water of the Boyne, and sheep of lifeless
stones, and swine of ferns. In the presence of the hosts I can make
gold and silver, plenty and to spare; and hosts of famous fighting men I
can produce from naught. Now, tell me, can thy God work the like?"

"Work for us," says the King, "some of these great wonders." Then Sheen
went forth out of the house, and she set herself to work spells on
Murtough, so that he knew not whether he was in his right mind or no.
She took of the water of the Boyne and made a magic wine thereout, and
she took ferns and spiked thistles and light puff-balls of the woods,
and out of them she fashioned magic swine and sheep and goats, and with
these she fed Murtough and the hosts. And when they had eaten, all their
strength went from them, and the magic wine sent them into an uneasy
sleep and restless slumbers. And out of stones and sods of earth she
fashioned three battalions, and one of the battalions she placed at one
side of the house, and the other at the further side beyond it, and one
encircling the rest southward along the hollow windings of the glen. And
thus were these battalions, one of them all made of men stark-naked and
their colour blue, and the second with heads of goats with shaggy beards
and horned; but the third, more terrible than they, for these were
headless men, fighting like human beings, yet finished at the neck; and
the sound of heavy shouting as of hosts and multitudes came from the
first and the second battalion, but from the third no sound save only
that they waved their arms and struck their weapons together, and smote
the ground with their feet impatiently. And though terrible was the
shout of the blue men and the bleating of the goats with human limbs,
more horrible yet was the stamping and the rage of those headless men,
finished at the neck.

And Murtough, in his sleep and in his dreams, heard the battle-shout,
and he rose impetuously from off his bed, but the wine overcame him, and
his strength departed from him, and he fell helplessly upon the floor.
Then he heard the challenge a second time, and the stamping of the feet
without, and he rose again, and madly, fiercely, he set on them,
charging the hosts and scattering them before him, as he thought, as far
as the fairy palace of the Brugh. But all his strength was lost in
fighting phantoms, for they were but stones and sods and withered leaves
of the forest that he took for fighting men.

Now Duivsech, Murtough