Two of the giants were already alive when the Amadan awoke, and the third was just opening his eyes. Up sprang the Amadan, and at him leaped they all—Slat Mor, Slat Marr, Slat Beag, the cailliach, and the four badachs.
If the Amadan had had a hard fight during the day, this one was surely ten times harder. But a brave and a bold fellow he was, and not to be daunted by numbers of showers of blows. They fought for long and long. They made the hard ground into soft, and the soft into spring wells; they made the rocks into pebbles, and the pebbles into gravel, and the gravel fell over the country like hailstones. All the birds of the air from the lower end of the world to the upper end of of the world, and all the wild beasts and tame from the four ends of the earth, came flocking to see the fight; and one after the other of them the Amadan ran his sword through, until he had every man of them stretched on the ground, dying or dead.
And when the old cailliach was dying, she called the Amadan to her and put him under geasa [an obligation that he could not shirk] to lose the power of his feet, of his strength, of his sight, and of his memory, if he did not go to meet and fight the Black Bull of the Brown Wood.
When the old hag died outright, the Amadan rubbed some of the iocshlainte to his wounds with the feather, and at once he was as hale and as fresh as when the fight began. Then he took the feather and the bottle of iocshlainte, buckled on his sword, and started away before him to fulfil his geasa.
He travelled for the length of that lee-long day, and when night was falling, he came to a little hut on the edge of a wood; and the hut had no shelter inside or out but one feather over it, and there was a rough, red woman standing in the door.
"You're welcome!" says she, "Amadan of the Dough, the king of Ireland's son. What have you been doing and where are you going?"
"Last night," says the Amadan, "I fought a great fight, and killed Slat Mor, Slat Marr, Slat Beag, the Cailliach of the Rocks, and four badachs. Now I'm under geasa to meet and to fight the Black Bull of the Brown Wood. Can you tell me where to find him?"
"I can that," says she, "but it's now night. Come in and eat and sleep."
So she spread for the Amadan a fine supper, and made a soft bed, and he ate heartily and slept heartily that night.
In the morning she called him early, and she directed him on his way to meet the Black Bull of the Brown Wood. "But, my poor Amadan," she said, "no one has ever yet met that bull and come back alive."