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464 had been married to the great sea-god Manannán mac Lir at the Dun of the Estuary, and the wooing of Cúchulainn by her is the sparkling of the pellucid drop in the sun's rays when he has reached the dark places of the earth; but that was to last only for a time, and Fand returns to her former love; that is to say, the crystal drop is finally carried back to the ocean. These pretty myth-pictures may date from almost any age in the history of an imaginative race; but it is probably a touch by the hand of hoary antiquity alone that represents the Sun-god gone mad, and only recalled to the ways in which he should go by the king's magicians and medicine-men.

Another tale, proved by the names involved to belong to the same class, must now be briefly added: it relates how Cúchulainn, on his way back from Scáthach's country, came on November-eve to a city whose prince, called Ruad or Red, king of the Isles, had been obliged to expose his daughter as tribute to the Fomori, three of whom were to come from their distant islands to carry her away from the strand, where she sat alone awaiting their dreaded arrival. Her father promised her to wife to any man who would rescue her, and Cúchulainn hearing of it, awaited the Fomori and killed them, wherefore he was entitled to the hand of the daughter of the king; so the king told him to take her. He excused himself, and told the maiden to come after him to Erinn in twelve months' time, but he forgot to fix the place of their