This is the reward which I ask for it.
“A stormy host and raging sea
Are a dangerous power, should one oppose it.
The skin of a pig, bounty without hardness!
This is the reward I ask, O Tuis.”
“That is a good poem,” said the king, “only I do not understand it.”
“I will explain it,” said Brian. “‘We praise thee as the oak above the kings’; this means that, as the oak excels all other trees, so do you excel all other kings in nobility and generosity. ‘The skin of a pig, bounty without hardness’; that is a pig’s-skin which you have, O Tuis, and which I should like to receive as the reward of my poem. ‘A stormy host and raging sea are a dangerous power, should one oppose it’; this means to say, that we are not used to going without anything on which we have set our hearts, O Tuis.”
“I should have liked your poem better,” replied the king, “if my pig’s-skin had not been mentioned in it. It was not a wise thing for you to have done, O poet. But I will measure three fills of red gold out of the skin, and you shall have those.”
“May all good be thine, O King!” answered Brian. “I knew that I should get a noble reward.”
So the king sent for the pig’s-skin to measure out the gold with. But, as soon as Brian saw it, he seized it with his left hand, and slew the man who was holding it, and Iuchar and Iucharba also hacked about them; and they cut their way down to the boat, leaving the King of Greece among the dead behind them.