For a time they thought the man was dead. It was one, they said, some great one, who had perished at the feet of his desire. Others thought he was a king who had come there to die alone, as Conn the Solitary had done, when he had known all that man can know. And some feared that the prone man was a demon, and the shining grianân a dreadful place of spells. The howling of a wolf, in the opposite glen that is called Strathnamara, brought sweat upon their backs: for when the half-human wish evil upon men they hide their faces, and the howling of a she-wolf is heard.
But of a sudden the helmsman made a sign. “It is Ulad,” he whispered hoarsely, because of the salt in his throat after that day of flight and long weariness: “It is Ulad the Wonder-Smith.”
Then all there were glad, for each man knew that Ulad the Wonder-Smith, that was a poet and a king, wrought no ill against any clan, and that wherever he was the swords slept.
Nevertheless they marvelled much that he was there alone, and in that silence, with his face prone upon the wilderness, while the sunset flamed overagainst the grianân that was now like wine, or like springing blood light and wonderful. But as tide and wind brought the birlinn close upon the shore, they heard a twofold noise, a rumour of strange sound. One looked at the other, with amaze that grew into fear. For the twofold sound was wrought of the muffled sobs and prayers of the man that lay upon the grass and of the laughter of the woman that was unseen, but who was within the grianân.
Connla, the helmsman and leader of the seafarers, waved to his fellows to pull the birlinn close in among the weedy masses which hung from the rocks. When the galley lay there, all but hidden, and each man’s head was beneath the wrack, Connla rose. Slowly he moved to where Ulad lay, face downward, upon the silt of sand and broken rock that was in front of the grianân. But, before he could speak, the young king rose, though not seeing the newcomer, and, looking upon the sunbower, whence the laughter suddenly ceased, raised his arms.
Then, when he had raised his arms, song was upon his lips. It was a strange chant that Connla heard, and had the sound in it of the wind far out at sea, or of a tempest moving across treeless moors, mournful, wild, filled with ancient sorrow and a crying that none can interpret. And the words of it, familiar to the helmsman, and yet with a strange lip-life upon them, were as these:—
Ah you in the grianân there, whose laughter is on me as fire-flames,
What of the sorrow of sorrows that is mine because of my loving—
You that came to me out of the place where the rainbows are builded,
Is it woman you are, O Fand, who laughest up there in thy silence?