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Rh week, that is to say, five nights and four days, which is given as the length of the Ultonian coavade. This was called cess noinden Ulad, which, if we call noinden a week, would mean '(the) Ulster men's sickness or indisposition of a week,' or, as one would put it in English, 'the Ulster men's week of sickness;' and it was more briefly termed either cess noinden, '(the) sickness of (the) week,' that is to say, '(the) week's sickness,' or noinden Ulad, 'the Ultonians' week'—a term, however, which did not necessarily refer to the couvade. It is not clear to me what the original meaning of the word noinden was, whether a heterogeneous nine consisting of five nights and four days, or a uniform reckoning, say one of nine nights. In the latter case, one might be tempted to regard the word as the Latin nundinæ borrowed; but in any case the Irish could not be said to have borrowed anything beyond the word, inasmuch as the reckoning by nines was clearly more in vogue in Ireland than in Italy as represented in the classics. In fact, the favourite expression for a small number of days in Irish