He went into the cave with certain of the Swallow People. They were all unmannerly. They kept screaming and crying to each other; they pulled at the clothes of the King’s Son and pinched him. One of them bit his hands. When they came into the cave they all sat down on black stones. One pulled in a black ass loaded with nets. They took the nets off its back, and before the King’s Son knew that anything was about to happen they threw the nets around him. The meshes of the nets were sticky. He felt himself caught. He ran at the Swallow People and fell over a stone. Then they drew more nets around his legs.
The old fellow whom he had commanded took up the Sword of Light. Then the Swallow People pulled up the ass that had carried the nets and rubbed its hard hoof on the Sword. The King’s Son did not know what happened to it. Then he heard them cry, “The brightness is gone off the thing now.” They left the Sword on a black rock, and now no light came from it. Then all the Swallow People scrambled out of the cave.
They came back eating eels and crab-apples out of their hands. They paid no attention to the King of Ireland’s Son, but climbed into a cave above where he was lying.
He broke the nets that were round him. He found the Sword on the black stones, with the brightness all gone from it because of the rubbing with the ass’s hoof. He climbed up the wall of the other cave to punish the Swallow People. They saw him before he could see them in the darkness, and they all went into holes and hid themselves as if they were rats and mice.
With the blackened sword in his hands the King of Ireland’s Son went out of the Cave, and the horse he had left behind, the Slight Red Steed, was not to be found.
III
Without a steed and with a blackened sword the King of Ireland’s Son came to where the Gobaun Saor had set up his forge and planted his anvil. No water nor sand would clean the Sword, but he left it down before the Gobaun Saor, hoping that he would show him a way to dean it. “The Sword must be bright that will kill the King of the Land of Mist and cut the tress that will awaken the Enchanter’s daughter,” said the Gobaun Saor. “You have let the Sword be blackened. Carry the blackened Sword with you now.”
“Brighten it for me and I will serve you,” said the King of Ireland’s Son.
“It is not easy for me to brighten the Sword now,” said the Gobaun Saor. “But find me the Unique Tale and what went before its beginning and what comes after its end, and I shall brighten the sword for you and show you the way to the Land of Mist. Go now, and search for the Unique Tale.”
He went, and he had many far journeys, I can tell you, and he found no person who had any knowledge of the Unique Tale or who knew any way of coming to the Land of Mist. One twilight in a wood he saw a great bird flying towards him. It lighted on an old tree, and the King of Ireland’s Son saw it was Laheen the Eagle.