And Goll, and the sons of Morna, who were
now captains of the Fianna under the High King, began to hear tales of
him and his exploits, and they sent trackers to inquire about him, for
they had an inkling of who this wonderful fair-haired youth might be.
Finn's foster mothers heard of this. "You must leave this place," they
said to him, "and see our faces no more, for if Goll's men find you
here they will slay you. We have cherished the blood of Cumhal," they
said, "and now our work is done. Go, and may blessing and victory go
with you." So Finn departed with naught but his weapons and his
hunting gear, very sorrowful at leaving the wise and loving friends
who had fostered his childhood; but deep in his heart was a wild and
fierce delight at the thought of the trackless ways he would travel,
and the wonders he would see; and all the future looked to him as
beautiful and dim as the mists that fill a mountain glen under the
morning sun.
Now after the death of Cumhal, his brother Crimmal and a few others of
the aged warriors of the Fianna, who had not fallen in the fight at
Cnucha, fled away into Connacht, and lived there in the deepest
recesses of a great forest, where they hoped the conquerors might
never find them. Here they built themselves a poor dwelling of tree
branches, plastered with mud and roofed with reeds from the lake, and
here they lived on what game they could kill or snare in the wild
wood; and harder and harder it grew, as age and feebleness crept on
them, to find enough to eat, or to hew wood for their fire.
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