Perhaps one of the earliest and most famous literary accounts of such a _taking_ is that concerning Aedh, son of Eochaid Lethderg son of the King of Leinster, who is represented as contemporary with Patrick.[238] While Aedh was enjoying a game of hurley with his boy companions near the _sídh_ of Liamhain Softsmock, two of the _sídh_-women, who loved the young prince, very suddenly appeared, and as suddenly took him away with them into a fairy palace and kept him there three years. It happened, however, that he escaped at the end of that time, and, knowing the magical powers of Patrick, went to where the holy man was, and thus explained himself:--'Against the youths my opponents I (i. e. my side) took seven goals; but at the last one that I took, here come up to me two women clad in green mantles: two daughters of _Bodhb derg mac an Daghda_, and their names _Slad_ and _Mumain_. Either of them took me by a hand, and they led me off to a garish _brugh_; whereby for now three years my people mourn after me, the _sídh_-folk caring for me ever since, and until last night I got a chance opening to escape from the _brugh_, when to the number of fifty lads we emerged out of the _sídh_ and forth upon the green. Then it was that I considered the magnitude of that strait in which they of the _sídh_ had had me, and away from the _brugh_ I came running to seek thee, holy Patrick.' 'That,' said the saint, 'shall be to thee a safeguard, so that neither their power nor their dominion shall any more prevail against thee.' And so when Patrick had thus made Aedh proof against the power of the fairy-folk, he kept him with him under the disguise of a travelling minstrel until, arriving in Leinster, he restored him to his father the king and to his inheritance: Aedh enters the palace in his minstrel disguise; and in the presence of the royal assembly Patrick commands him: 'Doff now once for all thy dark capacious hood, and well mayest thou wear thy father's spear!' When the lad removed his hood, and none there but recognized him, great was the surprise. He seemed like one come back from the dead, for long had his heirless father and people mourned for him. 'By our word,' exclaimed the assembly in their joyous excitement, 'it is a good cleric's gift!' And the king said: 'Holy Patrick, seeing that till this day thou hast nourished him and nurtured, let not the Tuatha De Danann's power any more prevail against the lad.' And Patrick answered: 'That death which the King of Heaven and Earth hath ordained is the one that he will have.' This ancient legend shows clearly that the Tuatha De Danann, or _Sidhe_, in the time when the scribe wrote the _Colloquy_ were thought of in the same way as now, as able to _take_ beautiful mortals whom they loved, and able to confer upon them fairy immortality which prevented 'that death which the King of Heaven and Earth hath ordained'.