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Updated: June 11, 2025
And he has sent us to find out what part of that hellish treasure belongs to the Brothers of Devenish and how much is the property of the king." Becfola again broke in, speaking graciously, regally, hastily: "Let those Brothers have the entire of the treasure, for it is Sunday treasure, and as such it will bring no luck to any one."
Then these two sets of four fought togethor with every warlike courtesy but with every warlike severity, and at the end of that combat there was but one man standing, and the other seven lay tossed in death. Becfola spoke to the youth. "Your combat has indeed been gallant," she said.
There they went inland towards a vast palace, in which there was no person but themselves alone, and there the young man went to sleep, while Becfola sat staring at him until the unavoidable peace pressed down her eyelids and she too slumbered. She was awakened in the morning by a great shout. "Come out, Flann, come out, my heart!"
IT was so early that not even a bird was yet awake, and the dull grey light that came from the atmosphere enlarged and made indistinct all that one looked at, and swathed all things in a cold and livid gloom. As she trod cautiously through dim corridors Becfola was glad that, saving the guards, no creature was astir, and that for some time yet she need account to no person for her movements.
These three returned then, and at the end of a day and night they saw far off the mighty roofs of Tara massed in the morning haze. The young man left them, and with many a backward look and with dragging, reluctant feet, Becfola crossed the threshold of the palace, wondering what she should say to Dermod and how she could account for an absence of three days' duration.
"It is truly not an hour for engagements," Dermod insisted, "for not a bird of the birds has left his tree; and," he continued maliciously, "the light is such that you could not see an engagement even if you met one." "I," Becfola gasped. "A Sunday journey," he went on, "is a notorious bad journey. No good can come from it. You can get your smocks and diadems to-morrow.
"It is true," Becfola replied, and she became suddenly to the king's eye a whiteness and a stare. He pointed to the door. "Go to your engagement," he stammered. "Go to that Flann." "He is waiting for me," said Becfola with proud shame, "and the thought that he should wait wrings my heart." She went out from the palace then.
That was the boy whom the Fianna called Oisi'n, or the Little Fawn. He grew to be a great fighter afterwards, and he was the chief maker of poems in the world. But he was not yet finished with the Shi. He was to go back into Faery when the time came, and to come thence again to tell these tales, for it was by him these tales were told. We do not know where Becfola came from.
"Either she is a woman of this world to be punished, or she is a woman of the Shi' to be banished, but this holy morning she was in the Shi', and her arms were about the neck of Flann." The king sank back in his chair stupefied, gazing from one to the other, and then turned an unseeing, fear-dimmed eye towards Becfola. "Is this true, my pulse?" he murmured.
They were married in a haste which equalled the king's desire; and as he did not again ask her name, and as she did not volunteer to give it, and as she brought no dowry to her husband and received none from him, she was called Becfola, the Dowerless. Time passed, and the king's happiness was as great as his expectation of it had promised.
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