And besides his sword, Mac an Luin, Finn had a shield was called Sgiath Gailbhinn, the Storm Shield; and when it called out it could be heard all through Ireland.

And whether or not it was the Storm Shield, Finn had a wonderful shield that he did great deeds with, and the story of it is this: 

At the time of the battle of the Great Battle of Magh Tuireadh, Lugh, after he had struck the head off Balor of the Evil Eye, hung it in the fork of a hazel-tree.  And the tree split, and the leaves fell from it with the dint of the poison that dropped from the head.  And through the length of fifty years that tree was a dwelling-place of crows and of ravens.  And at the end of that time Manannan, son of Lir, was passing by, and he took notice of the tree that it was split and withered, and he bade his men to dig it up.  And when they began to dig, a mist of poison rose up from the roots, and nine of the men got their death from it, and another nine after them, and the third nine were blinded.  And Luchtaine the Carpenter made a shield of the wood of that hazel for Manannan.  And after a while Manannan gave it, and a set of chessmen along with it, to Tadg, son of Nuada; and from him it came to his grandson, Finn, son of Muirne and of Cumhal.

CHAPTER VI.  LOMNA’S HEAD

Finn took a wife one time of the Luigne of Midhe.  And at the same time there was in his household one Lomna, a fool.

Finn now went into Tethra, hunting with the Fianna, but Lomna stopped at the house.  And after a while he saw Coirpre, a man of the Luigne, go in secretly to where Finn’s wife was.

And when the woman knew he had seen that, she begged and prayed of Lomna to hide it from Finn.  And Lomna agreed to that, but it preyed on him to have a hand in doing treachery on Finn.  And after a while he took a four-square rod and wrote an Ogham on it, and these were the words he wrote:—­“An alder stake in a paling of silver; deadly night-shade in a bunch of cresses; a husband of a lewd woman; a fool among the well-taught Fianna; heather on bare Ualann of Luigne.”

Finn saw the message, and there was anger on him against the woman; and she knew well it was from Lomna he had heard the story, and she sent a message to Coirpre bidding him to come and kill the fool.

So Coirpre came and struck his head off, and brought it away with him.

And when Finn came back in the evening he saw the body, and it without a head.  “Let us know whose body is this,” said the Fianna.  And then Finn did the divination of rhymes, and it is what he said:  “It is the body of Lomna; it is not by a wild boar he was killed; it is not by a fall he was killed; it is not in his bed he died; it is by his enemies he died; it is not a secret to the Luigne the way he died.  And let out the hounds now on their track,” he said.

So they let out the hounds, and put them on the track of Coirpre, and Finn followed them, and they came to a house, and Coirpre in it, and three times nine of his men and he cooking fish on a spit; and Lomna’s head was on a spike beside the fire.