Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/481

Rh. On the day, however, which had been appointed, Cúchulainn happened to be careering with a friend near Loch Cuan, better known as Strangford Lough, when they beheld on the water two swans joined together by a chain of gold. Cúchulainn cast a stone at them from his sling, which wounded one of them. On hastening to the strand, they found there, not two swans, but two of the finest women they had ever seen. Derborgaill, for that was the name of the maid rescued by Cúchulainn, explained who she was, and how she and her handmaid had come according to his order, though he had now wounded her with a stone which was lodged in her side. Cúchulainn was very sorry for what he had rashly done, and proceeded to suck the stone out of the wound with the blood around it. He afterwards gave her to wife to Lugaid, his greatest friend, as he declared that one whose side he had sucked could not be his own wife, a touch of refinement overcast with gloom by the sequel, which relates how Derborgaill was savagely mutilated by the women of Ulster under very peculiar circumstances, and how her death was grimly avenged on them by the enraged Cúchulainn. Now one version of Derborgaill's story makes her daughter to Forgall king of Lochlann, which meant a country in or beneath a loch or the sea, the home in fact