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Diarmuid's hound had crept back, to whine at the death. Finn took it by the lead and went down the hill. The friends of Diarmuid wrapped him in their cloaks and followed Finn.

As they came towards the fort, Grainne was on the wall, waiting for news. When she saw the hound led in without the master, her spirit fled from her and she pitched forward in a faint. And when she had recovered she sent five hundred of her people to bring Diarmuid from the mountain. The procession approached slowly, and she was keening for her dead lover.'

'O Diarmuid,' she cried, 'my handsome man, Finn has given you a hard bed indeed, lying on stone in the wet of the rain. Your blue eyes are closed. You were my hawk and my hound, my secret love hunted with you. And you were the prop for the men of Ireland, the head in every battle. Now I hear your harp no more. I am sorrowful, without mirth, without light. I am grief, I am dying. O Diarmuid, you pitiful man!'

Then as she was crying, suddenly there was another by her side, for Angus Og had flown on the pure cold wind to claim the body of his foster-son.'

'The boar of Ben Bulbin has cut you down,' Angus lamented, 'as the prophecy foretold, O my Diarmuid of the bright face. Did I abandon you to the treachery of Finn? Certainly I shall forever feel the bitter pangs of sorrow. Take up the body now and bring it to the Boyne. I cannot restore his life, but I shall breathe a spirit into him so that every day for a little while, we may talk together as we used to do.'

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