You play with arguments as lawyers do, And put no heart in them. I know your thoughts, For we have slept under the one cloak and drunk From the one wine cup. I know you to the bone. I have heard you cry, aye in your very sleep, ‘I have no son,’ and with such bitterness That I have gone upon my knees and prayed That it might be amended. CUCHULAIN. For you thought That I should be as biddable as others Had I their reason for it; but that’s not true, For I would need a weightier argument Than one that marred me in the copying, As I have that clean hawk out of the air That, as men say, begot this body of mine Upon a mortal woman. CONCHUBAR. Now as ever You mock at every reasonable hope, And would have nothing, or impossible things. What eye has ever looked upon the child Would satisfy a mind like that? CUCHULAIN. I would leave My house and name to none that would not face Even myself in battle. CONCHUBAR. Being swift of foot, And making light of every common chance, You should have overtaken on the hills Some daughter of the air, or on the shore A daughter of the Country-under-Wave. CUCHULAIN. I am not blasphemous. CONCHUBAR. Yet you despise Our queens, and would not call a child your own, If one of them had borne him. CUCHULAIN. I have not said it. CONCHUBAR. Ah! I remember I have heard you boast, When the ale was in your blood, that there was one In Scotland, where you had learnt the trade of war, That had a stone-pale cheek and red-brown hair. And that although you had loved other women, You’d sooner that fierce woman of the camp Bore you a son than any queen among them. CUCHULAIN. You call her a ‘fierce woman of the camp,’ For having lived among the spinning-wheels, You’d have no woman near that would not say, ‘Ah! how wise!’ ‘What will you have for supper?’ ‘What shall I wear that I may please you, sir?’ And keep that humming through the day and night Forever. A fierce woman of the camp! But I am getting angry about nothing. You have never seen her. Ah! Conchubar, had you seen her With that high, laughing, turbulent head of hers Thrown backward, and the bow-string at her ear, Or sitting at the fire with those grave eyes Full of good counsel as it were with wine, Or when love ran through all the lineaments Of her wild body—although she had no child, None other had all beauty, queen, or lover, Or was so fitted to give birth to kings. CONCHUBAR. There’s nothing I can say but drifts you farther From the one weighty matter. That very woman— For I know well that you are praising Aoife— Now hates you and will leave no subtilty Unknotted that might run into a noose About your throat, no army in idleness That might bring ruin on this land you serve. CUCHULAIN.