‘Why do you blame the men?’ said Ailill.

‘We do not blame them,’ said Medb; ’splendid are the warriors.  When the rest were making their huts, they had finished thatching their huts and cooking their food; when the rest were at dinner, they had finished dinner, and their harpers were playing to them.  It is folly for them to go,’ said Medb; ’it is to their credit the victory of the hosts will be.’

‘It is for us they fight,’ said Ailill.

‘They shall not come with us,’ said Medb.

‘Let them stay then,’ said Ailill.

‘They shall not stay,’ said Medb.  ’They will come on us after we have gone,’ said she, ‘and seize our land against us.’

‘What is to be done to them?’ said Ailill; ’will you have them neither stay nor go?’

‘To kill them,’ said Medb.

‘We will not hide that this is a woman’s plan,’ said Ailill; ’what you say is not good!’

‘With this folk,’ said Fergus, ’it shall not happen thus (for it is a folk bound by ties to us Ulstermen), unless we are all killed.’

‘Even that we could do,’ said Medb; ’for I am here with my retinue of two cantreds,’ said she, ’and there are the seven Manes, that is, my seven sons, with seven cantreds; their luck can protect them,’ (?) said she; ’that is Mane-Mathramail, and Mane-Athramail, and Mane-Morgor, and Mane-Mingor, and Mane-Moepert (and he is Mane-Milscothach), Mane-Andoe, and Mane-who-got-everything:  he got the form of his mother and of his father, and the dignity of both.’

‘It would not be so,’ said Fergus.  ’There are seven kings of Munster here, and a cantred with each of them, in friendship with us Ulstermen.  I will give battle to you,’ said Fergus, ’in the middle of the host in which we are, with these seven cantreds, and with my own cantred, and with the cantred of the Leinstermen.  But I will not urge that,’ said Fergus, ’we will provide for the warriors otherwise, so that they shall not prevail over the host.  Seventeen cantreds for us,’ said Fergus, ’that is the number of our army, besides our rabble, and our women (for with each king there is his queen, in Medb’s company), and besides our striplings.  This is the eighteenth cantred, the cantred of the Leinstermen.  Let them be distributed among the rest of the host.’

‘I do not care,’ said Medb, ’provided they are not gathered as they are.’

Then this was done; the Leinstermen were distributed among the host.

They set out next morning to Moin Choiltrae, where eight score deer fell in with them in one herd.  They surrounded them and killed them then; wherever there was a man of the Leinstermen, it was he who got them, except five deer that all the rest of the host got.  Then they came to Mag Trego, and stopped there and prepared their food.  They say that it is there that Dubthach sang this song: 

’Grant what you have not heard hitherto,
Listening to the fight of Dubthach. 
A hosting very black is before you,
Against Findbend of the wife of Ailill.
[Note:  Findbennach, the Whitehorned; i.e. the other of the two bulls in whom the rival swineherds were reincarnated.]