Up came a little lad running. “Fin M’Coul! Fin M’Coul!” cried he. “The great Scotch giant Cucullin’s looking for you. He says he’s come to beat you; he says he’s come to treat you as he’s done every other giant in Ireland!”
At that there was not a giant but dropped his sledge. Some felt of their heads, some felt of their jaws, some felt of their backs, and some, of their ribs. Every one put his hand to the spot where Cucullin had touched him last. For the truth of it was, Cucullin was a terror and there was not a giant could stand before him. When he stamped his foot, he shook the whole county. In his pocket he carried a thunderbolt which he had flattened to a pancake with one blow of his fist. Many were the times he had come before, looking for Fin; but always it had happened that Fin was away, seeing after his affairs in some distant part of the country.
But Fin was the best fighter in Ireland and not the man to be frightened before his friends. So, though his knees set up a kind of swaying beneath him, he called out to the little lad in a voice to shake the whole township.
“And what is the Scotchman waiting for?” roared he. “Tell him here is Fin, ready this long time to thrash him,—although,” he added easily, “if it’s not hurrying he is, he may not find me here. For the truth of it is, I was just about to be starting to see my wife Oonagh on the top of Knockmany Hill. And fight or no fight, it’s there I must be going, for she’ll be ailing, poor woman, and low in her spirits, all for the want of her Fin.”
Now, Fin was not one to be slow in anything he had made up his mind to. So hardly were the words from his mouth when it was down with his sledge, up with his heels and off with him over the hills to Knockmany. At first it was a long, swinging step he took, with a stout fir-tree as a walking-stick. But the farther and farther from the Causeway he went, the faster and faster his legs began to move, until after all he was going not so much at a walk as a run.
Of all the hills in Ireland, the chilliest and windiest was Knockmany where Fin lived. Day or night, winter or summer, it was never without a breeze; and besides that, from top to bottom was never a drop of water. But little did that trouble Fin. “Why,” he would say, “ever since I was the height of a round tower, I was fond of a good prospect of my own. And where should I find a better than the top of Knockmany Hill?”
There were some who said though, that it was not so much the view itself that Fin liked as it was to be able to see when Cucullin was coming to visit him. For then he could be off in time on his distant travels across the country.
Be that as it may have been, there was no doubt now but Fin was glad to be at home again. There was his darling Oonagh waiting for him at the tiptop of the hill; and the smack they gave each other made the waters of the lake below curl with kindness and sympathy.
“But what brought you home so soon?” said Oonagh.
“And what should it have been,” cried Fin, “but affection for yourself?”