“Oh, you will not stay. I will go to the forge and make an axe to break the (ice).”
He came back, and an axe with him. They broke the stone of ice. Bioultach came out. “Now, Bioultach, as we have come on two days unknown to the giant, he will send out two ball players, with hurls of gold and balls of silver; you will think they are the two champions you left behind at the Island of the Torrent. If any limb of their limbs touches you, or the ball, you are a grey flagstone, and over you heaps of ice and snow, as big as if you were there for a hundred years.”
When they went up, he saw the two champions coming. It seemed to him it was Splendour and Splendour-of-the-Sun were there. They ran to him, and he was running to them in his delight. The ragged green man threw them, so that they failed. They took out the ball. A man of them struck the ball a blow, and it was coming straight to Bioultach. He put up his hand to keep off the ball from his eye. He was struck on the palm of the hand, and he fell, and became a grey flagstone, and a holly tree growing through him. When the ragged green man saw that he was destroyed, he bowed down and wept his fill; then he went back to the Island of the Torrent.
“Oh,” said the men to him, “is it not long that you have been within? But where is Bioultach?”
“Oh! go ye home. Bioultach is destroyed; he is away from you, a day and a year’s voyage before you could reach him. He is a grey flagstone, and over him are heaps of ice and snow.”
“We will not go home ever. We have no business at home, but we will be travelling till we get as far as he is.”
“Do ye think that together ye could tie the giant?”
“Oh, I do not know.”
“Well, I will bring you there in the space of an hour.”
He took them with him as far as Bioultach, till they saw him and wept together.