Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Táin Bó Cúalnge from the Book of Leinster (Author: [unknown])
section 26
The four great provinces of Ireland encamped at the pillar-
stone in Crích Roiss that night. Then Medb asked the men
of Ireland for one of them to fight and do battle with Cú
Chulainn on the morrow. Every man of them kept saying: ‘It will
not be I who go’. ‘It will not be I who leave my place. No
captive is owing from my people’.
Then Medb asked Fergus to go to fight with and encounter
Cú Chulainn, since she was unable to get the men of
Ireland to do so. ‘It would not be fitting for me’ said
Fergus. ‘to encounter a young and beardless lad, my own
fosterling’. However when Medb begged Fergus so urgently, he
was unable not to undertake the fight. They remained there that
night. Fergus rose early on the morrow and came forward to the
ford of combat where Cú Chulainn was. Cú Chulainn
saw him coming towards him.
p.208
{line 2486-2516}
‘With weak security does my master Fergus come to me. He has no
sword in the sheath of the great scabbard’. Cú Chulainn
spoke truly.—A year before these event Ailill had come upon
Fergus together with Medb on the hillside in Crúachu with
his sword on the hill beside him, and Ailill had snatched the
sword from its sheath and put a wooden sword in its place, and he
swore that he would not give him back the sword until he gave it
on the day of the great battle.—‘I care not at all, my
fosterling’ said Fergus, ‘for even if there were a sword in
it, it would not reach you and would not be wielded against you.
But for the sake of the honour and nurture I and the Ulstermen
and Conchobor gave you, flee before me to-day in the presence of
the men of Ireland’. ‘I am loath to do that’ said
Cú Chulainn, ‘to flee before one man on the Foray
of Cúailnge’. ‘You need not shrink from doing
so’ said Fergus, ‘for I shall flee before you when you shall
be covered with wounds and blood and pierced with stabs in the
battle of the Táin, and when I alone shall
flee, then all the men of Ireland will flee’. So eager was
Cú Chulainn to do whatever was for Ulster's weal that his
chariot was brought to him and he mounted it and fled in rout
from the men of Ireland. The men of Ireland saw that. ‘He has
fled from you! He has fled from you, Fergus!’ said all.
‘Pursue him, pursue him, Fergus’ said Medb, ‘let him not
escape from you’. ‘Not so indeed’, said Fergus, ‘I
shall not pursue him any farther, for though ye may belittle that
flight I put him to, yet of all who encountered him on the
Foray of Cúailnge not one man of the men of
Ireland did as much. So I shall not meet that man again until the
men of Ireland meet him in turn in single combat’.
That is called the Encounter of Fergus.