Over the days that followed Mac became more and more disconsolate.

One evening Inteachán found him furiously ripping pieces of paper and throwing them into the fire grate.

‘Mac!’ she gasped. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I fear, my dear,’ said the sad old man, ‘that everything I have worked on for my whole life is just fundamentally mistaken and wrong.’

He ripped another page and screwed it into an angry ball.

‘Fomhóire. Infections. Kings. Horns. Tombs. All those tiny words I spent years scribbling now worthless.’

Inteachán stood silent as Mac cried his heart out.