[FN#22] The word for caparisons is “acrann,” the usual word for a shoe.  It is suggested that here it may be a caparison of leather:  “shoes” seem out of place here.  See Irische Texts, iii. 2. p. 531.

The watchman sees them from the dun when they had come into the plain of Cruachan.  “A multitude I see,” he says, “(come) towards the dun in their numbers.  Since Ailill and Maev assumed sovereignty there came not to them before, and there shall not come to them, a multitude, which is more beautiful, or which is more splendid.  It is the same with me that it were in a vat of wine my head should be, with the breeze that goes over them.

“The manipulation and play that the young hero who is in it makes—­I have not before seen its likeness.  He shoots his pole a shot’s discharge from him; before it reaches to earth the seven chase-hounds with their seven silver chains catch it.”

At this the hosts come from the dun of Cruachan to view them.  The people in the dun smother one another, so that sixteen men die while viewing them.

They alight in front of the dun.  They tent their steeds, and they loose the chase-hounds.  They (the hounds) chase the seven deer to Rath-Cruachan, and seven foxes, and seven hares, and seven wild boars, until the youths kill them in the lawn of the dun.  After that the chase-hounds dart a leap into Brei; they catch seven otters.  They brought them to the elevation in front of the chief rath.  They (Fraech and his suite) sit down there.

A message comes from the king for a parley with them.  It is asked whence they came, they name themselves according to their true names, “Fraech, son of Idath this,” say they.  The steward tells it to the king and queen.  “Welcome to them,” say Ailill and Maev; “It is a noble youth who is there,” says Ailill, “let him come into the Liss (outer court).”  The fourth of the house is allotted to them.  This was the array of the house, a seven fold order in it; seven apartments from fire to side-wall in the house all round.  A rail (or front) of bronze to each apartment; a partitioning of red yew under variegated planing all.

Three plates of bronze in the skirting of each apartment.  Seven plates of brass from the ceiling (?) to the roof-tree in the house.

Of pine the house was made; it is a covering of shingle it had externally.  There were sixteen windows in the house, and a frame of brass, to each of them; a tie of brass across the roof-light.  Four beams of brass on the apartment of Ailill and Medb, adorned all with bronze, and it in the exact centre of the house.  Two rails of silver around it under gilding.  In the front a wand of silver that reached the middle rafters of the house.  The house was encircled all round from the door to the other.[FN#23]

[FN#23] It should be noted that it is not certain whether the word “imdai,” translated apartments, really means “apartments” or “benches.”  The weight of opinion seems at present to take it as above.