She has great eyes, like the doe on the hill, and warm and sweet she is, O, come to me, Honey-Mouth, bend to me, Honey-Mouth, give me thy kiss! _White Hands_ her name is, where she reigns amid the princes fair: White hands she moves like swimming swans athrough her dusk-wave hair: White hands she puts about my heart, white hands fan up my breath: White hands take out the heart of me, and grant me life or death! White hands make better songs than hymns, white hands are young and sweet: O, a sword for me, O Honey-Mouth, and a war-horse fleet! O wild sweet eyes! O glad wild eyes! O mouth, how sweet it is! O, come to me, Honey-Mouth! bend to me, Honey-Mouth! give me thy kiss! When he had ceased he saw a shadow fall upon the white sand beyond the dune. He looked up, and beheld Colum the Saint. "Who taught you that song?" said the white holy one, in a voice hard and stern. "No one, O Colum." "Then the Evil One is indeed here. Cathal, I promised that you would be having a holy name soon, but that name I will not be giving you now. You must come to me in sackcloth and with dust upon your head, with pain upon you, and with deep grief in your heart. Then only shall I bless you before the brothers and call you Cathal Gille-Mhoire, Cathal the servant of Mary." A bitter, sad waiting it was for him who had fire in his young blood and was told to weave frost there, and to put silence upon the welling song in his heart. But at the end of the week Cathal was a holy monk again, and sang the hymns that Colum had taught him. It was on the eve of the day when Colum blessed him before the brethren, and called him Gille-Muire, that he walked alone, brooding upon the evil of women and the curse they brought, and praying to Mary to save him from the sins of which he scarce knew the meaning. On his way back to his cell he passed old Neis, the helot, who said to him mockingly: "It is a good thing that sorrow, Cathal mac Art,--and yet, sure, it is true that but for the hot love the slain man your father had for Foam that was your mother, you would not be here to praise your God or serve the woman whom the arch-druid yonder says is the Mother of God." Cathal bade the man eat silence, or it would go ill with him. But the words rankled. That night in his cell he woke, with on his lips his own sinful words: White hands make better songs than hymns, white hands are young and sweet; O, a sword for me, O Honey-Mouth, and a war-horse fleet!