Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) (28 page)
Read Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) Online
Authors: James MacKillop
Again and again, Cúchulainn is the superior in all encounters, even when Medb’s side reneges on the agreement, sending as many as a hundred fighters, hoping to extend the length of the combat so that her army would have more time to advance. As this is happening Cúchulainn must also face another resourceful female opponent, the supernatural Mórrígan, goddess of war, who is adept at shapeshifting. Usually taking the form of a huge raven, she may also appear as an eel that coils around the hero’s legs, a she-wolf and a red-eared (i.e. otherworldly) heifer. Once when he fights her off, wounding her in the process, she comes before him as a crone milking a cow with three teats, one for each of the wounds he has inflicted on her. So tired that he does not perceive her ruse, Cúchulainn asks for a drink. When he blesses the teats for nourishing him, he inadvertently heals the wounds he had inflicted on Mórrígan.
Another supernatural figure serves Cúchulainn’s efforts to defend Ulster. It is the hero’s divine father, Lug Lámfhota, who appears gloriously clad in brilliantly coloured clothes, carrying lethal weapons and invisible to everyone except his son. To give the young man respite, he stands guard for three days and nights, allowing time for restorative
sleep. Lug also attends to his son’s wounds, washing them and applying healing oils. On the fourth day Cúchulainn awakes to the fitness and strength of his first day in combat.
Cúchulainn receives mortal assistance from an unexpected source, the boy troop of Emain Macha, younger counterparts of the youthful corps that the hero had joined when he went to the capital. One hundred and fifty of them fight because they have been spared Macha’s debilitating curse delivered only to grown men. Their initial foray yields costly success, as each boy takes down a single Connachtman before falling himself. But the greater numbers in Medb’s army mean that the boy troop is eventually depleted, with only one boy escaping. When he makes a final dash at killing Ailill, he too is brought down, this time by the king’s bodyguards.
News of the boy troop calamity sends Cúchulainn into an extreme
ríastrad
, with a red mist like a fog of vapourized blood rising from him. To avenge the boy soldiers who had honoured him, Cúchulainn lays into the Connacht army with greater vehemence than he had shown before. Mounting his chariot he drives around the perimeter of the massed armies, slaughtering the hapless westerners six deep in a standing. Soon 500 are gone, then dozens of petty kings, scores of animals, even women and children. The huge pile of corpses means that no one can keep count of the massacre. But Cúchulainn and his chariot sustain not a scratch.
Fergus, Medb and Ailill rethink the principle of single combat. After some false starts, one of which is Medb’s deceitful attempt to send twenty-nine selected warriors on a fruitless attempt against Cúchulainn, the Connacht leadership is ready to comply. The question is to select the right champion for their side. Though his name has not been mentioned earlier in the
Táin
, only Ferdiad, best friend of Cúchulainn and former pupil of Scáthach, is judged worthy of the challenge.
Getting the combatants to square off takes some doing. Ferdiad is initially reluctant to face his boon companion. To push him, the Connacht forces threaten him with disgrace if he refuses but offer rich rewards if he consents, including the pledged troth of Medb’s beautiful, fair-haired daughter Finnabair and access to Medb’s lovemaking as well. Ferdiad responds that this will be a fight to the death, and if he must kill his old friend, he will return to camp and finish off Medb.
Yet Ferdiad has to be Connacht’s man because he is the only one who could possibly match the Ulster hero. In his camp Cúchulainn admits he dreads the looming duel, not because he fears Ferdiad but rather because he loves him.
Ferdiad’s duel with Cúchulainn, the climax of the
Táin
for many readers, is often cited as ‘the combat at the ford’, as if it were the only one. In a herding society like early Ireland’s, a society without modern bridges, all paths must eventually cross shallow passages of rivers and streams. Armed men and the cattle they drive are at their most vulnerable at such crossings. Not surprisingly, then, many battles take place at the fords of rivers, not only in the
Táin
but also in other early Irish literature. So while there is no foreshadowing for the person of Ferdiad, his battle with Cúchulainn at Áth Fhirdiad [Ardee, Co. Louth] on the Dee River, 14 miles north of Drogheda, is the culmination of a long series.
The battle rages for four days and includes boasts and taunts as well as constant hand-to-hand combat. Pieces of flesh the size of a baby’s head are hacked away, leaving wounds that gape so wide birds can fly through them. Each night Cúchulainn sends Ferdiad leeches and herbs to heal his wounds; the Ulsterman does not wish to have the advantage of better medical treatment. Ferdiad responds by sharing his food. For the first three days neither can gain an advantage while they fight with darts, slender spears, heavy spears and heavy swords. On the fourth day Cúchulainn calls for his Gáe Bulga, the mysterious and powerful weapon whose use he had learned from the amazonian Scáthach. It is a spear that enters the body at one point but opens to make thirty wounds within. Before he can act, Ferdiad plunges his sword into Cúchulainn’s chest, and Cúchulainn casts his spear through Ferdiad’s heart and halfway out of his back. But the
coup de grâce
is just now coming. With Láeg the charioteer helping him, Cúchulainn thrusts the Gáe Bulga against Ferdiad, killing him. Immediately Cúchulainn begins to lament the passing of his quasi-brother and friend, but he is prostrate from his own wounds.
The Ulstermen have little to celebrate in Ferdiad’s death because their own hero lies so weakened. Into the breach steps another champion who achieves some Cúchulainn-like deeds. White-haired Cethern mac Fintain, known for his generosity and his bloody blade, flies into
the camp of the western army, inflicting great damage. He, too, is severely wounded. Returned to the Ulster camp he makes a poor patient. Cethern kills the healers (fifteen or as many as fifty) who attempt to treat him because he does not like their unfavourable diagnoses. At the same time he tells stories of how he acquired his wounds, one of which has come from Medb herself. Cúchulainn gathers bone marrow and animal ribs to help restore him. Cethern returns to battle, felling many of the enemy before he himself is struck down.
Other single champions come forth from Ulster while Cúchulainn lies exhausted, but their futile efforts serve only to disturb Sualtam, the hero’s mortal father. Frightened, he thinks that either the sky is falling or his son is continuing against unequal odds and so seeks him out on the battlefield. Unable to rise, Cúchulainn sends Sualtam back to Emain Macha to rouse the rest of the troops. Taking this call most seriously, Sualtam rushes to the palace shouting with all the fury he can muster: ‘Men murdered! Women stolen! Cattle plundered!’ Three times he calls out, but there is no answer. A
geis
forbids a commoner to speak before the king, and a king to speak before the druid. Cathbad asks about the meaning of Sualtam’s cry, and learning that Sualtam has broken protocol by speaking before the king, refuses any help. Angered by the response, Sualtam shouts even louder, and in so doing loses his footing and trips on his scallop-edged but razor-sharp shield, instantly separating his head from his shoulders. The severed head is brought before Conchobar, where Sualtam still shouts the same warnings.
In death Sualtam achieves what he could not in life. Conchobar rouses the men of Ulster, and, at long last, the debilities of Macha’s curse begin to fall away from the fighting men. The charioteer Láeg, speaking for Cúchulainn, joins in the call to arms. The narrative now recognizes that immense forces are hurtling toward each other. As the armed companies advance, the text includes more than 500 lines of description of colour and armaments, all in anticipation of the massed assembly at Gáirech and Irgairech, southwest of Mullingar in what is now Co. Westmeath. During the night before what must be the final encounter, Mórrígan incites both armies against each other. As the battle begins the Connacht forces under Fergus’s command break
through the lines. In Cúchulainn’s absence, Conall Cernach rises to the fore and taunts Fergus for betraying his own kind for ‘the sake of a whore’s backside’. Undeterred, Fergus makes his way to Conchobar and almost succeeds in killing him but pulls back when he remembers the king is a fellow Ulsterman. Word of the assault on Conchobar reaches the still-recovering Cúchulainn, driving him from his bed and thrusting him into his battle frenzy. This is enough to drive Fergus from the field; as he had earlier promised, there would be no duel with Ulster’s prime hero.
Ailill and Medb are now alone on the battlefield, and they have the Brown Bull with them. Suddenly, and to Ailill’s displeasure, Medb announces that she has to relieve herself, and she withdraws. This is the time of her period, and the massive flow of her menstrual blood (urine, in an alternative reading) digs three great channels, each big enough to take a household. This is also just the moment Cúchulainn, restored from his bed of pain, comes upon her. He resists taking her when she is at a disadvantage. And when she pleads to be spared, he answers that it would be right to execute her, but he is not a killer of women. Thus he allows her to escape, taking the prized Donn Cuailnge with her. In anger Cúchulainn slices off the tops of three nearby hills. The human battle is over.
Surveying the carnage, Fergus observes: ‘We followed the rump of a misguiding woman.’ (The pun
tóin
[rump] and
táin
[cattle raid] disappears in translation.) And Fergus adds, ‘It is the usual thing for a herd led by a mare to be strayed and destroyed.’
Once Donn Cuailnge is led to Cruachain, Ailill and Medb’s residence, he gives out three mighty bellows, challenging Finnbennach the white-horned bull, which is grazing nearby. Finnbennach rises to the call, charging toward Cruachain, attracting a huge crowd. As Donn Cuailnge is tired from the trek across Ireland, Finnbennach gains an initial advantage. Briccriu Neimthenga, known for fairness as well as his bitter tongue, is called in as judge, but the raging beasts trample him under their hooves. In a reversal, Donn Cuailnge stamps his hoof on Finnbennach’s horn, pinning him to the ground. Standing nearby, Fergus goads the Brown Bull, saying too many men have died to let the White-horned Bull throw away his honour so easily. Thus released, the two bulls continue the battle all over Ireland until, at dawn, Donn
Cuailnge emerges at Cruachain with Finnbennach’s bloody remains dangling from his horns. With the battle decided, Donn Cuailnge starts out on a circuitous route home, scattering Finnbennach’s body parts hither and yon. The loins are memorably dropped at the principal ford of the Shannon, Ath Luain [ford of the loins, modern Athlone]. When Donn Cuailnge reaches Ulster at last, he falls at Druim Tairb [ridge of the bull], victim of his own bursting heart.
Ailill and Medb make peace with Ulster and with Cúchulainn, but their beautiful daughter stays with the former enemy. The men of Ulster return to Emain Macha in triumph.
Medb meets an absurd death in an eleventh-century story retold on
pp. 87–8
. In it Furbaide Ferbend, son of her murdered sister, punctures her skull with a hardened piece of cheese on an island in Lough Ree, Co. Roscommon. Her prowess and resilience fail her at the end.
Cúchulainn, though destined to live only a short life, still faces many more adventures.
Having been trained in martial arts by Scáthach, Cúchulainn is a fit adversary for the bellicose Queen Medb. He is less prepared to resist women endowed with other wiles, the flatterers, the beguilers and the temptresses. His interactions with a series of women, where he often finds himself at a disadvantage, fill the curious tenth-and eleventh-century narrative
Serglige Con Culainn agus Óenét Emire
, known in English as ‘The Wasting Sickness of Cúchulainn’ or ‘The Sickbed of Cúchulainn and the Only Jealousy of Emer’. As the title implies, there is a lack of coherence between two surviving portions, implying derivation from two earlier stories. Cúchulainn’s wife is first known as Eithne Ingubai and secondly as Emer, a conflict resolved in this retelling.
At the always portentous Samain time, the men of Ulster assemble at Mag Muirtheimne, Cúchulainn’s bailiwick, when a flock of birds descends upon a nearby lake. Learning that all the women desire the beautiful birds, one for each shoulder, Cúchulainn withdraws from an
intense match of the boardgame fidchell and goes hunting for them. He captures enough to supply each noblewoman with two, leaving none for his wife Emer, who thought herself deserving of the first pick of the lot. To repair relations with her Cúchulainn promises her two superior feathered creatures, ones linked with a golden chain who can sing a song of sleep-inducing sweetness. When he tries to hunt them down he only grazes them with his spear, after which Cúchulainn falls into a deep sleep while seated next to a pillarstone. In a dream more real than any he had known before, he envisions two beautiful women coming toward him, one in green and one in red. They begin to laugh, but their intentions are anything but coquettish. The one in green takes out a horsewhip and begins to flail Cúchulainn, and then she is joined by the woman in red. They beat him for such a long time that life seems drained from him. And then they leave without explanation.
Cúchulainn is carried to Emain Macha, where he does not answer any questions about how he finds himself in this state, nor does he speak a word for another year. He lies in his ‘wasting sickness’, prostrate for a full turning of the seasons.
On the next Samain a stranger of otherworldly mien appears at Cúchulainn’s bedside, offering to cure him in a cryptic song. He is Angus the son of Áed Abrat (not related to Angus Óg). He invites Cúchulainn to come with him to Mag Cruchna (Co. Roscommon) where the hero can be healed and where Angus’s lovely sister Fand is longing to be with him. On Conchobar’s advice, Cúchulainn is carried back to the pillarstone where he had first fallen into his state, and there he meets an attractive woman. Clad in green, she is recognizably one of the two who whipped him in the dream. Identifying herself as Lí Ban [paragon of women], she promises that she means him no further harm and instead seeks his friendship and possibly an alliance. She brings the greeting of her husband, Labraid Luathlám ar Claideb [swift hand on sword] of the otherworldly Mag Mell. The husband promises him Lí Ban’s extraordinary sister Fand [tear], now released from her husband Manannán mac Lir, the sea god. His demand is only one day of Cúchulainn’s service against Labraid’s three frightful enemies: Senach Siaborthe, Eochaid Iúil and Eochaid Inber. The offer interests Cúchulainn, especially in view of Fand’s renowned beauty – but as he is still stricken with the wasting sickness, he sends his charioteer Láeg
to look into the matter for him. The charioteer sails with Lí Ban in a bronze boat to an island where they are greeted by Fand and three fifties of women lying on three fifties of couches. Greeting Láeg also is Labraid who expresses his disappointment that Cúchulainn has not come. On his return Láeg speaks glowingly of his time in Mag Mell and the people he met there. On Cúchulainn’s bidding, Láeg summons Emer to her husband, whereupon she tells him it is time to rise from his sickbed. Scolding him for being weakened by ‘woman-love’, she tells him it is time to throw off the wasting sickness. Her words have the desired effect. He rises to find that the debilitation has passed from him. With his strength restored, Cúchulainn returns to the pillarstone where he again encounters Lí Ban, who repeats her invitation to return to Mag Mell. Saying he does not wish to follow a woman’s bidding, Cúchulainn refuses and again sends Láeg on his behalf, this time travelling by land. In Mag Mell Láeg is greeted by Labraid along with Fáilbe Finn, a regent. Fand is also there, and when she hears that Cúchulainn said he would not respond to a woman’s call, she reminds Láeg to tell his master that the invitation came from her. On his return Láeg again recounts the wonders he has seen and tells Cúchulainn he would be a fool not to visit the island of Fand and Labraid for himself.
With Lí Ban and Láeg in tow, Cúchulainn harnesses his chariot and makes for Mag Mell, where he receives a warm welcome. Fand, seeing the Ulster hero for the first time, shows her pleasure at what she beholds. Cúchulainn has little time for ceremony and forges ahead, eager for combat. To Labraid’s dismay, he announces he will take on all three enemies and their retinues. After reconnoitring during the night, partly with the help of ravens, Cúchulainn is seized by his
ríastrad
or battle fury at dawn. Then, single-handedly, he makes short work of Labraid’s antagonists. A thrown spear impales Eochaid Iúil as he bathes in a river. Wielding his sword with lightning speed, Cúchulainn flattens thirty-three soldiers to the left and right before crushing the skull of Senach Siaborthe with a terrible blow. Heartened by the Ulsterman’s swift success, Labraid’s army surges forward to drive the invading forces away, and Labraid himself asks that the killing cease. To withdraw from his battle fury, Cúchulainn is cooled in three vats of water, the first of which his body heat causes to boil over.
All of Mag Mell rejoices, and both Lí Ban and Fand honour Cúchulainn with poetry. Fand’s offering is more warmly accepted. Soon she and Cúchulainn are off by themselves and they make love continually for the next month. As he makes ready to depart, Cúchulainn agrees to tryst with her by the yew tree at Ibor Cind Trácha, near the modern town of Newry, Co. Down. News of this reaches Emer’s ears, and she is quickly consumed by her own fury. She leads fifty women with whetted knives to the appointed spot at the appointed time. What follows, however, reverses expectations. Emer delivers an oration denouncing men’s lust for what they do not have and their rejection of the familiar, which causes Cúchulainn to pledge his intention to live with his wife for ever. Seeing such exquisite love, Fand asks to be abandoned. Touched by the lover’s unselfishness, Emer then asks to be left behind. Each woman would deliver Cúchulainn’s love to the other. This ticklish impasse is resolved by the unanticipated arrival of Manannán mac Lir, Fand’s husband, who spirits her away with him. Cúchulainn, anguished at this turn of events, wanders the mountains of Munster, unwilling to eat or drink until the druids give him a vial of forgetfulness. The same drink also washes away all of Emer’s jealousy. In a magical conclusion, Manannán mac Lir shakes his cloak of forgetfulness between Cúchulainn and Fand so that they may never meet again.
