Sad is the deed which has come of it:
We the pupils of Scáthach,
I, all wounded and red with gore,
Thou, thy chariot no longer driving."
"Good, O Cuchulaind," said Laeg, "let us leave this ford now. Too long are we here."
"We shall leave now, indeed, O my friend Laeg," said Cuchulaind; "but every other combat that I have made was to me as a game and a sport compared with this fight with Ferdiad!"
It is impossible in brief space to convey the richness of imagery, the subtle character-sketching, and the minute detail of this noble and ancient poem. The future has brilliant crowns for Erinn besides those she may win politically. The re-establishment of her literary and artistic genius, the verification of her ancient and unceasing claim, the proving her root to have its deep hold in the earliest known fields of the human race,—this is part of the duty and responsibility that rests on the shoulders of the Irish race of the present.
