"I'm sorry for you, my poor Amadan," says she, "for no one ever met
before that White Wether and came back alive. But come in and eat and
rest, anyhow, for you must be both hungry and sleepy."
So she spread him a hearty meal and made him a soft bed, and the
Amadan ate and slept heartily; and in the morning she directed him to
where he would meet the White Wether of the Hill of the Waterfalls.
And she told him that no steel was tougher than the hide of the White
Wether, that a sword was never yet made that could go through it, and
that there was only one place--a little white spot just over the
wether's heart--where he could be killed or sword could cut through.
And she told the Amadan that his only chance was to hit this spot.
The Amadan thanked her, and set out. He travelled away and away before
him until he came to the Hill of the Waterfalls, and as soon as he
reached it he saw the White Wether coming tearing toward him in a
furious rage, and the earth he was throwing up with his horns was
shutting out the sun.
And when the wether came up and asked the Amadan what great feats he
had done that made him impudent enough to dare to come there, the
Amadan said: "With this sword I have killed Slat Mor, Slatt Marr,
Slatt Beag, the Cailliach of the Rocks and her four badachs, and
likewise the Black Bull of the Brown Wood."
"Then," said the White Wether, "you'll never kill any other." And at
the Amadan he sprang.
The Amadan struck at him with his sword, and the sword glanced off as
it might off steel. Both of them fell to the fight with all their
hearts, and such a fight never was before or since. They made the hard
ground into soft, and the soft into spring wells; they made the rocks
into pebbles, and the pebbles into gravel, and the gravel fell over
the country like hailstones. All the birds of the air from the lower
end of the world to the upper end of the world, and all the wild
beasts and tame from the four ends of the earth, came flocking to see
the fight. But at length and at last, after a long and terrible fight,
the Amadan, seeing the little spot above the heart that the red woman
had told him of, struck for it and hit it, and drove his sword through
the White Wether's heart, and he fell down. And when he was dying, he
called the Amadan and put him under a geasa to meet and fight the
Beggarman of the King of Sweden.
The Amadan took out his bottle of iocshlainte and rubbed himself with
the iocshlainte, and he was as fresh and hale as when he began the
fight. Then he set out again, and when night was falling, he reached
the hut that had no shelter within or without, only one feather over
it, and the rough, red woman was standing in the door.
Right glad she was to see the Amadan coming back alive, and she
welcomed him heartily and asked him the news.
He told her of the wonderful fight he had had, and that he was now
under geasa to meet and fight the Beggarman of the King of Sweden.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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