"It is where I am," he said, "I slept last
night at Dun Monaidhe, of the King of Alban; I am a day in Ile, a day in
Cionn-tire, a day in Rachlainn, a day in the Watchman's Seat in Slieve
Fuad; a pleasant, rambling, wandering man I am, and it is with yourself
I am now, O'Donnell," he said. "Let the gate-keeper be brought to me,"
said O'Donnell. And when the gate-keeper came, he asked was it he let in
this man, and the gate-keeper said he did not, and that he never saw him
before. "Let him off, O'Donnell," said the stranger, "for it was as easy
for me to come in, as it will be to me to go out again." There was
wonder on them all then, any man to have come into the house without
passing the gate.
The musicians began playing their music then, and all the best musicians
of the country were there at the time, and they played very sweet tunes
on their harps. But the strange man called out: "By my word, O'Donnell,
there was never a noise of hammers beating on iron in any bad place was
so bad to listen to as this noise your people are making."
With that he took a harp, and he made music that would put women in
their pains and wounded men after a battle into a sweet sleep, and it is
what O'Donnell said: "Since I first heard talk of the music of the Sidhe
that is played in the hills and under the earth below us, I never heard
better music than your own. And it is a very sweet player you are," he
said. "One day I am sweet, another day I am sour," said the clown.
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