“Oh, the meat of the deer is dainty food!
To eat thereof would do me good,
But I grudge to send thee to the wood.”
The Lord of Nann, when this he heard,
Hath gripp’d his oak spear with never a word;
His bonny black horse he hath leap’d upon,
And forth to the greenwood hath he gone.
By the skirts of the wood as he did go,
He was ware of a hind as white as snow.
Oh, fast she ran, and fast he rode,
That the earth it shook where his horse-hoofs trode.
Oh, fast he rode, and fast she ran,
That the sweat to drop from his brow began—
That the sweat on his horse’s flank stood white;
So he rode and rode till the fall o’ the night.
When he came to a stream that fed a lawn,
Hard by the grot of a Corrigaun.
The grass grew thick by the streamlet’s brink,
And he lighted down off his horse to drink.
The Corrigaun sat by the fountain fair,
A-combing her long and yellow hair.
A-combing her hair with a comb of gold,—
(Not poor, I trow, are those maidens cold).—