eathlike trance and stupor, till the sunlight woke them lying on the
heathery hillside, the house utterly vanished away.

The scenes of all the happenings in the story are well known: the rath
of Badamar is near Caher on the Suir, in the midst of the Golden Vale, a
plain of wonderful richness and beauty, walled in by the red precipices
of the Galtee Mountains, and the Knock-Mealdown Hills. From the rath of
Badamar Find could watch the western mountains reddening and glowing in
front of the dawn, as the sun-rays shot level over the burnished plain.
Clocar is thirty miles westward over the Golden Vale, near where Croom
now stands; and here were run the races; here Find gained the gift of
the coal-black steed. It is some forty miles still westwards to the
Strand of Tralee; the last half of the way among hills carpeted with
heather; and the Strand itself, with the tide out, leaves a splendid
level of white sand as far as the eye can reach, tempting Find to try
his famous courser. The race carried them southwards some fifteen miles
to the beautiful waters of Lough Leane, with its overhanging wooded
hills, the Lake of Killarney, southward of which rises the huge red
mass of Mangerton, in the midst of a country everywhere rich in beauty.
The Hill of Barnec is close by, but the site of the magic dwelling, who
can tell? Perhaps Find; or Cailte, or golden-tongued Ossin himself.

There was abundant fighting in those days, for well within memory was
the time of Conn of the Five-score Fights, against whom Cumal had warred
because Conn lord of Connacht had raised Crimtan of the Yellow Hair to
the kingship of Leinster. Cumal fought at the Rath that bears his name,
now softened to Rathcool, twelve miles inward from the sea at Dublin,
with the hills rising up from the plain to the south of the Rath. Cumal
fought and fell, slain by Goll Mac Morna, and enmity long endured
between Find and Goll who slew his sire. But like valiant men they were
reconciled, and when Goll in his turn died, Find made a stirring poem on
Goll's mighty deeds.

Another fateful fight for Find was the battle of Kinvarra, among the
southern rocks of Galway Bay; for though he broke through the host of
his foeman Uince, that chieftain himself escaped, and, riding swiftly
with a score of men, came to Find's own dwelling at Druim Dean on the
Red Hills of Leinster, and burned the dwelling, leaving it a smoldering
ruin. Find pursuing, overtook them, slaying them at the fo