Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/159

144 the heavens were bursting, or the sea ebbing away, or the earth gaping, or is it the groaning of my son that I hear overmatched in the strife?’ And when a little further on, Sualtam seeks help from the King of Ulster, who is lying prostrate in a trance, and riding up to the gates of the palace exclaims, ‘Ailill and Meave have harried and driven you before them: your women, your little boys, your cattle, and your horses, they have carried away; in the gaps and passes of Muirthemne Cuchulain all alone holds back the forces of the four great provinces of Erin’: the king half rousing himself out of his lethargy replies, ‘The heavens are over our heads, the earth is under us, and the sea encompasses us round about; unless the heavens with their showers of stars were to fall to earth, unless the earth itself bursts about our feet, and unless the furrow-drawn, azure-rimmed surface of the ocean flows over the face of the universe, I will restore every cow and every woman again to her own byre and to her own dwelling-house’ (see also Windisch's Táin, lines 5973, 5025, etc., and Siege of Howth, Stokes, Rev. Celt, viii. p. 56).

The Irish soldier seems not to have worn armour, but to have depended upon his weapons and his immense shield, which covered the whole of the body, and was made, it appears, sometimes of metal, but more often of wicker covered with hides, and was often decorated with knobs, or with designs chased into the metal. The edges were sharp, and both the Irish and Roman writers speak of the danger of falling upon or being cut with the edge of the shield. But up to the time of the Norse invasions and, indeed, at no time whatever, did they wear body-armour, except in combats of special danger, on which occasions a breastplate was donned. They seem to have sometimes worn aprons of leather, covering and partly protecting the lower part of the body, but otherwise to have gone into battle in their ordinary dress. There is a note of surprise in the Irish historic tale called Caithreim Callaghan Caisil, which describes some Munster wars with the Danes, that the Irish hosts went out to meet the Danes ‘with