“Take away thy mare, big man,” cried Conan then, “or by Heaven and Earth were it not that Finn told thee to let her loose I would let loose her brains.  Many a bad bargain has Finn made but never a worse than thou.”

“By Heaven and Earth,” said the gillie, “that I never will, for I have no horseboy, and I will do no horseboy’s work.”

Then Conan mac Morna took the iron halter and laid it on the stranger’s horse and brought the beast back to Finn and held it there.

Said Finn to Conan, “I have never seen thee do horseboy’s service even to far better men than this gillie.  How now if thou wert to leap on the brute’s back and gallop her to death over hill and dale in payment for the mischief she hath wrought among our steeds?”

At this word Conan clambered up on the back of the big man’s mare, and with all his might he smote his two heels into her, but the mare never stirred.

“I perceive what ails her,” said Finn.  “She will never stir till she has a weight of men on her equal to that of her own rider.”

Then thirteen men of the Fianna scrambled up laughing behind Conan, and the mare lay down under them, and then got up again, they still clinging to her.  At this the big man said,

“It appears that you are making a sport and mockery of my mare, and that even I myself do not escape from it.  It is well for me that I have not spent the rest of the year in your company, seeing what a jest ye have made of me the very first day; and I perceive, O Finn, that thou art very unlike the report that is made of thee.  And now I bid thee farewell, for of thy service I have had enough.”

So with downcast head and despondent looks the big gillie shambled slowly away until he had passed out of view of the Fianna, behind the shoulder of the hill.  Having arrived here he tucked up his coat to his waist, and fast though be the flight of the swallow, and fast that of the roe-deer, and fast the rush of a roaring wind over a mountain top in mid-March, no faster are these than the bounding speed and furious flight of the big man down the hillside toward the West.

No sooner did the mare see that her master had departed than she too dashed uncontrollably forward and flew down the hillside after him.  And as the Fians saw Conan the Bald and his thirteen companions thus carried off, willy nilly, they broke into a roar of laughter and ran alongside mocking them.  But Conan, seeing that they were being carried off in the wake of the big man of evil aspect, of whom none knew whence or who he was, he was terrified and began reviling and cursing, and shouted to Finn, “A palsy seize thee, Finn; may some rascally churl, that is if possible of worse blood than thyself, have thy head, unless thou follow and rescue us wheresoever this monster shall bring us.”  So Finn and the Fianna ran, and the mare ran, over bare hills and by deep glens, till at last they came to Corcaguiny in Kerry, where the gillie set his face to the blue ocean, and the mare dashed in after him.  But ere he did so, Liagan the Swift got two hands on the tail of the mare, though further he could not win, and he was towed in, still clinging to his hold, and over the rolling billows away they went, the fourteen Fians on the wild mare’s back, and Liagan haled along by her tail.