After the dialogue with Fergus, Bricriu, with the poets that attend
him, undertakes a journey to Ailill the Fair, to obtain from him the
bounty that Fergus had promised but was unable to grant. He makes a
fairly heavy demand upon Ailill's bounty, but is received hospitably,
and gets all he had asked for, as well as honour for his poetic
talents. He then asks about Ailill's wife Flidais, and is told about
her marvellous cow, which was able to supply milk to more than three
hundred men at one night's milking. Flidais returns from a journey, is
welcomed by Bricriu, who produces a poem in honour of her and her cow,
and is suitably recompensed.
A long conversation is then recorded between Flidais and Bricriu in
which Bricriu extols the great deeds of Fergus, supplying thereby a
commentary on the short statement at the beginning of the older
version, that Flidais' love to Fergus was on account of the great deeds
which had been told her that he had done. Flidais declares to Bricriu
her love for Fergus, and Bricriu, after a vain attempt to dissuade the
queen from her purpose, consents to bring a message to Fergus that
Flidais and her cow will come to him if he comes to her husband's
castle to seek her. He then returns to Connaught laden with gifts.
The story now proceeds somewhat upon the lines of the older version.
Bricriu approaches Fergus on his return, and induces him to go in the
guise of an ambassador to Ailill the Fair, with the secret intention of
carrying off Flidais. Fergus receives the sanction of Maev and her
husband for his errand, and departs, but not as in the older version
with a few followers; all the Ulster exiles are with him. Dubhtach, by
killing a servant of Maev, embroils Fergus with the queen of Connaught;
and the expedition reaches Ailill the Fair's castle. Fergus sends
Bricriu, who has most unwillingly accompanied him, to ask for
hospitality; he is hospitably received by Ailill, and when under the
influence of wine reveals to Ailill the plot. Ailill does not, as in
the older version, refuse to receive Fergus, but seats him beside
himself at a feast, and after reproaching him with his purpose
challenges him to a duel in the morning. The result of the duel, and
of the subsequent attack on the castle by Fergus' friends, is much as
stated in the older version, but the two stories end quite differently.
The L.U. version makes Flidais assist in the War of Cualgne by feeding
the army of Ailill each seventh day with the produce of her cows; she
dies after the war as wife of Fergus; the Glenn Masain version, in the
"Pursuit of the Cattle of Flidais," makes the Gamanrad clan, the
hero-clan of the West of Ireland, pursue Maev and Fergus, and rescue
Flidais and her cow; Flidais then returns to the west with Muiretach
Menn, the son of her murdered husband, Ailill the Fair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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