"She washed clean the head and she joined it on to its body, and she pressed it to her heart and her bosom, and fell to lamenting and heavily sorrowing over it, and began to suck in its blood and to drink it,[14] and she placed around the head a lovely satin cloth. 'Ochone!' said she, 'good was the beauty of this head, although it is low this day, and it is many of the kings and princes of the world would be keening it if they thought it was like this; and the men who demand gold and treasure, and ask petitions of the men of Erin and Alba [i.e., the poets and druids] thou wast their one love and their one choice of the men of the earth, and woe for me that I remain behind this day; for there was not of the women of Erin, nor in the whole great world, a woman mated with a husband, or unmated, not a single one, who, until this day, was not envious of me; for many were the goods and jewels and rents and tributes from the countries of the world that thou broughtest to me, with the valour and strength of thy hand,' and she took his hand in hers and fell to making lamentations over it, and to telling of its fame and its exploits, and 't was what she said, 'Alas!' said she, 'it is many of the kings and of the chieftains and of the strong men of the world that fell by this hand, and it is many of the goods and treasures of this world that were scattered by it upon poets and men of knowledge,' and she spake the lay,
"'Ochone O head, Ochone O head,'" etc.
Afterwards Conall Cearnach arrives with his pile of heads and planted them carefully "all round about the wide grass-green lawn" upon pointed sticks, and relates to Emer who they were and how they fell.[15]
"Thereafter," says the saga, "Emer desired Conall to make a wide very deep tomb for Cuchulain," and she laid herself down in it along with her gentle mate, and she set her mouth to his mouth, and she spake—
"'Love of my soul,' she said, 'O friend, O gentle sweetheart, and O thou one choice of the men of the earth, many is the woman envied me thee until now, and I shall not live after thee;' and her soul departed out of her, and she herself and Cuchulain were laid in the one grave by Conall, and he raised their stone over their tomb, and he wrote their names in Ogam, and their funeral games were performed by him and by the Ultonians.
"THUS FAR THE RED ROUT OF CONALL CEARNACH."
[1] He died at the age of twenty-seven years, according to the Annals of Tighearnach, and also according to a note in the Book of Ballymote, which Charles O'Conor of Belinagare identifies as an extract from the Synchronisms of Flann of Monasterboice, who died in 1056. But an account in a MS. H. 3. 17, in Trinity College, Dublin, which was copied about the year 1460, asserts that Cuchulain died in his fifty-ninth year. (See O'Curry's MS. Mat., p. 507.)
[2] Cennfaelad, son of Ailill.
[3] This MS., which contains many of the Cuchulain sagas, was copied about a hundred years ago by a scribe named Seághain O'Mathghamhna on an island in the Shannon.
[4] The older form of this name is Curoi. A detailed account of this saga is given by Keating. See p. 282 of O'Mahony's edition. The saga is also told under the title of Aided Conrui, in Egerton 88, British Museum.
[5] The saga of the battle of Rosnaree has recently been published with a translation by Rev. Ed. Hogan, S.J.