ervants who disliked dogs,
and when he heard that a man had drowned a litter of pups he used to
visit that person and try to marry his daughter.

Now Fionn, the son of Uail, was the reverse of Fergus Fionnliath in this
matter, for he delighted in dogs, and he knew everything about them from
the setting of the first little white tooth to the rocking of the last
long yellow one. He knew the affections and antipathies which are proper
in a dog; the degree of obedience to which dogs may be trained without
losing their honourable qualities or becoming servile and suspicious;
he knew the hopes that animate them, the apprehensions which tingle in
their blood, and all that is to be demanded from, or forgiven in, a
paw, an ear, a nose, an eye, or a tooth; and he understood these things
because he loved dogs, for it is by love alone that we understand
anything.

Among the three hundred dogs which Fionn owned there were two to whom
he gave an especial tenderness, and who were his daily and nightly
companions. These two were Bran and Sceo'lan, but if a person were to
guess for twenty years he would not find out why Fionn loved these two
dogs and why he would never be separated from them.

Fionn's mother, Muirne, went to wide Allen of Leinster to visit her son,
and she brought her young sister Tuiren with her. The mother and aunt
of the great captain were well treated among the Fianna, first, because
they were parents to Fionn, and second, because they were beautiful and
noble women.

No words can describe how delightful Muirne was--she took the branch;
and as to Tuiren, a man could not look at her without becoming angry
or dejected. Her face was fresh as a spring morning; her voice more
cheerful than the cuckoo calling from the branch that is highest in the
hedge; and her form swayed like a reed and flowed like a river, so that
each person thought she would surely flow to him.

Men who had wives of their own grew moody and downcast because they
could not hope to marry her, while the bachelors of the Fianna stared at
each other with truculent, bloodshot eyes, and then they gazed on Tuiren
so gently that she may have imagined she was being beamed on by the mild
eyes of the dawn.

It was to an Ulster gentleman, Iollan Eachtach, that she gave her love,
and this chief stated his rights and qualities and asked for her in
marriage.

Now Fionn did not dislike the man of Ulster, but either he did not
know them well or else he knew