"No friend of thine! Here stand the Clann Navin watching for thee;
namely, Aed the Lesser, and Aed the Tall, and Gonna the Wounder, and
Gothan the Loud-voiced, and Cuan the Tracker, with all their men. We
bear thee no love; and if thou come out at this door, we shall make thee
a mark for our swords and spears!"
And Dermat answered, "Lying and mean-faced dogs! It is not fear of you
that keeps me from going forth at this door; but I do not wish to defile
my spear with the blood of your shoeless, tracking vagabonds!"
And he went to another narrow door, and asked who was there.
"Finn, the son of Cumal, the son of Art, the son of Trenmore O'Baskin,
and with him the Leinster Fena. No love awaits thee here; and if thou
come forth we will cleave thee, flesh and bones!"
"The door I have sought I have found at last!" cried Dermat; "for the
door where thou, Finn, standest, that, of a certainty, is the very door
by which I shall pass out!"
Then Finn charged his men, under pain of death, not to let Dermat pass.
But Dermat, watching an unguarded place, rose by means of his two spears
with a light, airy bound over the fence, and alighted on the clear space
outside; and running swiftly forward, was in a moment beyond the reach
of sword and spear. And so dismayed were they by his threatening look,
that not a man attempted to follow him.
Then, turning southward, he never halted till he came to the Wood of the
two Sallows, where he found Angus and Grania in a warm hut, with a boar
fixed on hazel spits roasting before a great flaming fire. Dermat
greeted them; and the spark of life all but leaped from Grania's heart
with joy when she saw him.[CX.] So he told them all that had befallen
him; and they ate their meal and slept in peace that night, till the
morning of next day filled the world with light.
Then Angus arose with the dawn, and said to Dermat, "I will now depart,
my son; but Finn will still pursue you, and I leave you this counsel to
guide you when I am gone. Go not into a tree having only one trunk;
never enter a cave that has only one opening; never land on an island of
the sea that has only one channel of approach; where you cook your food,
there eat it not; where you eat, sleep not there; and where you sleep
to-night, sleep not there to-morrow night!"
So Angus bade them farewell; and they were sad after him.
FOOTNOTES:
[CX.] Original: "It was little but that the salmon of her life fled
through her mouth with joy before Dermat."
CHAPTER V.
THE THREE SEA-CHAMPIONS AND THEIR THREE VENOMOUS HOUNDS ON THE TRACK OF
DERMAT AND GRANIA.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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