" "It is too long a time you have been under this
oppression," said Lugh. And with that he started up and made an attack
on the Fomor, killing and wounding them, till he had made an end of
eight nines of them, but he let the last nine go under the protection of
Nuada the king. "And I would kill you along with the others," he said,
"but I would sooner see you go with messages to your own country than my
own people, for fear they might get any ill-treatment."
So the nine went back then till they came to Lochlann, where the men of
the Fomor were, and they told them the story from beginning to end, and
how a young well-featured lad had come into Ireland and had killed all
the tax-gatherers but themselves, "and it is the reason he let us off,"
they said, "that we might tell you the story ourselves."
"Do you know who is the young man?" said Balor of the Evil Eye then.
"I know well," said Ceithlenn, his wife; "he is the son of your
daughter and mine. And it was foretold," she said, "that from the time
he would come into Ireland, we would never have power there again for
ever."
Then the chief men of the Fomor went into a council, Eab, son of Neid,
and Seanchab, grandson of Neid, and Sital Salmhor, and Liath, son of
Lobais, and the nine poets of the Fomor that had learning and the gift
of foreknowledge, and Lobais the Druid, and Balor himself and his twelve
white-mouthed sons, and Ceithlenn of the Crooked Teeth, his queen.
And it was just at that time Bres and his father Elathan were come to
ask help of the Fomor, and Bres said: "I myself will go to Ireland, and
seven great battalions of the Riders of the Fomor along with me, and I
will give battle to this Ildanach, this master of all arts, and I will
strike his head off and bring it here to you, to the green of Berbhe.
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