Cormac then called for a military combat in which a battalion of one hundred men on each side would take part. It was at this point that the three daughters of Maol Mhisceadach – Eirge, Eang and Eangain – marched southwards. They had taken on the form of three brown sheep with impenetrable skins of horn, heads of bone, and beaks of iron distilling poisonous vapours capable of killing one hundred men at the hour of battle. All the spears and lances in the world were incapable of cutting a strand of their fleeces.
The Men of Munster prepared for this ‘Comhlann Céad’. From hard branches they made solid, sharp, enduring spears to carry in their hands and with a rampart of starry shields surrounding the company and three heavy hard-striking swords in their scabbards and with lances easy to aim in the press of battle, they advanced to the fray. When the two companies met – one coming from the north, the other from the south – the fight began.