hen the high-noon came the sun grew hot, and the King sat down
to rest upon the fairy mound, and the hunt passed on beyond him, and he
was left alone.

There was a witch woman in that country whose name was "Sigh, Sough,
Storm, Rough Wind, Winter Night, Cry, Wail, and Groan." Star-bright and
beautiful was she in face and form, but inwardly she was cruel as her
names. And she hated Murtough because he had scattered and destroyed the
Ancient Peoples of the Fairy Tribes of Erin, her country and her
fatherland, and because in the battle which he fought at Cerb on the
Boyne her father and her mother and her sister had been slain. For in
those days women went to battle side by side with men.

She knew, too, that with the coming of the new faith trouble would come
upon the fairy folk, and their power and their great majesty would
depart from them, and men would call them demons, and would drive them
out with psalm-singing and with the saying of prayers, and with the
sound of little tinkling bells. So trouble and anger wrought in the
witch woman, and she waited the day to be revenged on Murtough, for he
being yet a pagan, was still within her power to harm.

So when Sheen (for Sheen or "Storm" was the name men gave to her) saw
the King seated on the fairy mound and all his comrades parted from him,
she arose softly, and combed her hair with her comb of silver adorned
with little ribs of gold, and she washed her hands in a silver basin
wherein were four golden birds sitting on the rim of the bowl, and
little bright gems of carbuncle set round about the rim. And she donned
her fairy mantle of flowing green, and her cloak, wide and hooded, with
silvery fringes, and a brooch of fairest gold. On her head were tresses
yellow like to gold, plaited in four locks, with a golden drop at the
end of each long tress. The hue of her hair was like the flower of the
iris in summer or like red gold after the burnishing thereof. And she
wore on her breasts and at her shoulders marvellous clasps of gold,
finely worked with the tracery of the skilled craftsman, and a golden
twisted torque around her throat. And when she was decked she went
softly and sat down beside Murtough on the turfy hunting mound. And
after a space Murtough perceived her sitting there, and the sun shining
upon her, so that the glittering of the gold and of her golden hair and
the bright shining of the green silk of her garments, was like the
yellow iris-beds upon the lake o