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"I swore an oath indeed, but not to thee, Meriamun. I swore an oath to Argive Helen, whom I love, and I wake to find thee sleeping at my side, thee whom I hate." "Nay," she said, "to me thou didst swear the oath, Odysseus, for thou, of men the most guileful, hast at length been over-mastered in guile.

Thus she spake, and they gave ready ear and hearkened, and set beside Odysseus meat and drink, and the steadfast goodly Odysseus did eat and drink eagerly, for it was long since he had tasted food. Now Nausicaa of the white arms had another thought. She folded the raiment and stored it in the goodly wain, and yoked the mules strong of hoof, and herself climbed into the car.

One of the nymphs, immortal shepherdess, flew to the Sun to tell him that my men had slain his cattle. Hēlios was deeply angered, and spoke thus before the assembled gods: 'Father Zeus and all ye immortal gods, behold the comrades of Odysseus! They have slaughtered my heifers, which gladdened my heart as I went up to heaven and down to earth.

And there lay the back-bent bow and the quiver for the arrows, and many shafts were therein, winged for death, gifts of a friend of Odysseus, that met with him in Lacedaemon, Iphitus son of Eurytus, a man like to the gods. These twain fell in with one another in Messene, in the house of wise Ortilochus.

But Odysseus aimed and smote him with the arrow in the throat, and the point passed clean out through his delicate neck, and he fell sidelong and the cup dropped from his hand as he was smitten, and at once through his nostrils there came up a thick jet of slain man's blood, and quickly he spurned the table from him with his foot, and spilt the food on the ground, and the bread and the roast flesh were defiled.

"The time is come for thee to tell thy son who thou art," she said, and touched him with her golden wand. At once Odysseus was again a strong man, dressed in fine robes, and radiant and beautiful as the sun. When he went back into the hut Telemachus thought he was a god. "No god am I," said Odysseus; "I am thy father, Telemachus."

But Nestor of Gerenia, lord of chariots, would needs have Telemachus, son of divine Odysseus, to sleep there on a jointed bedstead beneath the echoing gallery, and by him Peisistratus of the good ashen spear, leader of men, who alone of his sons was yet unwed in his halls. As for him he slept within the inmost chamber of the lofty house, and the lady his wife arrayed for him bedstead and bedding.

As he was on the point of leaving Pylos on the morrow a bard named Theoclymenus appealed to him for protection, for he had slain a man and was a fugitive from justice. Taking him on board Telemachus frustrated the ambush, landing in safety; he proceeded to Eumaeus' hut, where Odysseus had with some difficulty been persuaded to remain.

When it was plain that all were there, the man who was oldest amongst them, the lord Ægyptus, rose up and spoke. He had sons, and two of them were with him yet, tending his fields. But one, Eurynomous by name, kept company with the wooers of Telemachus' mother. And Ægyptus had had another son; he had gone in Odysseus' ship to the war of Troy, and Ægyptus knew he had perished on his way back.

Homer tells of Odysseus going there; Virgil does the same of Aeneas; and the Oriental peoples, as well as the Germanic races, have similar tales; but no people have so many or such finished accounts of this sort as the ancient Irish.