“My king and my lord, I am fighting with my brother since morning; and if I killed him, I would do nothing but put my sword through my heart.”
“Oh, Bioultach, did you not know there was not another man able to fight with you but he?”
“I thought he was not yet so big.”
That was the time Maunus loosed the men, and they were only just alive. The king took them all with him—Bioultach and Maunus, and Splendour son of the King of Greece, and Splendour-of-the-Sun. They went to the court of the High King of Greece.
Bioultach rose in the morning, and he and Maunus went into the garden, and he began to ask Maunus how were his father and his mother and his sister, and how was Erin. But the High King of Greece had a daughter, and she was in a cloister in the garden. Maunus saw her going by, as a whiz of wind would go. “Oh, Bioultach, do you see that beautiful woman?”
“I do not see. She does not concern us. Perhaps she will never come by again.”
“Oh, Bioultach, I have never seen a woman as beautiful as she.”
“Well, you can see her no more. She goes by only once in a year.”
“I shall not live if I don’t get another sight of her.”
“Oh! I am sorry I ever saw you; but if you had an hour of her company you would ask no more?”