Fate constrains each one to stir,
Moving towards his sepulchre.

But do neoch cannot possibly mean “every man,” it means “some man;” usually the person in question is obvious.  Compare page 125 of this romance, line 3, which is literally:  “There will be some one who shall have sickness on that account,” biaid nech diamba galar, meaning, as here, Ferdia.

The line is an explanation of Ferdia’s appearance, and is not a moral reflection.

Line 29.  “O Cuchulain! with floods of deeds of valour,” or “brimming over with deeds, &c.”

PAGE 141

Line 9.  “Four jewels of carbuncle.”  This is the reading of H. 2, 17; T.C.D; which O’Curry quotes as an alternative to “forty” of the Book of Leinster.  “Each one of them fit to adorn it” is by O’Curry translated “in each compartment.”  The Irish is a cach aen chumtach:  apparently “for each one adornment.”

PAGE 144

Line 8 of poem.  “Alas for the departing of my ghost.”

PAGE 146

Lines 1, 2.  “Though he had struck off the half of my leg that is sound, though he had smitten off half my arm.”

PAGE 148

Line 5.  “Since he whom Aife bore me,” literally “Never until now have I met, since I slew Aife’s only son, thy like in deeds of battle, never have I found it, O Ferdia.”  This is O’Curry’s rendering; if it is correct, and it seems to be so substantially, the passage raises a difficulty.  Aife’s only son is, according to other records, Conlaoch, son of Cuchulain and Aife, killed by his father, who did not at the time know who Conlaoch was.  This battle is usually represented as having taken place at the end of Cuchulain’s life; but here it is represented as preceding the War of Cualgne, in which Cuchulain himself is represented to be a youth.  The allusion certainly indicates an early date for the fight with Conlaoch, and if we are to lay stress on the age of Cuchulain at the time of the War, as recorded in the Book of Leinster, of whose version this incident is a part, the “Son of Aife” would not have been a son of Cuchulain at all in the mind of the writer of this verse.  It is possible that there was an early legend of a fight with the son of Aife which was developed afterwards by making him the son of Cuchulain; the oldest version of this incident, that in the Yellow Book of Lecan, reconciles the difficulty by making Conlaoch only seven years old when he took up arms; this could hardly have been the original version.

Line 23 of poem is literally:  “It is like thrusting a spear into sand or against the sun.”

The metre of the poem “Ah that brooch of gold,” and of that on page 144, commencing “Hound, of feats so fair,” are unique in this collection, and so far as I know do not occur elsewhere.  Both have been reproduced in the original metre, and the rather complicated rhyme-system has also been followed in that on page 148.  The first verse of the Irish of this is