"To me my full life was three hundred years before Berachan, the lifetime of Berachan I spent [added thereto], I was enduring in lasting happiness.
"Since the time that Lughaidh of the Blades was for a while in the sovereignty of all Ireland I never experienced by sea or by land such weather as that which Léithin mentions in his lay."[34]
"Well, then, my own errand to thee," said Léithin, "is to enquire if thou didst ever experience, or remember to have seen or [to have heard] that there ever came such a morning as yesterday for badness."
"I do not remember that I ever saw such," said Dubhgoire, "or anything like it."
As for Léithin, she was sad and sorrowful, for those tidings did not help (?) her, and she proceeded on her way till she reached her nest and birds.
"What have you to tell us to-day?" said the bird.
"May you never have luck nor fortune," said Léithin. "I have no more news for you than I had when departing, except all my weariness from all the journeyings and wanderings which you contrive to get me to take, without my getting any profit or advantage out of you," and with that she gave a greedy venemous drive of her beak at the bird, so that she had like to have made a prey and flesh-torn spoil of it, with vexation at all the evil and misery she had experienced going to Kildare, so that the bird screeched out loudly and pitifully and miserably.
[A while] after that Léithin said, "It's a pity and a grief to me if any one in Ireland knows [that there ever came a night worse than that night] that I myself do not know of it."
"Well, then, indeed, there is one who knows," says the bird, "Goll of Easruaidh (i.e., the Blind One of Assaroe) and another name of him is the Éigne[35] of Ath-Seannaigh (i.e., the salmon of Ballyshannon), and it is certain that he knows about that, if any one in the world knows about it."
"It is hard for me to go the way you tell me," said Léithin, "yet should I like exceeding well to know about this thing."