Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Buile Suibhne (Author: [unknown])
paragraph 18
Suibhne also remained for a long time in that glen until he happened one night to be on the top of a tall ivy-clad hawthorn tree which was in the glen. it was hard for him to endure that bed, for at every twist and turn he would give, a shower of thorns off the hawthorn would stick in him, so that they were piercing and reiiding his side and wounding his skin. Suibhne thereupon changed from that bed to another
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place, where there was a dense thicket of great briars with fine thorns and a single protruding branch of blackthorn growing alone up through the thicket. Suibhne settled on the top of that tree, but so slender was it that it bowed and bent under him, so that he fell heavily through the thicket to the ground, and there was not as much as an inch from his hole to the crown of his head that was not wounded and reddened. He then rose up, strengthless and feeble, and came out through the thicket, whereupon he said: ‘My conscience!’ said he, ‘it is hard to endure this life after a pleasant one, and a year to last night I have been leading this. life,’ whereupon he uttered the lay: