Poems MacCarthy, Florence Denis

70
Green rushes, and beneath their heads the down
Of wounded men's soft pillows. Then the skilled
Professors of the art of healing came
To tend them and to cure them through the night.
But they for all their skill could do no more,
So numerous and so dangerous were the wounds,
The cuts, and clefts, and scars so large and deep,
But to apply to them the potent charms
Of witchcraft, incantations, and barb spells,
As sorcerers use, to stanch the blood and stay
The life that else would through the wounds escape:--
Of every charm of witchcraft, every spell,
Of every incantation that was used
To heal Cuchullin's wounds, a full fair half
Over the Ford was westward sent to heal
Ferdiah's hurts: of every sort of food,
And sweet, intoxicating, pleasant drink
The men of Erin to Ferdiah sent,
He a fair moiety across the Ford
Sent northward to Cuchullin where he lay,
Because his own purveyors far surpassed
In number those the Ulster chief retained.
For all the federate hosts of Erin were
Purveyors to Ferdiah, with the hope
That he would beat Cuchullin from the Ford.
The Bregians only were Cuchullin's friends--
His sole purveyors--and their wont it was
To come to him, and talk with him at night.
They rested there that night. Next morn they rose,
And to the Ford of battle forward came.
That day a great, ill-favoured, lowering cloud
Upon Ferdiah's face Cuchullin saw.
"Badly," said he, "dost thou appear this day,
Ferdiah, for thy hair has duskier grown
This day, and a dull stupour dims thine eyes,
And thine own face and form, and what thou wert
In outward seeming have deserted thee."
"'Tis not through fear of thee that I am so,"
Ferdiah said, "for Erin doth not hold
This day a champion I could not subdue."