Then the woman goes to him.

“I know not,” says he, “whether it is a fly or a gnat, or an ant that nips me in the wound.”

It happened that it was a hairy wolf that was there, as far as its two shoulders in the wound!

The woman seized it by the tail, and dragged it out of the wound, and it takes the full of its jaws out of him.

“Truly,” says the woman, “this is ‘an ant of ancient land.’”

Says Mac cecht “I swear to God what my people swears, I deemed it no bigger than a fly, or a gnat, or an ant.”

And Mac cecht took the wolf by the throat, and struck it a blow on the forehead, and killed it with a single blow.

Then Le fri flaith, son of Conaire, died under Mac cecht’s armpit, for the warrior’s heat and sweat had dissolved him.

Thereafter Mac cecht, having cleansed the slaughter, at the end of the third day, set forth, and he dragged Conaire with him on his back, and buried him at Tara, as some say.  Then Mac cecht departed into Connaught, to his own country, that he might work his cure in Mag Brengair.  Wherefore the name clave to the plain from Mac cecht’s misery, that is, Mag Bren-guir.

Now Conall Cernach escaped from the Hostel, and thrice fifty spears had gone through the arm which upheld his shield.  He fared forth till he reached his father’s house, with half his shield in his hand, and his sword, and the fragments of his two spears.  Then he found his father before his garth in Taltiu.

“Swift are the wolves that have hunted thee, my son,” saith his father.

“’Tis this that has wounded us, thou old hero, an evil conflict with warriors,” Conall Cernach replied.

“Hast thou then news of Da Derga’s Hostel?” asked Amorgin.  “Is thy lord alive?”

“He is not alive,” says Conall.

“I swear to God what the great tribes of Ulaid swear, it is cowardly for the man who went thereout alive, having left his lord with his foes in death.”

“My wounds are not white, thou old hero,” says Conall.

He shews him his shield-arm, whereon were thrice fifty wounds:  this is what was inflicted upon it.  The shield that guarded it is what saved it.  But the right arm had been played upon, as far as two thirds thereof, since the shield had not been guarding it.  That arm was mangled and maimed and wounded and pierced, save that the sinews kept it to the body without separation.

“That arm fought tonight, my son,” says Amorgein.

“True is that, thou old hero,” says Conall Cernach.  “Many there are unto whom it gave drinks of death tonight in front of the Hostel.”

Now as to the reavers, every one of them that escaped from the Hostel went to the cairn which they had built on the night before last, and they brought thereout a stone for each man not mortally wounded.  So this is what they lost by death at the Hostel, a man for every stone that is (now) in Carn Lecca.