still, for it
was fearful to look at. In body it was not large, but its head was of a
great size, and the mouth that was shaped in that head was able to open
like the lid of a pot. It was not teeth which were in that head, but
hooks and fangs and prongs. Dreadful was that mouth to look at, terrible
to look into, woeful to think about; and from it, or from the broad,
loose nose that waggled above it, there came a sound which no word of
man could describe, for it was not a snarl, nor was it a howl, although
it was both of these. It was neither a growl nor a grunt, although it
was both of these; it was not a yowl nor a groan, although it was both
of these: for it was one sound made up of these sounds, and there was in
it, too, a whine and a yelp, and a long-drawn snoring noise, and a deep
purring noise, and a noise that was like the squeal of a rusty hinge,
and there were other noises in it also.

"The gods be praised!" said the man who was in the branch above the
king.

"What for this time?" said the king.

"Because that dog cannot climb a tree," said the man.

And the man on a branch yet above him groaned out "Amen!"

"There is nothing to frighten sheep like a dog," said Mananna'n, "and
there is nothing to frighten these sheep like this dog."

He put the dog on the ground then.

"Little dogeen, little treasure," said he, "go and kill the sheep."

And when he said that the dog put an addition and an addendum on to the
noise he had been making before, so that the men of Ireland stuck their
fingers into their ears and turned the whites of their eyes upwards, and
nearly fell off their branches with the fear and the fright which that
sound put into them.

It did not take the dog long to do what he had been ordered. He went
forward, at first, with a slow waddle, and as the venomous sheep came to
meet him in bounces, he then went to meet them in wriggles; so that in a
while he went so fast that you could see nothing of him but a head and
a wriggle. He dealt with the sheep in this way, a jump and a chop for
each, and he never missed his jump and he never missed his chop. When he
got his grip he swung round on it as if it was a hinge. The swing began
with the chop, and it ended with the bit loose and the sheep giving its
last kick. At the end of ten minutes all the sheep were lying on the
ground, and the same bit was out of every sheep, and every sheep was
dead.

"You can come down now," said Mananna'n.

"That dog