Mad with pain and
wounds, he turned to his own land, and there
"He lay down
Against the hill, and his great heart broke there,
And sent a stream of blood down all the slope;
And thus, when all the war and Tain had ended,
In his own land, 'midst his own hills, he died."*
*The Tain, by Mary A. Hutton.
The Cattle Raid of Cooley is a strange wild tale, yet from it we
can learn a great deal about the life of these old, far-away
times. We can learn from it something of what the people did and
thought, and how they lived, and even of what they wore. Here is
a description of a driver and his war chariot, translated, of
course, into English prose. "It is then that the charioteer
arose, and he put on his hero's dress of charioteering. This was
the hero's dress of charioteering that he put on: his soft tunic
of deer skin, so that it did not restrain the movement of his
hands outside. He put on his black upper cloak over it outside.
. . . The charioteer took first then his helm, ridged like a
board, four-cornered.
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