blue-fronted wave: two hides by a tree. Two boats near
them full of thorns of a white thorn tree on a circular board. And there
seems to me somewhat like a slender stream of water on which the sun is
shining, and its trickle down from it, and a hide arranged behind it,
and a palace house-post shaped like a great lance above it. A good
weight of a plough-yoke is the shaft that is therein. Liken thou that, O
Fer rogain!

"Easy, meseems, to liken him! That is Mac cecht son of Snaide Teichid;
the battle-soldier of Conaire son of Eterscel. Good is the hero Mac
cecht! Supine he was in his room, in his sleep, when thou beheldest him.
The two bare hills which thou sawest by the man with hair, these are his
two knees by his head. The two loughs by the mountain which thou sawest,
these are his two eyes by his nose. The two hides by a tree which thou
sawest, these are his two ears by his head. The two five-thwarted boats
on a circular board, which thou sawest, these are his two sandals on his
shield. The slender stream of water which thou sawest, whereon the sun
shines, and its trickle down from it, this is the flickering of his
sword. The hide which thou sawest arranged behind him, that is his
sword's scabbard. The palace-housepost which thou sawest, that is his
lance; and he brandishes this spear till its two ends meet, and he hurls
a wilful cast of it when he pleases. Good is the hero, Mac cecht!"

"Six hundred will fall by him in his first encounter, and a man for each
of his weapons, besides a man for himself. And he will share prowess
with every one in the Hostel, and he will boast of triumph over a king
or chief of the reavers in front of the Hostel. He will chance to escape
though wounded. And when he shall chance to come upon you out of the
house, as numerous as hailstones, and grass on a green, and stars of
heaven will be your cloven heads and skulls, and the clots of your
brains, your bones and the heaps of your bowels, crushed by him and
scattered throughout the ridges."

Then with trembling and terror of Mac cecht they flee over three ridges.

They took the pledges among them again, even Ger and Gabur and Fer
rogain.

"Woe to him that shall wreak the Destruction!" says Lomna Druth; "your
heads will depart from you."

"Ye cannot," says Ingcel: "clouds of weakness are coming to you" etc.

"True indeed, O Ingcel," says Lomna Druth son of Donn Desa. "Not unto
thee is the loss caused by the Destruction. Woe is me f