“Hear my rede,” she told him:  “When at fall of day
Come the kine for milking, I abroad will stay;
I the castle portal every eve should close: 
Ye shall find it opened, free for tread of foes: 
I will say the weakling calves awhile I keep;
’Tis for milk, I’ll tell them:  come then while they sleep;
Come, their castle enter, all its wealth to spoil;
Only rests that serpent, he our plans may foil: 
Him it rests to vanquish, he will try you most;
Surely from that serpent swarms a serpent host!”

“Trust us well,” answered Conall, “that raid will we do! 
And the castle they sought, and the snake at them flew: 
For it darted on Conall, and twined round his waist;
Yet the whole of that castle they plundered in haste,
And the woman was freed, and her sons with her three
And away from her prison she went with them free: 
And of all of the jewels amassed in that dun
The most costly and beauteous the conquerors won.

Then the serpent from Conall was loosed, from his belt
It crept safely, no harm from that serpent he felt: 
And they travelled back north to the Pictish domains,
And a three of their cattle they found on the plains;
And, where Olla Mae Briuin[FN#38] his hold had of yore,
By Dunolly their cattle they drove to the shore.

[FN#38] Pronounced “Brewin.”

It chanced at Ard Uan Echach,[FN#39] where foam is hurled on high,
That doom on Bicne falling, his death he came to die: 
’Twas while the cows were driven that Bicne’s life was lost: 
By trampling hooves of cattle crushed down to death, or tossed;
To him was Loegaire[FN#40] father, and Conall Cernach chief
And Inver-Bicne’s title still marks his comrades’ grief.

[FN#39] Pronounced “Ard Oon Ay-ha,”

[FN#40] Pronounced “Leary.”

Across the Stream of Bicne the cows of Fraech have passed,
And near they came to Benchor, and there their horns they cast: 
’Tis thence the strand of Bangor for aye is named, ’tis said: 
The Strand of Horns men call it; those horns his cattle shed.

To his home travelled Fraech, with his children, and
And his cattle, and there with them lived out his life,
Till the summons of Ailill and Maev he obeyed;
And when Cualgne was harried, he rode on the Raid.

TAIN BO FRAICH

PART II

LITERAL TRANSLATION

It happened that his cows had been in the meanwhile stolen.  His mother came to him.  “Not active (or “lucky”) of journey hast thou gone; it shall cause much of trouble to thee,” she says.  “Thy cows have been stolen, and thy three sons, and thy wife, so that they are in the mountain of Elpa.  Three cows of them are in Alba of the North with the Cruthnechi (the Picts).”  “Query, what shall I do?” he says to his mother.  “Thou shalt do