Now there were in his reign great bounties, to wit, seven ships in every June in every year arriving at Inver Colptha[5], and oakmast up to the knees in every autumn, and plenty of fish in the rivers Bush and Boyne in the June of each year, and such abundance of good will that no one slew another in Erin during his reign.  And to every one in Erin his fellow’s voice seemed as sweet as the strings of lutes.  From mid-spring to mid-autumn no wind disturbed a cow’s tail.  His reign was neither thunderous nor stormy.

[Footnote 5:  The mouth of the river Boyne.—­W.S.]

Now his fosterbrothers murmured at the taking from them of their father’s and their grandsire’s gifts, namely Theft and Robbery and Slaughter of men and Rapine.  They thieved the three thefts from the same man, to wit, a swine and an ox and a cow, every year, that they might see what punishment therefor the king would inflict upon them, and what damage the theft in his reign would cause to the king.

Now every year the farmer would come to the king to complain, and the king would say to him.  “Go thou and address Donn Desa’s three great-grandsons, for ’tis they that have taken the beasts.”  Whenever he went to speak to Donn Desa’s descendants they would almost kill him, and he would not return to the king lest Conaire should attend his hurt.

Since, then, pride and wilfulness possessed them, they took to marauding, surrounded by the sons of the lords of the men of Erin.  Thrice fifty men had they as pupils when they (the pupils) were were-wolfing in the province of Connaught, until Maine Milscothach’s swineherd saw them, and he had never seen that before.  He went in flight.  When they heard him they pursued him.  The swineherd shouted, and the people of the two Maines came to him, and the thrice fifty men were arrested, along with their auxiliaries, and taken to Tara.  They consulted the king concerning the matter, and he said:  “Let each (father) slay his son, but let my fosterlings be spared.”

“Leave, leave!” says every one:  “it shall be done for thee.”

“Nay indeed,” quoth he; “no ‘cast of life’ by me is the doom I have delivered.  The men shall not be hung; but let veterans go with them that they may wreak their rapine on the men of Alba.”

This they do.  Thence they put to sea and met the son of the king of Britain, even Ingcel the One-eyed, grandson of Conmac:  thrice fifty men and their veterans they met upon the sea.

They make an alliance, and go with Ingcel and wrought rapine with him.

This is the destruction which his own impulse gave him.  That was the night that his mother and his father and his seven brothers had been bidden to the house of the king of his district.  All of them were destroyed by Ingcel in a single night.  Then the Irish pirates put out to sea to the land of Erin to seek a destruction as payment for that to which Ingcel had been entitled from them.