“She is the wife of Mídir.”
And with that the youth turned and moved haughtily away. She did not know that the Etáin of whom Cuchullin dreamed was no woman that he had seen in Eiré, but the wife of Mídir the King of Faerie, who was so passing fair that Mac Greine, the beautiful god, had made for her a grianan all of shining glass, where still she lives in a dream, and in that sun-bower still is fed at dawn upon the bloom of flowers and at dusk upon their fragrance. O ogham mhic Gréine, tha e boidheach,[15] she sighs for ever in her sleep: and that sigh is in all sighs of love for ever and ever.
[15] “O beauty of my love the Sun-lord” (lit. “O Youth, son of the Sun, how fair he is!”)
Scathach watched him till he was lost behind the flare of the camp-fires of the rath. For long she stood there, brooding deep; till the sickle of the new moon, which had been like a blown feather over the sun as it sank, stood out in silvershine against the blue-black sky, now like a wake in the sea because of the star-dazzle that was there. And what the queen brooded upon was this: whether to send emissaries to Eirèann, under bond to seek in that land till they found Mídir and Etáin, and to slay Mídir and bring to her the corpse, for a gift from her to lay before Cuchullin: or to bring Etáin to Skye, where the Queen might see her lose her beauty and wane into death. Neither way might win the heart of Cuchullin. The dark tarn of the woman’s mind grew blacker with the shadow of that thought.
Slowly she moved dûn-ward through the night. “As the moon sometimes is seen rising out of the east,” she muttered, “and sometimes, as now, is first seen in the west, so is the heart of love. And if I go west, lo the moon may rise along the sunway: and if I go east, lo the moon may be a white light over the setting sun. And who that knoweth the heart of man or woman can tell when the moon of love is to appear full-orbed in the east or sickle-wise in the west?”
It was on the day following that tidings came out of Eirèann. An Ultonian brought a sword to Cuchullin from Concobar the Ard-righ.
“The sword has ill upon it, and will die, unless you save it, Cuculain son of Lerg,” said the man.
“And what is that ill, Ultonian?” asked the youth.
“It is thirst.”