‘I will make myself a White Glaive of Light,’ said the fox; ‘it may be that thou wilt yet find a use for the White Glaive of Light.’
Brian was not so much against the fox this time, since he saw that he had got off from the Big Women.
‘Thou art come with it,’ said the big man. ‘It was in the prophecies that I should cut this great oak-tree at one blow, which my father cut two hundred years ago with the same sword.’
Brian got the marvellous bird, and he went away. He had gone but a short distance from the giant’s house when the fox made up to him with his pad to his mouth.
‘What’s this that befell thee?’ said Brian.
‘Oh! the son of the great one,’ said the fox, ‘when he seized me, with the first blow he cut the tree all but a small bit of bark. And look thyself, there is no tooth in the door of my mouth which that filth of a Bodach has not broken.’
Brian was exceedingly sorrowful that the fox had lost the teeth, but there was no help for it. They were going forward, walking at times, and at times riding, till they came to a spring that there was by the side of the road. ‘Now, Brian,’ said the fox, ‘unless thou dost strike off my head with one blow of the White Glaive of Light into this spring, I will strike off thine.’
‘S’tia,’ said Brian, ‘a man is kind to his own life.’
And he swept the head off him with one blow, and it fell into the well. And in the wink of an eye what should rise up out of the well but the son of the king that was father to the Sun Goddess.
They went on till they reached his father’s house. And his father made a great wedding with joy and gladness, and there was no word about marrying the hen wife’s daughter when I parted from them.