The two would be travelling the roads and roaming the fields of Connacht from the screech of dawn to dark. But for all their diversions together they fell out on a summer’s day, and it was blows they gave one another until a strong perspiration ran down from them and the air moved before their eyes like the stars of heaven on a frosty night. Neither could gain the mastery, and at long last they be to quit striving for they were bone weary and feeble as an infant child.
The one was hasty in his speech let a dark oath that he would be the death of his companion, evenly if the power of the lonesome grave itself was set between them to hold him from the fulfilment of his vow.
In three days from the time the words were spoken he died of a strange, sudden sickness.
The other had a great satisfaction on him, he having no dread of a man was rotting in the clay, where rich and poor are alike and the strong have no mastery above the weak. But in a short while a warning came to the lad in a dream, the way he walked the world in fear from that out:—
He seen a field where he was standing by his lone to confront a black bull was charging down. The eyes of the beast were glowing red as burning fire, and it was no right thing surely. There was such a fluttering of dread on the boy that he could not endeavour for to run, but he stood like a growing rush does be waving with the breeze. Three times the likeness of the great black bull came down against him, wounding him with the curved and lengthy horns were upon it; with that he awoke.
“The devil will be gifting the spirit of the dead with the form of a living beast, the way he’ll get bringing me the dark destruction he promised, and I looking fearful at the flames are burning in his eyes,” thinks the lad.
Sure enough, in a month’s time, he was in a field, and the appearance of the black bull came against him. Three times it struck him, the way he was tormented with the agony of the goring horns. With that the likeness of the living beast faded from the place leaving the young lad sore and sorry but alive.
He had peace for a short space only to be thinking on his escape. Didn’t a second warning come in the night to restore the cold fear to his heart:—
He seen a black goat come at him in standing leps, and the eyes of it were glowing like a turf in the heart of a strong fire.
“It is less power the devil be’s giving him this time,” thinks the lad. “All the while ’tis an ill hour stands before me: the like of yon beast will be middling weighty and it striking me in a standing lep with no one of its four feet upon the ground.”