dvisers, and it is what
they agreed, to send a good champion of their own to see the strangers
and to speak with them. So they chose out Sreng, that was a great
fighting man, and he rose up and took his strong red-brown shield, and
his two thick-handled spears, and his sword, and his head-covering, and
his thick iron club, and he set out from Teamhair, and went on towards
the place the strangers were, at Magh Rein.

But before he reached it, the watchers of the Tuatha de Danaan got sight
of him, and they sent out one of their own champions, Bres, with his
shield and his sword and his two spears, to meet him and to talk with
him.

So the two champions went one towards the other slowly, and keeping a
good watch on one another, and wondering at one another's arms, till
they came near enough for talking; and then they stopped, and each put
his shield before his body and struck it hard into the ground, and they
looked at one another over the rim. Bres was the first to speak, and
when Sreng heard it was Irish he was talking, his own tongue, he was
less uneasy, and they drew nearer, and asked questions as to one
another's family and race.

And after a while they put their shields away, and it was what Sreng
said, that he had raised his in dread of the thin, sharp spears Bres had
in his hand. And Bres said he himself was in dread of the thick-handled
spears he saw with Sreng, and he asked were all the arms of the Firbolgs
of the same sort. And Sreng took off the tyings of his spears to show
them better, and Bres wondered at them, being so strong and so heavy,
and so sharp at the sides though they had no points. And Sreng told him
the name of those spears was Craisech, and that they would break through
shields and crush flesh and bones, so that their thrust was death or
wounds that never healed. And then he looked at the sharp, thin,
hard-pointed spears that were with Bres. And in the end they made an
exchange of spears, the way the fighters on each side would see the
weapons the others were used to. And it is the message Bres sent to the
Firbolgs, that if they would give up one half of Ireland, his people
would be content to take it in peace; but if they would not give up that
much, there should be a battle. And he and Sreng said to one another
that whatever might happen in the future, they themselves would be
friends.

Sreng went back then to Teamhair and gave the message and showed the
spear; and it is what he advised hi