'This is not a good chariot, O my King,' said the boy.
Then there were led forward three chariots, and all these he brake in succession.
'These are not good chariots, O chief of the Red Branch,' said Cuculain. 'No brave warrior would enter the battle or fight from such rotten foothold.'
Then the king called to his son Cowshra Mead Macha and bade him take Læg, and harness to the war-chariot, of which he had the care, the wondrous gray steed, and that one which had been given him by Kelkar, the son of Uther, and to give Læg a charioteering equipment, to be charioteers of Cuculain. For now it was apparent to all the nobles and to the king that a lion of war had appeared amongst them, and that it was for him Macha had sent these omens.
Then Cuculain's heart leaped in his breast when he heard the thunder of the great war-car and the mad whinnying of the horses that smelt the battle afar. Soon he beheld them with his eyes, and the charioteer with the golden fillet of his office, erect in the car, struggling to subdue their fury. A gray, long-maned steed, whale-bellied, broad-chested, behind one yoke; a black, ugly-maned steed behind the other.
Like a hawk swooping along the face of a cliff when the wind is high, or like the rush of the March wind over the plain, or like the fleetness of the stag roused from his lair by the hounds and covering his first field, was the rush of those steeds when they had broken through the restraint of the charioteer, as though they galloped over fiery flags, so that the earth shook and trembled with the velocity of their motion, and all the time the great car brayed and shrieked as the wheels of solid and glittering bronze went round, for there were demons that had their abode in that car.
The charioteer restrained the steeds before the assembly, but nay-the-less a deep pur, like the pur of a tiger, proceeded from the axle. Then the whole assembly lifted up their voices and shouted for Cuculain, and he himself, Cuculain the son of Sualtam, sprang into his chariot, all armed, with a cry as of a warrior springing into his chariot in the battle, and he stood erect and brandished his spears, and the war-sprites of the Gæil shouted along with them, to the Bocanahs and Bananahs and the Genitii Glindi, the wild people of the glens, and the demons of the air, roared around him, when first the great warrior of the Gæil, his battle-arms in his hands, stood equipped for war in his chariot before all the warriors of his tribe, the kings of the Clanna Rury, and the people of Emain Macha.
FOOTNOTES.
[16] Cuculain was the great hero of legendary Ireland.
[17] Curious vows taken by the ancient warriors. Hardly anything definite is known of them.—Ed.