weapons we will kill you, but with the stones of the road only,’ said Brian.

And so the Sons of Tuireann started, and they cast stones at Cian, and they did not stop till he fell in one broken heap on the ground and his body was a litter of wounds. Then they buried him his own depth in the ground, and went off to join in the war against the Fomorians.

In that battle Lugh and his people, routed the invaders and sent them back to their land in the northern mists. Then Lugh called his kinsmen to him and asked for tidings of his father, Cian. They said they had not seen him since the eve of the battle when he went north to muster the people.

‘I know he is not living,’ said Lugh, ‘and I pledge my word not to touch food or drink till I find out how he came by his death.’

Then he went back to the last place he had seen his father, and after that on to the Plain of Muirthemne, where Cian had met the Sons of Tuireann. Here the stones of the ground cried out to Lugh and told him of the killing of his father by the Sons of Tuireann. Lugh stopped and ordered his men to dig up the grave, that he might see in what manner his father had been done to death.

The body was raised out of the earth, and they looked at it and saw that it was one litter of wounds. Lugh bent down and kissed his father three times, and then, jumping to his feet, said to his men:

‘This death has so grieved me that I can neither see with my eyes, nor hear with my ears, nor is there a living pulse-beat left in my heart with grief for my father. It was the Sons of Tuireann did this thing, and sorrow and anguish will fall on them because of it and on their children after them.’

Then he ordered the body to be put back in the earth, and he and his followers made their way to Tara, where the High King Nuada was celebrating the victory against the Fomorians. When Lugh reached Tara he was conducted to an honoured place at the King’s right hand. As he sat there in the assembly he looked around at the warriors and nobles present, and his eye fell on the three Sons of Tuireann. The minute he did Lugh stood up and asked that the Chain of Silence be shaken, as he wished to speak to all present, and this is what he said:

‘O King and warriors of Ireland, I ask you to tell me what vengeance would each of you take on him who had murdered your father?’

Each one present looked at the other and all were astonished. Then the King spoke and asked if it was Lugh’s own father who had been killed.

‘It is indeed my own father who has been murdered,’ said Lugh, ‘and I see here in this house the men who killed him, and they know themselves how they killed him better than I can tell them.’

King Nuada was the first to give his verdict, and this is what he said:

‘It is not on the one day I would kill the man who had made an end of my father, but I would cut off a limb day by day, till he would come to his death.’

All the chief men and warriors agreed with this, and the Sons of Tuireann no less than the rest. Then Lugh said that he would not demand the life of those who had killed Cian, since they were of the People of Dana, his own people; but instead he would ask them to pay a fine, and that they should make no attempt to leave the Royal Assembly until they had pledged themselves to pay it.

Then the Sons of Tuireann stood up and asked Lugh what his fine was to be, for now they saw that Lugh knew of their guilt.

‘This,’ said Lugh, ‘is the fine I am asking:

Three apples,

The skin of a pig,

A spear,

Two horses and a chariot,

Seven pigs,

A young dog,

A cooking spit,

Three shouts on a hill.

‘And,’ said Lugh, ‘if it is too much for you, a part will be taken from it, and if you do not think it is too much, then pay it in full.’

‘We do not think it is too much,’ said Brian, ‘nor a hundred times more would not be too much; but we think that there is some treachery in the back of your head, on account of the smallness of your fine.’

‘Then I will give you more knowledge of the fine,’ said Lugh, and he went on to tell them that the three apples were apples from the Garden of the Hesperides in the Eastern World. ‘Those apples,’ he said, ‘are of the colour of burnished gold, they have the taste of honey, and have the power to cure wounds or any kind of sickness, and they are each the size of the head of a two-months’-old child.

‘And the skin of the pig I asked of you belongs to the King of Greece, and it has the power to heal all wounds and all kinds of sickness.

‘And the spear I want is the poisoned spear of Pezaer, King of Persia. That spear is so active and mad for battle that its blade has to be kept standing always in a cauldron of icy water, for fear it would melt down the city around it with its fiery heat.

‘And do you know what two steeds and chariots I would wish to get from you?’ he went on.

‘We do not know,’ said they.

‘They are the two steeds of Doabre, the King of Sicily, and they can ride over the sea as if it were land, and there is no chariot equal to that one for strength and beauty of shape.

‘And the seven pigs are the pigs of Aesal, King of the Golden Pillars,’ said Lugh, ‘and though they are killed at nightfall, they are found alive again the next day, and they will cure anyone who is sick or in ill-health, and they never grow less with the eating.

‘And the dog’s whelp I was asking for belongs to the King of Irouad, and all the wild beasts of the world would lie down in fright before her, for she is more resplendent than the sun within its golden wheel.

‘The cooking-spit I want is one from the kitchen of the women of Fioncure Island, and to find that island is no small task, for it is neither on the sea nor on the land.

‘The three shouts on a bill must be given on the Hill of Midcain, in the land of the Northern Mists. Midcain and his three sons are under bonds not to allow anyone to shout on that hill, and as it was with him that my father Cian got his training in arms and war, it is certain that I would forgive you his death sooner than he.

‘And such, O Sons of Tuireann, is the eric you have to pay for the slaying of Cian, my father.’

The three brothers were struck dumb with despair when they heard what Lugh’s fine meant, and they went straight to their father’s dun to tell him of the misfortune that had befallen them, and to ask his advice.

‘It is a hard fine,’ said Tuireann, ‘but it must be paid, though it bring you to death and destruction.’

Then he advised them to go to Lugh and ask him to lend them ‘Wave-sweeper’ to take them over the seas on their quest. They went to Lugh and he gave them the boat, and they bade farewell to their father, and to their sister Eithne, who sorrowed greatly at their departure. Then they pushed out from the land of Erin and started on their travels.

‘We shall go first to the Garden of the Hesperides in the Eastern World and get the apples,’ said Brian, and the currach, without any more commands, turned its prow to the east and sailed away over the ridgy waves, and never stopped till it grounded in a little cove under the Garden of the Hesperides where the golden apples grew.

‘Now,’ said Brian, ‘how will we go about getting the apples?’

‘Let us march up and fight for them,’ said the two younger brothers, ‘ and if luck be with us we shall get them, or else we shall die fighting, as die we must, before we have paid all Cian’s fine.’

‘No,’ said Brian, ‘let us not be foolhardy, but rather let us act with cleverness and skill, so that even if we do die, the bravery of our deed and the wisdom of our actions will live after us. In my opinion,’ he went on, ‘the best thing for us to do now is to go into the garden in the shape of three swift hawks, and fly around the tree where the apples grow, until the warriors who are guarding it will have shot all their spears and javelins at us. Then we can swoop down, and quickly snatch an apple each, and bear it away in our claws.’

So Brian struck each of them with a druidical wand and changed them into three beautiful, sharp-eyed hawks. Flying around the tree, they evaded the shower of spears that the guards cast at them, and waiting till the last spear and javelin was thrown, they pounced down on the apples, and each hawk bore one away in its claws without suffering even a single scratch.

The news of the raid spread quickly about the city, and the three clever daughters of the King lost no time in turning themselves into three taloned ospreys, and followed them out to sea. As they went they sent shafts of lightning over and under the hawks, scorching their feathers and driving them off their course. But Brian turned himself and his brothers into swans, and darting under the water they escaped from the ospreys.

Then they went back to their boat, where they rested a little, rejoicing that the first of their quests had been suc­cessful. Next, they decided to go to Greece and seek the skin of the pig.

‘In what guise should we go there?’ asked his brothers of Brian.

‘We shall go as poets from Erin,’ said Brian, 'so that the people of Greece will honour and respect us.’

So the three of them dressed their hair in the poet’s way, and when they landed in Greece they went up and knocked at the door of the Royal Palace of King Tuas. When the doorkeeper asked them who they were, they answered that they were poets from Ireland, and they had come with a poem for the King.

By the King’s order, they were invited in and royally feasted. The King’s poet sang the songs and poems of Greece for them, and then Brian spoke his poem for the King. He called him ‘the oak among kings’ and praised him for his hospitality, and then, as a reward for his poem, he asked the King for the skin of the pig that was said to cure all wounds.

The King was pleased with the poem, but he was troubled by the request, and at having to refuse it.

‘I would not give that skin to all the poets or men of learning in the wide world,’ he declared, 'but I will give you three times the fill of it of red gold, as the price of your poem.'

Brian said he was well satisfied with this reward, but he asked that he should be allowed to see the measuring of the gold into the skin himself. The King agreed to this, and he went with his two brothers and the King’s servants to the treasure house.

‘Now,’ said Brian, ‘measure out the two shares for my brothers first, and then fill up a good skinful for me, since it was I who made the poem.’

As they were measuring, Brian suddenly snatched the skin from the King’s servant and, drawing his sword, pre­pared to hack his way through the guards. His two brothers joined him and they rushed through the palace, cutting down all who stood in their way. Just as they reached the door, King Tuas himself rushed on Brian and engaged him in single combat. Many and deadly were the blows they exchanged, until at last Brian drove his sword through the King’s body, and so King Tuas of Greece fell by the hand of Brian, Son of Tuireann. When they got to the shore they jumped into their boat and made out to sea, and they rested for a while and cured their wounds by laying on them the skin of the magic pig. Then, as the blue-watered land of Greece faded behind them, they decided to go to Persia and seek the spear of King Pezaer.

It was agreed that they would go to King Pezaer’s Court in the guise of poets once again. So, putting the tie of poets on their hair, they appeared at the door of the palace. As in Greece, they were brought in and treated with honour and respect as poets from the distant land of Erin. Then Brian chanted a poem in praise of King Pezaer and of his magic spear.

‘That is a good poem,’ said the King, ‘but I cannot understand why you bring my spear into it, O man of Poetry from Erin.’

Brian said that he would like to have the spear as a reward for his poem. The King grew very angry at hearing this, and said:

‘It is the greatest possible reward that you are not put to death instantly for making such a request.’

No sooner had Brian heard the King’s refusal than he threw one of the three golden apples from the Garden of the Hesperides at his head and dashed out his brains. Before the King’s warriors could recover from their sur­prise, Brian and his brothers made for the courtyard, where they had seen the spear steeping in a cauldron of ice-water to keep it from scorching the people and burning down the city. They seized the spear, and fought their way down to the boat, and many and grievous were the wounds they gave and received before they reached Wavesweeper and pushed out to sea once more.

‘Now,’ said Brian, ‘let us go to Sicily and ask King Doabre for the two steeds and the chariot that Lugh of the Long Arm demands of us. Let us tell Doabre that we are Irish soldiers wishing to hire ourselves out to the kings of the world. Then, when we take service with him, we shall see where he keeps the two magic horses and the chariot, and how we can come at them.’

As they hoped, King Doabre was pleased to hire the three brothers, and they entered into his service. But they were at his Court for a month and two weeks, and never in all that time did they catch as much as a glimpse of the steeds or the chariot. So Brian began to lose patience, and he said to his brothers:

‘It is little use for us to wait here any longer, for we know as much of the horses and chariot that we came to get as we did on the first day of our hiring.’

‘What shall we do, then?’ they asked him.

‘Gather together your belongings,’ said Brian, ‘and gird on your arms and your travelling array. Then let us go to the King, and let us tell him that we will leave his service unless he shows us his steeds and his chariot that are famous throughout the Western World.’

And they did as Brian said, and they went to the King dressed as if for a journey, and the King, wishing to keep them in his service, sent for his steeds and had them yoked to the chariot. Then he had them driven around the show-ground, so that Brian and his brothers could see them, and they saw that the steeds could go on the water as if it were dry land, and they were as quick as the thin wind of March.

Brian was watching the steeds carefully, and, as they were passing him the second time he made a sudden spring, and, leaping into the chariot, seized the reins, and dashed the charioteer from his seat. His two brothers were quickly by his side and, before the King and his nobles knew what was happening, the Sons of Tuireann had driven away his steeds and chariot, and so ended their fourth quest.

By this time, having come through so many trials safely, the three brothers began to feel that perhaps they would succeed in fulfilling Lugh’s eric. So their spirits rose, and they journeyed happily on to the Land of the Golden Pillars to get the seven magic pigs from King Aesal.

As their boat touched the shore, Aesal, to their surprise, came down to the brink of the water to meet them. He told them that the fame of their deeds had spread throughout the world, and he asked them if it were true that they had plundered the treasures of the kings of the world for the payment of a mighty blood fine.

Then Brian told him the story of the eric that Lugh had put on them, and of the trials and hardships they had already suffered in trying to pay it.

‘And now,’ said King Aesal, ‘why have you come to my country?’

‘We have come,’ said Brian, ‘for your seven magic pigs, for they too are part of that eric.’

When the King heard this he took counsel with his people, and they decided to give up the pigs peacefully to the Sons of Tuireann, partly to show admiration for their valiant deeds and partly because they knew that the Sons of Tuireann would get them, as they got the other treasures in the lands they had already visited.

Brian and his brothers then swore fealty to King Aesal, and pledged themselves to stand by his side and fight to the death for him in whatever quarrel he might find himself. Then King Aesal took them to his palace for the night, and they were given every kind of food and drink and soft beds to lie on. When they arose in the morning Aesal asked them what country they intended to visit next.

‘We are going to Irouad,’ said they, ‘for a puppy hound that the King has.’

‘Grant me one request,’ said Aesal, ‘and that is to allow me to go with you to Irouad, for a daughter of mine is married to the king, and I want to persuade him to give that puppy to you without striking a blow.’

So the King’s boat was got ready, and the Sons of Tuireann arranged their treasures in ‘Wave-sweeper’, and they set out together for the land of Irouad.

When they reached it they found all the coves and the harbours guarded against them, and they were forbidden to land. Aesal, however, went to his son-in-law, told him the whole story of the Sons of Tuireann, and how they had to fight the kings and mighty warriors of the world to get their treasures for Lugh of the Long Arm in payment of the blood fine he put on his father. He advised him to give them the puppy hound in a peaceful way, and reminded him that many of the kings of the world had already fallen by their swords.

But the King of Irouad would take no such advice.

‘There are no champions born,’ said he, ‘that the gods have so favoured that they could get my puppy hound either by force or by goodwill.’

When the Sons of Tuireann heard this they quickly seized their weapons and rushed upon the King and his guards. Fierce and bloody was the conflict that was waged around the brothers, and they were separated many times. At last Brian came on the King in the thick of the fight, and he engaged him in single combat, and succeeded in over­powering him. Then he bore him through the centre of the fighting throng to where Aesal was at the side, outside the press of battle.

‘There is your son-in-law for you,’ said he to King Aesal, ‘and I swear by my arms of valour it would have been easier for me to kill him three times over than to bring him here to you.'

So peace was made between them, and the King of Irouad gladly gave them his hound in admiration of their valiant fight. And it was in the friendliest spirit that they bade farewell to the two kings and set out to sea once more.

Meanwhile, back in Banba, Lugh had discovered, by means of sorcery, that the Sons of Tuireann had obtained all the magical treasures that he needed in the coming battle against the Fomorians, for the last battle of that war had not so far been fought. He knew that their eric was not yet com­plete, for they had not got the cooking-spit nor had they given the three shouts on the Hill of Midcain. But he needed the invaluable poisoned spear, the magical pigskin, the steeds and the rest.

So he sent a druidical spell after them that caused them to forget the cooking-spit and the three shouts on the hill which would complete the fine. In addition to this, the spell filled their hearts with a passionate longing for their own land again, so with unbounded joy they told ‘Wave-sweeper’ to bear them back to Banba, and to their father Tuireann, and to the warriors in Tara of the Kings, where songs would be sung in praise of their deeds until the end of time.

Great indeed was their joy when they saw the grey back of Ben Eader against the western sky, and greater still was it when the prow of ‘Wave-sweeper’ grounded on the pebbly beach at the Boyne, and they felt the soil of Erin under their feet again. They stood still for a moment to breathe in the gentle Irish air and to let the sight of the bright streams and the heathery slopes of Meath soothe their eyes once more. Then, collecting their treasures, they made straight for Tara, where the High King was holding an assembly.

In Tara the High King and all the noblest warriors of the country welcomed them royally, praising them for the valour of their deeds and rejoicing with them that the blood feud between them and Lugh would, from that day, be at an end forever. Meanwhile Lugh, hearing of their return, had slipped off from Tara, and waited at some distance, arrayed in all his arms of valour. Word was sent to him that the Sons of Tuireann had returned and had brought the eric with them.

‘Have them pay it over to the High King,’ said Lugh.

The eric was paid to the High King, and Lugh returned to Tara. Then Brian spoke to Lugh, saying:

'We have paid the blood fine on Cian, Lugh.’

But Lugh answered:

‘It is a good payment indeed for anyone who has been killed, but the blood fine of Cian is not here complete, and you have pledged yourselves not to leave anything out. Where is the cooking-spit of the women of Fioncure? And you have not given the three shouts on the Hill of Midcain.’

When the three Sons of Tuireann heard this they fell to the ground in a swoon, and then when they recovered they went sadly back to the house of their father, their heads bowed with grief and dismay. They told him with sorrow of all the trials they had endured to get the eric for Lugh, and of the trick that Lugh had played on them in the end. That night they spent with Tuireann, and when the morning came they went back to their boat. Eithne and their father accompanied them, and great was their sorrow to see them go.

As their boat bore them away out to sea they looked back at the shape of Ireland growing dim behind them, and there was no hope in their hearts of ever seeing it again, for now it was clear to them that it was not compensation for killing his father that Lugh wanted, but to bring about their des­truction only.

For three months they sailed hither and thither on the green, storm-tossed sea, and they could not find any trace of the island of Fioncure where the women lived who had the cooking-spit. Then at last Brian decided to search for the island in the depths of the sea. Leaping over the side of the boat, he left his brothers in ‘Wave-sweeper’, and for two long weeks he searched the green depths, and at last he came on the island, halfway down to the bed of the ocean, with water under it and over it and around it.

Here among gardens of sea-flowers, tinkling like bells, he found a company of red-haired maidens working gold embroidery around jewels that winked and glinted in the under-water sunlight. There were three times fifty of them, and they sang sweetly as they plied their needles. They looked at Brian as he walked down the hall towards the cooking-spit, but no one spoke. Then, as he seized the spit from the side of the massive hearth, they broke into a ripple of laughter, and one of them said:

‘You may carry it away with you, Brian, as a reward for your daring, for bold is your deed in taking it; for even if your two brothers were here to help you, the weakest of us could overcome all three of you.’

Then Brian went back to his brothers in the boat, having thanked the maidens for their cooking-spit, and they lost no time in making for the Hill of Midcain, on which they were to give the three shouts.

When they reached the hill, Midcain himself, the guardian of the hill, came towards them and demanded to know what their business was on his territory.

‘We have come to give three shouts on this hill,’ said Brian, ‘in fulfilment of an eric.’

‘I am under bonds never to allow anyone to raise a shout on my hill,’ said Midcain.

‘Then let our swords speak,’ said Brian, and they both drew, and rushed on each other with the fury of two lions, and hard and fierce was the combat, till at last Brian drove his blade through the heart of Midcain, and he fell dead on his own hillside.

Then the three Sons of Midcain came out to fight the three Sons of Tuireann, and never before was there such a deadly contest fought between any group of warriors. Now they fought with the ferocity of hungry lions, and then with the wildness of forest boars, and all the time with the staying power of angry bears, till the grass under their feet was a carpet of red blood and the wounds in their bodies were so big that a wood-pigeon could fly out through the two sides of any of them. But the end of it was the three Sons of Midcain fell dead one after the other, and soon after them the three Sons of Tuireann fell to the ground more dead than alive from the severity of their wounds.

After some time Brian remembered that they had not done that for which they came, the fulfilment of Lugh’s eric, the three shouts on the bill. He raised himself on his elbow and he spoke to his brothers:

‘How is it with you, my dear brothers?’

‘We are near death,’ they answered.

‘Let us rise up, then,’ said Brian, ‘and give three shouts on the hill, for I see the signs of death coming on us.'

Then he dragged himself up, and raising his two brothers with an arm around each, while blood flowed continuously from their wounds, they raised their voices, and with their dying breath gave the three shouts on the Hill of Midcain that Lugh had demanded of them. And so the last of Cian’s blood fine was paid, and they fell back exhausted.

After resting for a while, Brian dragged his brothers down to the boat and laid them carefully inside, and lying there between life and death the three Sons of Tuireann were borne back to Erin. After journeying over the waves for a long time like this, Brian put up his head and looked over the sea to the west.

‘I see Ben Eader, Dun Tuireann, and Tara of the Kings, my brothers,’ he said gently to them. The dying brothers opened their eyes when they heard this, and asked him to raise their heads on his breast so that they might get one last glimpse of the land of Erin. ‘And then,’ they said, 'we care not whether we live or die after that.’

Brian then raised them up, and they saw the furzy brow of Ben Eadar, and the gentle watered plain of the Boyne, and their father’s dun near Tara. Then ‘Wave-sweeper’, instead of grounding at the beach by the mouth of the Boyne, carried them gently and swiftly over land, and did not stop till it brought them to the door of Dun Tuireann. Their father came out to meet them with all haste, and he saw, with one look, that the life was only barely in them. Then Brian spoke to him and said:

‘Go, my dear father, and take the cooking-spit to Lugh at Tara, and tell him that we have given the three shouts on the Hill of Midcain, and that the eric for Cian is now paid in full, and beg him to lend us the magic pig-skin, so that we may heal our wounds, for there is no cause left now that he should still punish us. And,’ he added, as with his dying breath, ‘make haste, my father, for the life that is in us flickers like a rush-light, or you may not find us alive before you on your return.'

Then with all speed Tuireann went to Lugh and besought him to give him the pigskin to save the lives of his sons. Lugh, while Tuireann spoke, looked into the distance across the Plain of Muirthemne and was silent. Then after some time he spoke and this is what he said:

‘Thy sons have paid the blood-fine for Cian, and in pay­ing it they have fought many a valiant fight, and performed deeds that bards and minstrels will sing to kings and noble companies until the end of time, and now that they have come to their deaths with such valour and renown, to live on after this would be a poor thing.’

When Brian heard from his father that Lugh would not grant them the loan of the healing pigskin he went and laid himself down between his two brothers, and they put their arms around each other, and life went out of the three of them at the same instant. Then Tuireann, kneeling down beside them, kissed each of his sons in turn, and then fell dead over them, for his heart was broken with grief. Eithne, his daughter, then buried them in the one grave, and composed a sorrowful lay over them.

And so ends the tale of ‘The Quest of the Sons of Tuireann’ that the bards have named ‘First of the Three Sorrows of Story­telling’.