he sees him in the trench,
and there was the earth round him on every side to hide him.

'"Why have you come into the battlefield," said Conchobar, "that
you may swoon there?"

'He lifts him out of the trench then; six of the strong men of
Ulster with us would not have brought him out more bravely.

'"Go before us to the house yonder," said Conchobar; "if a roast
pig came to me, I should live."

'"I will go and bring it," said Cuchulainn.

'He goes then, and saw a man at a cooking-hearth in the middle of
the wood; one of his two hands had his weapons in it, the other was
cooking the pig.

'The hideousness of the man was great; nevertheless he attacked him
and took his head and his pig with him. Conchobar ate the pig then.

'"Let us go to our house," said Conchobar.

'They met Cuscraid Mac Conchobair. There were sure wounds on him;
Cuchulainn took him on his back. The three of them went then to
Emain Macha.

'Another time the Ulstermen were in their weakness. There was not
among us,' said Fergus, 'weakness on women and boys, nor on any one
who was outside the country of the Ulstermen, nor on Cuchulainn and
his father. And so no one dared to shed their blood; for the
suffering springs on him who wounds them. [Gloss incorporated in
text: 'or their decay, or their shortness of life.']

'Three times nine men came to us from the Isles of Faiche. They
went over our back court when we were in our weakness. The women
screamed in the court. The boys were in the play-field; they come
at the cries. When the boys saw the dark, black men, they all take
to flight except Cuchulainn alone. He plies hand-stones and his
playing-club on them. He kills nine of them, and they leave fifty
wounds on him, and they go forth besides. A man who did these deeds
when his five years were not full, it would be no wonder that he
should have come to the edge of the boundary and that he should
have cut off the heads of yonder four.'

'We know him indeed, this boy,' said Conall Cernach, 'and we know
him none the worse that he is a fosterling of ours. It was not long
after the deed that Fcrgus has just related, when he did another
deed. When Culann the smith served a feast to Conchobar, Culann
said that it was not a multitude that should be brought to him, for
the preparation which he had made was not from land or country, but
from the fruit of his two hands and his pincers. Then Conchobar
went, and fifty chariots with him, of those who