and they laid the weapons before
her. "Goodly indeed are these arms," she said, "for that is the
Thunder Spear of the King Oversea and the shield is the Red Branch
Shield," for it was covered with red arabesques. Then she bestowed her
bracelets on Finn's three harpers, the dwarf Cnu, and Blanit his wife,
and the harper Daira. And she bade Finn care for her burial, that it
should be done becomingly, "for under thy honour and protection I got
my death, and it was to thee I came into Ireland." So they buried her
and lamented her, and made a great far-seen mound over her grave,
which is called the Ridge of the Dead Woman, and set up a pillar stone
upon it with her name and lineage carved in Ogham-crave.[23]

[23] Ogham-craobh = "branching Ogham," so called because the
letters resembled the branching of twigs from a stem. The Ogham
alphabet was in use in Ireland in pre-Christian times, and many
sepulchral inscriptions in it still remain.

CHAPTER XIII

The Chase of the Gilla Dacar

In the reign of Cormac mac Art, grandson of Conn of the Hundred
Battles, the order of precedence and dignity in the court of the High
King at Tara was as follows: First came great Cormac, the kingly, the
hospitable, warrior and poet, and he was supreme over all. Next in
order came the five kings of the five Provinces of Ireland, namely,
Ulster, Munster, Connacht, Leinster, and Mid-Erinn. After these ranked
the captains of the royal host, of whom Finn, son of Cumhal, was the
chief.

Now the privileges of the Fianna of Erinn were many and great; to wit,
in every county in Ireland one townland, and in every townland a
cartron of land, and in the house of every gentleman the right to
have a young deer-hound or a beagle kept at nurse from November to
May, together with many other taxes and royalties not to be recounted
here. But if they had these many and great privileges, yet greater
than these were the toils and hardships which they had to endure, in
guarding the coasts of all Ireland from oversea invaders and
marauders, and in keeping down all robbers and outlaws and evil folk
within the kingdom, for this was the duty laid upon them by their bond
of service to the King.

Now the summer half of the year was wont to be ended by a great
hunting in one of the forests of Ireland, and so it was that one
All-hallowtide, when the great banquet of Finn in his Dun on the Hill
of Allen was going forward, and the hall resounded with