Yet he raised his shield and gripped the fairy sword, striving to shout the Fian battle-cry as he closed with Fovor.

But soon a heavy blow smote him to the ground, and his armour clanged harshly on the stones.

Then a cloud seemed to pass from his spirit, and he leaped to his feet quicker than an arrow flies from the string, and thrusting fiercely at the giant his sword-point gashed the under side of Fovor's arm when it was raised to strike, and Oisin saw his enemy's blood.

Then the fight raged hither and thither about the wide courtyard, with trampling of feet and clash of steel and ringing of armour and shouts of onset as the heroes closed; Oisin, agile as a wild stag, evading the sweep of the mighty axe and rushing in with flickering blade at every unguarded moment, his whole soul bent on one fierce thought, to drive his point into some gap at shoulder or neck in Fovor's coat of mail.

At length, when both were weary and wounded men, with hacked and battered armour, Oisin's blade cut the thong of Fovor's headpiece and it fell clattering to the ground.