a helmet on his head with two beautiful precious
stones set in the front of it and one at the back, and when he took it
off, his forehead was like the sun on a dry summer day. And he had
Manannan's sword, the Freagarthach, the Answerer, at his side, and no
one that was wounded by it would ever get away alive; and when that
sword was bared in a battle, no man that saw it coming against him had
any more strength than a woman in child-birth.

And the troop came to where the King of Ireland was with the Tuatha de
Danaan, and they welcomed one another.

And they were not long there till they saw a surly, slovenly troop
coming towards them, nine times nine of the messengers of the Fomor,
that were coming to ask rent and taxes from the men of Ireland; and the
names of the four that were the hardest and the most cruel were Eine and
Eathfaigh and Coron and Compar; and there was such great dread of these
four on the Tuatha de Danaan, that not one of them would so much as
punish his own son or his foster-son without leave from them.

They came up then to where the King of Ireland was with the Riders of
the Sidhe, and the king and all the Tuatha de Danaan stood up before
them. And Lugh of the Long Hand said: "Why do you rise up before that
surly, slovenly troop, when you did not rise up before us?"

"It is needful for us to do it," said the king; "for if there was but a
child of us sitting before them, they would not think that too small a
cause for killing him." "By my word," said Lugh, "there is a great
desire coming on me to kill themselves." "That is a thing would bring
harm on us," said the king, "for we would meet our own death and
destruction through it." "It is too long a time you have been under this
oppression," said Lugh. And with that he started up and made an attack
on the Fomor, killing and wounding them, till he had made an end of
eight nines of them, but he let the last nine go under the protection of
Nuada the king. "And I would kill you along with the others," he said,
"but I would sooner see you go with messages to your own country than my
own people, for fear they might get any ill-treatment."

So the nine went back then till they came to Lochlann, where the men of
the Fomor were, and they told them the story from beginning to end, and
how a young well-featured lad had come into Ireland and had killed all
the tax-gatherers but themselves, "and it is the reason he let us off,"
they said, "that we might tell y