He next made a ruddy bowl of his face and his countenance.  He gulped down one eye into his head so that it [W.2603.] would be hard work if a wild crane succeeded in drawing it out on to the middle of his cheek from the rear of his skull.  Its mate sprang forth till it came out on his cheek, [1]so that it was the size of a five-fist kettle, and he made a red berry thereof out in front of his head.[1] His mouth was distorted monstrously [2]and twisted up to his ears[2].  He drew the cheek from the jaw-bone so that the interior of his throat was to be seen.  His lungs and his lights stood out so that they fluttered in his mouth and his gullet.  He struck a mad lion’s blow with the upper jaw [3]on its fellow[3] so that as large as a wether’s fleece of a three year old was each [4]red,[4] fiery flake [5]which his teeth forced[5] into his mouth from his gullet.  There was heard the loud clap of his heart against his breast like the yelp of a howling bloodhound or like a lion going among bears. [LL.fo.78a.] There were seen the [a]torches of the Badb,[a] and the rain clouds of poison, and the sparks of glowing-red fire, [6]blazing and flashing[6] in hazes and mists over his head with the seething of the truly-wild wrath that rose up above him.  His hair bristled all over his head like branches of a redthorn thrust into a gap in a great hedge.  Had a king’s apple-tree laden with royal fruit been shaken around him, scarce an apple of them all would have passed over him to the ground, but rather would an apple have stayed stuck on each single hair there, for the twisting of the anger which met it as it rose from his hair above him.  The Lon Laith (’Champion’s Light’) stood out of his forehead, so that it was as long and as thick as a warrior’s whetstone, [7]so that it was as long as his nose, till he got furious handling the shields, thrusting out the charioteer, destroying the hosts.[7] As high, as thick, as strong, as steady, as long as the sail-tree of some huge [W.2623.] prime ship was the straight spout of dark blood which arose right on high from the very ridgepole of his crown, so that a black fog of witchery was made thereof like to the smoke from a king’s hostel what time the king comes to be ministered to at nightfall of a winter’s day.

    [1-1] Eg. 93 and H. 2. 17.

    [2-2] Stowe.

    [3-3] Reading with Stowe.

    [4-4] Eg. 93 and H. 2. 17.

    [5-5] Reading with Eg. 93.

    [a-a] A kenning for ‘swords.’

    [6-6] Eg. 93 and H. 2. 17.

    [7-7] LU. 1958-1959.

When now this contortion had been completed in Cuchulain, then it was that the hero of valour sprang into his scythed war-chariot, with its iron sickles, its thin blades, its hooks and its hard spikes, with its hero’s fore-prongs, with its opening fixtures, with its stinging nails that were fastened to the poles and thongs and bows and lines of the chariot, [1]lacerating heads and bones and bodies, legs and necks and shoulders.[1]