[FN#28]"Hidden spot” (Windisch

After that he throws the branches to them out of the water.  “The berries are stately and beautiful, bring us an addition of them.”  He goes off again until he was in the middle of the water.  The serpent catches him out of the water.  “Let a sword come to me from you,” he says; and there was not on the land a man who would dare to give it to him through fear of Ailill and Medb.  After that Find-abair strips off her clothes, and gives a leap into the water with the sword.  Her father lets fly a five-pronged spear at her from above, a shot’s throw, so that it passes through her two tresses, and that Fraech caught the spear in his hand.  He shoots the spear into the land up, and the monster in his side.  He lets it fly with a charge of the methods of playing of championship, so that it goes through the purple robe and through the tunic (? shirt) that was about Ailill.

At this the youths who were about Ailill rise to him.  Find-abair goes out of the water and leaves the sword in Fraech’s hand, and he cuts the head off the monster, so that it was on its side, and he brought the monster with him to land.  It is from it is Dub-lind Fraech in Brei, in the lands of the men of Connaught.  Ailill and Medb go to their dun afterwards.

“A great deed is what we have done,” says Medb.  “We repent,” says Ailill, “of what we have done to the man; the daughter however,” he says, “her lips shall perish [common metaphor for death] to-morrow at once, and it shall not be the guilt of bringing of the sword that shall be for her.  Let a bath be made by you for this man, namely, broth of fresh bacon and the flesh of a heifer to be minced in it under adze and axe, and he to be brought into the bath.”  All that thing was done as he said.  His trumpeters then before him to the dun.  They play then until thirty of the special friends of Ailill die at the long-drawn (or plaintive) music.  He goes then into the dun, and he goes into the bath.  The female company rise around him at the vat for rubbing, and for washing his head.  He was brought out of it then, and a bed was made.  They heard something, the lament-cry on Cruachan.  There were seen the three times fifty women with crimson tunics, with green head-dresses, with brooches of silver on their wrists.

A messenger is sent to them to learn what they had bewailed.  “Fraech, son of Idath,” says the woman, “boy-pet of the king of the Side of Erin.”  At this Fraech heard their lament-cry.

Thirty men whom King Ailill loved dearly
By that music were smitten to die;
And his men carried Fraech, and they laid him
In that bath, for his healing to lie.

Around the vat stood ladies,
They bathed his limbs and head;
From out the bath they raised him,
And soft they made his bed.

Then they heard a strange music;
The wild Croghan “keen”;
And of women thrice fifty
On Croghan were seen.