“Let us leave off quarrelling on each side now,” said Patrick; “and go on, Oisin, with your story.  What happened you after you knew the Fianna to be at an end?”

“I will tell you that, Patrick,” said Oisin.  “I was turning to go away, and I saw the stone trough that the Fianna used to be putting their hands in, and it full of water.  And when I saw it I had such a wish and such a feeling for it that I forgot what I was told, and I got off the horse.  And in the minute all the years came on me, and I was lying on the ground, and the horse took fright and went away and left me there, an old man, weak and spent, without sight, without shape, without comeliness, without strength or understanding, without respect.

“There, Patrick, is my story for you now,” said Oisin, “and no lie in it, of all that happened me going away and coming back again from the Country of the Young.”

CHAPTER II.  OISIN IN PATRICK’S HOUSE

And Oisin stopped on with S. Patrick, but he was not very well content with the way he was treated.  And one time he said:  “They say I am getting food, but God knows I am not, or drink; and I Oisin, son of Finn, under a yoke, drawing stones.”  “It is my opinion you are getting enough,” said S. Patrick then, “and you getting a quarter of beef and a churn of butter and a griddle of bread every day.”  “I often saw a quarter of a blackbird bigger than your quarter of beef,” said Oisin, “and a rowan berry as big as your churn of butter, and an ivy leaf as big as your griddle of bread.”  S, Patrick was vexed when he heard that, and he said to Oisin that he had told a lie.

There was great anger on Oisin then, and he went where there was a litter of pups, and he bade a serving-boy to nail up the hide of a freshly killed bullock to the wall, and to throw the pups against it one by one.  And every one that he threw fell down from the hide till it came to the last, and he held on to it with his teeth and his nails.  “Rear that one,” said Oisin, “and drown all the rest.”

Then he bade the boy to keep the pup in a dark place, and to care it well, and never to let it taste blood or see the daylight.  And at the end of a year, Oisin was so well pleased with the pup, that he gave it the name of Bran Og, young Bran.

And one day he called to the serving-boy to come on a journey with him, and to bring the pup in a chain.  And they set out and passed by Slieve-nam-ban, where the witches of the Sidhe do be spinning with their spinning-wheels; and then they turned eastward into Gleann-na-Smol.  And Oisin raised a rock that was there, and he bade the lad take from under it three things, a great sounding horn of the Fianna, and a ball of iron they had for throwing, and a very sharp sword.  And when Oisin saw those things, he took them in his hands, and he said:  “My thousand farewells to the day when you were put here!” He bade the lad to clean them well then; and when