them, and ordered them off instantly. Then
he sat down by the giants' corpses to watch. But he was so tired from
his great day's fighting that by and by he fell asleep.

About twelve o'clock at night, when the Amadan was sleeping soundly,
up comes a _cailliach_ [old hag] and four _badachs_ [unwieldy big
fellows], and the cailliach carried with her a feather and a bottle of
_iocshlainte_ [ointment of health], with which she began to rub the
giants' wounds.

Two of the giants were already alive when the Amadan awoke, and the
third was just opening his eyes. Up sprang the Amadan, and at him
leaped they all--Slat Mor, Slat Marr, Slat Beag, the cailliach, and
the four badachs.

If the Amadan had had a hard fight during the day, this one was surely
ten times harder. But a brave and a bold fellow he was, and not to be
daunted by numbers of showers of blows. They fought for long and long.
They made the hard ground into soft, and the soft into spring wells;
they made the rocks into pebbles, and the pebbles into gravel, and the
gravel fell over the country like hailstones. All the birds of the air
from the lower end of the world to the upper end of of the world, and
all the wild beasts and tame from the four ends of the earth, came
flocking to see the fight; and one after the other of them the Amadan
ran his sword through, until he had every man of them stretched on the
ground, dying or dead.

And when the old cailliach was dying, she called the Amadan to her and
put him under _geasa_ [an obligation that he could not shirk] to lose
the power of his feet, of his strength, of his sight, and of his
memory, if he did not go to meet and fight the Black Bull of the Brown
Wood.

When the old hag died outright, the Amadan rubbed some of the
iocshlainte to his wounds with the feather, and at once he was as hale
and as fresh as when the fight began. Then he took the feather and the
bottle of iocshlainte, buckled on his sword, and started away before
him to fulfil his geasa.

He travelled for the length of that lee-long day, and when night was
falling, he came to a little hut on the edge of a wood; and the hut
had no shelter inside or out but one feather over it, and there was a
rough, red woman standing in the door.

"You're welcome!" says she, "Amadan of the Dough, the king of
Ireland's son. What have you been doing and where are you going?"

"Last night," says the Amadan, "I fought a great fight, and killed
Slat Mor, Slat Mar