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Then, sitting down, she made them sit beside her, Connla on her right hand and Nora on her left. Then she ordered the nine little pipers to come before her, and she said to them: "So far you have done your duty faithfully, and now play one more sweet air and your task is done."
"'Tis no lofty seat on which Connla sits among short-lived mortals awaiting fearful death, but now the folk of life, the ever-living living ones, beg and bid thee come to Moy Mell, the Plain of Pleasure, for they have learnt to know thee." When Cond the king observed that since the maiden came Connla his son spake to none that spake to him, then Cond of the hundred fights said to him
Hearing Ulick speak of foreseeing and divinations by the stars was, too, like sweet rain in a dying land; and as they returned to Dowlands, she spoke to him of Moy Mell where Boadag is king, of the Plain of the Ever Living, of Connla and the Fairy Maiden gliding in the crystal boat over the Western Sea, and during dinner she longed to ask him if he believed in a future life.
Connla of the Fiery Hair was son of Conn of the Hundred Fights. One day as he stood by the side of his father on the height of Usna, he saw a maiden clad in strange attire coming towards him. "Whence comest thou, maiden?" said Connla. "I come from the Plains of the Ever Living," she said, "there where there is neither death nor sin.
On went the steed, and soon he was galloping beneath the branches that almost touched Connla's head. And on they went until they had passed through the wood, and then they saw rising up before them the "Golden Spear." "Oh, Connla," said Nora, "we are at home at last." "Yes," said Connla, "but where is the little house under the hill?"
Once upon a time there lived in a little house under a hill a little old woman and her two children, whose names were Connla and Nora. Right in front of the door of the little house lay a pleasant meadow, and beyond the meadow rose up to the skies a mountain whose top was sharp-pointed like a spear.
And all the while there grew within him a mighty yearning and longing after the maiden he had seen. But when the last day of the month of waiting came, Connla stood by the side of the king his father on the Plain of Arcomin, and again he saw the maiden come towards him, and again she spoke to him.
And you both can soon return to Erin of the Streams, but I shall not see it till three hundred years have passed away, for I am Liban the Mermaid, daughter of a line of kings. But I may not keep you here. The Fairy Queen is waiting for you in her snow-white palace and her fragrant bowers. And now kiss me once more, Nora, and kiss me, Connla.
And Connla laid aside his spear and shield, and took off his golden helmet and his silken cloak. Then he caught the little mother and kissed her, and lifted her up until she was as high as his head. And said he: "Don't you know, little mother, I'd rather have you than all the world."
"No," said Connla, "I never did." "That's because you never saw the crystal hall of the fairy of the mountains," said a voice above the heads of the children. And when they looked up, who should they see perched on a branch but the thrush. "And where is the crystal hall of the fairy?" said Connla. "Oh, it is where it always was, and where it always will be," said the thrush.
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