A Literary History of Ireland, from Earliest Times to the Present DayHyde, Douglas
History
A Literary History of Ireland, from Earliest Times to the Present Day
Hyde, Douglas
Civilization, Celtic, in literature; Irish literature -- History and criticism; Language and culture -- Ireland
"White-skinned Carroll O Baoisgne[11] spake, and 't is what he said:
'O Goll,' said he, 'there is many a man,' said he, 'to silence you and
your people in the household of Finn mac Cúmhail.'
"Bald cursing Conan mac Morna spake, and 't is what he said, 'I swear
by my arms of valour,' said he, 'that Goll, the day he has least men,
has a man and a hundred in his household, and not a man of them but
would silence you.'
"'Are you one of those, perverse, bald-headed Conan?' said Carroll.
"'I am one of them, black-visaged, nail-torn, skin-scratched,
little-strength Carroll,' says Conan, 'and I would soon prove it to
you that Cúmhail was in the wrong.'
"It was then that Carroll arose, and he struck a daring fist, quick
and ready, upon Conan, and there was no submission in Conan's answer,
for he struck the second fist on Carroll in the middle of his face and
his teeth."
Upon this the chronicler relates how first one joined in and then
another, until at last all the adherents of Goll and Finn and even the
captains themselves are hard at work. "After that," he adds, "bad was
the place for a mild, smooth-fingered woman or a weak or infirm person,
or an aged, long-lived elder." This terrific fight continued "from the
beginning of the night till the rising of the sun in the morning," and
was only stopped--just as Diodorus says battles were stopped--by the
intervention of the bards.
"It was then," says the romancist, "that the prophesying poet of the
pointed words, that guerdon-full good man of song, Fergus Finnbheóil,
rose up, and all the Fenians' men of science along with him, and they
sang their hymns and good poems, and their perfect lays to those
heroes to silence and to soften them. It was then they ceased from
their slaughtering and maiming, on hearing the music of the poets,
and they let their weapons fall to earth, and the poets took up their
weapons and they went between them, and grasped them with the grasp of
reconciliation."
When the palace was cleared out it was found that 1,100 of Finn's
people had been killed between men and women, and eleven men and fifty
women of Goll's party.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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