Around him a beautiful crimson five-folded tunic, fastened at its opening on his white breast with a brooch of inlaid gold, against which it heaves beating in full strokes. A shirt with a white hood, interwoven red with flaming gold. Seven red dragon gems on the ground of either of his eyes. Two blue-white, blood-red cheeks, that breathe forth sparks and flashes of fire. A ray of love burns in his look. Methinks a shower of pearls has fallen into his mouth. As black as the side of a black ruin each of his eyebrows. On his two thighs rests a golden hilted sword, and fastened to the copper frame of the chariot is a blood-red spear with a sharp mettlesome blade, on a shaft of wood well-fitted to the hand. Over his shoulders a crimson shield with a rim of silver, ornamented with figures of golden animals. He leaps the hero’s salmon-leap into the air and does many like swift feats. Such was Cuchulinn in the damsel’s eyes. Eimer declined his suit at first on the plea that she was a younger daughter, and advised him to approach her father for leave to pay court to her elder sister, whose brilliant accomplishments she fully rehearsed. This suggestion the hero spurned and love sprang up between them. After he departed Forgaill heard of the visit of the remarkable unknown stranger, and quickly divined who he was. Not wishing to have this professional champion as son-in-law, the wily father disguised himself as a Gaulish or Scandinavian envoy and set out for Emania. There he was well received by the king, and while witnessing the feats of the knights he took occasion to recommend the king to send his nephew to Skye to complete his special training in arms, at the celebrated school of the lady Scathach. His sinister idea was that so many dangers and difficulties would beset Cuchulinn on the way that he would never return. The latter vowed he would go. And on setting out he encountered many perils. Among others he had to traverse “the plain of misfortune,” which he did by the aid of a wheel and of an apple given him by a chance acquaintance. He took instruction from the Albannach Donall by the way, and declined the love of his ugly daughter. But departing from their home he arrived in safety at Dun Scathach. The Grianan or sunny house of his future instructress, “built upon a rock of appalling height,” “had seven great doors and seven great windows between every two doors of them, and thrice fifty couches between every two windows of them, and thrice fifty handsome marriageable girls in scarlet cloaks and in beautiful and blue attire, attending and waiting upon Scathach.”