Then Ailill recollected that he had a young bull named “Finn-bheannach” or “White-horned,” which had been calved by one of the Queen’s cows, but which had left her herd and joined his own because the high-minded animal did not “deem it honourable to be under a woman’s control.” Meve’s disappointment was keen that no bull of hers was found to match this one; so, when Fergus Mac Roth the herald assured her that Daré, in Cuailgne, Ulster, possessed a brown one, the best in all Erin, she immediately sent him with nine subordinates to fetch it, offering its owner liberal terms for a year’s loan. Daré treated the messengers with kindly hospitality, and agreed to the royal request. But, unhappily, while the men were imbibing too freely that night, his steward overheard one of them boasting that if the bull had not been willingly sent they would have taken it by compulsion. On this coming to Daré’s ears, he swore by the gods that now they would not have his Donn Chuailgne either by force or consent. Meve was not a woman to be thus lightly denied or insulted. _Nolens volens_ she would have the bull, and summoned her native forces for action. She also invited the men of Leinster and Munster to join her in avenging past indignities received at the hands of the men of Ulster. Fifteen hundred men from the latter province, who happened to be at feud with King Conchobar for his treachery to the sons of Uisneach, were prevailed upon to answer her summons, and a great army set out. At a place near modern Louth, where they halted on the march, a feast was held, at which the Queen contrived to promise to each of the leaders, without the knowledge of the rest, the hand of her beautiful daughter Finnamhair in marriage as a stimulus to valour and fidelity. “On one of the nights the snow that fell reached to men’s legs and to the wheels of the chariots, so that it made one plain of the five provinces of Erin, and the men never suffered so much before in camp. None knew throughout the whole night whether it was his friend or his foe who was next him until the clear shining sun rose early on the morrow.” Though the Ulster men had sufficient warning of the approach of this host, they were not in readiness. A childish helplessness, to which they were subject for an unmanly crime, had overtaken them and left them at the mercy of their foes.