"What
appearance should we go in with but our own?" said the others. "That is
not what I think best," said Brian; "but to go in with the appearance of
poets from Ireland, the way the high people of Greece will hold us in
respect and in honour." "It would be hard for us to do that," they said,
"and we without a poem, and it is little we know how to make one."
However, they put the poet's tie on their hair, and they knocked at the
door of the court, and the door-keeper asked who was in it. "We are
poets of Ireland," said Brian, "and we are come with a poem to the
king."
The door-keeper went in and told the king that there were poets from
Ireland at the door. "Let them in," said the king, "for it is in search
of a good man they came so far from their own country." And the king
gave orders that everything should be well set out in the court, the way
they would say they had seen no place so grand in all their travels.
The sons of Tuireann were let in then, having the appearance of poets,
and they fell to drinking and pleasure without delay; and they thought
they had never seen, and there was not in the world, a court so good as
that or so large a household, or a place where they had met with better
treatment.
Then the king's poets got up to give out their poems and songs. And then
Brian, son of Tuireann, bade his brothers to say a poem for the king.
"We have no poem," said they; "and do not ask any poem of us, but the
one we know before, and that is to take what we want by the strength of
our hand if we are the strongest, or to fall by those that are against
us if they are the strongest.
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