hurried to the dun of the High-King, and cried out in the midst of
the assembly hall that the Sidhe, whether for good or evil she knew
not, had bent over the child that night; and the king and his poets
and men of law, and his huntsmen, and his cooks, and his chief
warriors went with her to the hut and gathered about the cradle, and
were as noisy as magpies, and the child sat up and looked at them.

Two years passed over, and the king died fighting against the Fer
Bolg; and the poets and the men of law ruled in the name of the
child, but looked to see him become the master himself before long,
for no one had seen so wise a child, and tales of his endless
questions about the household of the gods and the making of the world
went hither and thither among the wicker houses of the poor.
Everything had been well but for a miracle that began to trouble all
men; and all women, who, indeed, talked of it without ceasing. The
feathers of the grey hawk had begun to grow in the child's hair, and
though, his nurse cut them continually, in but a little while they
would be more numerous than ever. This had not been a matter of great
moment, for miracles were a little thing in those days, but for an
ancient law of Eri that none who had any blemish of body could sit
upon the throne; and as a grey hawk was a wild thing of the air which
had never sat at the board, or listened to the songs of the poets in
the light of the fire, it was not possible to think of one in whose
hair its feathers grew as other than marred and blasted; nor could
the people separate from their admiration of the wisdom that grew in
him a horror as at one of unhuman blood. Yet all were resolved that
he should reign, for they had suffered much from foolish kings and
their own disorders, and moreover they desired to watch out the
spectacle of his days; and no one had any other fear but that his
great wisdom might bid him obey the law, and call some other, who had