The blood of vipers and of Osmuinn’s trunks;—

It was of these the tathlum was composed.

“The sand of the swift Armorian sea,

And the sand of the teeming Red Sea;—

All these, being first purified, were used

In the composition of the tathlum.

“Briun, the son of Bethar, no mean warrior,

Who on the ocean’s eastern border reigned;—

It was he that fused, and smoothly formed,

It was he that fashioned the tathlum.