n its fellow[3] so that as large as
a wether's fleece of a three year old was each [4]red,[4] fiery flake
[5]which his teeth forced[5] into his mouth from his gullet. There was
heard the loud clap of his heart against his breast like the yelp of a
howling bloodhound or like a lion going among bears. [LL.fo.78a.] There
were seen the [a]torches of the Badb,[a] and the rain clouds of poison, and
the sparks of glowing-red fire, [6]blazing and flashing[6] in hazes and
mists over his head with the seething of the truly-wild wrath that rose up
above him. His hair bristled all over his head like branches of a redthorn
thrust into a gap in a great hedge. Had a king's apple-tree laden with
royal fruit been shaken around him, scarce an apple of them all would have
passed over him to the ground, but rather would an apple have stayed stuck
on each single hair there, for the twisting of the anger which met it as it
rose from his hair above him. The Lon Laith ('Champion's Light') stood out
of his forehead, so that it was as long and as thick as a warrior's
whetstone, [7]so that it was as long as his nose, till he got furious
handling the shields, thrusting out the charioteer, destroying the
hosts.[7] As high, as thick, as strong, as steady, as long as the sail-tree
of some huge [W.2623.] prime ship was the straight spout of dark blood
which arose right on high from the very ridgepole of his crown, so that a
black fog of witchery was made thereof like to the smoke from a king's
hostel what time the king comes to be ministered to at nightfall of a
winter's day.

[1-1] Eg. 93 and H. 2. 17.

[2-2] Stowe.

[3-3] Reading with Stowe.

[4-4] Eg. 93 and H. 2. 17.

[5-5] Reading with Eg. 93.

[a-a] A kenning for 'swords.'

[6-6] Eg. 93 and H. 2. 17.

[7-7] LU. 1958-1959.

When now this contortion had been completed in Cuchulain, then it was that
the hero of valour sprang into his scythed war-chariot, with its iron
sickles, its thin blades, its hooks and its hard spikes, with its hero's
fore-prongs, with its opening fixtures, with its stinging nails that were
fastened to the poles and thongs and bows and lines of the chariot,
[1]lacerating heads and bones and bodies, legs and necks and shoulders.[1]

[1-1] Eg. 93 and H. 2. 17.

It was then he delivered [2]over his chariot[2] the thunder-feat of a
hundred and the thunder-feat of two hundred and the thunder-feat of three
hundred and the thunder-fea