“There came another company there,” said Mac Roth; “no champion could be found more comely than he who leads them. His hair is of a deep-red yellow, and bushy; his forehead broad and his face tapering; thin red lips; pearly shining teeth; a white smooth body. A red and white cloak flutters about him; a golden brooch in that cloak at his breast; a shirt of white kingly linen with gold embroidery at his skin; a white shield with gold fastenings at his shoulder; a gold-hilted long sword at his left side; a long, sharp, dark-green spear with a rich band and carved silver rivets in his hand.” “Who is he, O Fergus?” said Ailill. “The man who has come there is in himself half a battle; the fury of the slaughter hound,” etc. Truly a wonderful accoutred warrior was this, and gorgeous in his apparel for his age. Like our Oriental Nabobs and savage chiefs he believed in colour and luxurious display. But I fancy it would be hard to beat the second quotation as an illustration of the riotous luxuriance of the Celtic imagination in the days when it was at its best, unsobered by science, unrestricted by reason. The quotation is from the description of the fight between the two rival bulls in Queen Meve’s country. In the poetic language of the tale, “the province rang with the echoes of their roaring, the sky was darkened by the sods of earth they threw up with their feet, and the foam that flew from their mouths; faint-hearted men, women, and children hid themselves in caves, caverns, and clefts of the rocks, whilst even the most veteran warriors but dared to view the combat from the neighbouring hills and eminences. The Finn-bheannach or White-horned at length gave way, and retreated towards a certain pass which opened into the plain in which the battle raged, and where sixteen warriors bolder than the rest had planted themselves; but so rapid was the retreat and the pursuit that not only were all these trampled to the ground, but they were buried several feet in it. The Donn Chuailgne at last coming up with his opponent, raised him on his horns, ran off with him, passed the gates of Meve’s palace, tossing and shaking him as he went, until at last he shattered him to pieces, dropping his disjointed members as he went along. And wherever a part fell, that place retained the name of that joint ever after.” And thus it was that “Ath Luain, now Athlone, which was before called Ath Mor or the Great Ford, received its present name from the Finnbheannach’s luan or loin having been dropped there.”