sock the dog, but it was the last night of the year, and Grainne, after wishing him safety, observed that it was the Tuatha Dé Danann that were busying themselves. Presently Diarmait heard the hound's voice again, and he would have gone out after the dog, but his wife's advice prevailed. He fell into a deep sleep, but by and by he was waked by the voice of the dog again, and, as it was now daylight, he went out lightly armed and accompanied by his favourite hound. He walked on and on until he reached the top of Benn Gulbain, a mountain now called Benbulbin, in the county of Sligo. There he found before him Finn all alone, and, without greeting him, he asked him if it was he that was hunting, whereupon Finn answered that it was not, but that a party of his men who had gone before him were there, and that one of the dogs had come across the track of a wild boar. He went on to say that it was the Boar of Benn Gulbain, and that it was idle for them to hunt him, as they had tried it often before: in fact, the beast had killed, he said, half a hundred of their number that very morning. Moreover, he added, that the boar was coming up the hill towards where they now were; the huntsmen were fleeing before him, and he thought it advisable for them both to quit the knoll where they were standing. But Diarmait would not go, and Finn told him he had better, as he was under gessa or prohibitions not to hunt a swine. He said he had never heard that before, and he wished Finn to explain. The latter then began to relate to him how he, Diarmait, was brought up at the house of his foster-father, the great magician Aengus of the Brugh of the Boyne, and how his mother Crochnuit was the mother also of a son of Roc mac Díocain, who was
