Behold the sky is covered,
As with a mighty shroud:
A forlorn light is lying
Between the earth and cloud.
And he went on in the dawn, when as the bard said (and this is the last stanza he made, for the King said there was nothing at all in his adventure):—
In the silence of the morning
Myself, myself went by,
Where lonely trees sway branches
Against spaces of the sky.
And then, when the sun was looking over the first high hills he came to a river. He knew it was the river he followed before, for no other river in the country was so wide or held so much water. As he had gone with the flow of the river then he thought he would go against the flow of the river now, and so he might come back to the glens and ridges and deep boggy places he had traveled from.
He met a Fisherman who was drying his nets and he asked him what name the river had. The Fisherman said it had two names. The people on the right bank called it the Day-break River and the people on the left bank called it the River of the Morning Star. And the Fisherman told him he was to be careful not to call it the River of the Morning Star when he was on the right bank nor the Daybreak River when he was on the left, as the people on either side wanted to keep to the name their fathers had for it and were ill-mannered to the stranger who gave it a different name. The Fisherman told Flann he was sorry he had told him the two names for the River and that the best thing he could do was to forget one of the names and call it just the River of the Morning Star as he was on the left bank.
Flann went on with the day widening before him and when the height of the noon was past he came to the glens and ridges and deep boggy places he had traveled from. He went on with the bright day going before him and the brown night coming behind him, and at dusk he came to the black and burnt place where the Hags of the Long Teeth had their house of stone.
He saw the house with a puff of smoke coming through every crevice in the stones. He went to the shut door and knocked on it with the knocking-stone.
“Who’s without?” said one of the Hags.
“Who’s within?” said Flann.
“The Three Hags of the Long Teeth,” said one of the Hags, “and if you want to know it,” said she, “they are the runners and summoners, the brewers and candle-makers for Crom Duv, the Giant.”