Afterwards Sualtach, father of Cuchulain, heard the groans of his son as he was being cured, and said, "Is it heaven that is bursting, or the sea that is retiring, or the land that is loosening, or is it the groan of my son in his extremity that I hear?" said he. Cuchulain despatches him to urge the Ultonians to his assistance. "Tell them how you found me," he said; "there is not the place of the point of a needle in me from head to foot without a wound, there is not a hair upon my body without a dew of crimson blood upon the top of every point, except my left hand alone that was holding my shield." And now the Ultonians begin to rally and face the men of Erin. Troops are seen to pour in from every quarter of Ulster, gathering upon the plains of Meath for the great battle that was impending. Mève sends out her trusted messenger to bring word of what is going on amongst the hostile bands. His first report is that the noise of the Ultonians hewing down the woods before their chariots with the edge of their swords was "like nothing but as it were the solid firmament falling upon the surface-face of the earth, or as it were the sky-blue sea pouring over the superficies of the plain, as it were the earth being rent asunder, or the forests falling [each tree] into the grasp and fork of the other." Mac Roth, the chief messenger, is again sent out to observe the gathering of the hosts and to bring word of what bands are coming in to the hill where Conor, king of Ulster, has set up his standard. On his return at nightfall there follows a long, minute, and tedious account, something like the list of ships in the Iliad, only broken by the questions of Mève and Oilioll, and the answers of Fergus. It contains, however, some passages of interest. The scout describes the arrival of twenty-nine different armaments around their respective chiefs at the hill where King Conor is encamping. Incidentally he gives us descriptions of characters of interest in the Saga-cycle. As he ends his description of each band and its leaders, Oilioll turns to Fergus, and Fergus from Mac Roth's description recognises and tells him who the various leaders are. In this way we get a glimpse at Sencha, the wise man, the Nestor of the Red Branch, whose counsel was ever good. "That man," said Fergus, "is the speaker and peace-maker of the host of Ulster, and I pledge my word that it is no cowardly or unheroic counsel which that man will give to his lord this day, but counsel of vigour and valour and fight." We see the arrival of Feirceirtné, the arch-ollav of the Ultonians, of Cathbadh the Druid, he who had prophesied of Déirdre at her birth, who was supposed, according to the earliest accounts, to have been the real father of King Conor, he who weakened the children of Usnach by his spells; and we see also Aithirne, the infamous and overbearing poet of the Ultonians, about whom much is related in other tales. "The lakes and rivers,"