Ossian Collection > Heroic and Ossianic literature

best warriors of her army, laying injunctions on them not to pass
the ford until he was overcoioe. The spirit and usages of the
time put it out of Meave's power to refuse, and there, day after
day, were severe conliicts waged between the single Ultonian
champion and the best warriors of Meave, all of whom he
successively vanquished. Meave even called in the aid of magic
spells. One warrior was helped by demons of the air, in bird shape,
but in vain, and the great magician, Cailetin and his twenty-
seven sons, despite their spells, also met their doom. Cuchulinn
further is persecuted by the war goddess, the Morrigan, who
ap])ears in all shapes to plague him and to frighten the life of
valour out of his soul. Cuchulinn is not behind in daimonic
influence, for with the help of the Tuatha-De— Manannan especi-
ally — he does great havoc among Meave's troops, circling round
them in his chariot, and dealing death with his sling. Meave is
getting impatient ; time is being lost ; the XJltonians will soon
revive, and Cuchulinn must be got rid oS'. She calls on
Ferdia, the only match there exists for Cuchulinn, but he
refuses to fight with his school days' friend. Nay, he would
by his vows be forced to defend him against all comers.
The queen plies him in every way with promises, wiles, and
blandishments ; he will get Findabar, her daughter, for wife, and
lands and riches ; and, alas ! he consents, he binding himself to
fight Cuchulinn, and she binding herself to fulfil her magnificent
promises. Fergus goes forward to apprise Cuchulinn of what
occurred, that his friend and companion, Ferdia, was coming to
fight with him. "I am here," said Cuchulinn, " detaining and
delaying the four great provinces of Erin, since Samhain to the
beginning of Imbulc (spring), and I have not yielded one foot in
retreat before any one during that time, nor will I, I trust, before
him." Cuchulinn's charioteer gets his chariot yoked, with the
two divine horses — those my.stic animals that the gods had sent
for Cuchulinn, the Liath Macha " Grey of Macha," the war- goddess,
and the Dub-sanglend. " And then," says the tale, " the battle-
fighting, dexterous, battle-winning, red-sworded hero, Cuchulinn,
son of Sualtam, sprang into his chariot. And there shouted
around him Bocanachs, and Bananachs, and Geniti Glindi, and
demons of the air. For the Tuatha-De-Danann were used to set
up shouts around him, so that the hatred and the fear and the
abhorrence and the great terror of him should be greater in every
battle, in every battlefield, in every combat, and in every fight into
which he went."
Ferdia's charioteer, who does not wish his master to fight with
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