Thereafter all laid aside their weapons and their wrath.  The smiths with a mighty clattering cast their tools into the dark end of the chamber, and the Ultonians hanged theirs upon the walls, and the feasting and pledging and making of friendly speeches were resumed.  There was no more any anger anywhere, but a more unobstructed flow of mutual good-will and regard, for the Ultonians felt no more a secret inclination to laugh at the dusky artificers, and the smiths no longer regarded with disdain the beauty, bravery, and splendour of the Ultonians.

In the meantime Setanta had returned to his place between the King and Fergus Mac Roy.  There a faintness came upon him, and a great horror overshadowed him owing to his battle with the dog, for indeed it was no common dog, and when he would have fallen, owing to the faintness, they pushed him behind them so that he lay at full length upon the couch unseen by the smiths.  Concobar nodded to his chief Leech, and he came to him with his instruments and salves and washes.  There unobserved he washed the cruel gashes cut by the hound’s claws, and applied salves and stitched the skin over the wounds, and, as he did so, in a low voice he murmured healing songs of power.

“Where is the boy?” said Culain.

“He is reposing a little,” said Concobar, “after his battle and his conflict.”

After a space they gave Setanta a draught of mighty ale, and his heart revived in him and the colour returned to his cheeks wherein before was the pallor of death, and he sat up again in his place, slender and fair, between Concobar and Fergus Mac Roy.  The smiths cried out a friendly welcome to him as he sat up, for they held him now to be their foster-son, and Culain himself stood up in his place holding in both hands a great mether [Footnote:  A four-cornered quadrangular cup.] of ale, and he drank to all unborn and immature heroes, naming the name of Setanta, son of Sualtam, now his dear foster-son, and magnified his courage, so that the boy blushed vehemently and his eyelids trembled and drooped; and all the artificers stood up too and drank to their foster-son, wishing him victory and success, and they drained their goblets and dashed them, mouth downwards, upon the brazen tables, so that the clang reverberated over Ulla.  Setanta thereupon stood up while the smiths roared a welcome to their foster-son, and he said that it was not he who had gained the victory, for that someone invisible had assisted him and had charged him with a strength not his own.  Then he faltered in his speech and said again that he would be a faithful hound in the service of the artificers, and sat down.  The smiths at that time would not have yielded him for all the hounds in the world.

After that their harpers harped for them and their story tellers related true stories, provoking laughter and weeping.  There was no story told that was not true in the age of the heroes.  Then the smiths sang one of their songs of labour, though it needed the accompaniment of ringing mettle, a song wild and strange, and the Ultonians clear and high sang all together with open mouths a song of battle and triumph and of the marching home to Emain Macha with victory; and so they spent the night, till Concobar said—­