Concobar answered straight, “Thou shalt not get from me or from the Ultonians any eric, small or great.  My nephew slew the beast in fair fight, defending his life against an aggressor.  But I will say something else, proud smith, and little it recks me whether it is pleasing to thee or not.  Had thy wolf slain my nephew not one of you would have left this dun alive, and of your famous city of artificers I would have made a smoking heap.”

The Ultonians fiercely applauded that speech, declaring that the smiths should get no eric, great or small, for the death of their monster.  The smiths thereupon armed themselves with their hammers, and tongs, and fire-poles, and great bars of unwrought brass, and Culain himself seized an anvil withal to lay waste the ranks of the Red Branch.  The Ultonians on their side ran to the walls and plucked down their spears from the pegs, and they raised their shields and balanced their long spears, and swords flashed and screeched as they rushed to light out of the scabbards, and the vast chamber glittered with shaking bronze and shone with the eyeballs of angry men, and rang with shouts of defiance and quick fierce words of command.  For the Red Branch embattled themselves on one side of the chamber and the smiths upon the other, burning with unquenchable wrath, earth-born.  The vast and high dome re-echoing rang with the clear terrible cries of the Ultonians and the roar of the children of the gloomy Orchil, and, far away, the magic shield moaned at Emain Macha, and the waves of the ocean sent forth a cry, for the peril of death and of shortness of life were around Concobar in that hour.  And, though the doors of thick oak, brass-bound, were shut and barred, there came a man into the assembly, and he was not seen.  He was red all over, both flesh and raiment, as if he had been plunged in a bath of blood.  His countenance was distraught and his eyes like those of an insane man, and sparks new from them like sparks from a smith’s stithy when he mightily hammers iron plucked white from the furnace.  Smoke and fire came from his mouth.  He held in his hand a long boar-yard.  The likeness of a boar bounded after him.  He traversed the vast chamber with the velocity of lightning, and with his boar-yard beat such as were not already drunk with wrath and battle-fury, and shot insane fire into their souls. [Footnote:  This was the demon referred to in the lines at the head of the chapter.]

Then indeed it wanted little, not the space of time during which a man might count ten, for the beginning of a murder grim and great as any renowned in the world’s chronicles, and it is the opinion of the learned that, in spite of all their valour and beautiful weapons, the artificers would then and there have made a bloody end of the Red Branch had the battle gone forward.  But at this moment, ere the first missile was hurled on either side, the boy Setanta sprang into the midst, into the middle space which separated the enraged men, and cried aloud, with a clear high voice that rang distinct above the tumult—­