He went towards her and asked her what news had she.  “I cannot tell it till I gather the rushes,” she said.  “Be telling it while you are gathering them,” said Diarmuid.  “There is great haste on me,” she said.  “What is this place where we are?” said Diarmuid.  “It is Land-under-Wave,” said she.  “And what use have you for the rushes when they are gathered?” “The daughter of King Under-Wave is come home,” she said, “and she was for seven years under enchantment, and there is sickness on her now, and all the physicians are gathered together and none of them can do her any good, and a bed of rushes is what she finds the wholesomest.”  “Will you show me where the king’s daughter is?” said Diarmuid.  “I will do that,” said the woman; “I will put you in the sheaf of rushes, and I will put the rushes under you and over you, and I will carry you to her on my back.”  “That is a thing you cannot do,” said Diarmuid.  But she put the rushes about him, and lifted him on her back, and when she got to the room she let down the bundle.  “O come here to me,” said the daughter of King Under-Wave, and Diarmuid went over to her, and they took one another’s hands, and were very joyful at that meeting.  “Three parts of my sickness is gone from me now,” she said then; “but I am not well yet, and I never will be, for every time I thought of you, Diarmuid, on my journey, I lost a drop of the blood of my heart.”  “I have got those three drops here in this napkin,” said Diarmuid, “and take them now in a drink and you will be healed of your sickness.”  “They would do nothing for me,” she said, “since I have not the one thing in the world that I want, and that is the thing I will never get,” she said.  “What thing is that?” said Diarmuid.  “It is the thing you will never get, nor any man in the world,” she said, “for it is a long time they have failed to get it.”  “If it is in any place on the whole ridge of the world I will get it,” said Diarmuid.  “It is three draughts from the cup of the King of Magh an Ionganaidh, the Plain of Wonder,” she said, “and no man ever got it or ever will get it.”  “Tell me where that cup is to be found,” said Diarmuid, “for there are not as many men as will keep it from me on the whole ridge of the world.”  “That country is not far from the boundary of my father’s country,” she said; “but there is a little river between, and you would be sailing on that river in a ship, having the wind behind it, for a year and a day before you would reach to the Plain of Wonder.”

Diarmuid set out then, and he came to the little river, and he was a good while walking beside it, and he saw no way to cross it.  But at last he saw a low-sized, reddish man that was standing in the middle of the river.  “You are in straits, Diarmuid, grandson of Duibhne,” he said; “and come here and put your foot in the palm of my hand and I will bring you through.”  Diarmuid did as he bade him, and put his foot in the red man’s palm, and he brought him across the river.  “It is going to the King of the Plain of Wonder you are,” he said, “to bring away his cup from him; and I myself will go with you.”