Then he put on his head a ridged-helmet of battle and contest and strife, from which there was uttered the shout of a hundred warriors, with along cry from every corner and every angle of it.  For there used to cry from it equally goblins and sprites and ghosts of the glen and demons of the air, before and above and around, wherever he used to go before shedding the blood of warriors and enemies.  There was cast over him his dress of concealment by the garment of the Land of Promise that was given by his foster-father in wizardry.

It is then came the first contortion on Cuchulainn, so that it made him horrible, many-shaped, wonderful, strange.  His shanks shook like a tree before the stream, or like a rush against the stream, every limb and every joint and every end and every member, of him from head to foot.  He made a ——­ of rage of his body inside his skin.  His feet and his shins and his knees came so that they were behind him; his heels and his calves and his hams came so that they were in front.  The front-sinews of his calves came so that they were on the front of his shins, so that every huge knot of them was as great as a warrior’s clenched fist.  The temple-sinews of his head were stretched, so that they were on the hollow of his neck, so that every round lump of them, very great, innumerable, not to be equalled (?), measureless, was as great as the head of a month old child.

Then he made a red bowl of his face and of his visage on him; he swallowed one of his two eyes into his head, so that from his cheek a wild crane could hardly have reached it [to drag it] from the back of his skull.  The other sprang out till it was on his cheek outside.  His lips were marvellously contorted.  Tie drew the cheek from the jawbone, so that his gullet was visible.  His lungs and his lights came so that they were flying in his mouth and in his throat.  He struck a blow of the ——­ of a lion with his upper palate on the roof of his skull, so that every flake of fire that came into his mouth from his throat was as large as a wether’s skin.  His heart was heard light-striking (?) against his ribs like the roaring of a bloodhound at its food, or like a lion going through bears.  There were seen the palls of the Badb, and the rain-clouds of poison, and the sparks of fire very red in clouds and in vapours over his head with the boiling of fierce rage, that rose over him.

His hair curled round his head like the red branches of a thorn in the gap of Atalta (?).  Though a royal apple-tree under royal fruit had been shaken about it, hardly would an apple have reached the ground through it, but an apple would have fixed on every single hair there, for the twisting of the rage that rose from his hair above him.

The hero’s light rose from his forehead, so that it was as long, and as thick, as a warrior’s whet-stone, so that it was equally long with the nose, till he went mad in playing with the shields, in pressing on (?) the charioteer, in ——­ the hosts.  As high, as thick, as strong, as powerful, as long, as the mast of a great ship, was the straight stream of dark blood that rose straight up from the very top of his head, so that it made a dark smoke of wizardry like the smoke of a palace when the king comes to equip himself in the evening of a wintry day.