his engagement to fight that day. He (Aitherne) never devoured his full meal in a place where one should see him. He proceeded, therefore, [one day] to take with him a cooked pig and a pot of mead, in order that he might eat his fill all alone. And he set in order before him the pig and the pot of mead, when he beheld a man coming towards him. 'Thou wouldst do [it] all alone,' said the stranger, whilst he took the pig and the pot away from him. 'What is thy name?' said Aitherne. 'Nothing very grand,' said he:
'Sethor. ethor. othor. sele. dele, dreng gerce.
mec gerlusce. ger ger. dír dír issed moainmse.'
Sethor, ethor, othor, sele, dele, dreng gerce,
Son of Gerlusce, sharp sharp, right right, that is my name.
Aitherne neither got the pig nor was he able to make rhymes to the satire. It is evident that it was one come from God to take away the pig; for Aitherne was not stingy from that hour forth."
From this little story one may gather, among other things, that Aitherne, unable to master on the spur of the moment metrical skill enough to manipulate the name of the angel in possession of the pig and the pot of mead, was powerless to curse him: it had to be done according to the rules of the poetic art, and the form of words was of course all-important. But let us come to the birds: Aitherne got them for the purposes of denial and stinginess, crimes treated in a version of the Vision of Adamnán as characteristic of a very bad class of men, who undergo punishment in Hell in the company of 'thieves and liars, and folk of treachery and blasphemy, and robbers, and raiders, and false-judging brehons, and folk of contention, and witches, and slanderers, men who mark themselves
