Ethne, whose story also is here, has lived for all her youth in the court of Angus, deep in the hill beside the rushing of the Boyne.
These stories are but a few out of a great number of the loves and wars between the men and women of the human and the fairy races.
Curiously enough, as the stories become less ancient, the relations between men and the fairies are more real, more close, even more affectionate.

Finn and the Fianna seem to be almost in daily companionship with the fairy host--much nearer to them than the men of the Heroic Cycle are to the gods.

They interchange love and music and battle and adventure with one another.

They are, for the most part, excellent friends; and their intercourse suffers from no doubt.

It is as real as the intercourse between Welsh and English on the Borderland.
There was nothing illusive, nothing merely imaginary, in these fairy worlds for the Irish hero or the Irish people.