Page:Celtic Stories by Edward Thomas.djvu/38

 youth, I have never found one like thee in might and courage, nor one whom it was so ill to have slain. It is vain for thee now to expect Finnavar, Maeve's beautiful daughter, O Ferdia.'

Presently he ordered his charioteer to take the gaebolg out of the body. The weapon was drawn out of Ferdia, and Cohoolin looked long at it and at the man whose death it was. 'Come now, Cohoolin,' said the charioteer, 'let us be going. We have been here too long.' 'Yes, we will go,' he said. 'O charioteer, every other fight of mine was a game compared with this. Fighting was a sport without a sting until to-day. O Ferdia, yesterday thou wert greater than a mountain. To-day thou art less than a shadow.' The men of Erin buried him.

Cohoolin had so many wounds that all were as one. Only his shield hand was untouched. They bore him to be bathed in the rivers of Muirhevna, rivers of his boyhood, mingled with healing herbs. His father Sualtam heard his groans and came to him. But Cohoolin bade him not to weep and think of revenge, but to go to Navan and tell King Conachoor that now he could not alone defend Ulster against all Erin. So his father mounted Cohoolin's warhorse and galloped to Navan. Twice he shouted in the palace courts: 'Men are dying, women are carried off, cattle are stolen, in Ulster.' The men of Ulster were not roused from their magic sleep. He shouted a third time and wakened Cathbad the Druid, but the druid only cursed him for shouting while Conachoor slept. Sualtam turned his horse round in a fury. The horse reared, and struck the sharp edge of his shield against the rider's neck, so that he died. But his dead head was carried by the galloping steed still