beginning.  We have taken their women and their sons and their children, their steeds and their troops of horses, their herds and their flocks and their droves.  We have laid level their hills after them, so that they have become lowlands and are all one height.  For this cause, will I await them no longer here, but let them offer me battle on Mag Ai, if so it please them.  But, say here what we will, some one shall go forth [4]from us[4] to watch the great, wide plain of Meath, to know if the men of Ulster come hither.  And, should the men of Ulster come hither, I will in no wise be the first to retreat [5]till battle be given them,[5] for it was never the wont of a good king to retreat.”

    [1-1] YBL. 45b, 22.

    [2-2] YBL. 45b, 23-26.

    [3-3] Stowe.

    [4-4] Stowe and H. 1. 13.

    [5-5] Stowe and H. 1. 13.

“Who should fitly go thither?” asked all.  “Who but macRoth our chief runner yonder,” [6]answered another group of them.[6]

    [6-6] Stowe and H. 1. 13.

[W.5023.] MacRoth went his way to survey the great wide-spreading plain of Meath.  Not long was macRoth there when he heard something:  A rush and a crash and a clatter and a clash.  Not slight the thing he judged it to be, but as though it was the firmament itself that fell on the man-like face of the world, or as though it was the furrowed, blue-bordered ocean that broke o’er the tufted brow of the earth, or as though the ground had gone asunder in quakes, or as though the forest fell, each of the trees in the crotches and forks and branches of the other.  But why give further accounts!  The wood’s wild beasts were hunted out on the plain, so that beneath them the grassy forelocks of the plain of Meath were not to be seen.

MacRoth hastened to tell this tale at the place where were Ailill and Medb and Fergus and the nobles of the men of Erin.  MacRoth related the whole matter to them.

“What was that there, O Fergus?” asked Ailill; [1]"to what likenest thou it?"[1] “Not hard [2]for me to say what it resembled.[2] It was the rush and tramp and clatter that he heard,” said Fergus, “the din and thunder, the tumult and turmoil [3]of the Ulstermen.[3] It was the men of Ulster [4]arising from their ’Pains,’[4] who have come into the woods, the throng of champions and battle-heroes cutting down with their swords the woods in the way of their chariots.  This it was that hath put the wild animals to flight on the plain, so that the grassy forelocks of the field of Meath are hidden beneath them!”

    [1-1] YBL. 46a, 2.

    [2-2] YBL. 46a, 1-2.

    [3-3] Stowe and H. 1. 13.

    [4-4] YBL. 46a, 3-4.