Togail na Tebe = The Thebiad of Statius : the Irish text

THE THEBAIDvery venomous, full maned, named Python, was devastating theshapely island of Delos. And when Apollo heard that, he cameto fight with the serpent, for that lovely consecrated place washis own ; and that serpent fell by Apollo in that way becauseof very great innumerable wounds when he compassed andsurrounded that serpent for a hundred days on the slopingplains of Cirrha.And after that Apollo came onward to rich well-knownexcellent houses, unto the high-king of the Greeks, to wit,Crotopus, and thus was that king: he had a fine match ofa bright pure chaste daughter, and that daughter loved Apolloexceedingly, and through her Apollo went in secret to the bankof the glancing pure stream of Nemea, and that maiden waspregnant for nine months, the period that every woman is, andshe brought forth a pretty delicately beautiful darling boy inthe secret shelters of the bending branching forest. And shegave him to nurse to a certain shepherd in the mountainthat was nearest her, for she feared her father would heap hisreproach upon her. And that boy was brought up in beds ofgrass and of a sacred grove, and under remote luxuriant clumpsof oak. And the cause of sleep for that child was this, to wit,sweetly melodious hollow whistles playing to him.Once whenhe was thus asleep behind his fosterer, an open-jawed ragingpack of wolves came to him, and devoured him. When themother of that boy, to wit, the daughter of Crotopus, heard it,she filled the very wide royal halls with weeping and loudlamentation, and she told that to her father, and the father'sheart went not out to her, and she was killed by him. NowApollo took it ill that his wife should be killed, and he sent avery large fiendish mad monster to devastate the land and theearth in order to avenge his wife. The monster was thus, towit, a woman's shape was upon it from the breasts upwards,with dusky dark-green serpents parting her tresses (?) abouther head. And the thing she does is to come into houses totake youths and little people from their mothers' and nurses'bosoms, and to eat them.333