Ill to-night thy friends are faring,
Naught hath Fergus to bestow;
He a poor man’s look is wearing,
Never yet was greater woe!

After the dialogue with Fergus, Bricriu, with the poets that attend him, undertakes a journey to Ailill the Fair, to obtain from him the bounty that Fergus had promised but was unable to grant.  He makes a fairly heavy demand upon Ailill’s bounty, but is received hospitably, and gets all he had asked for, as well as honour for his poetic talents.  He then asks about Ailill’s wife Flidais, and is told about her marvellous cow, which was able to supply milk to more than three hundred men at one night’s milking.  Flidais returns from a journey, is welcomed by Bricriu, who produces a poem in honour of her and her cow, and is suitably recompensed.

A long conversation is then recorded between Flidais and Bricriu in which Bricriu extols the great deeds of Fergus, supplying thereby a commentary on the short statement at the beginning of the older version, that Flidais’ love to Fergus was on account of the great deeds which had been told her that he had done.  Flidais declares to Bricriu her love for Fergus, and Bricriu, after a vain attempt to dissuade the queen from her purpose, consents to bring a message to Fergus that Flidais and her cow will come to him if he comes to her husband’s castle to seek her.  He then returns to Connaught laden with gifts.

The story now proceeds somewhat upon the lines of the older version.  Bricriu approaches Fergus on his return, and induces him to go in the guise of an ambassador to Ailill the Fair, with the secret intention of carrying off Flidais.  Fergus receives the sanction of Maev and her husband for his errand, and departs, but not as in the older version with a few followers; all the Ulster exiles are with him.  Dubhtach, by killing a servant of Maev, embroils Fergus with the queen of Connaught; and the expedition reaches Ailill the Fair’s castle.  Fergus sends Bricriu, who has most unwillingly accompanied him, to ask for hospitality; he is hospitably received by Ailill, and when under the influence of wine reveals to Ailill the plot.  Ailill does not, as in the older version, refuse to receive Fergus, but seats him beside himself at a feast, and after reproaching him with his purpose challenges him to a duel in the morning.  The result of the duel, and of the subsequent attack on the castle by Fergus’ friends, is much as stated in the older version, but the two stories end quite differently.  The L.U. version makes Flidais assist in the War of Cualgne by feeding the army of Ailill each seventh day with the produce of her cows; she dies after the war as wife of Fergus; the Glenn Masain version, in the “Pursuit of the Cattle of Flidais,” makes the Gamanrad clan, the hero-clan of the West of Ireland, pursue Maev and Fergus, and rescue Flidais and her cow; Flidais then returns to the west with Muiretach Menn, the son of her murdered husband, Ailill the Fair.