So Finn took the spear, and left the strings of the case loose, and he
paced with it towards night-fall around the ramparts of royal Tara.
And when he had once made the circuit of the rampart, and the light
had now almost quite faded from the summer sky, and the wide low
plains around the Hill of Tara were a sea of white mist, he heard far
off in the deepening gloom the first notes of the fairy harp. Never
such music was made by mortal hand, for it had in it sorrows that man
has never felt, and joys for which man has no name, and it seemed as
if a man listening to that music might burst from time into eternity
and be as one of the Immortals for evermore. And Finn listened, amazed
and rapt, till at last as the triumphant melody grew nearer and louder
he saw dimly a Shadow Shape playing as it were on a harp, and coming
swiftly towards him. Then with a mighty effort he roused himself from
dreams, and tore the cover from the spear-head and laid the metal to
his brow. And the demoniac energy that had been beaten into the blade
by the hammers of unearthly craftsmen in ancient days thrilled
through him and made him fighting-mad, and he rushed forward shouting
his battle-cry, and swinging the spear aloft. But the Shadow turned
and fled before him, and Finn chased it northward to the Fairy Mound
of Slieve Fuad, and there he drove the spear through its back.
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