raged, and everywhere was seen the strange bard, encouraging the intruders, until at length in the affray he encountered Conrigh, and casting off the false beard that disguised him, they stood face to face amid the combat—the husband and the lover of Brehilda. They fought with all the terrible hate that animated them, and Conrigh fell, pierced with many wounds, beneath the sword of his adversary. A brief moment, and Maon, bearing the insensible form of Brehilda, passed swiftly through the hall and out at the portal. Mounting a strong steed, while the assailants continued their work of blood, and placing her for whom he had wrought the night’s sacrifice, before him, he fled with all speed toward the court of Conquovar Mac Nessa, King of Ulster.
This wise and munificent king was a patron of the learned, and in his court the unfortunate and the proscribed found an asylum and a mediator. Morning dawned as Maon paused in his flight beside a running spring, and alighted with his unconscious burthen. He sprinkled her brow with the cool lymph, and filling the korn—the cup sacred to the deity of the earth and the waters, suspended from the overhanging branch of a tree—he raised the draught to her lips. Who can describe the rapture of Brehilda, on awaking from her long trance, to find herself supported by the arms of the lover of her girlhood, and to meet again his look of ardent affection.
