rs than
they to make a fool of me, after all the respect
I had showed them, giving my life to watching
themselves and the plans they have laid down
for men and for mortals.

_King_: It seems as if I myself was the best prophet
and that there is no Dragon at all.

_Fintan_: What a bad opinion you have of me
that I would be so far out as that! It would be
a deception and a disappointment out of measure,
there to come no Dragon, and I after foretelling
and prophesying him.

_King_: Troth, it would be no disappointment
at all to ourselves.

_Fintan_: It would be better, I tell you, a score
of king's daughters to be ate and devoured, than
the high stars in their courses to be proved wrong.
But it must be right, it surely must be right. I
gave the prophecy according to her birth hour,
that was one hour before the falling back of the sun.

_Dall Glic_: It was not, but an hour before the
rising of the sun.

_Fintan_: Not at all! It was the Nurse herself
told me it was at evening she was born.

_Queen_: There is the Nurse now. Let you ask
her account.

_Fintan: (To Nurse.)_ It was yourself laid down
it was evening!

_Nurse_: Sure I wasn't in the place at all till
Samhuin time, when she was near three months
in the world.

_Fintan_: Then it was some other hag the very
spit of you! I wish she didn't tell a lie.

_Nurse_: Sure that one was banished out of this
on the head of telling lies. An hour ere sunrise,
and before the crowing of the cocks. The Dall
Glic will tell you that much.

_Dall Glic_: That is so. I have it marked upon
the genealogies in the chest.

_Fintan_: That is great news! It was a heavy
wrong was done me! It had me greatly upset.
Twelve hours out in laying down the birth-time!
That clears the character of myself and
of the carwheel of the stars. I knew I could
make no mistake in my office and in my
billet!

_King_: Will you stop praising yourself and give
out some sense?

_Fintan_: Knowledge is surely the greatest thing
in the world! And truth! Twelve hours with
the planets is equal to twelve months on earth.
I am well satisfied now.

_Queen_: So the Dragon is not coming, and the
girl is in no danger at all?

_Fintan_: Not coming! Heaven help your poor
head! Didn't I get word within the last half-hour
he is after leaving his den in the Kingdoms of the
Cold, and is at this minute ploughing his way to
Ireland, the same as I foretold him, but that I
made a miscount of a year?