e is a withe, what does the withe declare to us?
What is its mystery?
What number threw it?
Few or many?

'Will it cause injury to the host,
If they go a journey from it?
Find out, ye druids, something therefore
For what the withe has been left.

'---- of heroes the hero who has thrown it,
Full misfortune on warriors;
A delay of princes, wrathful is the matter,
One man has thrown it with one hand.

'Is not the king's host at the will of him,
Unless it breaks fair play?
Until one man only of you
Throw it, as one man has thrown it.
I do not know anything save that
For which the withe should have been put.
Here is a withe.'

Then Fergus said to them: 'If you outrage this withe,' said he, 'or
if you go past it, though he be in the custody of a man, or in a
house under a lock, the ---- of the man who wrote the ogam on it
will reach him, and will slay a goodly slaughter of you before
morning, unless one of you throw a like withe.'

'It does not please us, indeed, that one of us should be slain at
once,' said Ailill. 'We will go by the neck of the great wood
yonder, south of us, and we will not go over it at all.'

The troops hewed down then the wood before the chariots. This is
the name of that place, Slechta. It is there that Partraige is.
(According to others, the conversation between Medb and Fedelm the
prophetess took place there, as we told before; and then it is
after the answer she gave to Medb that the wood was cut down; i.e.
'Look for me,' said Medb, 'how my hosting will be.' 'It is
difficult to me,' said the maiden; 'I cannot cast my eye over them
in the wood.' 'It is ploughland (?) there shall be,' said Medb; 'we
will cut down the wood.' Then this was done, so that Slechta was
the name of the place.)

They spent the night then in Cul Sibrille; a great snowstorm fell
on them, to the girdles of the men and the wheels of the chariots.
The rising was early next morning. And it was not the most peaceful
of nights for them, with the snow; and they had not prepared food
that night. But it was not early when Cuchulainn came from his
tryst; he waited to wash and bathe.

Then he came on the track of the host. 'Would that we had not gone
there,' said Cuchulainn, 'nor betrayed the Ulstermen; we have let
the host go to them unawa