And Laeg took that message to Emer, and he found her weeping in Dun Dalgan. And she said, “It is strange to me, O Laeg, that though for a whole year your master has been lying ill, not one of you has sought to heal or succour him. Well known is it that you possess the power to go away to fairy-land, where all herbs of healing are to be found, yet never have you sought a fairy herb to cure your master. Surely some warrior or wise man of Ulster might have done some heroic deed to bring him back from the sore sickness in which he lies! Had Fergus or Conall been sick or wounded, or had they lost their sleep, or had King Conor been bound down in enchanted slumber as now Cuchulain is, short would have been the time till Cuchulain would have done some mighty deed or have sought some magic means of healing them. Certain it is he would have gone into the fairy mounds, or through the solid earth itself; the great wide world he would have searched from end to end, until he found some plant of healing that would have saved and wakened them. But as for me, for a whole year have I not found one night of sweet repose, since he, the Hound of Ulster, lay bound down with magic chains. Sore is my heart and sick; bright music nor the voice of pleasant friendship strikes my ear; blood presses on my heart since Cuchulain lay in fairy toils.”
Then to the Speckled House she went in haste, and stayed not until she entered the hall where Cuchulain lay, weak and prostrate upon his bed.
She seated herself at the side of the bed and touched Cuchulain’s hand, and kissed him, and she called on him to come back from fairy-land. “Awake, awake, O champion of Ulster, shake off this fairy sickness; not fit is it that a chariot-warrior should lie upon his bed. Lo! Ulster calls upon her Hound of Battle. Lo! friends and comrades call. Lo! I, thy wife, am at thy side. Awake! awake! O Hound!”
At that, Cuchulain stood up and opened wide his eyes, and he saw Emer of the beautiful hair seated at his side. Then he passed his hand across his face, and his heaviness and weariness passed away from him, and he arose and embraced his friends and his own and only wife; and he felt his strength returning to him, and his old vigour coming to him again.
And he said to Emer, “For one day, O wife, spare me yet; for there is a deed of battle-valour that I must perform to-day, and after that I will come home to you. Go before me to Dun Dalgan, and prepare a feast and call my comrades and my friends together. I will but go and come again.” Then Emer set out for Dun Dalgan to prepare the feast, but for a whole year she waited for Cuchulain, watching day by day, and yet he came not.
[CHAPTER XXI]
How Cuchulain went to Fairy-Land
When Cuchulain left Emer, he went forward to the fairy-rath where he had seen Liban, and he found her waiting for him to take him to Labra’s Isle.
It seemed to him that the way they took was long, for they passed over the Plain of Speech, and beyond the Tree of Triumphs, and over the festal plain of Emain, and the festal plain of Fidga, until they came to the place where the bronze skiff awaited them, to take them to the Isle of all Delights. A noble and right hospitable welcome was prepared for Cuchulain in that Isle, but he would not rest for that, but bade Labra conduct him without delay to the Plain of Combat. So Labra bade him mount his chariot and together they passed on to the Plain of Combat, where the armies of the phantom hosts were assembled for the fight upon the morrow. On one side were the hosts of Labra, very few, but picked and chosen men in splendid garb, with arms of the best in their hands; but on the side of Senach the Spectral, as far as eye could reach on every side, rose lines of black and gloomy tents, with black pennons flying from their poles. Gaunt heroes clothed in black moved about amongst the tents, and all the horses that they rode were red as blood with fiery manes. And over the whole there hung a mist, heavy and lowering, so that Cuchulain could not see how far the host extended for the gloom of that heavy mist.