I'll lay the whole thing bare. You saw the luck that he had when he pushed in past me there. Does anything stir on the sea? LAEGAIRE Not even a fish or a gull. CONALL You were gone but a little while. We were there and the ale-cup full. We were half drunk and merry, and midnight on the stroke When a wide, high man came in with a red foxy cloak, With half-shut foxy eyes and a great laughing mouth, And he said when we bid him drink, that he had so great a drouth He could drink the sea. CUCHULAIN I thought he had come from one of you Out of some Connaught rath, and would lap up milk and mew; But if he so loved water I have the tale awry. CONALL You would not be so merry if he were standing by, For when we had sung or danced as he were our next of kin He promised to show us a game, the best that ever had been; And when we had asked what game, he answered, "Why, whip off my head! Then one of you two stoop down, and I'll whip off his," he said. "A head for a head," he said, "that is the game that I play." CUCHULAIN How could he whip off a head when his own had been whipped away? CONALL We told him it over and over, and that ale had fuddled his wit, But he stood and laughed at us there, as though his sides would split, Till I could stand it no longer, and whipped off his head at a blow, Being mad that he did not answer, and more at his laughing so, And there on the ground where it fell it went on laughing at me. LAEGAIRE Till he took it up in his hands-- CONALL And splashed himself into the sea. CUCHULAIN I have imagined as good when I've been as deep in the cup. LAEGAIRE You never did. CUCHULAIN And believed it. CONALL Cuchulain, when will you stop Boasting of your great deeds, and weighing yourself with us two, And crying out to the world whatever we say or do, That you've said or done a better?--Nor is it a drunkard's tale, Though we said to ourselves at first that it all came out of the ale, And thinking that if we told it we should be a laughing-stock, Swore we should keep it secret. LAEGAIRE But twelve months upon the clock. CONALL A twelvemonth from the first time. LAEGAIRE And the jug full up to the brim: For we had been put from our drinking by the very thought of him. CONALL We stood as we're standing now. LAEGAIRE The horns were as empty. CONALL When He ran up out of the sea with his head on his shoulders again. CUCHULAIN Why, this is a tale worth telling. CONALL And he called for his debt and his right, And said that the land was disgraced because of us two from that night If we did not pay him his debt. LAEGAIRE What is there to be said When a man with a right to get it has come to ask for your head? CONALL If you had been sitting there you had been silent like us. LAEGAIRE