mell of green boughs when
they kindled them to roast the deer-flesh in Fian ovens in the
wildwood.

So next day Oisin and Niam fared forth on horseback, with their
company of knights and maidens, and dogs leaping and barking with
eagerness for the chase. Anon they came to the forest, and the hunters
with the hounds made a wide circuit on this side and on that, till at
last the loud clamour of the hounds told that a stag was on foot, and
Oisin saw them streaming down an open glen, the stag with its great
antlers laid back and flying like the wind. So he shouted the Fian
hunting-cry and rode furiously on their track. All day long they
chased the stag through the echoing forest, and the fairy steed bore
him unfaltering over rough ground and smooth, till at last as darkness
began to fall the quarry was pulled down, and Oisin cut its throat
with his hunting-knife. Long it seemed to him since he had felt glad
and weary as he felt now, and since the woodland air with its odours
of pine and mint and wild garlic had tasted so sweet in his mouth; and
truly it was longer than he knew. But when he bade make ready the
wood-oven for their meal, and build a bothy of boughs for their
repose, Niam led him seven steps apart and seven to the left hand, and
yet seven back to the place where they had killed the deer, and lo,
there rose before him a stately Dun with litten windows and smoke
drifting above its roof. When they entered, there was a table spread
for a great company, and cooks and serving-men busy about a wide
hearth where roast and boiled meats of every sort were being prepared.
Casks of Greek wine stood open around the walls, and cups of gold were
on the board. So they all ate and drank their sufficiency, and all
night Oisin and Niam slept on a bed softer than swans-down in a
chamber no less fair than that which they had in the City of the Land
of Youth.

Next day, at the first light of dawn, they were on foot; and soon
again the forest rang to the baying of hounds and the music of the
hunting-horn. Oisin's steed bore him all day, tireless and swift as
before, and again the quarry fell at night's approach, and again a
palace rose in the wilderness for their night's entertainment, and all
things in it even more abundant and more sumptuous than before. And so
for seven days they fared in that forest, and seven stags were slain.
Then Oisin grew wearied of hunting, and as he plunged his sharp black
hunting-knife into the throat