Then Cuchulain is described, driving at a gallop a dapple-gray and a dark-gray, in a chariot with iron wheels and a bright silver pole. The hero himself is a dark, melancholy man, the comeliest of the men of Erin, in a crimson tunic, with gold-hilted sword, a blood-red spear, and over his shoulders a crimson shield rimmed with silver and gold. Meave, on hearing the description, chants the hero as:
“An ocean in fury, a whale that rageth, a fragment of flame and fire;
A bear majestic, a grandly moving billow,
A beast in maddening ire:
In the crash of glorious battle through the hostile foe he leaps,
His shout the fury of doom;
A terrible bear, he is death to the herd of cattle,
Feat upon feat, head upon head he heaps:
Laud ye the hearty one, he who is victor fully.”
Bricriu lost his life as a sequel of the great raid for the Dun Bull of Cooley. This was undertaken by Queen Meave as the result of the “bolster conversation,” the curtain quarrel, between her and Ailill as to which of the two, husband or wife, had the more treasure. To settle the dispute, they compared their respective treasures, beginning with their wooden and iron vessels, going on with their rings and bracelets and brooches and fine clothes, and ending with their flocks of sheep, and herds of swine, horses, and cattle. The tally was even for both sides until they came to the cattle, when it appeared that Ailill had a huge, white-horned bull with which there was nothing of Meave’s to compare. The chagrined queen learned from a herald that in Cooley there was a dun or brown bull which, it was asserted, was even larger and more formidable.