she had; but on this day, the number was doubled and trebled by the acquisition of every hopeful young chieftain whose heart had been fired by the fame of King Kavaran’s sister.
All along the highways leading to the city could be seen groups of horsemen. Here a young chieftain would ride, with his father, escorted by the bard and the physician, two inseparable adjuncts to the dignity of every Celtic clan. After these followed the retainers. The bard’s office was very evident, as the sound of his harp was heard whenever the groups stopped to rest by the wayside; but did we not know that the physician was the constant attendant upon every enterprise of an Irish chieftain, we might suppose that his mission in this case would be to heal the wounds inflicted by the blue eyes of the princess.
On this beautiful May morning in the year A.D. 990, along the sloping roads that wind down from the hills of Wicklow to the plains of the Liffey, between the hawthorn hedges, came a particularly attractive group of travellers. A venerable chieftain sat at the head of the cavalcade. At his right hand rode his young son. They were Fergus and Eogan O’Niall, coming from their own province of Munster to be present at the fair. The white-haired man of seventy years sat his steed with almost the same grace as he did fifty years before, when he rode to meet the Danes in battle, or the Leinster chiefs when they encroached too closely upon his territory. The youth was in the
