The door-keeper went in and told the king that there were poets from Ireland at the door.  “Let them in,” said the king, “for it is in search of a good man they came so far from their own country.”  And the king gave orders that everything should be well set out in the court, the way they would say they had seen no place so grand in all their travels.

The sons of Tuireann were let in then, having the appearance of poets, and they fell to drinking and pleasure without delay; and they thought they had never seen, and there was not in the world, a court so good as that or so large a household, or a place where they had met with better treatment.

Then the king’s poets got up to give out their poems and songs.  And then Brian, son of Tuireann, bade his brothers to say a poem for the king.  “We have no poem,” said they; “and do not ask any poem of us, but the one we know before, and that is to take what we want by the strength of our hand if we are the strongest, or to fall by those that are against us if they are the strongest.”  “That is not a good way to make a poem,” said Brian.  And with that he rose up himself and asked a hearing.  And they all listened to him, and it is what he said: 

“O Tuis, we do not hide your fame; we praise you as the oak among kings; the skin of a pig, bounty without hardness, this is the reward I ask for it.

“The war of a neighbour against an ear; the fair ear of his neighbour will be against him; he who gives us what he owns, his court will not be the scarcer for it.

“A raging army and a sudden sea are a danger to whoever goes against them.  The skin of a pig, bounty without hardness, this is the reward I ask, O Tuis.”

“That is a good poem,” said the king; “but I do not know a word of its meaning.”  “I will tell you its meaning,” said Brian. “’O Tuis, we do not hide your fame; we praise you as the oak above the kings.’  That is, as the oak is beyond the kingly trees of the wood, so are you beyond the kings of the world for open-handedness and for grandeur.

“‘The skin of a pig, bounty without hardness.’  That is, the skin of a pig you own is what I would wish to get from you as a reward for my poem.

“’The war of a neighbour against an ear, the fair ear of his neighbour will be against him.’  That is, you and I will be by the ears about the skin, unless I get it with your consent.

“And that is the meaning of the poem,” said Brian.

“I would praise your poem,” said the king, “if there was not so much about my pig-skin in it; and you have no good sense, man of poetry,” he said, “to be asking that thing of me, and I would not give it to all the poets and the learned men and the great men of the world, since they could not take it away without my consent.  But I will give you three times the full of the skin of gold as the price of your poem,” he said.

“May good be with you, king,” said Brian, “and I know well it was no easy thing I was asking, but I knew I would get a good ransom for it.  And I am that covetous,” he said, “I will not be satisfied without seeing the gold measured myself into the skin.”