Then Cuchulainn comes to meet her.  The men rise to attack him.  Fourteen spears are thrown at him at once.  Cuchulainn guards himself so that his skin or his ——­ (?) is not touched.  Then he turns on them and kills them, the fourteen of them.  So that they are the fourteen men of Focherd, and they are the men of Cronech, for it is in Cronech at Focherd that they were killed.  Hence Cuchulainn said:  ‘Good is my feat of heroism,’ [Note:  Fo, ‘good’; cherd, ‘feat.’  Twelve lines of rhetoric.] etc.

So it is from this that the name Focherd stuck to the place; that is, focherd, i.e. ‘good is the feat of arms’ that happened to Cuchulainn there.

So Cuchulainn came, and overtook them taking camp, and there were slain two Daigris and two Anlis and four Dungais of Imlech.  Then Medb began to urge Loch there.

‘Great is the mockery of you,’ said she, ’for the man who has killed your brother to be destroying our host, and you do not go to battle with him!  For we deem it certain that the wild man, great and fierce [Note:  Literally, ’sharpened.’], the like of him yonder, will not be able to withstand the rage and fury of a hero like you.  For it is by one foster-mother and instructress that an art was built up for you both.’

Then Loch came against Cuchulainn, to avenge his brother on him, for it was shown to him that Cuchulainn had a beard.

‘Come to the upper ford,’ said Loch; ’it would not be in the polluted ford that we shall meet, where Long fell.’

When he came then to seek the ford, the men drove the cattle across.

’It will be across your water [Note:  Irish, tarteisc.] here to-day,’ said Gabran the poet.  Hence is Ath Darteisc, and Tir Mor Darteisc from that time on this place.

When the men met then on the ford, and when they began to fight and to strike each other there, and when each of them began to strike the other, the eel threw three folds round Cuchulainn’s feet, till he lay on his back athwart the ford.  Loch attacked him with the sword, till the ford was blood-red with his blood.

‘Ill indeed,’ said Fergus, ’is this deed before the enemy.  Let each of you taunt the man, O men,’ said he to his following, ’that he may not fall for nothing.’

Bricriu Poison-tongue Mac Carbatha rose and began inciting Cuchulainn.

‘Your strength is gone,’ said he, ’when it is a little salmon that overthrows you when the Ulstermen are at hand [coming] to you out of their sickness yonder.  Grievous for you to undertake a hero’s deed in the presence of the men of Ireland and to ward off a formidable warrior in arms thus!’

Therewith Cuchulainn arises and strikes the eel so that its ribs broke in it, and the cattle were driven over the hosts eastwards by force, so that they took the tents on their horns, with the thunder-feat that the two heroes had made in the ford.

The she-wolf attacked him, and drove the cattle on him westwards.  He throws a stone from his sling, so that her eye broke in her head.  She goes in the form of a hornless red heifer; she rushes before the cows upon the pools and fords.  It is then he said:  ’I cannot see the fords for water.’  He throws a stone at the hornless red heifer, so that her leg breaks under her.  Then he sang a song: