ade
To see the work that Conall made,
Till he pierced with a bitter blow,
That hero youth his hardy foe."

That is all we are told of the fighting; the ballad passes straight to a
terse dramatic dialogue, which Cuchulain opens:--

"Champion, tell your story,
For I see your wounds are heavy;
'Twill be short ere they raise your cairn,
So hide your testament no longer."

"That's what he said to the son," said James Kelly, finishing the verse,
and beginning afresh,

"Let me fall on my face,
For methinks 'tis you are my father,
And for fear lest men of Eire should see
Me retreating from your fierce grapple."

"Then," said James, "the son spoke for to tell him the reason he
couldn't spake at the first":--

"I took pledges to my mother
Not to give my story to any single man,
If I would give it to any under the sun,
It is to your bright body I would tell it."

("Complimenting him, like," said James.) Then he recited the stanza
which tells by implication how in the long duel Cuchulain was at last
driven to use the irresistible stroke of Sgathach's teaching:--

"I lay my curse on my mother,
That she put me under pledge;
But if it were not for the feat of magic
I had not been got for nothing."

(It is a fine phrase surely, "You had paid dear in blood before you
mastered me.")

Cuchulain answers groaning, with a wail for the lineage that is cut off:

"I lay my curse on your mother,
For she destroyed a multitude of young ones;
And because the treachery that was in her
Left your smooth flesh reddened."

Then comes, with the boy's dying word, the revelation of the most tragic
moment in the fight.

"Cuchulain, beloved father,
Is it not a wonder you did not know me
When I cast my spear crooked and feebly
Against your bush of blades."

Where will you find a finer stroke of invention? The boy, tongue-tied by
his pledge, knows his father and feels his defence failing against the
terrible onset; he would not, if he could, be the victor, but he thinks
of a way within the honour of his bond which may awaken knowledge of
him; and he casts his javelin with a clumsiness not to be looked for in
the champion "that tied Conall." It is useless, the battle madness is in
Cuchulain, he thinks only of conquest, an end to the supple, quick
parrying, and he throws the gaebulg, a spear of dragon's bones bristling
with point