How Ethne Quitted Fairyland By the banks of the River Boyne, where rises the great Fairy Mound now called Newgrange, there stood long ago the shining Palace of a prince of the People of Dana, named Angus.

Of him it is that the lines are written-- "By the dark rolling waters of the Boyne Where Angus Og magnificently dwells." When the Milesian race invaded Ireland, and after long fighting subdued the Danaans in spite of all their enchantments and all their valour, the Danaans wrought for themselves certain charms by which they and all their possessions became invisible to mortals, and thus they continued to lead their old joyous life in the holy places of the land, and their palaces and dancing-places and folk-motes seem to the human eye to be merely a green mound or rath, or a lonely hillside, or a ruined shrine with nettles and foxgloves growing up among its broken masonry.
Now, after Angus and his folk had thus retreated behind the veil of invisibility, it happened that the steward of his palace had a daughter born to him whose name was Ethne.

On the same day Fand, the wife of Mananan the Sea God, bore him a daughter, and since Angus was a friend of Mananan and much beloved by him, the child of the Sea God was sent to Brugh na Boyna, the noble dwelling-place of Angus, to be fostered and brought up, as the custom was.

And Ethne became the handmaid of the young princess of the sea.
In time Ethne grew into a fair and stately maiden Now in the Brugh of Angus there were two magical treasures, namely, an ale-vat which could never be emptied, and two swine whereof one was ever roasted and ready to be eaten while the other lived, and thus they were, day and day about.

There was therefore always a store of food of faery, charged with magical spells, by eating of which one could never grow old or die.