Page:The wind among the reeds.pdf/88

 beautiful and changeable and lascivious, or beautiful and wise and lonely; for water is everywhere the signature of the fruitfulness of the body and of the fruitfulness of dreams. The white hair of Fionn may be but another of the troubles of those that come to unearthly wisdom and earthly trouble, and the threats and violence of the Fiana against her, a different form of the threats and violence the country people use, to make the Tribes of Danu give up those that are 'away.' Bare is now often called an ugly old woman; but Dr. Joyce says that one of her old names was Aebhin, which means beautiful. Aebhen was the goddess of the tribes of northern Leinster; and the lover she had made immortal, and who loved her peﬂectly, left her, and put on mortality, to ﬁght among them against the stranger, and died on the strand of Clontarf.