Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/185

 Rh night. When darkness came on, Fach-Mòhr said to them all, "We must watch. Choose you the first part of the night or the last?" They said they were ready to take the first watch, but Fach-Mòhr replied, "He now thought he would take the first, and they should have the latter watch, and so they might now go to bed." About midnight the mother of all the giants he had slain in the barn came home with provisions for her sons, and, seeing Fach-Mòhr, a battle began between them. He got the great mother down, when she cried, "Spare my life, and I will give you what will bring the dead to life and cure all manner of disease." "Where is it?" "Under the flag of the hearthstone," she said. "And how do you call it?" "Flaggan Fiacallach." As soon as she had said this ho put her to death. In the morning they all went down to the bay, and got on board their vessel. "Now," cried the queen, "Fach-Mòhr, remove all your enchantments." "I like well, queen, that you should look at us so till we go out of sight." They had now got some way from Eillen-na-Muick, when Fach-Mòhr said to his master and to the crew, "I will now make war in the sky, and you will not see me for six days and six nights, except as a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire." At the end of that time he said they would see him coming down, when they must hold up the blunt end of a spear, on which he might alight. They were overjoyed when the storm was over and they saw him coming down; but they had held up the points of their spears, and on them Fach-Mòhr-mac-Righ-na-Lirriach falling was slain. They were sorry for the death of their champion, and, as ordered by the king, they hoisted black sails, that the Ben-ee might see that her son was dead. Soon after they landed, and the Ben-ee met them. To the king of the Faen she said, "I knew how it would be and how it is—my son is dead. It is not willingly that you slew him, else none of you had ever reached the land," and, taking her son in her arms, she carried him to the hills; she found on his body the Flaggan Fiacallach, and rubbing some of the oil into the corpse brought him to life again. She then brought him to her hut, and there he lived till he heard that his brother, the son of the king of the Lirriach, was ill and dying. All the physicians of the land had been called, but they could not cure him; when they failed, their heads were cut off, and