At length six of the tallest and mightiest of the warriors of the High King took up the bier upon their shoulders, and strode in.

And first the watchers on the bank saw the brown water swirl about their knees, and then they sank thigh-deep, and at last it foamed against their shoulders, yet still they braced themselves against the current, moving forward very slowly as they found foothold among the slippery rocks in the river-bed.

But when they had almost reached the mid-stream it seemed as if a great surge overwhelmed them, and caught the bier from their shoulders as they plunged and clutched around it, and they must needs make back for the shore as best they could, while Boyne swept down the body of Cormac to the sea.
On the following morning, however, shepherds driving their flocks to pasture on the hillside of Ross-na-ree found cast upon the shore the body of an aged man of noble countenance, half wrapped in a silken pall; and knowing not who this might be they dug a grave in the grassy hill, and there laid the stranger, and laid the green sods over him again.
There still sleeps Cormac the King, and neither Ogham-lettered stone nor sculptured cross marks his solitary grave.

But he lies in the place where he would be, of which a poet of the Gael in our day has written:-- "A tranquil spot: a hopeful sound Comes from the ever-youthful stream, And still on daisied mead and mound The dawn delays with tenderer beam.
"Round Cormac, spring renews her buds: In march perpetual by his side Down come the earth-fresh April floods, And up the sea-fresh salmon glide; "And life and time rejoicing run From age to age their wonted way; But still he waits the risen sun, For still 'tis only dawning day."[39] [39] These lines are taken from Sir S.Ferguson's noble poem, _The Burial of King Cormac_, from which I have also borrowed some of the details of the foregoing narrative.
* * * * * Notes on the Sources _The Story of the Children of Lir_ and _The Quest of the Sons of Turenn_ are two of the three famous and popular tales entitled "The Three Sorrows of Storytelling." The third is the _Tragedy of the Sons of Usna_, rendered by Miss Eleanor Hull in her volume CUCHULAIN.

I have taken the two stories which are given here from the versions in modern Irish published by the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, with notes and translation.