Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) (27 page)
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Authors: James MacKillop
The spear, Gáe Bulga, given him by Scáthach, is one of his major weapons along with his sword Caladbolg.
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In later oral tradition he wields the Claidheamh Soluis [sword of light], which may also be known as Cruaidin Catutchenn. His charioteer is Láeg, and together they drive two horses, Saingliu or Dubh [Black] Sainglenn and Liath Macha [Grey of Macha]. Cúchulainn also has many associations with ravens and is once warned by two magical ravens.
Cúchulainn is always seen as a boy or a very young man. Unlike Fionn mac Cumhaill or King Arthur, he never ages. Once again, as in the other cycles of Irish literature, there is no implicit timeline to show that one story comes before or after another. The same is true of Cúchulainn’s portrayals in the previous chapter, competing for the champion’s portion or racing across Ireland in the middle of the night. Imposing as the
Táin
is, storytellers saw no need to allude to it in Cúchulainn’s other adventures, even in such foretales to the epic as this story. We can, however, understand that seven years have passed since Cúchulainn’s sojourn in Scotland, learning the arts of war from Scáthach and fathering a child upon her rival Aífe. That son, Connla, has now reached the age of seven, and, like his father, he is ready to assert himself with arms.
Cúchulainn might have been an absent father, but he left instructions for the boy’s upbringing. He was to be called Connla and sent to Scáthach for training as soon as he was able. He must step aside for no man, never refuse a challenge to single combat, and never tell his name to anyone except when overcome by another combatant. Further, Cúchulainn left a ring for the boy, asking that he should wear it when his hand was sufficiently big and then be sent to look for his father.
Seven years after the day of those fatherly commands, Cúchulainn and Conchobar mac Nessa are walking with other Ulster warriors on the beach at Tracht Esi (or Trácht Éisi, near Baile’s Strand, Co. Louth) when they see a boy rowing on the sea in a bronze boat with gilded oars. The boy’s power in using a sling to make birds do his will fills the men with awe. Cautiously, the Ulstermen send a lesser champion, hapless Condere, to prevent his landing or at least learn his name. The boy confidently defies him, refusing to give his name until he is bested in combat, which Condere does not wish to try. The more imposing Conall Cernach blusters, but with little effect. The mere noise of the boy’s sling is enough to flatten Conall, after which the boy ties his arms with a shield strap.
With his last breath the boy cries out that Cúchulainn has used something that Scáthach did not teach him – and it has mortally wounded him.
The name of their common teacher is enough to reveal the boy’s identity to Cúchulainn, confirmed by finding the ring the father had left with Aífe. The father then takes Connla’s body in his arms and brings it before the assembled Ulstermen.
Known as
Aided Óenfhir Aífe
[The Tragic Death of Aífe’s Only Son], the Cúchulainn-Connla story is an Irish instance of the international tale type N731.3, of which the best-known example is the Persian story of Sohrab and Rustum.
For wealth of detail, richness of characterization and enumeration of episode, not to mention sheer length, the
Táin Βó Cuailnge
can stand comparison with the national epics of Europe. It is not, however, a highly finished work. To begin with it lacks a unifying narrative tone. Successive episodes do not advance continuing themes. Scant motivation appears for abrupt shifts in character. Some have derisively called it an ‘epic-like saga’ rather than an epic. What we have survives in two versions that differ in both character and specifics. Internal linguistic evidence suggests that narratives within the epic
Táin Βó Cuailnge
began to form as early as the seventh century, but the two
versions that come down to us are of later date. The oldest recension, found in
Lebor na hUidre
[Book of the Dun Cow] (1106), exhibits lean prose and sharp humour but is somewhat disjointed. The text in
Lebor Buide Lecáin
[Yellow Book of Lecan] (completed
c
.1390) is clearly copied from the
Lebor na hUidre
. The second version, found in
Lebor Laignech
[Book of Leinster] (completed
c
. 1150), can be more literary at best but is also given to florid alliteration and sentimentality. The
Lebor Laignech
version includes the
remscéla
or foretales, such as the Deirdre story, that are now usually cited as anticipations of the central narrative, even when Cúchulainn or Medb do not appear in them.
Táin Bó Cuailnge
is often referred to as ‘the
Táin
’ for short, although that is a bit misleading. The words
Táin Βó
[cattle raid] follow a storyteller’s device of categorizing in the first word of the title the kind of action that is about to be told. Several other early Irish stories have titles beginning
Táin
…, such as the
Táin Βó Flidais
[Cattle Raid of Flidias] or
Táin Bó Fraích
[Cattle Raid of Fraich]. David Greene suggested the title of the epic is inappropriate and may have been influenced by analogy with the others. The motive in the action is a quest for a single bull, not a herd of cattle. The English title, The Cattle Raid of Cooley, is not usually cited in learned commentary.
The first of the
remscéla
is a ninth-century anecdote giving the purported origin of the story. Fergus mac Róich returns from the dead and recites the entire text to the chief poet Senchán Torpéist. Internal evidence indicates that the
Táin
is the work of many hands, but the creation of Senchán Torpéist, whose name appears rarely elsewhere, suggests that the compilers wished for a native equivalent of Homer.
In other
remscéla
we learn of Macha’s curse on the Ulstermen, of Conchobar’s birth, his struggle to gain the kingship and his illfated love for Deirdre. Three stories of Cúchulainn, related earlier in this chapter, tell of his birth, his courtship of Emer and training by Scáthach, and the tragic combat with his son Connla. The final foretale is a story of magical transformation with comic undertones, explaining how the two great bulls, the Brown Bull and the White-horned Bull, came to be. Two swineherds, Friuch [boar’s bristle] and Rucht [boar’s grunt], are good friends, but their masters and everyone around them try to incite trouble between them. Friuch keeps pigs in the household
of Bodb, king of the Munster
sídh
, while Rucht labours at the Connacht
sídh
of Ochall Ochne, bitter enemy of Bodb. Each plays a trick on the other as a test of power, which ends their friendship and sets them against one another. Dismissed for damage to the herds from their trickery, the pig-keepers spend two years transformed into birds of prey before returning to human form to tell of war-wailing and heaps of corpses. By now their enmity seethes through each change of form. Off again, they become, successively, two water creatures, warriors, stags, phantoms, dragons and finally maggots or water worms, each transformation bringing them different names. When a cow belonging to Dáire mac Fiachna in Ulster drinks water containing one of the worms, Medb’s cow in Connacht swallows the other. Both cows beget bulls. Rucht is then Finnbennach, the White-horned Bull of Connacht, and Friuch is Dub [dark] or Donn Cuailnge, the Brown Bull of Ulster.
The body of the
Táin Bó Cuailnge
embraces fourteen episodes of varying length, of which the fourth is clearly interpolated. It tells of the boyhood deeds of Cúchulainn, as related earlier in this chapter. The other thirteen depict the collisions of Connacht and Ulster, Medb and Cúchulainn.
Action begins in disarming quiet, with ‘pillow talk’, a dispute between Medb and her husband Ailill mac Máta in their bedroom at Cruachain [Rathcrogan, Co. Roscommon]. Romance is not the issue; power, as measured by possessions, is. Medb’s luxuries give her an initial edge, but Ailill seems to win the contest by laying claim to the great white-horned bull, Finnbennach. Possession of cattle was the standard of wealth in early Ireland, a herding society; in pre-Christian culture they had been worshipped. Sealing his superiority with a gibe, Ailill reminds his wife that the prized Finnbennach was born into her herds but left them because it did not wish to be ruled by a woman. All her possessions are thus diminished because she does not possess a bull to equal the great white-horned one of her husband. What should she do? Through her courtier (and lover) Fergus mac Róich, Medb learns how she can win advantage. The other of the two greatest bulls in all of Ireland is living now in the region of Cuailnge in Ulster, and she must have it. (Cuailnge is the Cooley Peninsula in northeastern County Louth in the Republic of Ireland, but then a part of Ulster.) She sends representatives to bargain with the owner, Dáire mac Fiachna,
offering many treasures, including access to her ‘friendly thighs’ (a phrase that will reappear in the text). Dáire rebuffs her offer.
Enraged when the news is delivered, Medb resolves to take the bull by force and calls up the armies of Connacht and Leinster as well as Ulster exiles Cormac Connloinges, son of Conchobar mac Nessa, and Fergus mac Róich. Convincing Ailill that any insult to her is shared by the household, she gains him as an ally in the quest to assert her claim to superior wealth. Before the army decamps Medb consults two seers about what it is to face. One is the mysterious prophetess known only as Fedelm, who weaves a fringe with a gold staff as she rides on the shaft of a chariot. Asked what she sees Fedelm answers with the word ‘Crimson’. When she is challenged by Medb and others, she repeats ‘Crimson’ and adds a description of the formidable deeds of Cúchulainn. The second seer, a druid, is more consoling; he tells Medb that she will return alive.
As the driving force of a huge army, Medb is attentive to the discipline and deportment of individual troops. Her judgement, however, sometimes appears impetuous. Noticing that the Leinster soldiers are more adept than the Connachtmen, she fears that they will outshine her own people, demoralizing them. Such allies could betray her. She thinks of sending them home or even of killing them. Dissuaded from such rashness, Medb agrees to distribute the crack Leinster fighters among her own soldiers, shoring up weaker regiments and reducing the threat that the allies will win more glory.
Fergus mac Róich, though an Ulsterman, takes command in the field. Why he has joined the enemies of his country is not always clear. He may be jealous of Conchobar mac Nessa, who is king in his place, or he may have exiled himself after the king’s role in the murder of the sons of Uisnech, as told in the Deirdre story. He is uneasy about opposing his countrymen. Ulster is virtually defenceless as the warriors there still suffer under Macha’s curse, binding them in the pain of a woman in labour. All, of course, except Sualtam and his son Cúchulainn.
In his first encounter with Medb’s army, Cúchulainn merely leaves a posted, written warning. This happens at Iraird Cuillen [Crossakeel, Co. Meath], when the party is two-thirds of the way to Cuailnge. The hero cuts an oak sapling into the ring shape of a spancel, which could
be used as a fetter for a cow or goat, a common item on the Irish landscape at that time. On this Cúchulainn writes a threatening message in ogham, ‘Come no further, unless you have a man who can make a hoop like this one, with one hand, out of one piece.’ At this time Cúchulainn sends his mortal father Sualtam to warn the rest of the Ulstermen.
Cúchulainn himself is far removed when the army reads his warning, as he is enjoying a tryst with a young woman – possibly Fedelm Noíchrothach, daughter of Conchobar, or possibly her bondswoman. This Fedelm is married to Ailill’s elder brother Cairbre Nia Fer, whom Cúchulainn kills in a story outside the
Táin
. Cairbre’s son Erc is destined to make Cúchulainn suffer vengeance for this particular killing, even though it is only one of thousands.
On the next night his message is more compelling. After cutting the fork of a tree with a single stroke, Cúchulainn thrusts two thirds of the trunk into the earth. Then he decorates the branches with the severed heads of four Connachtmen who strayed from the rest of the forces. In horror Fergus reminds his men that it would violate a
geis
to pass the tree without pulling it out. Medb asks him to do this, and it takes him seven tries to succeed. When asked who could have slaughtered the four and have the strength to drive the tree so far into the ground, Fergus replies that it could only be his fosterson Cúchulainn. He then gives a long account of Cúchulainn’s boyhood deeds, as retold on
pp. 194–7 above
.
As the Connacht army advances further toward Cuailnge, it faces only one enemy fighter. Cúchulainn taunts and terrorizes, usually only one soldier at a time. Yet he can show disarming mercy. He assures one trembling Connacht charioteer that he has no quarrel with him and seeks his master instead. That master turns out to be Orlám, a son of Medb and Ailill. Cúchulainn instantly decapitates him, knowing that the head will be returned to the army command post. As the grieving parents examine it, Cúchulainn uses his long slingshot to crush the head of Fertedil, Orlám’s charioteer, because he disobeys the exacting order to carry Orlám’s head further, all the way to Medb’s and Ailill’s private camp. When the occasion presents itself, Cúchulainn also employs his sling to kill a bird perched on Medb’s
shoulder, and later casts a fatal stone at the pet marten on her warm neck. Three arrogant brothers try to avenge Orlám’s death, but Cúchulainn makes short work of them.
Meanwhile in Cuailnge, Donn the Brown Bull begins to sniff the distant bloodletting. Hovering near him, croaking encouragement, is the many-shaped goddess of war Mórrígan, who is sometimes a woman, sometimes a beast, a bird or the wind. Now she is a raven on the bull’s shoulder, capriciously reversing mood in decrying death and slaughter. Rampaging, Donn Cuailnge puts his head down and mows everything in front of him, ploughing a deep furrow in the earth, frightening everyone within earshot.
The Connachtmen’s first encounter with Donn Cuailnge goes badly when the bull gores the herdsman who tries to capture him. With a retinue of fifty heifers, Donn tramples through Medb and Ailill’s camp, killing fifty warriors before bounding into the countryside. Such mishaps do not keep Medb from pulling away from camp for amorous meetings with Fergus. A charioteer reports these indiscretions to Ailill, who accepts them but with rancour.
With the Ulstermen still debilitated by Macha’s curse, Cúchulainn alone faces the western army. Each night he makes devastating raids, smashing heads with efficient use of his slingshot, leaving hundreds dead. Even with these losses, however, the army advances. Events put Fergus in a tight corner, as Medb and the Connachtmen expect him to strike a blow for their side. In a parley with Cúchulainn, Fergus negotiates an agreement committing both sides to single combat each day; the duration of the combat will be the only time the army advances. With Fergus at this meeting is Etarcomol, the headstrong fosterson of Medb and Ailill, who stares insolently at Cúchulainn. This is followed by insults and the boast that he will be the first westerner to face the Ulster champion the next day. Etarcomol persists in baiting Cúchulainn until the Ulster hero in exasperation slices the young man in two, from crown to navel. After rebuffing Fergus’s claim that Cúchulainn has already violated the agreement, the Ulster hero has nothing left to do but drag Etarcomol’s body back to Medb’s camp.
In an unexpected turn of events Medb and her entourage head north, away from the path east to Cuailnge, setting their sights on Dún
Sobairche [Dunseverick, Co. Antrim]. This temporarily presents Cúchulainn with a dilemma as he wishes to track the queen but also wants to protect his own territory on the eastern coast. As he is doubling back he encounters Buide mac Báin and twenty-four followers who most unexpectedly are driving none other than Donn Cuailnge and twenty-four cows. Cúchulainn kills Buide easily, but in the fracas the great Brown Bull is driven off, causing the hero to suffer deep disappointment and dismay. Recovering, he resumes the slaughter of the enemy. One victim is Medb and Ailill’s satirist Redg, who first asks for the Ulsterman’s javelin. Cúchulainn responds by putting it through the satirist’s head. Redg answers gamely in his death throes, ‘Now, that is a stunning gift.’ The remark inspires the early Irish name for the place of this combat,
Áth Tolam Sét
[Ford of the Overwhelming Gift]. Dozens of Cúchulainn’s other combats are described as explaining names of places, some real and others probably imaginary, on the medieval map of Ireland. In the meantime Medb plunders Dún Sobairche to the north, a diversion from her principal mission.