26. Now the Dagda was unhappy at the work, and in the house he used to meet an idle blind man named Cridenbel, whose mouth grew out of his chest. Cridenbel considered his own meal small and the Dagda’s large, so he said, “Dagda, for the sake of your honor let the three best bits of your serving be given to me!” and the Dagda used to give them to him every night. But the satirist’s bits were large: each bit was the size of a good pig. Furthermore those three bits were a third of the Dagda’s serving. The Dagda’s appearance was the worse for that.
27. Then one day the Dagda was in the trench and he saw the Mac Oc corning toward him.
“Greetings to you, Dagda!” said the Mac Oc.
“And to you,” said the Dagda.
“What makes you look so bad?” he asked.
“I have good cause,” he said. “Every night Cridenbel the satirist demands from me the three best bits of my serving.”
28. “I have advice for you,” said the Mac Oc. He puts his hand into his purse, and takes from it three coins of gold, and gives them to him.
29. “Put,” he said, “these three gold coins into the three bits for Cridenbel in the evening. Then these will be the best on your dish, and the gold will stick in his belly so that he will die of it; and Bres’s judgement afterwards will not be right. Men will say to the king, ‘The Dagda has killed Cridenbel with a deadly herb which he gave him.’ Then the king will order you to be killed, and you will say to him, ‘What you say, king of the warriors of the Feni, is not a prince’s truth. For he kept importuning me since I began my work, saying to me, “Give me the three best bits of your serving, Dagda. My housekeeping is bad tonight.” Indeed, I would have died from that, had not the three gold coins which I found today helped me. I put them into my serving. Then I gave it to Cridenbel, because the gold was the best thing that was before me. So the gold is now in Cridenbel, and he died of it.'”
“It is clear,” said the king. “Let the satirist’s stomach be cut out to see whether the gold will be found in it. If it is not found, you will die. If it is found, however, you will live.”
30. Then they cut out the satirist’s stomach to find the three gold coins in his belly, and the Dagda was saved.
31. Then the Dagda went to his work the next morning, and the Mac Oc came to him and said, “Soon you will finish your work, but do not seek payment until the cattle of Ireland are brought to you. Choose from among them the dark, black-maned, trained, spirited heifer.
32. Then the Dagda brought his work to an end, and Bres asked him what he would take as wages for his labour. The Dagda answered, “I require that you gather the cattle of Ireland in one place.” The king did that as he asked, and he chose the heifer from among them as the Mac Oc had told him. That seemed foolish to Bres. He had thought that he would have chosen something more.
33. Now Nuadu was being treated, and Dian Cecht put a silver hand on him which had the movement of any other hand. But his son Miach did not like that. He went to the hand and said “joint to joint of it, and sinew to sinew”; and he healed it in nine days and nights. The first three days he carried it against his side, and it became covered with skin. The second three days he carried it against his chest. The third three days he would cast white wisps of black bulrushes after they had been blackened in a fire.
34. Dian Cecht did not like that cure. He hurled a sword at the crown of his son’s head and cut his skin to the flesh. The young man healed it by means of his skill. He struck him again and cut his flesh until he reached the bone. The young man healed it by the same means. He struck the third blow and reached the membrane of his brain. The young man healed this too by the same means. Then he struck the fourth blow and cut out the brain, so that Miach died; and Dian Cecht said that no physician could heal him of that blow.
35. After that, Miach was buried by Dian Cecht, and three hundred and sixty-five herbs grew through the grave, corresponding to the number of his joints and sinews. Then Airmed spread her cloak and uprooted those herbs according to their properties. Dian Cecht came to her and mixed the herbs, so that no one knows their proper healing qualities unless the Holy Spirit taught them afterwards. And Dian Cecht said, “Though Miach no longer lives, Airmed shall remain.”
36. At that time, Bres held the sovereignty as it had been granted to him. There was great murmuring against him among his maternal kinsmen the Tuatha De, for their knives were not greased by him. However frequently they might come, their breaths did not smell of ale; and they did not see their poets nor their bards nor their satirists nor their harpers nor their pipers nor their horn-blowers nor their jugglers nor their fools entertaining them in the household. They did not go to contests of those pre-eminent in the arts, nor did they see their warriors proving their skill at arms before the king, except for one man, Ogma the son of Lain.
37. This was the duty which he had, to bring firewood to the fortress. He would bring a bundle every day from the islands of Clew Bay. The sea would carry off two-thirds of his bundle because he was weak for lack of food. He used to bring back only one third, and he supplied the host from day to day.
38. But neither service nor payment from the tribes continued; and the treasures of the tribe were not being given by the act of the whole tribe.
39. On one occasion the poet came to the house of Bres seeking hospitality (that is, Coirpre son of Etain, the poet of the Tuatha De). he entered a narrow, black, dark little house; and there was neither fire nor furniture nor bedding in it. Three small cakes were brought to him on a little dish–and they were dry. The next day he arose, and he was not thankful. As he went across the yard he said,
“Without food quickly on a dish,
Without cow’s milk on which a calf grows,
Without a man’s habitation after darkness remains,
Without paying a company of storytellers–let that be Bres’s condition.”
“Bres’s prosperity no longer exists,” he said, and that was true. There was only blight on him from that hour; and that is the first satire that was made in Ireland.
40. Now after that the Tuatha De went together to talk with their adopted son Bres mac Elathan, and they asked him for their sureties. he gave them restoration of the kingship, and they did not regard him as properly qualified to rule from that time on. He asked to remain for seven years. “You will have that,” the same assembly agreed, “provided that the safeguarding of every payment that has been assigned to you–including house and land, gold and silver, cattle and food –is supported by the same securities, and that we have freedom of tribute and payment until then.”
“You will have what you ask,” Bres said.
41. This is why they were asked for the delay: that he might gather the warriors of the sid, the Fomoire, to take possession of the Tuatha by force provided he might gain an overwhelming advantage. He was unwilling to be driven from his kingship.
42. Then he went to his mother and asked her where his family was. “I am certain about that,” she said, and went onto the hill from which she had seen the silver vessel in the sea. She then went onto the shore. His mother gave him the ring which had been left with her, and he put it around his middle finger, and it fitted him. She had not given it up for anyone, either by sale or gift. Until that day, there was none of them whom it would fit.
43. Then they went forward until they reached the land of the Fomoire. They came to a great plain with many assemblies upon it, and they reached the finest of these assemblies. Inside, people sought information from them. They answered that they were of the men of Ireland. Then they were asked whether they had dogs, for at that time it was the custom, when a group of men visited another assembly, to challenge them to a friendly contest. “We have dogs,” said Bres. Then the dogs raced, and those of the Tuatha De were faster than those of the Fomoire. Then they were asked whether they had horses to race. They answered, “We have,” and they were faster than the horses of the Fomoire.
44. Then they were asked whether they had anyone who was good at sword-play, and no one was found among them except Bres. But when he lifted the hand with the sword, his father recognized the ring on his finger and asked who the warrior was. His mother answered on his behalf and told the king that Bres was his son. She related to him the whole story as we have recounted it.
45. His father was sad about him, and asked, “What force brought you out of the land you ruled?”
Bres answered, “Nothing brought me except my own injustice and arrogance. I deprived them of their valuables and possessions and their own food. Neither tribute nor payment was ever taken from them until now.”
46. “That is bad,” said his father. “Better their prosperity than their kingship. Better their requests than their curses. Why then have you come?” asked his father.
47. “I have come to ask you for warriors,” he said. “I intend to take that land by force.”
48. “You ought not to gain it by injustice if you do not gain it by justice,” he said.
49. “I have a question then: what advice do you have for me?” said Bres.
50. After that he sent him to the champion Balor, grandson of Net, the king of the Hebrides, and to Indech mac De Domnann, the king of the Fomoire; and these gathered all the forces from Lochlainn westwards to Ireland, to impose their tribute and their rule upon them by force, and they made a single bridge of ships from the Hebrides to Ireland.
51. No host ever came to Ireland which was more terrifying or dreadful than that host of the Fomoire. There was rivalry between the men from Scythia of Lochlainn and the men out of the Hebrides concerning that expedition.