250. Three prohibitions of food: to eat it without giving thanks, to eat it before its proper time, to eat it after a guest.
[251.] Four elements[124] of wisdom: patience, docility, sobriety, well-spokenness; for every patient person is wise, and every docile person is a sage, every sober person is generous, every well-spoken person is tractable.
[252.] Four elements[124] of folly: silliness, bias, wrangling, foulmouthedness.
[124] Literally, 'alphabets.'
[253.] Three tabus of a chief: an ale-house without story-telling, a troop without a herald, a great company without wolfhounds.[125]
[125] This triad has been wrongly read (faiscre instead of faisneis) and rendered by O'Grady in his Catalogue of Ir. mss. in the British Museum, p. 91.
254. Three indications of dignity in a person: a fine figure, a free bearing, eloquence.
255. Three coffers whose depth is not known: the coffer of a chieftain, of the Church,[126] of a privileged poet.
[126] "Die Kirche hat einen guten Magen," Goethe, Faust.