he chase went on. For, he said, the Dedannans were ever on
the watch to work the Feni mischief by their druidical spells, and more
so during the chase than at other times.

Finn Ban Mac Bresal stood forward and offered to go; and, grasping his
broad spears, he went to the top, and sat viewing the plain to the four
points of the sky. And the King and his companions brought forth the
chess-board and chess-men and sat them down to a game.

Finn Ban Mac Bresal had been watching only a little time when he saw on
a plain to the east a Fomor of vast size coming towards the hill,
leading a horse. As he came nearer Finn Ban observed that he was the
ugliest-looking giant his eyes ever lighted on. He had a large, thick
body, bloated and swollen out to a great size; clumsy, crooked legs; and
broad, flat feet turned inwards. His hands and arms and shoulders were
bony and thick and very strong-looking; his neck was long and thin; and
while his head was poked forward, his face was turned up, as he stared
straight at Finn Mac Bresal. He had thick lips, and long, crooked teeth;
and his face was covered all over with bushy hair.

He was fully armed; but all his weapons were rusty and soiled and
slovenly looking. A broad shield of a dirty, sooty colour, rough and
battered, hung over his back; he had a long, heavy, straight sword at
his left hip; and he held in his left hand two thick-handled,
broad-headed spears, old and rusty, and seeming as if they had not been
handled for years. In his right hand he held an iron club, which he
dragged after him with its end on the ground; and, as it trailed along,
it tore up a track as deep as the furrow a farmer ploughs with a team of
oxen.

The horse he led was even larger in proportion than the giant himself,
and quite as ugly. His great carcass was covered all over with tangled
scraggy hair, of a sooty black; you could count his ribs and all the
points of his big bones through his hide; his legs were crooked and
knotty; his neck was twisted; and as for his jaws, they were so long and
heavy that they made his head look twice too large for his body.

The giant held him by a thick halter, and seemed to be dragging him
forward by main force, the animal was so lazy and so hard to move. Every
now and then, when the beast tried to stand still, the giant would give
him a blow on the ribs with his big iron club, which sounded as loud as
the thundering of a great billow against the rough-headed rocks of