[14] "Do rinne an ceann do niamhghlanadh agus do chuir ar a chollain féin é, agus do dhruid re na h-ucht agus n-a h-urbhruinne é, agus do ghaibh ag tuirse agus ag trom-mhéala os a chionn, agus do ghaibh ag sughadh a choda fola agus ag a h-ól," etc. This was to express affection. Déirdre does the same when her husband is slain, she laps his blood.
[15] This is the celebrated Laoi na gceann, or Lay of the Heads, which begins by Emer asking—
"A Chonaill cia h-iad na cinn?
Is dearbh linn gar dheargais h-airm,
Na cinn o thárla ar an ngad
Slointear leat na fir d'ar baineadh."
It was popular in the Highlands also. There is a copy in the book of the Dean of Lismore, published by Cameron in his "Reliquiæ Celticæ," vol. i. p. 66. Also in the Edinburgh MSS. 36 and 38. See ibid. pp. 113 and 115. The piece consists of 116 lines. The oldest form of Emer's lament over Cuchulain, "Nuallguba Emire," is in the Book of Leinster, p. 123, a. 20. It is a kind of unrhymed chant. The lament I have given is from my own modern manuscript.
[CHAPTER XXVIII]
OTHER SAGAS OF THE RED BRANCH
Another saga belonging to this cycle affords so curious a picture of pagan customs that it is worth while to give here some extracts from it. This is the story of Mac Dáthó's Pig and Hound, which is contained in the Book of Leinster, a MS. copied about the year 1150. It was first published without a translation by Windisch in his "Irische Texte," from the Book of Leinster copy collated with two others. It has since been translated by Kuno Meyer from a fifteenth-century vellum.[1] The story runs as follows.
Mac Dáthó was a famous landholder in Leinster, and he possessed a hound so extraordinarily strong and swift that it could run round Leinster in a day. All Ireland was full of the fame of that hound, and every one desired to have it. It struck Mève and Oilioll, king and queen of Connacht, to send an embassy to Mac Dáthó to ask him for his hound, at the same time that the notion came to Conor, king of Ulster, that he also would like to possess it. Two embassies reach Mac Dáthó's house at the same time, the one from Connacht and the other from Ulster, and both ask for the hound for their respective masters. Mac Dáthó's house was one of those open hostelries[2] of which there were five at that time in Ireland.