him a harp, and he could not play any tune.  “It is likely your reading and your music are gone from you,” said Seaghan; and he made a little rann on him, saying it was a strange thing Duartane O’Duartane that had such a great name not to be able to read a line of a book, or even to remember one.  But when the stranger heard how he was being mocked at, he took up the book, and read from the top to the bottom of the page very well and in a sweet-sounding voice.  And after that he took the harp and played and sang the same way he did at O’Donnell’s house the day before.  “It is a very sweet man of learning you are,” said Seaghan.  “One day I am sweet, another day I am sour,” said the stranger.

They walked out together then on Cnoc Aine, but while they were talking there, the stranger was gone all of a minute, and Seaghan, Son of the Earl, could not see where he went.

And after that he went on, and he reached Sligach just at the time O’Conchubar was setting out with the men of Connacht to avenge the Connacht hag’s basket on the hag of Munster.  And this time he gave himself the name of the Gilla Decair, the Bad Servant.  And he joined with the men of Connacht, and they went over the Sionnan westward into Munster, and there they hunted and drove every creature that could be made travel, cattle and horses and flocks, into one place, till they got the hornless bull of the Munster hag and her two speckled cows, and O’Conchubar brought them away to give to the Connacht hag in satisfaction for her basket.

But the men of Munster made an attack on them as they were going back; and the Gilla Decair asked O’Conchubar would he sooner have the cows driven, or have the Munster men checked, and he said he would sooner have the Munster men checked.  So the Gilla Decair turned on them, and with his bow and twenty-four arrows he kept them back till O’Conchubar and his people were safe out of their reach in Connacht.

But he took some offence then, on account of O’Conchubar taking the first drink himself when they came to his house, and not giving it to him, that had done so much, and he took his leave and went from them on the moment.

After that he went to where Tadg O’Cealaigh was, and having his old striped clothes and his old shoes as before.  And when they asked him what art he had, he said:  “I am good at tricks.  And if you will give me five marks I will show you a trick,” he said.  “I will give that,” said Tadg.

With that the stranger put three rushes on the palm of his hand.  “I will blow away the middle rush now,” he said, “and the other two will stop as they are.”  So they told him to do that, and he put the tops of two of his fingers on the two outside rushes, and blew the middle one away.  “There is a trick now for you, Tadg O’Cealaigh,” he said then.  “By my word, that is not a bad trick,” said O’Cealaigh.  But one of his men said:  “That there may be no good luck with him that did it.  And give