' And another
said: 'It is not to the Country of the Young you will be going if you
go with him, but to Mayo of the bogs.' Oona looked at him then as if
she would question him, but he raised her hand in his hand, and
called out between singing and shouting: 'It is very near us that
country is, it is on every side; it may be on the bare hill behind it
is, or it may be in the heart of the wood.' And he said out very loud
and clear: 'In the heart of the wood; oh, death will never find us in
the heart of the wood. And will you come with me there, Oona?' he
said.
But while he was saying this the two old women had gone outside the
door, and Oona's mother was crying, and she said: 'He has put an
enchantment on Oona. Can we not get the men to put him out of the
house?'
'That is a thing you cannot do, said the other woman,' for he is a
poet of the Gael, and you know well if you would put a poet of the
Gael out of the house, he would put a curse on you that would wither
the corn in the fields and dry up the milk of the cows, if it had to
hang in the air seven years.'
'God help us,' said the mother, 'and why did I ever let him into the
house at all, and the wild name he has!'
'It would have been no harm at all to have kept him outside, but
there would great harm come upon you if you put him out by force. But
listen to the plan I have to get him out of the house by his own
doing, without anyone putting him from it at all.
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