aughter of Teigue, the son of
Nuada from Faery, and her mother was Ethlinn. That is, her brother
was Lugh of the Long Hand himself, and with a god, and such a god, for
brother we may marvel that she could have been in dread of Morna or his
sons, or of any one. But women have strange loves, strange fears, and
these are so bound up with one another that the thing which is presented
to us is not often the thing that is to be seen.

However it may be, when Uall died Muirne got married again to the King
of Kerry. She gave the child to Bovmall and Lia Luachra to rear, and we
may be sure that she gave injunctions with him, and many of them. The
youngster was brought to the woods of Slieve Bloom and was nursed there
in secret.

It is likely the women were fond of him, for other than Fionn there
was no life about them. He would be their life; and their eyes may
have seemed as twin benedictions resting on the small fair head. He was
fair-haired, and it was for his fairness that he was afterwards called
Fionn; but at this period he was known as Deimne. They saw the food they
put into his little frame reproduce itself length-ways and sideways in
tough inches, and in springs and energies that crawled at first, and
then toddled, and then ran. He had birds for playmates, but all the
creatures that live in a wood must have been his comrades. There would
have been for little Fionn long hours of lonely sunshine, when the world
seemed just sunshine and a sky. There would have been hours as long,
when existence passed like a shade among shadows, in the multitudinous
tappings of rain that dripped from leaf to leaf in the wood, and slipped
so to the ground. He would have known little snaky paths, narrow enough
to be filled by his own small feet, or a goat's; and he would have
wondered where they went, and have marvelled again to find that,
wherever they went, they came at last, through loops and twists of the
branchy wood, to his own door. He may have thought of his own door as
the beginning and end of the world, whence all things went, and whither
all things came.

Perhaps he did not see the lark for a long time, but he would have heard
him, far out of sight in the endless sky, thrilling and thrilling until
the world seemed to have no other sound but that clear sweetness; and
what a world it was to make that sound! Whistles and chirps, coos and
caws and croaks, would have grown familiar to him. And he could at last
have told which brothe