The result of this chivalrous, but, to modern ideas, amazing, parley was that a truce of one hundred and five days was agreed upon. It was on Midsummer Day that the opposing armies at last met. The people of the goddess Danu appeared in “a flaming line”, wielding their “red-bordered, speckled, and firm shields”. Opposite to them were ranged the Fir Bolgs, “sparkling, brilliant, and flaming, with their swords, spears, blades, and trowel-spears”. The proceedings began with a kind of deadly hurley-match, in which thrice nine of the Tuatha Dé Danann played the same number of the Fir Bolgs, and were defeated and killed. Then followed another parley, to decide how the battle should be carried on, whether there should be fighting every day or only on every second day. Moreover, Nuada obtained from Eochaid an assurance that the battles should always be fought with equal numbers, although this was, we are told, “very disagreeable to the Fir Bolg king, because he had largely the advantage in the numbers of his army”. Then warfare recommenced with a series of single combats, like those of the Greeks and Trojans in the “Iliad”. At the end of each day the conquerors on both sides went back to their camps, and were refreshed by being bathed in healing baths of medicinal herbs. So the fight went on for four days, with terrible slaughter upon each side. A Fir Bolg champion called Sreng fought in single combat with Nuada, the King of the Gods, and shore off his hand and half his shield with one terrific blow. Eochaid, the King of the Fir Bolgs, was even less fortunate than Nuada; for he lost his life. Suffering terribly from thirst, he went, with a hundred of his men, to look for water, and was followed, and pursued as far as the strand of Ballysadare, in Sligo. Here he turned to bay, but was killed, his grave being still marked by a tumulus. The Fir Bolgs, reduced at last to three hundred men, demanded single combat until all upon one side were slain. But, sooner than consent to this, the Tuatha Dé Danann offered them a fifth part of Ireland, whichever province they might choose. They agreed, and chose Connaught, ever afterwards their especial home, and where, until the middle of the seventeenth century, men were still found tracing their descent from Sreng.