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For a long time he had been at enmity and spiteful warfare with Fiachna Finn; and to this Fiachna Duv there was born in the same night a daughter, and this girl was named Duv Laca of the White Hand. "Ah!" cried the Flame Lady. "You see!" said Mongan, and he drank anew and joyously of the fairy wine.
"Well, he is Mongan," said Mongan, "and these twenty-nine men are twenty-nine of his nobles from Ulster."
He spoke of the old Irish legend of Mongan and the Bard, and Evelyn begged of him to tell it her. "Mongan," he said, "had been Fin MacCool two hundred years before. When he was Fin he had been present at the death of a certain king. The bard was singing before Mongan, and mis-stated the place of the king's death.
"I don't care if there is," said Mongan. "You must ask what he wants." "But I don't want to know it," said Mongan. "Nevertheless, you musk ask him," she insisted. So Mongan did ask him, and it was in a melancholy voice that he asked it. "Do you want anything?" said he to the King of Leinster. "I do indeed," said Branduv. "If it is in Ulster I will get it for you," said Mongan mournfully.
"He was," replied Cairide'. "Indeed, indeed!" said the abbot. After a while he continued: "There is only one part of your story that I do not like." "What part is that?" asked Cairide'. "It is the part where the holy man Tibraide' was ill treated by that rap by that by Mongan."
He said that he was Caolte, one of Fin's famous warriors, that the king whose place of death was in dispute was killed where Mongan had said, that if they dug down into the earth they would find the spear-head, that it would fit the shaft he held in his hand, that it was the spear-head that had killed the king." "Go on, and tell me some more stories.
"What is it they are doing?" said he. "They are reading." "Indeed, and indeed they are," said mac an Da'v. "I can't make out a word of the language except that the man behind says amen, amen, every time the man in front puts a grunt out of him. And they don't like our gods at all!" said mac an Da'v. "They do not," said Mongan. "Play a trick on them, master," said mac an Da'v.
"Very well," said Mongan, "you shall have your wish." He touched her with his finger, and the instant he touched her all dilapidation and wryness and age went from her, and she became so beautiful that one dared scarcely look on her, and so young that she seemed but sixteen years of age.
He killed Fiachna Finn in that battle, and be crowned himself King of Ulster. The men of Ulster disliked him, and they petitioned Mananna'n to bring Mongan back, but Mananna'n would not do this until the boy was sixteen years of age and well reared in the wisdom of the Land of Promise.
Among native minstrels, Jerome Duigenan, Dominic Mongan, Denis Hempson, Charles Byrne, James Duncan, Arthur Victory, and Arthur O'Neill were celebrated as harpers. The Belfast meeting of 1792 revived the vogue of the national instrument. Nor was the bagpipe neglected. Even in America, in 1778, Lord Rawdon had a band of pipers, with Barney Thomson as Pipe Major.
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