("Complimenting him, like," said James.) Then he recited the stanza which tells by implication how in the long duel Cuchulain was at last driven to use the irresistible stroke of Sgathach's teaching:—
"I lay my curse on my mother,
That she put me under pledge;
But if it were not for the feat of magic
I had not been got for nothing."
(It is a fine phrase surely, "You had paid dear in blood before you mastered me.")
Cuchulain answers groaning, with a wail for the lineage that is cut off:
"I lay my curse on your mother,
For she destroyed a multitude of young ones;
And because the treachery that was in her
Left your smooth flesh reddened."
Then comes, with the boy's dying word, the revelation of the most tragic moment in the fight.
"Cuchulain, beloved father,
Is it not a wonder you did not know me
When I cast my spear crooked and feebly
Against your bush of blades."
Where will you find a finer stroke of invention? The boy, tongue-tied by his pledge, knows his father and feels his defence failing against the terrible onset; he would not, if he could, be the victor, but he thinks of a way within the honour of his bond which may awaken knowledge of him; and he casts his javelin with a clumsiness not to be looked for in the champion "that tied Conall." It is useless, the battle madness is in Cuchulain, he thinks only of conquest, an end to the supple, quick parrying, and he throws the gaebulg, a spear of dragon's bones bristling with points (his "bush of blades"), with the magic cast that there is no meeting. And now there is nothing left to him but the lamentation,
"Och, och! Great is my madness!
I lifting here my young lad!
My son's head in my one hand,
His arms and his raiment on the other.
"I, the father that slew his son,
May I never throw spear nor noble javelin;
The hand that slew its son,
May it win torture and sharp wounding.