But the deep bay of winded hounds chasing the leaping deer;
No swathes of wool shall bind my wounds, no cushioned couch have I,
Amidst the carnage of the slain I and my kind shall lie.
“No silky coat of well-combed hair, smooth ‘neath the children’s hand,
But a fierce mastiff, gaunt and grim, when strife invades the land;
Where fords are weak, where forts blaze red, where trumpets sound for war,
The ‘Hound of Ulster’ stands at guard, or drives the foe afar.”
Then when Fand saw that nothing would content him, she bade him a gentle kind farewell; and all the youths and maidens came about him, sorrowing that he was so soon weary of their land. But Labra thanked him kindly and heartily for his help against the demon host and he bade Liban take Cuchulain safely back across the lake to Erin once again.
But, before he went, Fand lifted up her lovely witching face, and said, “Tell me some place where, at the end of a year from now, I may see your face once more. Never till now have I ventured forth from fairy-land; but, for your sake, for one brief hour I will come to the land of troubled mortal men. Give me a tryst.”