Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
The Metrical Dindshenchas (Author: [unknown])

poem/story 49

ODRAS

  1. Odras, noble the lady for whom we furbish the lay that we indite, the daughter of Odornatan
    [...]
    son of Laidne son of Luaidir.
  2. A lady of land was she, and mighty, deedful, radiant, danger-loving, the fair and shapely spouse of stout Buchat, lord of cattle.
  3. Keeper of kine to worshipful Cormac was Buchat, man of might: he roused the lusty herd betimes each morning.
  4. His trim alert wife Odras, fierce and tall, followed him one day to watch the sweet-fleshed cattle.
  5. As busy dark-wrinkled Odras was sleeping in the early morning the Dagda's wife found her: in this wise came the shape-shifting goddess:

    6. p.199

  6. The envious queen fierce of mood, the cunning raven-caller, brought off with her the bull that lived in miry Liathmuine.
  7. The bull covered a cow, the paddock bull in our herd: he hied him in haste from Temair to the levels of the Moor of Oiriu.
  8. Slemon was that bull's name: wild was that brown savage, a mettlesome unmastered beast: his name clave to that lowland.
  9. There came to blood-stained Cruachu, according to the weird and terrible tale, the mighty Morrigan, whose pleasure was in mustered hosts.
  10. Odras came to despoil her by arms, to an issue that was not lawful, with her stark ill-fated henchman, who fell at Cuil Cada.
  11. Cada was her gillie's name—many a fight he knew; Odras brought him, in a bitter hour, on the track of her herd of heifers.
  12. Afterward, when her henchman was gone, the lady came, in shining trim, to Sid Cruachan likewise, and a weird event befell yonder.
  13. Imprudently the dark-wrinkled one let sleep come over her in cold Daire Falgud, where she met mortal outrage.

    14. p.201

  14. The horrid Morrigan out of the cave of Cruachu, her fit abode, came upon her slumbering: alas, the combat on the hill!
  15. The owner of kine chanted over her, with fierceness unabating, toward huge Sliab Bodbgna every spell of power: she was full of guile.
  16. The forceful woman melted away toward Segais in a sleepy stream, like a pool void of lustre: she lost her victorious powers.
  17. Odras is the sweet-sounding noble name of the sluggish pallid streamlet: it passed from the lady—luckless visitant—to the river Odras.