It was only at the last that his own friend Ferdiad was despatched against him, through the wiles of Mève. Ferdiad was not a Gael, but of the Firbolg or Firdomhnan race,[12] yet he proved very nearly a match for Cuchulain. Knowing what Mève wanted with him, he positively refused to come to her tent when sent for, and in the end he is only persuaded by her sending her druids and ollavs against him, who threatened "to criticise, satirise, and blemish him, so that they would raise three blisters[13] on his face unless he came with them." At last he went with them in despair, "because he thought it easier to fall by valour and championship and weapons than to fall by [druids'] wisdom and by reproach." The fight with Ferdiad is perhaps the finest episode in the Táin. The following is a description of the conduct of the warriors after the first day's conflict. THE FIGHT AT THE FORD.[14] "They ceased fighting and threw their weapons away from them into the hands of their charioteers. Each of them approached the other forthwith and each put his hand round the other's neck and gave him three kisses. Their horses were in the same paddock that night, and their charioteers at the same fire; and their charioteers spread beds of green rushes for them with wounded men's pillows to them. The professors of healing and curing came to heal and cure them, and they applied herbs and plants of healing and curing to their stabs, and their cuts, and their gashes, and to all their wounds. Of every herb and of every healing and curing plant that was put to the stabs and cuts and gashes, and to all the wounds of Cuchulain, he would send an equal portion from him, westward over the ford to Ferdiad, so that the men of Erin might not be able to say, should Ferdiad fall by him, that it was by better means of cure that he was enabled to kill him. "Of each kind of food and of palatable pleasant intoxicating drink that was sent by the men of Erin to Ferdiad, he would send a fair moiety over the ford northwards to Cuchulain, because the purveyors of Ferdiad were more numerous than the purveyors of Cuchulain. All the men of Erin were purveyors to Ferdiad for beating off Cuchulain from them, but the Bregians only were purveyors to Cuchulain, and they used to come to converse with him at dusk every night. They rested there that night." The narrator goes on to describe the next day's fighting, which was carried on from their chariots "with their great broad spears," and which left them both in such evil plight that the professors of healing and curing "could do nothing more for them, because of the dangerous severity of their stabs and their cuts and their gashes and their numerous wounds, than to apply witchcraft and incantations and charms to them to staunch their blood and their bleeding and their gory wounds." Their meeting on the next day follows thus:--