Then marching westward to the plain of the battle among the hills, they set their camp and advanced upon the Fomorians.  Each man had two spears bound with a thong to draw them back after the cast, with a shield to ward off blows, and a broad-bladed sword of bronze for close combat.  With war-chants and invocations the two hosts met.  The spears, well poised and leveled, clove the air, hissing between them, and under the weight of the spear-heads and their sharp points many in both hosts fell.  There were cries of the wounded now, mingled with battle-songs, and hoarse shouting for vengeance among those whose sons and brothers and sworn friends fell.  Another cast of the spears, seaming the air between as the hosts closed in, and they fell on each other with their swords, shields upraised and gold-bronze sword-points darting beneath like the tongues of serpents.  They cut and thrust, each with his eyes fixed on the fierce eyes of his foe.

They fought on the day of the Spirits, now the Eve of All Saints; the Fomorians were routed, and their chieftains slain.  But of the De Danaans, Nuada, once wounded by Sreng of the Firbolgs, now fell by the hand of Balor; yet Balor also fell, slain by Lug, his own daughter’s son.

Thus was the might of the Fomorians broken, and the De Danaans ruled unopposed, their power and the works of their hands spreading throughout the length and breadth of the land.

Many monuments are accredited to them by tradition, but greatest and most wonderful are the pyramids of stone at Brugh on the Boyne.  Some nine miles from the sandy seashore, where the Boyne loses itself in the waves, there is a broad tongue of meadowland, shut in on three sides southward by the Boyne, and to the northeast cut off by a lesser stream that joins it.  This remote and quiet headland, very famous in the annals, was in old days so surrounded by woods that it was like a quiet glade in the forest rimmed by the clear waters of the Boyne.  The Mourne Mountains to the north and the lesser summits on the southern sky-line were hidden by the trees.  The forest wall encircled the green meadowland, and the river fringed with blue forget-me-nots.

In this quiet spot was the sacred place of the De Danaans, and three great pyramids of stone, a mile apart along the river, mark their three chief sanctuaries.  The central is the greatest; two hundred thousand tons of stone heaped up, within a circular wall of stone, itself surrounded by a great outer circle of standing stones, thirty in number, like gray sentinels guarding the shrine.  In the very heart of the pyramid, hushed in perpetual stillness and peace, is the inmost sanctuary, a chamber formed like a cross, domed with a lofty roof, and adorned with mysterious tracings on the rocks.  Shrines like this are found in many lands, whether within the heart of the pyramids of Egypt or in the recesses of India’s hills; and in all lands they have the same purpose.  They are secret and holy sanctuaries, guarded well