Connaught. For the house was no small one: it had seven doors and
fifty couches between each two doors; and it was no meeting of friends
that was then seen in that house, but the hosts that filled it were
enemies to each other, for during the whole time of the three hundred
years that preceded the birth of Christ there was war between Ulster
and Connaught.

Then they slaughtered for them Mac Datho's Boar; for seven years had
that boar been nurtured upon the milk of fifty cows, but surely venom
must have entered into its nourishment, so many of the men of Ireland
did it cause to die. They brought in the boar, and forty oxen as
side-dishes to it, besides other kind of food; the son of Datho himself
was steward to their feast: "Be ye welcome!" said he; "this beast
before you hath not its match; and a goodly store of beeves and of
swine may be found with the men of Leinster! And, if there be aught
lacking to you, more shall be slain for you in the morning."

"It is a mighty Boar," said Conor.

"'Tis a mighty one indeed," said Ailill. "How shall it be divided, O
Conor?" said he.

"How?" cried down Bricriu,[FN#11] the son of Carbad, from above; "in
the place where the warriors of Ireland are gathered together, there
can be but the one test for the division of it, even the part that each
man hath taken in warlike deeds and strife: surely each man of you hath
struck the other a buffet on the nose ere now!"

"Thus then shall it be," said Ailill.