Discontent came to a climax when the bard Cairbre, son of the poetess Etan, visited the royal court, and was sent to a dark chamber, without fire or bed, and, for all royal fare, served with three small cakes of bread.

If we wish to know the true history of a people, to understand the causes of its sorrows and its joys, to estimate its worth, and to know how to rule it wisely and well, let us read such old-world tales carefully, and ponder them well.

Even if prejudice or ignorance should induce us to undervalue their worth as authentic records of its ancient history, let us remember the undeniable fact, that they _are_ authentic records of its deepest national feelings, and let them, at least, have their weight as such in our schemes of social economy, for the present and the future.
The poet left the court next morning, but not until he pronounced a bitter and withering satire on the king--the first satire that had ever been pronounced in Erinn.

It was enough.

Strange effects are attributed to the satire of a poet in those olden times; but probably they could, in all cases, bear the simple and obvious interpretation, that he on whom the satire was pronounced was thereby disgraced eternally before his people.