Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/272

170, and they realized that the three "phantoms" were the three shapes out of Yew Glen, which had thus taken revenge for injury done to their sister, Culenn Wide-Maw.$32$

In The Fairy Palace of the Quicken-Trees (Bruighean Caorthuinn) Fionn defeated and killed the King of Lochlann, but spared his son Midac, bringing him up in his household. Midac requited him ill, for he chose land on either side of the Shannon's mouth, where armies could land, and then invited Fionn and his men to the palace of the quicken-trees, while Oisin, Diarmaid, and four others remained outside. Presently Midac left the palace, when all its splendour disappeared, and the Féinn were unable to move. Meanwhile an army arrived, but Diarmaid and the others repulsed it after long fighting; and he released Fionn and the rest with the blood of three kings.$33$ In a folk- tale version the blood was exhausted before Conan was reached, and he said to Diarmaid, "If I were a pretty woman, you would not have left me to the last," whereupon Diarmaid tore him away, leaving his skin sticking to the seat.$34$ The house created by glamour in these stories, and vanishing at dawn, has frequently been found in other tales.

The Féinn were sometimes aided by, sometimes at war with, the Tuatha Dé Danann, though in later tales these seem robbed of much of their divinity, one story regarding them almost as demoniac. Conaran, a chief of the Tuatha Dé Danann, bade his three daughters punish Fionn for his hunting. On three holly sticks they hung hasps of yarn in front of a cave and reeled them off withershins, while they sat in the cavern as hideous hags and magically bound Fionn and others who entered it. Now arrived Goll, Fionn's former enemy, and with him the hags fought; but two of them he halved by a clean sword-sweep, and the third, after being vanquished, restored the heroes. Afterward, however, when she reappeared to avenge her sisters' death, Goll slew her and then burned Conaran's síd, giving its wealth to Fionn, who bestowed his daughter on him.$35$ Goll is here deemed a hero,