ing, they saw a clown coming towards them, old
striped clothes he had, and puddle water splashing in his shoes, and his
sword sticking out naked behind him, and his ears through the old cloak
that was over his head, and in his hand he had three spears of hollywood
scorched and blackened.

He wished O'Donnell good health, and O'Donnell did the same to him, and
asked where did he come from. "It is where I am," he said, "I slept last
night at Dun Monaidhe, of the King of Alban; I am a day in Ile, a day in
Cionn-tire, a day in Rachlainn, a day in the Watchman's Seat in Slieve
Fuad; a pleasant, rambling, wandering man I am, and it is with yourself
I am now, O'Donnell," he said. "Let the gate-keeper be brought to me,"
said O'Donnell. And when the gate-keeper came, he asked was it he let in
this man, and the gate-keeper said he did not, and that he never saw him
before. "Let him off, O'Donnell," said the stranger, "for it was as easy
for me to come in, as it will be to me to go out again." There was
wonder on them all then, any man to have come into the house without
passing the gate.

The musicians began playing their music then, and all the best musicians
of the country were there at the time, and they played very sweet tunes
on their harps. But the strange man called out: "By my word, O'Donnell,
there was never a noise of hammers beating on iron in any bad place was
so bad to listen to as this noise your people are making."

With that he took a harp, and he made music that would put women in
their pains and wounded men after a battle into a sweet sleep, and it is
what O'Donnell said: "Since I first heard talk of the music of the Sidhe
that is played in the hills and under the earth below us, I never heard
better music than your own. And it is a very sweet player you are," he
said. "One day I am sweet, another day I am sour," said the clown.

Then O'Donnell bade his people to bring him up to sit near himself. "I
have no mind to do that," he said; "I would sooner be as I am, an ugly
clown, making sport for high-up people." Then O'Donnell sent him down
clothes, a hat and a striped shirt and a coat, but he would not have
them. "I have no mind," he said, "to let high-up people be making a
boast of giving them to me."

They were afraid then he might go from them, and they put twenty armed
horsemen and twenty men on foot to hold him back from leaving the house,
and as many more outside at the gate, for they knew him not to be