st the ram broke through five
of their shields. But Tadg took his spear that there was no escape from,
and made a lucky cast at the ram and killed him. And they brought the
ram to the curragh and made it ready for the young men to eat, and they
stopped three nights on the island, and every night it was a sheep they
had for their food. And they gathered a good share of the wool and put
it in the curragh because of the wonder and the beauty of it. And they
found the bones of very big men on the island, but whether they died of
sickness or were killed by the rams they did not know.

They left that island then and went forward till they found two strange
islands where there were great flocks of wonderful birds, like
blackbirds, and some of them the size of eagles or of cranes, and they
red with green heads on them, and the eggs they had were blue and pure
crimson. And some of the men began eating the eggs, and on the moment
feathers began to grow out on them. But they went bathing after that,
and the feathers dropped off them again as quick as they came.

It was the foreigner they had with them gave them the course up to this
time, for he had been on the same track before. But now they went on
through the length of six weeks and never saw land, and he said then,
"We are astray on the great ocean that has no boundaries." Then the wind
with its sharp voice began to rise, and there was a noise like the
tramping of feet in the sea, and it rose up into great mountains hard to
climb, and there was great fear on Tadg's people, for they had never
seen the like. But he began to stir them up and to rouse them, and he
bade them to meet the sea like men. "Do bravery," he said, "young men of
Munster, and fight for your lives against the waves that are rising up
and coming at the sides of the curragh." Tadg took one side of the
curragh then and his men took the other side, and he was able to pull it
round against the whole twenty-nine of them, and to bale it out and keep
it dry along with that. And after a while they got a fair wind and put
up their sail, the way less water came into the curragh, and then the
sea went down and lay flat and calm, and there were strange birds of
many shapes singing around them in every part. They saw land before them
then, with a good coast, and with that courage and gladness came on
them.

And when they came nearer to the land they found a beautiful inver, a
river's mouth, with green hills about it, and