ping and
swimming.

One of them would take a thorn switch in her hand, and Fionn would
take a thorn switch in his hand, and each would try to strike the other
running round a tree.

You had to go fast to keep away from the switch behind, and a small boy
feels a switch. Fionn would run his best to get away from that prickly
stinger, but how he would run when it was his turn to deal the strokes!

With reason too, for his nurses had suddenly grown implacable. They
pursued him with a savagery which he could not distinguish from hatred,
and they swished him well whenever they got the chance.

Fionn learned to run. After a while he could buzz around a tree like
a maddened fly, and oh, the joy, when he felt himself drawing from the
switch and gaining from behind on its bearer! How he strained and panted
to catch on that pursuing person and pursue her and get his own switch
into action.

He learned to jump by chasing hares in a bumpy field. Up went the hare
and up went Fionn, and away with the two of them, hopping and popping
across the field. If the hare turned while Fionn was after her it was
switch for Fionn; so that in a while it did not matter to Fionn which
way the hare jumped for he could jump that way too. Long-ways, sideways
or baw-ways, Fionn hopped where the hare hopped, and at last he was the
owner of a hop that any hare would give an ear for.

He was taught to swim, and it may be that his heart sank when he fronted
the lesson. The water was cold. It was deep. One could see the bottom,
leagues below, millions of miles below. A small boy might shiver as he
stared into that wink and blink and twink of brown pebbles and murder.
And these implacable women threw him in!

Perhaps he would not go in at first. He may have smiled at them, and
coaxed, and hung back. It was a leg and an arm gripped then; a swing for
Fionn, and out and away with him; plop and flop for him; down into chill
deep death for him, and up with a splutter; with a sob; with a grasp
at everything that caught nothing; with a wild flurry; with a raging
despair; with a bubble and snort as he was hauled again down, and down,
and down, and found as suddenly that he had been hauled out.

Fionn learned to swim until he could pop into the water like an otter
and slide through it like an eel.

He used to try to chase a fish the way he chased hares in the bumpy
field--but there are terrible spurts in a fish. It may be that a fish
cannot hop, but he gets