Page:Kuno Meyer - Cath Finntrága.djvu/33

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THE BATTLE OF VENTRY.
5

world was the first to take harbour, so that thenceforward its name was Rinn na Bairci (The Point of the Barque). And they let down their many-coloured linen-white sails, and raised their purple-mouthed speckled tents, and consumed their excellent savoury viands, and their fine intoxicating drinks, and their harps were brought to them for long playing, and their poets to sing their songs and their dark conceits to them.

'O Glas son of Dreman,' said the king of the world, 'to whom belongs this land into which we have come first as a portion of the spoil when they will divide Erinn between them before they return eastward?' 'To Tor the son of Breogan, the king of Spain,' said Glas, 'belongs this land.' 'In that case, O king of Spain,' said the king of the world, 'thou art obliged to procure entertainment and good cheer for us to-night.'

Then the king of Spain rose, and four red-armed battalions in order together with him, and he went at once across the border of the country, and there were three forts to the west of this territory, namely, Dun Cais, and Dun Aeda and Dun Cerbain, and they were burnt by the king of Spain, both kings and lords, both women and children, both dogs and men, both bowls and drinking-horns and cups, and there were thrice fifty henchmen in each of these forts, and they were all of them burnt by them.

Now Finn and the fianns of Erinn knew that that heavy troop would come against Erinn, to wit, the kings of the whole world, as it had been represented and prophesied to them. And there was no landing-place in Erinn without a watchman from Finn over it, and he that was watching this harbour was Conncrithir the son of