Then said the king:  “This is the woman that has been prophesied to me!”

Now while she was there next morning she saw a Bird on the skylight coming to her, and he leaves his birdskin on the floor of the house, and went to her and possessed her, and said:  “They are coming to thee from the king to wreck thy house and to bring thee to him perforce.  And thou wilt be pregnant by me, and bear a son, and that son must not kill birds[4].  And ‘Conaire, son of Mess Buachalla’ shall be his name,” for hers was Mess Buachalla, “the Cowherds’ fosterchild.”

[Footnote 4:  This passage indicates the existence in Ireland of totems, and of the rule that the person to whom a totem belongs must not kill the totem-animal.—­W.S.]

And then she was brought to the king, and with her went her fosterers, and she was betrothed to the king, and he gave her seven cumals and to her fosterers seven other cumals.  And afterwards they were made chieftains, so that they all became legitimate, whence are the two Fedlimthi Rechtaidi.  And then she bore a son to the king, even Conaire son of Mess Buachalla, and these were her three urgent prayers to the king, to wit, the nursing of her son among three households, that is, the fosterers who had nurtured her, and the two Honeyworded Maines, and she herself is the third; and she said that such of the men of Erin as should wish to do aught for this boy should give to those three households for the boy’s protection.

So in that wise he was reared, and the men of Erin straightway knew this boy on the day he was born.  And other boys were fostered with him, to wit, Fer Le and Fer Gar and Fer Rogein, three great-grandsons of Donn Desa the champion, an army-man of the army from Muc-lesi.

Now Conaire possessed three gifts, to wit, the gift of hearing and the gift of eyesight and the gift of judgment; and of those three gifts he taught one to each of his three fosterbrothers.  And whatever meal was prepared for him, the four of them would go to it.  Even though three meals were prepared for him each of them would go to his meal.  The same raiment and armour and colour of horses had the four.

Then the king, even Eterscele, died.  A bull-feast is gathered by the men of Erin, in order to determine their future king; that is, a bull used to be killed by them and thereof one man would eat his fill and drink its broth, and a spell of truth was chanted over him in his bed.  Whosoever he would see in his sleep would be king, and the sleeper would perish if he uttered a falsehood.

Four men in chariots were on the Plain of Liffey at their game, Conaire himself and his three fosterbrothers.  Then his fosterers went to him that he might repair to the bull-feast.  The bull-feaster, then in his sleep, at the end of the night beheld a man stark-naked, passing along the road of Tara, with a stone in his sling.

“I will go in the morning after you,” quoth he.