and your sweat that have we lost, and the glory of the Red Branch
is at an end.'"

That speech was pleasing to the Red Branch, and they cried out
that Fergus Mac Roy had spoken well. Then all at once, on a sudden
impulse, they sang the battle-song of the Ultonians, and shouted
for the war so that the building quaked and rocked, and in the
hall of the weapons there was a clangour of falling shields, and
men died that night for extreme dread, so mightily shouted the
Ultonians around their king and around Fergus. When the echoes and
reverberations of that shout ceased to sound in the vaulted roof
and in the far recesses and galleries, then there arose somewhere
upon the night a clear chorus of treble voices, singing, too, the
war-chant of the Ultonians, as when rising out of the clangour of
brazen instruments of music there shrills forth the clear sound of
fifes. For the immature scions of the Red Branch, boys and tender
youths, awakened out of slumber, heard them, and from remote
dormitories responded to their sires, and they cried aloud
together and shouted. The trees of Ulster shed their early leaves
and buds at that shout, and birds fell dead from the branches.

Concobar struck the brazen canopy with his silver rod. The smitten
brass rang like a bell, and the Ultonians in silence hearkened for
the words of their clear-voiced king.

"No ruler of men," he said, "however masterful and imperious,
could withstand this torrent of martial ardour which rolls to-
night through the souls of the children of Rury, still less I,
newly come to this high throne, having been but as it were
yesterday your comrade and equal, till Fergus, to my grief,