ounds of Finn in a ring, and
they keeping back the other hounds, and in the middle of the ring was a
young boy, with high looks, and he naked and having long hair. And he
was no way daunted by the noise of the hounds, and did not look at them
at all, but at the men that were coming up. And as soon as the fight was
stopped Bran and Sceolan went up to the little lad, and whined and
licked him, that any one would think they had forgotten their master.
Finn and the others came up to him then, and put their hands on his
head, and made much of him. And they brought him to their own hunting
cabin, and he ate and drank with them, and before long he lost his
wildness and was the same as themselves. And as to Bran and Sceolan,
they were never tired playing about him.

And it is what Finn thought, there was some look of Sadbh in his face,
and that it might be he was her son, and he kept him always beside him.
And little by little when the boy had learned their talk, he told them
all he could remember. He used to be with a deer he loved very much, he
said, and that cared and sheltered him, and it was in a wide place they
used to be, having hills and valleys and streams and woods in it, but
that was shut in with high cliffs on every side, that there was no way
of escape from it. And he used to be eating fruits and roots in the
summer, and in the winter there was food left for him in the shelter of
a cave. And a dark-looking man used to be coming to the place, and
sometimes he would speak to the deer softly and gently, and sometimes
with a loud angry voice. But whatever way he spoke, she would always
draw away from him with the appearance of great dread on her, and the
man would go away in great anger. And the last time he saw the deer, his
mother, the dark man was speaking to her for a long time, from softness
to anger. And at the end he struck her with a hazel rod, and with that
she was forced to follow him, and she looking back all the while at the
child, and crying after him that any one would pity her. And he tried
hard to follow after her, and made every attempt, and cried out with
grief and rage, but he had no power to move, and when he could hear his
mother no more he fell on the grass and his wits went from him. And when
he awoke it is on the side of the hill he was, where the hounds found
him. And he searched a long time for the place where he was brought up,
but he could not find it.

And the name the Fianna gave him was