“It’s time to put a stop to that,” said Lui Lavada, Balor’s grandson. With that he walked up to the two and said, “Ye’ll go home out of this as ye are.”
Maol answered with insult, and made an offer to strike him. Lui caught Maol then and split his tongue; he cut a hole in each of his cheeks, and putting one half of the tongue through the left cheek, and the other through the right, he thrust a sliver of wood through the tips of each half. He took Mullag then and treated him in like manner.
The people led the two down to the seashore after that. Lui put Maol in one boat and Mullag in another, and let them go with the wind, which carried them out in the ocean, and there is no account that any man saved them.
Balor swore vengeance on the people for destroying his men, and especially on Lui Lavada. He had an eye in the middle of his forehead which he kept covered always with nine shields of thick leather, so that he might not open his eye and turn it on anything, for no matter what Balor looked at with the naked eye he burned it to ashes. He set out in a rage then from Tory, and never stopped till he landed at Baile Nass and went toward Gavidin’s forge. The grandson was there before him, and had a spear ready and red hot.
When Balor had eight shields raised from the evil eye, and was just raising the ninth, Lui Lavada sent the red spear into it. Balor pursued his grandson, who retreated before him, going south, and never stopped till he reached Dun Lui, near Errigal Mountain. There he sat on a rock, wearied and exhausted. While he was sitting there, everything came to his mind that he did since the time that his men stole Glas Gavlen from Gavidin Gow. “I see it all now,” said he. “This is my grandson who has given the mortal blow to me. He is the son of my daughter and Fin MacKinealy. No one else could have given that spear cast but him.” With that Balor called to the grandson and said, “Come near now. Take the head off me and place it above on your own a few moments. You will know everything in the world, and no one will be able to conquer you.”
Lui took the head off his grandfather, and, instead of putting it on his own head, he put it on a rock. The next moment a drop came out of the head, made a thousand pieces of the rock, and dug a hole in the earth three times deeper than Loch Foyle,—the deepest lake in the world up to that time,—and so long that in that hole are the waters of Gweedore Loch, they have been there from that day to this.
The above tale I wrote down on the mainland, where I found also another version, but inferior to this. On Tory itself I found two versions, both incomplete. Though differing in particulars, the argument is the same in all. Balor is represented as living on Tory to escape the doom which threatens him through a coming grandson; he covets the cow Glas Gavlen, and finally gains her through his agents.
The theft of the cow is the first act in a series which ends with the death of Balor at Gweedore, and brings about the fulfilment of the prophecy. In all the variants of the tale Balor is the same unrepentant, unconquerable character,—the man whom nothing can bend, who tries to avenge his own fate after his death by the destruction of his grandson. The grandson does not know whom he is about to kill. He slays Balor to avenge his father, Fin MacKinealy, according to the vendetta of the time.