“I? It is I who laugh now. The old men put a spell upon me. I am no more Cathal Gille-Muire, but Cathal mac Art. Nay, I am Cathal Gille-Ardanna.”
With that he plucked the branch of a rowan that grew near. He stripped it of its leaves, and threw them from him north, south, east, and west.
“Why do you do that, Cathal-aluinn?” Ardanna asked, looking at him with eyes of love, and she like a summer morning there, because of the sunshine in her hair, and the wild roses on her face, and the hill-tarn blue of her eyes.
“These are all the hymns that Colum taught me. I give them back. I am knowing them no more. They are idle, foolish songs.”
Then the monk took the branch and broke it, and threw the pieces upon the ground and trampled upon them.
“Why do you that, Cathal-aluinn?” asked Ardanna, wondering at him with her home-call eyes.
“That is the branch of all the wisdom Colum taught me. Old Neis, the helot, was wise. It is a madness, all that. See, it is gone: it is beneath my feet: I am a man now.”
“But O Cathal, Cathal! this very day of the days, Ecta, my father, has become a man of the Christ-faith, him and his; and he would do what Molios asked, now. And Molios would ask your death.”
“Death is a dream.”