Chapter 6
But Fionn was gone. He was away, bound with his band of poets
for the Galtees.
It is likely they were junior poets come to the end of a year's
training, and returning to their own province to see again the
people at home, and to be wondered at and exclaimed at as they
exhibited bits of the knowledge which they had brought from the
great schools. They would know tags of rhyme and tricks about
learning which Fionn would hear of; and now and again, as they
rested in a glade or by the brink of a river, they might try their
lessons over. They might even refer to the ogham wands on which the
first words of their tasks and the opening lines of poems were cut;
and it is likely that, being new to these things, they would talk
of them to a youngster, and, thinking that his wit
