'Tis this that some books relate, that but a very few fell around Conaire, namely, nine only. And hardly a fugitive escaped to tell the tidings to the champions who had been at the house. Where there had been five thousand--and in every thousand ten hundred--only one set of five escaped, namely Ingcél, and his two brothers Echell and Tulchinne, the "Yearling of the Reavers"--three great-grandsons of Conmac, and the two Reds of Róiriu who had been the first to wound Conaire. Thereafter Ingcél went into Alba, and received the kingship after his father, since he had taken home triumph over a king of another country. This, however, is the recension in other books, and it is more probably truer. Of the folk of the Hostel forty or fifty fell, and of the reavers three fourths and one fourth of them only escaped from the Destruction. Now when Mac cecht was lying wounded on the battle-field, at the end of the third day, he saw a woman passing by. "Come hither, O woman!" says Mac cecht. "I dare not go thus," says the woman, "for horror and fear of thee." "There _was_ a time when I had this, O woman, even horror and fear of me on some one. But now thou shouldst fear nothing. I accept thee on the truth of my honour and my safeguard." Then the woman goes to him. "I know not," says he, "whether it is a fly or a gnat, or an ant that nips me in the wound." It happened that it was a hairy wolf that was there, as far as its two shoulders in the wound! The woman seized it by the tail, and dragged it out of the wound, and it takes the full of its jaws out of him. "Truly," says the woman, "this is 'an ant of ancient land.'" Says Mac cecht "I swear to God what my people swears, I deemed it no bigger than a fly, or a gnat, or an ant." And Mac cecht took the wolf by the throat, and struck it a blow on the forehead, and killed it with a single blow. Then Lé fri flaith, son of Conaire, died under Mac cecht's armpit, for the warrior's heat and sweat had dissolved him. Thereafter Mac cecht, having cleansed the slaughter, at the end of the third day, set forth, and he dragged Conaire with him on his back, and buried him at Tara, as some say. Then Mac cecht departed into Connaught, to his own country, that he might work his cure in Mag Bréngair. Wherefore the name clave to the plain from Mac cecht's misery, that is, Mag Brén-guir. Now Conall Cernach escaped from the Hostel, and thrice fifty spears had gone through the arm which upheld his shield. He fared forth till he reached his father's house, with half his shield in his hand, and his sword, and the fragments of his two spears. Then he found his father before his garth in Taltiu. "Swift are the wolves that have hunted thee, my son," saith his father. "'Tis this that has wounded us, thou old hero, an evil conflict with warriors," Conall Cernach replied. "Hast thou then news of Dá Derga's Hostel?" asked Amorgin. "Is thy lord alive?" "He is _not_ alive," says Conall.