“Labraid the son of swiftness is there, he is not slow, abundant shall be the assembly of war, slaughter is set when the plain of Fidga shall be full.”

“Welcome to thee, O Laeg! for the sake of her with whom thou hast come; and since thou hast come, welcome to thee for thyself!”

The metre of the first two pieces is spirited and unusual.  The second one runs: 

Ata Labraid luithe cland, ni ba mall bid immda tinol catha, cuirther ar, día ba Ian Mag Fidgae.

PAGE 63

Line 24.  “Fand.”  The derivations of the names of Fand and of Aed Abra are quite in keeping with the character of the Antiquarian form, and would be out of place in the other form of the romance.  It may perhaps be mentioned that the proper meaning of Abra is “an eyelash,” but the rendering “Aed Abra of the Fiery Eyebrows,” which has been employed in accounts of this romance, would convey a meaning that does not seem to have been in the mind of the authors of either of the two forms.

For the literal translations of the three invocations to Labraid, on pp. 63, 66, Thurneysen (p. 87) may be referred to; but there would be a few alterations.

In the first, line 2 should be “heir of a little host, equipped with light spears,” if Windisch’s Dictionary is to be followed; line 5 would seem to begin “he seeketh out trespasses” (oirgniu); and line 7 should begin, “attacker of heroes,” not “an attacking troop,” which hardly makes sense.

In the second invocation the first line should alter Labraid’s title to “Labraid the swift hand-on-sword-of-battle;” line 3 should end with “wounded his side.”  In line 6 and again in the third line of the third invocation, Thurneysen translates gus as “wrath”:  Windisch gives the word to mean “strength.”

Line 4 of the third invocation is rendered “he pierceth through men” by Thurneysen; the Irish is criathraid ocu.  Criathraim is given by O’Reilly as meaning “to sift”:  “he sifteth warriors” seems a satisfactory meaning, if O’Reilly is to be relied on.

PAGE 65

Labraid’s answer to the three invocations seems to run thus, but the translation is doubtful, many words are marked unknown by Windisch:  “I have no pride or arrogance, O lady, nor renown, it is not error, for lamentation is stirred our judgment” (reading na ardarc nid mell, chai mescthair with the second Ms.), “we shall come to a fight of very many and very hard spears, of plying of red swords in right fists, for many peoples to the one heart of Echaid Juil (?), (let be) no anbi of thine nor pride, there is no pride or arrogance in me, O lady.”  I can make nothing of Anbi.

PAGE 66

Thurneysen does not translate the rhetoric; the translation seems to run thus: 

Great unprofitableness for a hero to lie in the sleep of a sick-bed; for unearthly women show themselves, women of the people of the fiery plain of Trogach, and they have subdued thee, and they have imprisoned thee, and they have chased thee away (?) amid great womanish folly.