"If thy heart is set on any of the white maidens that are my handmaids, tell me of it, and I shall court her for thee and she shall come to thee," and then Ailill cried out,

"Love indeed, O Queen, hath brought me low. It is a plague nearer than the skin, it overwhelms my soul as an earthquake, it is farther than the height of the sky, and harder to win than the treasures of the Fairy Folk. If I contend with it, it is like a combat with a spectre; if I fly to the ends of the earth from it, it is there; if I seek to seize it, it is a passion for an echo. It is thou, O my love, who hast brought me to this, and thou alone canst heal me, or I shall never rise again."

Then Etain went away and left him. But still in her palace in Tara she was haunted by his passion and his misery, and, though she loved him not, she could not endure his pain, nor the triumph of grim death over his youth and beauty. So at last she went to him again and said, "If it lies with me, Ailill, to heal thee of thy sickness, I may not let thee die." And she made a tryst to meet him on the morrow at a house of Ailill's between Dún Tethba and Tara, "but be it not at Tara," she said, "for that is the palace of the High King."

All that night Ailill lay awake with the thought of his tryst with Etain. But on the morrow morn a heaviness came upon his eyelids, and a druid sleep overcame him, and there all day he lay buried in slumbers from which none could wake him, until the time of his meeting with Etain was overpast.

But Etain, when she had come to the place of the tryst, looked out, and behold, a youth having the appearance and the garb of Ailill was approaching from Tethba. He entered the bower where she was; but no lover did she there meet, but only a sick and sorrowful man who spake coldly to her and lamented the sufferings of his malady, and after a short time he went away.

Next day Etain went to see Ailill and to hear how he did. And Ailill entreated her forgiveness that he had not kept his tryst, "for," said he, "a druid slumber descended upon me, and I lay as one dead from morn till eve. And morever," he added, "it seems as if the strange passion that has befallen me were washed away in that slumber, for now, Etain, I love thee no more but as my Queen and my sister, and I am recovered as if from an evil dream." Then Etain knew that powers not of earth were mingling in her fate, and she pondered much of these things, and grew less lighthearted than of old. And when the King came back, he rejoiced to find his brother whole and sound and merry, as Ailill had ever been, and he praised Etain for her gentleness and care.

Now after a time as Etain was by herself in her sunny bower she was aware of a man standing by her, whom she had never seen before. Young he was, and grey-eyed, with curling golden hair, and in his hand he bore two spears. His mantle was of crimson silk, his tunic of saffron, and a golden helmet was on his head. And as she gazed upon him, "Etain," he said, "the time is come for thee to return; we have missed thee and sorrowed for thee long enough in the Land of Youth." Etain said, "Of what land dost thou speak?" Then he chanted to her a song:—

"Come with me, Etain, O come away,
To that oversea land of mine! Where music haunts the happy day,
And rivers run with wine; Where folk are careless, and young, and gay,
And none saith 'mine' or 'thine.'

"Golden curls on the proud young head,
And pearls in the tender mouth; Manhood, womanhood, white and red,
And love that grows not loth When all the world's desires are dead,
And all the dreams of youth.

"Away from the cloud of Adam's sin!
Away from grief and care! This flowery land thou dwellest in
Seems rude to us, and bare; For the naked strand of the Happy Land
Is twenty times as fair."