After a time Conchobar hatched a plot to lure them back. First he approached Cuchulinn and Conall Cearnach to undertake a mission. But these champions, suspecting treachery, gave blunt refusal. At length Fergus Mac Roich was induced to go, not without misgivings. When he arrived with his two sons and bargeman, Naois and Deirdre were sitting together in their hunting booth playing at chess. Fergus went into the glen and raised his sweet-voiced warning cry, after the manner of a hunter. Naois heard the sound and said, “I hear the cry of a man of Erin.” Deirdre dissimulated at first, “That was not the cry of a man of Erin but the cry of a man of Alba.” Afterwards she explained it was because of a dream she had had, which she felt foreboded evil. The emissaries spend the night with them and win over Naois. Next morning they all sail away, returning to Erin, and as the land fades from her view, Deirdre with mingled regret and presentiment, sings or recites a beautiful lay, describing the shores of Loch Etive and the charms of the life she led in the glens. The following rendering is from Dr. Skene, the few verses here quoted indicating the feeling and passion of the old lyric:— Glen Etive! O Glen Etive! There I raised my earliest house; Beautiful its woods on rising When the sun fell on Glen Etive. Glen Orchy! O Glen Orchy! The straight glen of smooth ridges; No man of his age was so joyful As Naois in Glen Orchy. Glenlaidhe! O Glenlaidhe! I used to sleep by its soothing murmurs; Fish and flesh of wild boar and badger, Was my repast in Glenlaidhe. Glendaruadh! O Glendaruadh! I love each man of its inheritance, Sweet the noise of the cuckoo on bended bough, On the hill above Glendaruadh. Glenmasan! O Glenmasan! High its herbs, fair its boughs; Solitary was the place of our repose, On grassy Invermasan. The upshot of this fateful voyage was that Fergus, their guardian, was unwittingly decoyed to a feast through the King’s strategy, his son Buinne Borb was bribed to act the traitor, and the sons of Uisneach were slain. But not before they had done mighty execution against the hosts of Conchobar, and kept them at bay till his Druid put a sea with high waves across the plain before them, while their foes had the benefit of dry land on which to attack from behind.