Long, long ago there was a beautiful woman, and her name was Etain, and she was loved by a man. I am not for remembering the name of that man, for it is a story of the far-off days: but he was a prince. I will call him Art, and mayhap he was a son of that Art the Solitary who was wont to hear the songs of the hidden people and to see the moonshine dancers.
This Art loved Etain, and she him. So one day he took her to his dûn, and she was his wife. But, and this was an ill thing for one like Art, who was a poet and dreamer, he loved this woman overmuch. She held his life in the hollow of her hand. Nevertheless, and in her own way, she loved him truly: and for him, blind with the Dream against his eyes, all might have been well, but for one thing. For Art, who was no coward, feared one hazard, and that was death: not his own death, and not even the death of Etain, but death. He loved Etain beyond the narrow frontiers of life: and at that indrawing shadow he stood appalled.
One day, when his longing was great upon him, he went out alone upon the Hills of Ruel. There a man met him, a stranger, comely beyond all men he had seen, with dark eyes of dream, and a shadowy smile.
“And so,” he said, “and so, Art the Dreamer, thou art eager to know what way thou mayest meet Etain, in that hour when the shadow of the Shadow is upon thee?”
“Even so; though I know neither thee nor the way by which my name is known unto thee.”
“Oh, for sure I am only a wandering singer. But, now that we are met, I will sing to you, Art my lord.”
Art looked at him frowningly. This man who called him lord spake with heedless sovereignty.
Then, of a sudden, song eddied off the lips of the man, the air of it marvellous light and of a haunting strangeness: and the words were those that Eilidh there sang by the fire.
Through the dusk of silence which that song made in his brain, Art saw the stranger draw from the fawnskin, slung round his shoulders and held by a gold torque, a reed. The man played upon it.
While he played, there was a stirring on the Hills of Ruel. All the green folk were there. They sang.