They must have been young, for one time a Leinsterman came on
them, a great robber named Fiacuil mac Cona, and he killed the
poets. He chopped them up and chopped them down. He did not leave
one poeteen of them all. He put them out of the world and out of
life, so that they stopped being, and no one could tell where
they went or what had really happened to them; and it is a wonder
indeed that one can do that to anything let alone a band. If they
were not youngsters, the bold Fiacuil could not have managed them
all. Or, perhaps, he too had a band, although the record does not
say so; but kill them he did, and they died that way.

Fionn saw that deed, and his blood may have been cold enough as
he watched the great robber coursing the poets as a wild dog
rages in a flock. And when his turn came, when they were all
dead, and the grim, red-handed man trod at him, Fionn may have
shivered, but he would have shown his teeth and laid roundly on
the monster with his hands. Perhaps he did that, and perhaps for
that he was spared.

"Who are you?" roared the staring black-mouth with the red tongue
squirming in it like a frisky fish.

"The son of Uail, son of Baiscne," quoth hardy Fionn. And at that
the robber ceased to be a robber, the murderer disappeared, the
black-rimmed chasm packed with red fish and precipices changed to
something else, and the round eyes that had been popping out of
their sockets and trying to bite, changed also. There remained a
laughing and crying and loving servant who wanted to tie himself
into knots if that would please the son of his great captain.
Fionn went home on the robber's shoulder, and the robber gave