it was good to stare at an impenetrable roof of leaves and then
climb into it. How wonderful the loneliness was up there! When he
looked down there was an undulating floor of leaves, green and
green and greener to a very blackness of greeniness; and when he
looked up there were leaves again, green and less green and not
green at all, up to a very snow and blindness of greeniness; and
above and below and around there was sway and motion, the whisper
of leaf on leaf, and the eternal silence to which one listened
and at which one tried to look.

When he was six years of age his mother, beautiful, long-haired
Muirne, came to see him. She came secretly, for she feared the
sons of Morna, and she had paced through lonely places in many
counties before she reached the hut in the wood, and the cot
where he lay with his fists shut and sleep gripped in them.

He awakened to be sure. He would have one ear that would catch an
unusual voice, one eye that would open, however sleepy the other
one was. She took him in her arms and kissed him, and she sang a
sleepy song until the small boy slept again.

We may be sure that the eye that could stay open stayed open that
night as long as it could, and that the one ear listened to the
sleepy song until the song got too low to be heard, until it was
too tender to be felt vibrating along those soft arms, until
Fionn was asleep again, with a new picture in his little head and
a new notion to ponder on.

The mother of himself! His own mother!