The King gave judgment, that the sheep which had eaten
the woad were to be given to the Queen in compensation for what they
had destroyed. Then Cormac rose up before the people and said, "Nay,
but let the wool of the sheep, when they are next shorn, be given to
the Queen, for the woad will grow again and so shall the wool." "A
true judgment, a true judgment," cried all the folk that were present
in the place; "a very king's son is he that hath pronounced it." And
they murmured so loudly against mac Con that his druids counselled him
to quit Tara lest a worse thing befall him. So he gave up the sovranty
to Cormac and went southward into Munster to rally his friends there
and recover the kingdom, and there he was slain by Cormac's men as he
was distributing great largesse of gold and silver to his followers,
in the place called The Field of the Gold.
[26] Woad is a cruciferous plant, _Isatis tinctoria_, used for
dyeing.
So Cormac, son of Art, ruled in Tara and was High King of all Ireland.
And the land, it is said, knew its rightful lord, and yielded harvests
such as never were known, while the forest trees dripped with the
abundance of honey and the lakes and rivers were alive with fish. So
much game was there, too, that the folk could have lived on that alone
and never put a ploughshare in the soil.
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