In one thing only was sadness endurable to her and that was in her
music, for when she sang or touched the harp all hearts were pierced
with longing for they knew not what, and all eyes shed tears save hers
alone, who looked as though she beheld, far from earth, some land more
fair than words of man can tell; and all the wonder of that land and
all its immeasurable distance were in her song.
Now Eochy the King had a brother whose name was Ailill Anglounach, or
Ailill of the Single Stain, for one dark spot only was on his life,
and it is of this that the story now shall tell. One day, when he had
come from his own Dun to the yearly Assembly in the great Hall of
Tara, he ate not at the banquet but gazed as it were at something afar
off, and his wife said to him, "Why dost thou gaze so, Ailill; so do
men look who are smitten with love?" Ailill was wroth with himself and
turned his eyes away, but he said nothing, for that on which he gazed
was the face of Etain.
After that Assembly was over Ailill knew that the torment of love had
seized him for his brother's wife, and he was sorely shamed and
wrathful, and the secret strife in his mind between his honour and the
fierce and pitiless love that possessed him brought him into a sore
sickness. And he went home to his Dun in Tethba and there lay ill for
a year.
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