[2] In Old Irish, Bruiden; in modern, Bruidhean (Bree-an).
[3] "Tucad turbaid chotulta / do Mac Dáthó co a thech.
Ros bói ni no chomairled / cen co labradar fri nech."
[4] But especially since Fergus mac Róigh or Roy had deserted Ulster and gone over to Connacht on the death of Déirdre.
[5] He is well known in the Ultonian saga. Keating describes him in his history as a "mighty warrior of the Connachtmen, and a fierce wolf of evil to the men of Ulster." It was he who gave King Conor the wound of which, after nine years, he died. He was eventually slain by Conall Cearnach as he was returning in a heavy fall of snow from a plundering excursion in Ulster, carrying three heads with him. See O'Mahony's Keating, p. 274, and Conall Cearnach was taken up for dead and brought away by the Connacht men after the fight, but recovered. This evidently formed the plot of another saga now I think lost.
[6] This is what Cuchulain also does the day he assumes arms for the first time. The story of his doings on that day and his foray into Connacht as recited by Fergus to Oilioll and Mève forms one of the most interesting episodes of the Táin Bo Chuailgne. Every young Ultonian on assuming arms made a raid into Connacht.
[7] It was he who, in the oldest version of the Déirdre saga, slew Naoise, and it was to him Conor made Déirdre over at the end of a year. See above p. [317].
[8] This phrase, introduced by a Christian reciter or copyist, need not in the least take away from the genuine pagan character of the whole.
[9] Windisch's "Irische Texte," Erste Serie, 134, and D'Arbois de Jubainville's "L'Épopée Celtique en Irlande," p. 22.
[10] D'Arbois de Jubainville's "Épopée Celtique," p. 3.
[11] Translated by Kuno Meyer in "Revue Celtique," vol. xi., and "The Archæological Review," vol. i., and Jubainville's "Épopée Celtique," p. 39.