The giant went in, and fitted on his wide, roomy vest, his strong, unbreakable helmet, his cross-worked coat-of-mail; then he took his bossy, pale-red shield and his spear. Every hair on his head and in his beard was so stiffly erect from anger and rage that a small apple or a sloe, an iron apple or a smith’s anvil, might stand on each hair of them.
Blaiman fitted on his smooth, flowery stockings, and his two dry warm boots of the hide of a small cow, that was the first calf of another cow that never lay on any one of her sides. He fitted on his single-threaded silken girdle which three craftsmen had made, underneath his broad-pointed, sharp sword that would not leave a remnant uncut, or, if it did, what it left at the first blow it took at the second. This sword was to be unsheathed with the right hand, and sheathed with the left. He gave the first blood of battle as a terrible oath that he himself was, the choice champion of the Fenians, the feather of greatness, the slayer of a champion of bravery; a man to compel justice and right, but not give either justice or right; a man who had earned what he owned in the gap of every danger, in the path of every hardship, who was sure to get what belonged to him, or to know who detained it.
They rushed at each then like two bulls of the wilderness, or two wild echoes of the cliff; they made soft ground of the hard, and hard ground of the soft; they made low ground of high, and high ground of low. They made whirling circles of the earth, and mill-wheels of the sky; and if any one were to come from the lower to the upper world, it was to see those two that he should come. They were this way at each other to the height of the evening. Blaiman was growing hungry; and through dint of anger he rose with the activity of his limbs, and with one stroke of his sword cut off the giant’s head. There was a tree growing near. Blaiman knocked off a tough, slender branch, put one end of it in through the left ear and out through the right, then putting the head on the sword, and the sword on his shoulder, went home to the king. Coming near the castle with the giant’s head, he met a man tied in a tree whose name was Hung Up Naked.
“Victory and prosperity to you, young champion,” said the man; “you have done well hitherto; now loose me from this.”
“Are you long there?” asked Blaiman.
“I am seven years here,” answered the other.
“Many a man passed this way during that time. As no man of them loosed you, I will not loose you.”
He went home then, and threw down the head by the side of the castle. The head was so weighty that the castle shook to its deepest foundations. The king came to the hall-door, shook Blaiman’s hand, and kissed him. They spent that night as the previous night; and on the next day he went to meet the second giant, came to his house, and struck the pole of combat. The giant put out his head, and said, “You rascal, I lay a wager it was you who killed my young brother yesterday; you’ll pay for it now, for I think it is a sufficient length of life to get a glimpse of you, and I know not what manner of death I should give you.”
“It is not to offer satisfaction that I am here,” said Blaiman, “but to give you the same as your brother.”
“Is it any courage you have to fight me?” asked the giant.