So a hurling-match was called for the first day of Lunassa, and it was to be played along the strand of the sea. Mananaun himself set the goal-marks, and Aine’ was there to watch the game. It was played from the rising of the sun until the high tide of noon, and neither side won a goal. Then the players stopped to eat the refreshment that Mananaun had provided.
This is what Mananaun had brought from his own country, Silver-Cloud Plain: a branch of bright-red rowan berries. Whoever ate one of these rowan berries his hunger and his weariness left him in a moment. The berries were to be eaten by the players, Mananaun said, and not one of them was to be taken into the world of the mortals or the world of the Fairies.
When they stopped playing at the high tide of noon the mortal Fergus saw Aine’ and saw her for the first time. A spirit that he had never felt before flowed into him at the sight of Mananaun’s daughter. He forgot to eat the berry he was given and held it in his mouth by the stalk.
He went into the hurling-match again and now he was like a hawk amongst small birds. Curoi defended the goal and drove the ball back. Fergus drove it to the goal again; the two champions met and Curoi’s hurl, made out of rhinoceros’ horn, did not beat down Fergus’s hurl made out of the ash of the wood. The hosts stood aside and left the game to Fergus and Curoi. Curoi’s hurl jerked the ball upward; then Fergus gave it the double stroke first with the handle and then with the weighted end of the hurl and drove it, beautifully as a flying bird, between the goal-marks that Mananaun had set up. The match was won by the goal that Fergus had gained.
The Fianna then invited the Fairies of Munster to a feast that they were giving to Fergus and his bride. The Fairies went, and Mananaun and Aine’ went before them all. Fergus marched at the head of his troop with the rowan berry still hanging from his mouth. And as he went he bit the stalk and the berry fell to the ground. Fergus never heeded that.
When the feast was over he went to where Mananaun stood with his daughter. Aine’ gave him her hand. “And it is well,” said Conan, the Fool of the Fianna, “that this thick-witted Fergus has at last dropped the berry out of his mouth.” “What berry?” said Curoi, who was standing by. “The rowan berry,” said Conan, “that he carried across two townlands the same as if he were a bird.”