“Good-bye, mountains and flowers and rivers; some day I will come back
to you.”
Then Mananaan wrapped Lugh in his cloak and stepped into his boat, the
Ocean-Sweeper, and without oar or sail they journeyed over the sea till
they crossed the waters at the edge of the world and came to the country
of Mananaan—a beautiful country shining With the colours of the dawn.
Lugh stayed in that country with Mananaan. He raced the waves along the
strand; he gathered apples sweeter than honey from trees with crimson
blossoms, and wonderful birds came to play with him. Mananaan’s
daughter, Niav, took him through woods where there were milk-white deer
with horns of gold, and black-maned lions and spotted panthers, and
unicorns that shone like silver, and strange beasts that no one ever
heard of; and all the animals were glad to see him, and he played with
them and called them by their names. Every day he grew taller and
stronger and more beautiful, but he did not any day ask Mananaan to take
him back to Ireland.
Every night when darkness had come into the sky, Mananaan wrapped
himself in his mantle of power and crossed the sea and walked all round
Ireland, stepping from rock to rock. No one saw him, because his mantle
made him invisible, but he saw everything and knew that trouble had
found the De Danaanans. The ugly, misshapen folk of the Fomor had come
into Ireland and spread themselves over the country like a pestilence.
They had stolen the Cauldron of Plenty and carried it away to their own
land, where Balor of the Evil Eye reigned. They had taken the Spear of
Victory also, and the only one of the four great Jewels of Sovereignity
remaining to the De Danaanans was the Stone of Destiny. It was hidden
deep in the earth of Ireland, and because of it the Fomorians could not
altogether conquer the country, nor could they destroy the De Danaanans,
though they drove them from their pleasant palaces and hunted them
through the glens and valleys like outlaws.
Mananaan himself had the fourth Jewel, the Sword of Light: he kept it
and waited.