wonderful, so that they shook with their ramping the thick shell of the sad-sodded earth.  They flecked the plain behind them with the foam dripping from the [1]swift[1] Danish steeds, from the bits and bridles, from the traces and tracks of the huge, maned, mighty[b] steeds, greater than can be told!  They excited strife with their din of arms.  They plunged headlong in their swift impatience.  They aroused great terror at their accoutrement, at their armour, at their cunning, at their power, at their hugeness, at their destructive, terrible, hostile vengeance on the four grand, proud provinces of Erin.  Amazing to me was their appearance because of the unwontedness of their trappings both in form and in garb.  Three wonderful flights of birds with variety of appearance hovered over them.  The first flock was all red, the second flock was white as swans, the third flock as black as ravens.  Three red-mouthed, crow-shaped demons of battle sped around them as swift as hares, circling the three wheeled towers, and this is what they prophesied:—­

    “Sheaves[c] of battle,
    Might of quelling,
    Ill of war-deeds,
    Sating of foul ravens! 
    Sodden ground, blood-red;
    Men low in dust;
    Sheaves[c] on sword-blades!”

    [6-6] The following passage, to page 342, is taken from Stowe and
    H. 1. 13; it is not found in LL.

    [1-1] H. 1. 13 and Add. 18,748.

    [2-2] That is, the movable towers.

    [a] Following the emendation bairnech, suggested by Windisch.

    [1-1] H. 1. 13.

    [b] Following the emendation moradbal, suggested by Windisch.

    [c] That is, the layers of the slain.

“They wheeled about and brought them twelve[d] battle-pillars of thick, huge, iron pillars.  As thick as the middle of a warrior’s thigh, as tall as a champion’s spear was each battle-fork of them, and they placed four forks under each [W.5646.] wheeled-tower.  And their horses all ran from them and grazed upon the plain.  And those forty[a] that had gone in advance descend clad in armour on the plain, and the garrison of the three battle-wheeled towers falls to attacking and harassing them, and is attacked and harassed in turn by those forty champions, so that there was heard the breaking of shields and the loud blows of hard iron poles on bucklers and battle-helmets, on coats of mail and on the iron plates of smooth, hard, blue-black, sharp-beaked, forked spears.  And in the whole camp there is none but is on the watch for their fierceness and their wrath and their cunning and their strangeness, for their fury, their achievements and the excellence of their guard.  And in the place where the forty champions are and the thousand armed men contending with them, not one of the thousand had a wounding stroke nor a blow on his opponent because of the might of their skill in arms and the excellence of their defence withal!”