The He was known as the Enchanter, the Wizard 

 Milky as we would say now, and was feared on this 

 ay account, and because he was the son of Don, 

 King of the Otherworld, Lord of the Secret 

 People, the * fairies ' of later tradition. Like 

 Grania, the beautiful wife of Fionn, whose 

 elopement with Dermid and their subsequent 

 epical odyssey is the subject of one of the 

 greatest and to this day most popular of 

 Gaelic legendary romances, the wife of Gwy- 

 thon fled from his following vengeance from 

 land to land, across seas, over mountains, 'to 

 the ends of the earth,' and at last with her 

 faery lover dared the vast untrodden ways of 

 the remote skies. But long before they could 

 reach Arcturus, or whatever the star or planet 

 to which they fled, Gwython overtook them, 

 led by the dust which these mortal if semi- 

 divine fugitives made along the soundless dark 

 blue roads of heaven. He slew them and their 

 winged horses and their aerial hounds, and 

 standing on the verge of space flung the heads 

 and limbs and bodies into infinitude. Hence 

 the meteors and falling stars which at the 

 season of the autumnal equinox and at the 

 approach of winter may still be seen whirling 

 adown the bastions of high heaven. So terrible 

 in tragedy, so titanic the deed, that to all 

 eternity, or as long as our world endures, the 



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