Page:West Irish folk-tales and romances - William Larminie.djvu/70

 38 Bioultach threw him and tied him more tightly than the other, and laid him along with him. The king had nothing for it but to send a messenger down with a branch of green yew. When Bioultach saw the yew coming, he loosed the men, and the messengers bade him come with them to the palace. Bioultach went with them, and he spent a day and a year with the King of Greece, learning everything the king could teach him, and the king never asked who he was or whence he came. But at the end of a year the king asked,—

“It were good to me to know your name. It was not good to me to put any telling on you; but now I have a desire you should tell me who you are.”

“Oh, I will tell you, and a thousand welcomes. If you asked me at first I would have told you. Bioultach am I, son of the High King of Erin, who left my father's court and pleasant home, since I thought little of the learning he was giving me, and I spent a year with the King of Spain before I came here.”

Bioultach had a brother, who was but little when he went away. When he grew big he asked the king,—

“Dada, where went my brother?”

“I know not,” said the king. “I never found out, either by praying or by paying.”

“Why did he go away?”