Page:West Irish folk-tales and romances - William Larminie.djvu/75

 Rh “Well,” said Maunus, “had you a brother?”

“I had never but one brother, and sorry I am he is not so big as you yet.”

“Whether he is big or little, it is he that has been fighting with you since morning.”

“Oh,” said Bioultach, “it cannot be that you are Maunus.”

They embraced one another, and Bioultach was weeping and kissing his brother. When the King of Greece came in among the men—"Oh, Bioultach, what ails you?”

“My king and my lord, I am fighting with my brother since morning; and if I killed him, I would do nothing but put my sword through my heart.”

“Oh, Bioultach, did you not know there was not another man able to fight with you but he?”

“I thought he was not yet so big.”

That was the time Maunus loosed the men, and they were only just alive. The king took them all with him—Bioultach and Maunus, and Splendour son of the King of Greece, and Splendour-of-the-Sun. They went to the court of the High King of Greece.

Bioultach rose in the morning, and he and Maunus went into the garden, and he began to ask Maunus how were his father and his mother and his sister, and how was Erin. But the High King of Greece had a daughter, and she was in