Lugh saying Farewell to the Irish Hills.
“O Lugh,” said Mananaan, “they have never known you. Will you leave me and Niav and this land where sorrow has never touched you, for the sake of stranger kinsfolk?”
Lugh answered—
“I remember the hills and the woods and the rivers of Ireland, and though all my kinsfolk were gone from it and the sea covered everything but the tops of the mountains, I would go back.”
“You have the hardiness that wins victory,” said Mananaan. “I will set you on my own white horse and give you companions as high-hearted as yourself. I will put my helmet on your head and my breastplate over your heart; you shall drive the Fomorians out of Ireland as chaff is driven by the wind.”
When Lugh put on the helmet of Mananaan, brightness shot into the sky as if a new sun had risen; when he put on the breastplate, a great wave of music swelled and sounded through Tir-nan-oge; when he mounted the white horse, a mighty wind swept past him, and lo! the companions Mananaan had promised, rode beside him. Their horses were white like his, and gladness that age cannot wither shone in their faces. When they came to the sea that is about Tir-nan-oge, the little crystal waves lifted themselves up to look at Lugh, and when he and his comrades sped over the sea as lightly as blown foam, the little waves followed them till they came to Ireland, and the three great waves of Ireland thundered a welcome—the wave of Thoth, the wave of Rury, and the long, snow-white, foaming wave of Cleena.
No one saw the Faery Host coming into Ireland. At the place where their horses leaped from sea to land there was a great wood of pine trees.
“Let us go into the wood,” said Lugh, and they rode between the tall, straight tree-trunks into the silent heart of the wood.
“Rest here,” said Lugh, “till morning; I will go to the dun of Nuada and get news of my kinsfolk.”