Mac Cecht's Wound
A woman then came by and saw mac Cecht lying exhausted and wounded on the field.
“Come hither, O woman,” says mac Cecht.
“I dare not go there,” says the woman, “for horror and fear of thee.”
But he persuades her to come, and says: “I know not whether it is a fly or gnat or an ant that nips me in the wound.”
The woman looked and saw a hairy wolf buried as far as the two shoulders in the wound. She seized it by the tail and dragged it forth, and it took “the full of its jaws out of him.”
“Truly,” says the woman, “this is an ant of the Ancient Land.”
And mac Cecht took it by the throat and smote it on the forehead, so that it died.
“Is thy Lord Alive?”
The tale ends in a truly heroic strain. Conall of the Victories, as we have seen, had cut his way out after the king's death, and made his way to Teltin, where he [pg 177] found his father, Amorgin, in the garth before his dūn. Conall's shield-arm had been wounded by thrice fifty spears, and he reached Teltin now with half a shield, and his sword, and the fragments of his two spears.