nt Goll took her head from its shoulders
and swung it on high before Fionn.

As the Fianna turned homewards Fionn spoke to his great champion and
enemy.

"Goll," he said, "I have a daughter."

"A lovely girl, a blossom of the dawn," said Goll.

"Would she please you as a wife?" the chief demanded.

"She would please me," said Goll.

"She is your wife," said Fionn.

But that did not prevent Goll from killing Fionn's brother Cairell later
on, nor did it prevent Fionn from killing Goll later on again, and
the last did not prevent Goll from rescuing Fionn out of hell when the
Fianna-Finn were sent there under the new God. Nor is there any reason
to complain or to be astonished at these things, for it is a mutual
world we llve in, a give-and-take world, and there is no great harm in
it.

BECUMA OF THE WHITE SKIN

CHAPTER I

There are more worlds than one, and in many ways they are unlike each
other. But joy and sorrow, or, in other words, good and evil, are not
absent in their degree from any of the worlds, for wherever there is
life there is action, and action is but the expression of one or other
of these qualities.

After this Earth there is the world of the Shi'. Beyond it again lies
the Many-Coloured Land. Next comes the Land of Wonder, and after that
the Land of Promise awaits us. You will cross clay to get into the Shi';
you will cross water to attain the Many-Coloured Land; fire must be
passed ere the Land of Wonder is attained, but we do not know what will
be crossed for the fourth world.

This adventure of Conn the Hundred Fighter and his son Art was by the
way of water, and therefore he was more advanced in magic than Fionn
was, all of whose adventures were by the path of clay and into Faery
only, but Conn was the High King and so the arch-magician of Ireland.

A council had been called in the Many-Coloured Land to discuss the case
of a lady named Becuma Cneisgel, that is, Becuma of the White Skin, the
daughter of Eogan Inver. She had run away from her husband Labraid and
had taken refuge with Gadiar, one of the sons of Mananna'n mac Lir, the
god of the sea, and the ruler, therefore, of that sphere.

It seems, then, that there is marriage in two other spheres. In the
Shi' matrimony is recorded as being parallel in every respect with
earth-marriage, and the desire which urges to it seems to be as violent
and inconstant as it is with us; but in the Many-Coloured Land marriage
is but a