(Comes in and says to the fool) Give me that horn. (The fool gives him a horn which Cuchullain fills with ale and drinks.) FINTAIN. Do not listen to him, listen to me. CUCHULLAIN. What are you wrangling over? BARACH. He is fat and good for nothing. He has left me the bones and the feathers. CUCHULLAIN. What feathers? BARACH. I left him turning a fowl at the fire. He ate it all. He left me nothing but the bones and feathers. FINTAIN. Do not believe him. You do not know how vain this fool is. I gave him the feathers, because I thought he would like nothing so well. (Barach is sitting on a bench playing with a heap of feathers which he has taken out of the breast of his coat.) BARACH. (Singing) When you were an acorn on the tree top-- FINTAIN. Where would he be but for me? I must be always thinking, thinking to get food for the two of us, and when we've got it, if the moon's at the full or the tide on the turn, he'll leave the rabbit in its snare till it is full of maggots, or let the trout slip through his hands back into the water. BARACH. (Singing) When you were an acorn on the tree top, Then was I an eagle cock; Now that you are a withered old block, Still am I an eagle cock! FINTAIN. Listen to him now! That's the sort of talk I have to put up with day out day in. (The fool is putting the feathers into his hair. Cuchullain takes a handful of feathers out of the heap and out of the fool's hair and begins to wipe the blood from his sword with them.) BARACH. He has taken my feathers to wipe his sword. It is blood that he is wiping from his sword! FINTAIN. Whose blood? Whose blood? CUCHULLAIN. That young champion's. FINTAIN. He that came out of Aoife's country? CUCHULLAIN. The Kings are standing round his body. FINTAIN. Did he fight long? CUCHULLAIN. He thought to have saved himself with witchcraft. BARACH. That blind man there said he would kill you. He came from Aoife's country to kill you. That blind man said they had taught him every kind of weapon that he might do it. But I always knew that you would kill him. CUCHULLAIN. (To the blind man.) You knew him, then? FINTAIN. I saw him when I had my eyes, in Aoife's country. CUCHULLAIN. You were in Aoife's country? FINTAIN. I knew him and his mother there. CUCHULLAIN. He was about to speak of her when he died. FINTAIN. He was a Queen's son. CUCHULLAIN. What Queen, what Queen? (He seizes the blind man.) Was it Scathach? There were many Queens. All the rulers there were Queens. FINTAIN. No, not Scathach. CUCHULLAIN. It was Uathach then. Speak, speak! FINTAIN. I cannot speak, you are clutching me too tightly. (Cuchullain lets him go.) I cannot remember who it was. I am not certain. It was some Queen. BARACH. He said a while ago that the young man was Aoife's son. CUCHULLAIN. She? No, no, she had no son when I was there. BARACH.