[Footnote:  One of Ireland’s many names.] wholly in all her green borders, and let the realms of Lir, which sustain no foot of man, be the limit of our sovereignty.  Let us gather the tributes of all Ireland, after many battles and much warlike toil.  Then more sweetly shall we drink while the bards chaunt our own prowess.  Once I knew a coward who boasted endlessly about his forefathers, and at last my anger rose, and with a flat hand I slew him in the middle of his speech, and paid no eric, for he was nothing.  We have the blood of heroes in our veins, and we sit here nightly boasting about them; about Rury, whose name we bear, being all his children; and Macha the warrioress, who brought hither bound the sons of Dithorba and made them rear this mighty dun; and Combat son of Fiontann; and my namesake Fergus,[Footnote:  This was the king already referred to who slew the sea-monster.  The monster had left upon him that mark and memorial of the struggle.] whose crooked mouth was no dishonour, and the rest of our hero sires; and we consume the rents and tributes of Ulster which they by their prowess conquered to us, and which flow hither in abundance from every corner of the province.  Valiant men, too, will one day come hither and slay us as I slew that boaster, and here in Emain Macha their bards will praise them.  Then in the halls of the dead shall we say to our sires, ’All that you got for us by your blood and your sweat that have we lost, and the glory of the Red Branch is at an end.’”

That speech was pleasing to the Red Branch, and they cried out that Fergus Mac Roy had spoken well.  Then all at once, on a sudden impulse, they sang the battle-song of the Ultonians, and shouted for the war so that the building quaked and rocked, and in the hall of the weapons there was a clangour of falling shields, and men died that night for extreme dread, so mightily shouted the Ultonians around their king and around Fergus.  When the echoes and reverberations of that shout ceased to sound in the vaulted roof and in the far recesses and galleries, then there arose somewhere upon the night a clear chorus of treble voices, singing, too, the war-chant of the Ultonians, as when rising out of the clangour of brazen instruments of music there shrills forth the clear sound of fifes.  For the immature scions of the Red Branch, boys and tender youths, awakened out of slumber, heard them, and from remote dormitories responded to their sires, and they cried aloud together and shouted.  The trees of Ulster shed their early leaves and buds at that shout, and birds fell dead from the branches.

Concobar struck the brazen canopy with his silver rod.  The smitten brass rang like a bell, and the Ultonians in silence hearkened for the words of their clear-voiced king.