‘Have you news?’ said Conchobar.

‘Women are captured,’ said Cuchulainn, ’cattle are driven away, men are slain.’

‘Who carries them off? who drives them away? who kills them?’

’...  Ailill Mac Matae carries them off, and Fergus Mac Roich very bold ...’ [Note:  Rhetoric.]

‘It is not great profit to you,’ said Conchobar, ’to-day, our smiting has come to us all the same.’

Cuchulainn goes thence from them; he saw the hosts going forth.

‘Alas,’ said Ailill, ‘I see chariots’ ..., etc [Note:  Rhetoric, five lines.]

Cuchulainn kills thirty men of them on Ath Duirn.  They could not reach Cul Airthir then till night.  He slays thirty of them there, and they pitch their tents there.  Ailill’s charioteer, Cuillius, was washing the chariot tyres [Note:  See previous note on the word fonnod; the word used here is fonnod.] in the ford in the morning; Cuchulainn struck him with a stone and killed him.  Hence is Ath Cuillne in Cul Airthir.  They reach Druim Feine in Conaille and spent the night there, as we have said before.

Cuchulainn attacked them there; he slays a hundred men of them every night of the three nights that they were there; he took a sling to them from Ochaine near them.

‘Our host will be short-lived through Cuchulainn in this way,’ said Ailill.  ’Let an agreement be carried from us to him:  that he shall have the equal of Mag Murthemne from Mag Ai, and the best chariot that is in Ai, and the equipment of twelve men.  Offer, if it pleases him better, the plain in which he was brought up, and three sevens of cumals [Note:  The cumal (bondmaid) was a standard of value.]; and everything that has been destroyed of his household (?) and cattle shall be made good, and he shall have full compensation (?), and let him go into my service; it is better for him than the service of a sub king.’

‘Who shall go for that?’

‘Mac Roth yonder.’

Mac Roth, the messenger of Ailill and Medb, went on that errand to Delga:  it is he who encircles Ireland in one day.  It is there that Fergus thought that Cuchulainn was, in Delga.

‘I see a man coming towards us,’ said Loeg to Cuchulainn.  ’He has a yellow head of hair, and a linen emblem round it; a club of fury(?) in his hand, an ivory-hilted sword at his waist; a hooded tunic with red ornamentation on him.’

‘Which of the warriors of the king is that?’ said Cuchulainn.

Mac Roth asked Loeg whose man he was.

‘Vassal to the man down yonder,’ said Loeg.

Cuchulainn was there in the snow up to his two thighs, without anything at all on him, examining his shirt.

Then Mac Roth asked Cuchulainn whose man he was.

‘Vassal of Conchobar Mac Nessa,’ said Cuchulainn.

‘Is there no clearer description?’

‘That is enough,’ said Cuchulainn.

‘Where then is Cuchulainn?’ said Mac Roth.