It was Cuchulinn’s country the enemy had invaded, and he kept them at bay. Hovering around them unseen all day, he killed as many as a hundred each night with his sling. In vain Meve tried to buy this boyish hero off, first by a mutual conference, with the glen between them, and second by sending an embassage with Mac Roth as messenger-in-chief. On this occasion Cuchulinn discarded the twenty-seven cunningly prepared undershirts which with cords and ropes were secured about him. And this he did to escape the difficulty that would arise in throwing them off, should his paroxysm come to boiling point and he in them still. Anon for thirty feet all round the hero’s body the snow melted with the intense heat generated in his system. His charioteer, we are told, durst not come nigh him. From a safe distance he informed his master of Mac Roth’s approach and described him. Cuchulinn demands single combat, enjoining his opponents by the laws of Irish chivalry not to pass the ford till he was overcome. Queen Meve reluctantly consents, deeming it better to lose one warrior a day than a hundred each night. With her messenger came a youth anxious to see the renowned hero, and he, deceived by the boyish appearance of Cuchulinn, determined to fight him. To warn the rash stripling of his danger, the latter plays upon him two sword-feats. By the first, “the under-cut,” he slices away the sod from under this Etarchomal’s soles and lays him supine, with the sod upon his upturned chest. By the second, “the vigorous edge-stroke,” he takes off all his hair from poll to forehead and from ear to ear, as clean as though he had been shaven with a razor, but without drawing blood. Finally, he despatches him with the “oblique transverse stroke,” whereby in three simultaneously fallen segments the youth reaches the ground. Champion after champion falls in single combat, until Meve, getting desperate, had at length to call in the aid of magic. So we read that one warrior was helped by demons of the air in bird shape, but in vain; and the great magician Cailatin and his twenty-seven sons, despite their spells, also met their doom. Cuchulinn was further persecuted by the war-goddess, the Morrigan, who appears in all shapes to plague him and to frighten the life of valour out of his soul. He himself is not behind in demoniac influence, for with the help of the Tuatha de Danann—Manannan especially—he does great havoc among Meve’s troops, circling round them in his chariot and dealing death with his sling. It was during one of these exploits that he gave his chariot the heavy turn, so that its iron wheels sank into the earth and their track was in itself a sufficient fortification, for the stones and pillars and flags and sand rose back high on every side round the wheels.