The helmet covered his face.  There was no opening there save breathing slits and two round holes through which his eyes shone terribly.  On his feet were strong shoes bound with brass.  To any other man but himself this armour would have been an encumbrance, for it was good and sufficient loading for a car drawn by one yoke of oxen; but so clad, this man was aware of no unusual weight.  When they had clasped him and braced him to his satisfaction, and, indeed, that was not easy, they put upon him his tunic of dusky grey, and over that his mantle of dark crimson, and fastened it on his breast with a brooch whose wheel alone would task one man’s full strength to lift from the ground.

Then Tuatha went forth out of the dun, and when his people saw him they shouted mightily, for before that they had been greatly dismayed, and cast down on account of the slaying of Foil, whom till then they had deemed invincible.  They were all males dwelling here together in sorcery and common lust for blood.  No woman brightened their dark assemblies and the voice of a child was never heard within the dun or around it.  So they rejoiced greatly when they beheld Tuatha and saw him how wrathfully he came forth, breathing slaughter, and heard his voice; for terribly he shouted as he strode down from the dun, and he banned and cursed Cuculain and Laeg, and devoted them to his gloomy gods.  Beneath his feet the massive timbers of the drawbridge bent and creaked.

Said Laeg, “This man, O dear Setanta, is far more terrible than the first, for he is said to be altogether invulnerable and proof against any weapon that was ever made.”

“It is not altogether thus,” said Cuculain, “but if the man escapes the first stroke he is thenceforward invincible, and surely slays his foe.  Therefore give into my hand Concobar’s unendurable and mighty ashen spear, for I must make an end of him at one cast or not at all.”

Tuatha now rushed upon Cuculain, flinging darts, of which he carried many in his left hand.  Not one of them did Cuculain attempt to take upon his shield, but altogether eluded them, for now he swerved to one side and now to another, and now he dropped on one knee and again sprang high in air, so that the missile hurtled and hissed between his gathered feet.  Truly since the beginning of the world there was not, and to the end of the world there will not be, a better leaper than thy nursling, daughter of Cathvah; and behind him all the lawn was as it were sown thick with spears, and these so buried in the earth that two-thirds of their length was concealed and a third only projected slantwise from the green and glittering sward.  When the man with all his force, fury, and venom had discharged his last shaft and seen it, too, shoot screaming beneath the aerial feet of the hero, he roared so terribly that the shores and waters of the Boyne and the surrounding woods and groves returned a hollow moan, and, laying his right hand on the hand-grip of his sword, he rushed upon Cuculain.