"I am the bark (buffeted) from wave to wave, I am the ship after the losing of its rudder, I am the apple upon the top of the tree That little thought of its falling."[12] instead of the text of the third line stands a rough picture of a tree with a large apple on the top! Another saga[13] tells of Cuchulain's _geasa_ [gassa] or restrictions. It was _geis_ or tabu to him to narrate his genealogy to one champion, as it was also to his son Conlaoch, to refuse combat to any one man, to look upon the exposed bosom of a woman, to come into a company without a second invitation, to accept the hospitality of virgins, to boast to a woman, to let the sun rise before him in Emania, he must when there rise before it, etc. There is in this saga a graphic description of the pagan king's retinue journeying with him to be fed in the house of a retainer. "All the Ultonian nobles set out; a great train of provincials, sons of kings and chiefs, young lords and men-at-arms, the curled and rosy youth of the kingdom, and the maidens and fair ringleted ladies of Ulster. Handsome virgins, accomplished damsels, and splendid, fully-developed women were there. Satirists and scholars were there, and the companies of singers and musicians, poets who composed songs and reproofs, and praising-poems for the men of Ulster. There came also with them from Emania historians, judges, horse-riders, buffoons, tumblers, fools, and performers on horseback. They all went by the same way, behind the king."[14] Dismissing Cuchulain for the present, we pass on now to another personality of the Red Branch saga--the Lady Déirdre. [1] _See_ "Compert Conculaind," by Windisch in "Irische Texte," t. i. p. 134, and Jubainville's "Epopée Celtique en Irlande," p. 22. [2] _See_ the story of Cuchulain's sick-bed, translated by O'Curry in the first volume of the "Atlantis," and by Mr. O'Looney in Sir J. Gilbert's "Facsimiles of the National MSS. of Ireland," and by Windisch in "Irische Texte," vol. i., pp. 195-234, and by M. de Jubainville in his "Epopée Celtique," p. 174, and lastly, Mr. Nutt's "Voyage of Bran," vol. ii., p. 38.