"
MILTON.
When Culain saw far away the tall figures of the Ultonians against
the sunset, and the flashing of their weapons and armour, he cried
out with a loud voice to his people to stop working and slack the
furnaces and make themselves ready to receive the Red Branch; and
he bade the household thralls prepare the supper, roast, boiled
and stewed, which he had previously ordered. Then he himself and
his journeymen and apprentices stripped themselves, and in huge
keeves of water filled by their slaves they washed from them the
smoke and sweat of their labour and put on clean clothes. The
mirrors at which they dressed themselves were the darkened waters
of their enormous tubs.
Culain sent a party of his men and those who were the best dressed
and the most comely and who were the boldest and most eloquent in
the presence of strangers, to meet the high King of the Ultonians
on the moor, but he himself stood huge in the great doorway just
beyond the threshold and in front of the bridge over which the Red
Branch party was to pass.
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