“Will ye give me your daughter?” says Fraech.  “The hosts will clearly see she shall be given,” says Ailill, “if thou wouldest give a dowry as shall be named.”  “Thou shalt have it,” says Fraech.  “Sixty black-grey steeds to me, with their bits of gold to them, and twelve milch cows, so that there be milked liquor of milk from each of them, and an ear-red, white calf with each of them; and thou to come with me with all thy force and with thy musicians for bringing of the cows from Cualgne; and my daughter to be given thee provided thou dost come” (or as soon as[FN#27] thou shalt come).  “I swear by my shield, and by my sword, and by my accoutrement, I would not give that in dowry even of Medb.”  He went from them out of the house then.  Ailill and Medb hold a conversation.  “It shall drive at us several of the kings of Erin around us if he should carry off the daughter.  What is good is, let us dash after him, and let us slay him forthwith, before he may inflict destruction upon us.”  “It is a pity this,” says Medb, “and it is a decay of hospitality for us.”  “It shall not be a decay of hospitality for us, it shall not be a decay of hospitality for us, the way I shall prepare it.”

[FN#27] This is Thurneysen’s rendering ("Sagen aus dem alten Irland,” p. 121).

Ailill and Medb go into the palace.  “Let us go away,” says Ailill, that we may see the chase-hounds at hunting till the middle of the day, and until they are tired.”  They all go off afterwards to the river to bathe themselves.

“It is declared to me,” says Ailill, “that thou art good in water.  Come into this flood, that we may see thy swimming.”  “What is the quality of this flood?” he says.  “We know not anything dangerous in it,” says Ailill, “and bathing in it is frequent.”  He strips his clothes off him then, and he goes into it, and he leaves his girdle above.  Ailill then opens his purse behind him, and the ring was in it.  Ailill recognises it then.  “Come here, O Medb,” says Ailill.  Medb goes then.  “Dost thou recognise that?” says Ailill.  “I do recognise,” she says.  Ailill flings it into the river down.

Fraech perceived that matter.  He sees something, the salmon leaped to meet it, and caught it in his mouth.  He (Fraech) gives a bound to it, and he catches its jole, and he goes to land, and he brings it to a lonely[FN#28] spot on the brink of the river.  He proceeds to come out of the water then.  “Do not come,” says Ailill, “until thou shalt bring me a branch of the rowan-tree yonder, which is on the brink of the river:  beautiful I deem its berries.”  He then goes away, and breaks a branch off the trees and brings it on his back over the water.  The remark of Find-abair was:  “Is it not beautiful he looks?” Exceedingly beautiful she thought it to see Fraech over a black pool:  the body of great whiteness, and the hair of great loveliness, the face of great beauty, the eye of great greyness; and he a soft youth without fault, without blemish, with a below-narrow, above-broad face; and he straight, blemishless; the branch with the red berries between the throat and the white face.  It is what Find-abair used to say, that by no means had she seen anything that could come up to him half or third for beauty.