Then Ivar said, “If one might venture to make a suggestion to such a little one, I should rejoice if we might now turn back and find our way home to Emain again. For at this moment in the hall supper is being carved and the feast has just begun; and though for you your appointed place is kept at Conor’s side until you come, I, on the contrary, if I come late must fit in where I may among the grooms and jesters of the house. For this reason I judge it now high time that I were back to scramble for my place.”
“Harness the horses and prepare the chariot,” Cuchulain said, and thinking that they now were going home, the charioteer most gladly hastened to obey. “What mountain is that over there?” inquired the boy. “Slieve Mourn,” replied the driver. “Let us go thither,” said the lad. They reach the mountain’s foot, and, “What is that cairn I see upon the top?” said he again. “The White Cairn is its name,” quoth Ivar sulkily. “I would like to visit the White Cairn,” said the boy. “The hill is high, and it is getting late,” replied the charioteer. “Thou art a lazy loon,” Cuchulain says, “and the more so that this is my first day’s adventure-quest, and thy first day’s trip abroad with me.” “And if it is,” cried Ivar, “and if ever we get home again, for ever and for ever may it be my last!”
They gained the topmost peak, and far away descried a stretch of level country. “Come now, driver,” said the lad, “describe to me from here the whole of Ulster’s wide domain; its forts and dwellings, fords and meadow-lands, its hills and open spaces. Name every place in order, that thus I may the better know my way about.
“What is yon well-defined plain with hollow glens and running streams before us to the south?” “Moy Bray,” replied the charioteer. “The names, again, of all the forts and palaces scattered over it?” Then Ivar pointed out the kingly dwelling-places of Tara and Taillte, and the summer palace of Cletty on the river Boyne; the Fairy Mound of Angus Og, the god of Youth and Beauty, and the burial-tomb of the Great God or Dagda Mór. And at the last he showed beneath the hill where lay the fort of the three fierce and warlike sons of Nechtan the Mighty.
“Are those the sons of Nechtan of whom I heard it said that the Ulstermen who are yet alive are not so many as have fallen by their hands?” “The same,” said Ivar. “Away then, with us straight to Nechtan’s fort,” Cuchulain cried. “Woe waits on him who goes to Nechtan’s fort,” replied the charioteer; “whoever goes or goes not, I for one will never go.” “Alive or dead thou goest there, however,” said the boy. “Alive I go then, but sure it is that dead I shall be left there,” replied the charioteer.
They make their way then down the hill and reach the green before the fort at the meeting of the bogland and the stream; and in the centre of the green they saw an upright pillar-stone, encircled by an iron collar on its top. Words were engraven on the collar forbidding any man-at-arms or warrior to depart off the green, once he had entered it, without challenging to single combat some one of those living within the fort. Cuchulain read the writing, and he took the collar off the pillar-stone, and with all his strength he hurled it down the stream, for it was thus the challenge should be made.
“In my poor opinion,” said the charioteer, “the collar was much safer where it was, and well I know that this time, at all events, thou wilt find the object of thy careful search, a quick and violent death.” “Good, good, O driver, talk not over much, but spread for me the chariot coverings on the ground, that I may sleep a while.”
Now the charioteer was frightened, for he knew the fierceness and ill-fame of the sons of Nechtan, and he grumbled that Cuchulain should be so rash and foolhardy in a land of foemen as to sleep before their very door; but for all that he dared not disobey, and he took the cushions out of the chariot and spread them on the ground, and covered Cuchulain with the skins; and in a moment the little fellow was asleep, his head resting peacefully on his hand. Just then Foll, son of Nechtan, issued from the fort. Ivar would well have liked to waken up Cuchulain, but he did not dare, for the child had said before he fell asleep: “Waken me up if many come, but waken me not for a few;” and Foll mac Nechtan came alone. At sight of the chariot standing on his lands, the warrior thundered forth, “Driver, be off at once with those horses; let them not graze upon our ground; unyoke them not.” “I have not unyoked them,” said the charioteer. “I hold the reins yet in my hands, ready for the road.” “Whose steeds and chariot are they?” enquired the man. “The steeds of Conor, King of Ulster,” said Ivar. “Just as I thought,” said Foll; “and who has brought them to these borders?” “A young bit of a little boy,” said Ivar, hoping to hinder Foll from fighting him. “A high-headed wee fellow, who, for luck, has taken arms to-day, and come into the marshes to show off his form and skill as though he were a grown champion.” “Ill-luck to him, whoever he is,” said Foll; “were he a man capable of fight, I would send him back to the King dead instead of alive.” “Capable of fight he is not, indeed, nor a man at all,” said Ivar, “but only a small child of seven years, playing at being a man.”
Cuchulain in his sleep heard the affront that the charioteer put upon him, and from head to foot he blushed a rosy red. His face he lifted from the ground and said: “I am not a child at all, but ripe and fit for action, as you will see; this ‘small child’ here has come to seek for battle with a man.” “I rather hold that fit for action thou art not,” replied Foll, surprised to find the little fellow rising from his sleep and speaking with such boldness. “That we shall know presently,” replied the boy; “come down only to the ford, where it is customary in Ireland that combats should take place. But first go home and fetch your arms, for in cowardly guise come you hither, and never will I fight with men unarmed, or messengers, or drivers in their cloaks, but only with full-weaponed men-of-war.”