e
weight of the spear-heads and their sharp points many in both hosts
fell. There were cries of the wounded now, mingled with battle-songs,
and hoarse shouting for vengeance among those whose sons and brothers
and sworn friends fell. Another cast of the spears, seaming the air
between as the hosts closed in, and they fell on each other with their
swords, shields upraised and gold-bronze sword-points darting beneath
like the tongues of serpents. They cut and thrust, each with his eyes
fixed on the fierce eyes of his foe.

They fought on the day of the Spirits, now the Eve of All Saints; the
Fomorians were routed, and their chieftains slain. But of the De
Danaans, Nuada, once wounded by Sreng of the Firbolgs, now fell by the
hand of Balor; yet Balor also fell, slain by Lug, his own
daughter's son.

Thus was the might of the Fomorians broken, and the De Danaans ruled
unopposed, their power and the works of their hands spreading throughout
the length and breadth of the land.

Many monuments are accredited to them by tradition, but greatest and
most wonderful are the pyramids of stone at Brugh on the Boyne. Some
nine miles from the sandy seashore, where the Boyne loses itself in the
waves, there is a broad tongue of meadowland, shut in on three sides
southward by the Boyne, and to the northeast cut off by a lesser stream
that joins it. This remote and quiet headland, very famous in the
annals, was in old days so surrounded by woods that it was like a quiet
glade in the forest rimmed by the clear waters of the Boyne. The Mourne
Mountains to the north and the lesser summits on the southern sky-line
were hidden by the trees. The forest wall encircled the green
meadowland, and the river fringed with blue forget-me-nots.

In this quiet spot was the sacred place of the De Danaans, and three
great pyramids of stone, a mile apart along the river, mark their three
chief sanctuaries. The central is the greatest; two hundred thousand
tons of stone heaped up, within a circular wall of stone, itself
surrounded by a great outer circle of standing stones, thirty in number,
like gray sentinels guarding the shrine. In the very heart of the
pyramid, hushed in perpetual stillness and peace, is the inmost
sanctuary, a chamber formed like a cross, domed with a lofty roof, and
adorned with mysterious tracings on the rocks. Shrines like this are
found in many lands, whether within the heart of the pyramids of Egypt
or in the recesses of India