rms and kiss her, and now do so if thou wilt."

[Illustration: "They rose up in the air"]

Then Midir took his weapons in his left hand and placed his right
around Etain, and when he did so they rose up in the air over the
heads of the host, and passed through a roof-window in the palace.
Then all rose up, tumultuous and angry, and rushed out of doors, but
nothing could they see save two white swans that circled high in air
around the Hill of Tara, and then flew southwards and away towards
the fairy mountain of Slievenamon. And thus Etain the immortal
rejoined the Immortals; but a daughter of Etain and of Eochy, who was
another Etain in name and in beauty, became in due time a wife, and
mother of kings.

CHAPTER VIII

How Ethne Quitted Fairyland

By the banks of the River Boyne, where rises the great Fairy Mound now
called Newgrange, there stood long ago the shining Palace of a prince
of the People of Dana, named Angus. Of him it is that the lines are
written--

"By the dark rolling waters of the Boyne
Where Angus Og magnificently dwells."

When the Milesian race invaded Ireland, and after long fighting
subdued the Danaans in spite of all their enchantments and all their
valour, the Danaans wrought for themselves certain charms by which
they and all their possessions became invisible to mortals, and thus
they continued to lead their old joyous life in the holy places of the
land, and their palaces and dancing-places and folk-motes seem to the
human eye to be merely a green mound or rath, or a lonely hillside, or
a ruined shrine with nettles and foxgloves growing up among its broken
masonry.

Now, after Angus and his folk had thus retreated behind the veil of
invisibility, it happened that the steward of his palace had a
daughter born to him whose name was Ethne. On the same day Fand, the
wife of Mananan the Sea God, bore him a daughter, and since Angus was
a friend of Mananan and much beloved by him, the child of the Sea God
was sent to Brugh na Boyna, the noble dwelling-place of Angus, to be
fostered and brought up, as the custom was. And Ethne became the
handmaid of the young princess of the sea.

In time Ethne grew into a fair and stately maiden Now in the Brugh of
Angus there were two magical treasures, namely, an ale-vat which could
never be emptied, and two swine whereof one was ever roasted and ready
to be eaten while the other lived, and thus they were, day and day
about. There was ther