Relate further for us, said Conan.
It is true that I will not, said Finn.
With
that he rose to a full tree-high standing, the sable cat-guts which held his
bog-cloth drawers to the hems of his jacket of pleated fustian clanging
together in melodious discourse. Too great was he for standing. The neck to
him was as the bole of a great oak, knotted and sized together with
muscle-humps and carbuncles of tangled sinew, the better for good feasting and
contending with the bards. The chest to him was wider than the poles of a good
chariot, coming now out, now in, and pastured from chin to navel with meadows
of black man-hair and meated with layers of fine man-meat the better to hide
his bones and fashion the semblance of his twin bubs. The arms to him were
like the necks of beasts, ball-swollen with their bunched-up brawnstrings and
blood-veins, the better for harping and hunting and contending with the bards.
Each thigh to him was the thickness of a horse’s belly, narrowing to a
green-veined calf to the thickness of a foal. Three-fifties of
fosterlings could engage with handball against the wideness of his
backside, which was wide enough to halt the march of warriors through a
mountain-pass.
I am a bark for buffeting, said Finn,
I
am a hound for thornypaws.
I
am a doe for swiftness.
I
am a tree for wind-siege.
I
am a windmill.
I
am a hole in a wall.
On the seat of the bog-cloth drawers to his fork was shuttled the green
alchemy of mountain-leeks from Slieve and Iarainn in the middle of Erin; for
it was here that he would hunt for a part of the year with his people,
piercing the hams of a black hog with his spears, birds-nesting, hole-drawing,
vanishing into the fog of a small gully, sitting on green knolls with Fergus
and watching the boys at ball- throw.
...
Conclusion of the foregoing.