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gravel of the ground, in a dyke as high as the iron wheels, enough for a fortress-wall. He threw up this circle of the Badb round about the four great provinces of Ireland to stop them fleeing and scattering from him, and corner them where he could wreak vengeance for the boy-troop. He went into the middle of them and beyond, and mowed down great ramparts of his enemies’ corpses, circling completely around the armies three times, attacking them in hatred. They fell sole to sole and neck to headless neck, so dense was that destruction. He circled them three times more in the same way, and left a bed of them six deep in a great circuit, the soles of three to the necks of three in a ring around the camp. This slaughter on the Tain was given the name Seisrech Bresligi, the Sixfold Slaughter. It is one of the three uncountable slaughters on the Tain: Seisrech Bresligi, Imslige Glennamnach—the mutual slaughter at Glenn Domain—and the Great Battle at Gáirech andIrgairech (though this time it was horses and dogs as well as men.) Any count or estimate of the number of the rabble who fell there is unknown, and unknowable. Only the chiefs have been counted. The following are the names of these nobles and chiefs: two called Cruaid, two named Calad, two named Cír, two named Cíar, two named Ecell, three named Crom, three named Caur, three named Combirge, four named Feochar, four named Furechar, four named Cass, four named Fota, five named Aurith, five named Cerman, five named Cobthach, six named Saxan, six named Dach, six named Dáire, seven named Rochad, seven named Ronan, seven named Rurthech, eight named Rochlad, eight named Rochtad, eight named Rinnach, eight named Coirpre, eight named Mulach, nine named Daithi, nine more named Dáire, nine named Damach, ten named Fiac, ten named Fiacha and ten named Feidlimid.
    In this great Carnage on Murtheimne Plain Cuchulain slew one hundred and thirty kings, as well as an uncountable horde of dogs and horses, women and boys and children and rabble of all kinds. Not one man in three escaped without his thighbone or his head or his eye being smashed, or without some blemish for the rest of his life. And when the battle was over Cuchulain left without a scratch or a stain on himself, his helper or either of his horses.

THE PALACE OF THE QUICKEN TREES
FINN M AC COOL

    Finn MacCool (Fionn mac Cuimhaill), perhaps the most popular of the Irish mythical heroes, has appeared over the centuries in many guises. As a giant, he is given credit for building the Giant’s Causeway, a natural rock formation on the Antrim coast, and for cutting many mountain passes in both Ireland and Scotland with his sword. In the Old Irish version of “Tristan and Isolde” (“The Pursuit of Dermat and Grania”), he is a bumbling old fool. Geoffrey Keating, the seventeenth-century historian, claimed he was a historical figure who died in A . D . 283. But in most of the tales he appears as an Arthurian ruler—a descendant of Nuadu, the silver-armed king of the De Danann—who is surrounded by a band of followers, Fenians, who are not unlike the knights of the roundtable. Among them are his son, the poetic Oisin, and his grandson, the heroic Oscar, both of whom became especially popular during the nineteenth-century Celtic revival.
    The quicken trees in the title are European mountain ash, often thought to have magical powers. Although this tale includes many magical elements, it also has its realistic aspects, such as the Viking threat, the presence of high-born hostages in royal courts, and the fact that most medieval skirmishes did indeed take place near fords across streams or rivers. The King of the World in the story may be a reference to the Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne.
    The Palace of the Quicken Trees
(Bruidhean Chaorthainn) came out of the eighth- and ninth-century oral tradition and seems to have been first written down in the tenth century.
COLGA, KING OF LOCHLANN,
INVADES ERIN, AND IS SLAIN
    A NOBLE,