"Without battles, without taking of spoils; without playing at nimble
feats; without going courting or hunting, two trades that were my
delight."
PATRICK. "Leave off, old man, leave your foolishness; let what you have
done be enough for you from this out. Think on the pains that are before
you; the Fianna are gone, and you yourself will be going."
OISIN. "If I go, may yourself not be left after me, Patrick of the
hindering heart; if Conan, the least of the Fianna, were living, your
buzzing would not be left long to you."
"Or if this was the day I gave ten hundred cows to the headless woman
that came to the Valley of the Two Oxen; the birds of the air brought
away the ring I gave her, I never knew where she went herself from me."
PATRICK. "That is little to trouble you, Oisin; it was but for a while
she was with you; it is better for you to be as you are than to be among
them again."
OISIN. "O Son of Calphurn of the friendly talk, it is a pity for him
that gives respect to clerks and bells; I and Caoilte my friend, we were
not poor when we were together.
"The music that put Finn to his sleep was the cackling of the ducks from
the lake of the Three Narrows; the scolding talk of the blackbird of
Doire an Cairn, the bellowing of the ox from the Valley of the Berries.
"The whistle of the eagle from the Valley of Victories, or from the
rough branches of the ridge by the stream; the grouse of the heather of
Cruachan; the call of the otter of Druim-re-Coir.
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