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arose before him until thirteen days had passed.
    The next day he and the two brothers, Dagda and Ogma, conversed together on Grellach Dollaid; and his two kinsmen Goibniu and Dían Cécht were summoned to them.
    They spent a full year in that secret conference, so that Grellach Dollaid is called the
Amrún
of the Men of the Goddess.
    Then the druids of Ireland were summoned to them, together with their physicians and their charioteers and their smiths and their wealthy landowners and their lawyers. They conversed together secretly.
    Then he asked the sorcerer, whose name was Mathgen, what power he wielded. He answered that he would shake the mountains of Ireland beneath the Fomoire so that their summits would fall to the ground. And it would seem to them that the twelve chief mountains of the land of Ireland would be fighting on behalf of the Túatha Dé Danann: Slieve League, and Denda Ulad, and the Mourne Mountains, and Brí Erigi and Slieve Bloom and Slieve Snaght, Slemish and Blaíslíab and Nephin Mountain and Slíab Maccu Belgodon and the Curlieu hills and Croagh Patrick.
    Then he asked the cupbearer what power he wielded. He answered that he would bring the twelve chief lochs or Ireland into the presence of the Fomoire and they would not find water in them, however thirsty they were. These are the lochs: Lough Derg, Lough Luimnig, Lough Corrib, Lough Ree, Lough Mask, Strangford Lough, Belfast Lough, Lough Neagh, Lough Foyle, Lough Gara, Loughrea, Márloch. They would proceed to the twelve chief rivers of Ireland—the Bush, the Boyne, the Bann, the Blackwater, the Lee, the Shannon, the Moy, the Sligo, the Erne, the Finn, the Liffey, the Suir—and they would all be hidden from the Fomoire so they would not find a drop in them. But drink will be provided for the men of Ireland even if they remain in battle for seven years.
    Then Figol mac Mámois, their druid, said, “Three showers of fire will be rained upon the faces of the Fomorian host, and I will take out of them two-thirds of their courage and their skill at arms and their strength, and I will bind their urine in their own bodies and in the bodies of their horses. Every breath that the men of Ireland will exhale will increase their courage and skill at arms and strength. Even if they remain in battle for sevenyears, they will not be weary at all.
    The Dagda said, “The power which you boast, I will wield it all myself.”
    “You are the Dagda [‘the Good God’]!” said everyone; and “Dagda” stuck to him from that time on.
    Then they disbanded the council to meet that day three years later ….
    The men of Ireland came together the day before All Hallows. Their number was six times thirty hundred, that is, each third consisted of twice thirty hundred.
    Then Lug sent the Dagda to spy on the Fomoire and to delay them until the men of Ireland came to the battle.
    Then the Dagda went to the Fomorian camp and asked them for a truce of battle. This was granted to him as he asked. The Fomoire made porridge for him to mock him, because his love of porridge was great. They filled for him the king’s cauldron, which was five fists deep, and poured four score gallons of new milk and the same quantity of meal and fat into it. They put goats and sheep and swine into it, and boiled them all together with the porridge. Then they poured it into a hole in the ground, and Indech said to him that he would be killed unless he consumed it all; he should eat his fill so that he might not satirize the Fomoire.
    Then the Dagda took his ladle, and it was big enough for a man and a woman to lie in the middle of it. These were the bits that were in it: halves of salted swine and a quarter of lard.
    Then the Dagda said, “This is good food if its broth is equal to its taste.” But when he would put the full ladle into his mouth he said, “Its poor bits do not spoil it,’ says the wise old man.”
    Then at the end he scraped his bent finger over the bottom of the hole among