Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/212

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THE WEAPON-FEATS OF CUCHULLIN.
187

famus, cutting off an opponent's hair with the sword; the taith-béim, 'vertical stroke,' which fixed an antagonist to the ground; the fodh-béim, 'sod-blow,' by which the sod was cut, in contempt, from under the feet of an antagonist by a stroke of the sword [hence, undoubtedly, the common Irish phrase, "cutting the ground from under his feet"]; the dreim fri foghuist,

No 20. No 21. No 22.
MANAIS—BEAUTIFUL BRONZE SPEARS, TUATIIA DE DANAJTN.
(See page 177.)

climbing a rock; the fonaidhm niadh for rinnibh slegh, coiling of a champion around the blades of upright spears;' and the carbad-searrdha, the feat of the armed or scythed war-chariot."

Surely, the man who "held the record," in modern sporting parlance, for all these feats, de-