Táin Bó Cúailnge

Key takeaways: the Táin is the central epic of the Ulster Cycle; Medb’s raid begins as a contest of wealth and ends in mutual ruin; Cú Chulainn holds Ulster alone through single combat at the fords; the famous Pillow Talk opening belongs only to the later recension; and the two bulls, older than the war itself, destroy each other at its end.

The two bulls

The war that fills Ireland’s greatest epic was fought for the difference of one bull.

[The mythological prehistory of the two bulls, their origin as rival swineherds Friuch and Rucht, their successive transformations through animal and human forms, and their final incarnation as Donn Cúailnge and Finnbennach, is narrated in the remscél De Chophur na Dá Mucado and is omitted here. Recension I opens directly with the muster without this backstory.]

In the beginning, as Recension I of the Táin attests, there were two bulls of extraordinary power in Ireland: Finnbennach, the White-Horned, incomparably fertile and strong, who had been born into the herds of Queen Medb of Connacht but who scorned being owned by a woman and transferred himself into the herds of her husband Ailill mac Máta; and Donn Cúailnge, the Brown Bull of Cooley, mightiest animal in Ireland, owned by the cattle-lord Dáire mac Fiachna on the Cooley Peninsula in the province of Ulster.

The broken bargain

[The famous “Pillow Talk” (comrád cind cherchailli, the “bolster-conversation”), in which Medb and Ailill lie in their royal bed at Crúachain Aí and compare their wealth item by item until they discover that the sole advantage belongs to Ailill by virtue of Finnbennach, is the opening scene of Recension II (Book of Leinster, c. 1160), where it functions as a prologue establishing the motive for the raid. Recension I (Lebor na hUidre, c. 1100) begins instead directly with the muster of the Connacht host, taking the purpose of the expedition as established context. The Pillow Talk is quoted in multiple translations including Kinsella (1969) and Carson (2007) but these draw on Recension II material for the opening; it is absent from the Recension I text as edited by O’Rahilly (1976). The conflict between versions is a genuine scholarly issue and not the result of scribal error.]

In the version the manuscripts preserve most fully, what is known is this: Medb of Connacht, sovereign queen, daughter of the High King, and ruler in her own right from her palace at Crúachain Aí (Rathcroghan, Co. Roscommon), perceived that her wealth did not equal her husband’s so long as Finnbennach stood in Ailill’s herd. She determined to possess Donn Cúailnge, the only bull in Ireland that could match the White-Horned. Her messengers offered Dáire mac Fiachna generous terms, land, cattle, and the loan of the bull for one year. Dáire agreed. But Medb’s envoys, drunk, boasted that Medb would have taken the bull by force had Dáire refused. When word of this reached Dáire, he retracted his consent. The embassy failed, and war became inevitable.

The muster at Cruachan

Medb and Ailill raised a great army at Crúachain Aí, mustering the forces of all four provinces of Ireland to march on Ulster. Among the chiefs were the seven sons of Mágu of Munster, each with three thousand men, and Cormac Cond Longas, son of King Conchobor of Ulster, who had come into exile in Connacht with three hundred men. Most significantly, Fergus mac Róich led the Ulster exiles: formerly king of Ulster himself, he had been tricked from his throne by Conchobor mac Nessa, and had fled to Connacht after Conchobor’s betrayal of the Sons of Uisliu, for whom Fergus had stood as surety. [The full account of Fergus’s exile is told in the remscél Longes mac nUislenn.] Fergus, Connacht’s guide and the army’s pathfinder, was also Medb’s lover, a relationship conducted in plain sight and deeply resented by Ailill.

For a fortnight the prophets and druids kept the host at Crúachain, awaiting auspicious omens. Then, on the Monday after the autumn feast of Samhain, the great army set out eastward. At the gate of the fort, Medb’s charioteer turned the chariot right-handwise to strengthen the omen for the road ahead. There they met Feidelm, poetess of Connacht, returning from Albion where she had studied the art of imbas forosna, prophetic illumination. Three times Medb asked her what she saw ahead for the host. Three times Feidelm answered: Atchíu forderg. Atchíu rúad, “I see it blood-red. I see it crimson.” She identified Cú Chulainn mac Súaldaim, the seventeen-year-old champion of Ulster, as the figure who would devastate the army, leaving a thousand severed heads in his wake. Medb dismissed the prophecy and ordered the march to continue.

[The full itinerary of the march, a long sequence of place-names from Crúachain through Mag Trego, Tethba, Mide, Sléibte, and into Cúailnge, is preserved in Recension I but is omitted from this retelling in the interest of compression.]

The curse of Macha

The men of Ulster were helpless. Upon them lay the curse of Macha: the goddess, wife of the mortal Cruinnchu, had been forced by the king of Ulster to race his horses while great with child. She won the race but gave birth on the finishing line, and as she did she laid on the Ulaid a curse that in their hour of greatest need they would suffer the pangs of a woman in labour, nine days and nine nights, for nine generations. [The full account is in the remscél Ces Ulad / Noínden Ulad.] Only Cú Chulainn, whose father was the god Lug mac Ethlend and who had come of age too recently for the curse’s full force, was exempt. Even he had allowed the Connacht army to cross the border unopposed, he had been on a tryst when he should have been watching the ford.

One fighter stood between the army of Ireland and Ulster. He was seventeen years old.

Cú Chulainn moved fast. He could not stop the army; he could harry it, slow it, and bleed it. He worked by guile and terror as much as by force: cutting forked branches and impaling severed heads on them across fords and road-junctions, sending challenges in ogam inscriptions, driving enemy scouts back in rout. He killed the four sons of Irard, Eirr, Indell, Foich, and Fochlam, at Áth nGabla, then fought the three sons of Nechta Scéne (Fóill, who could not be killed by a weapon after its first use; Fannall, who moved as fast on water as on land; Túachell, who could not be killed by a single blow): all three fell to him before he returned with their heads and the cattle he had seized.

Fergus, meanwhile, guided the Connacht host by roundabout ways, deliberately wasting days and choosing difficult ground, buying time for the Ulstermen to recover. Ailill grew suspicious, but Fergus’s knowledge of the terrain was too valuable to waste. When Ailill’s charioteer discovered Fergus and Medb lying together in a field, Ailill said nothing, but sent the charioteer back to remove Fergus’s sword from its scabbard and replace it with a wooden substitute. Fergus, his weapon secretly unmanned, did not know until the great battle what had been taken from him.

Single combat at the fords

An agreement was reached, or rather, one was imposed by circumstances. Cú Chulainn could not defeat the whole army of Ireland alone, and the army could not march freely while he raked its flanks. A compact was established: one champion from Connacht’s side each day, at a ford, single combat, while the main army stood. If the champion won, the army marched unopposed that day. If Cú Chulainn won, the army halted until the next morning. In this way a few months of relative stalemate were bought.

[The series of single combats at fords is the longest section of the Táin, dozens of named champions fall to Cú Chulainn in episodes of varying length. The most notable include: the combat with Nath Crantail; the fight with Loch mac Emonis (in which the Morrígan intervenes, as detailed below); the combat with Cúr mac Daltach; and numerous others. These are omitted individually here but their cumulative weight, the exhaustion and wounds accumulating on Cú Chulainn, and the growing catalogue of Connacht dead, is essential to the narrative’s tragic momentum.]

The Morrígan at the ford

The war-goddess the Morrígan had not been a passive observer. Before the campaign began, in the remscél Táin Bó Regamna, she had appeared to Cú Chulainn in her red chariot, driving a cow she had stolen to bring to Donn Cúailnge. When Cú Chulainn tried to stop her she took the form of a black bird and prophesied that when the calf she carried became a yearling, Cú Chulainn would be called to battle. She foretold her own three attacks on him, as eel, as wolf, and as heifer, and he named the wound he would give her in each form.

During the campaign, during Cú Chulainn’s combat at the ford with Loch mac Emonis, the Morrígan fulfilled her threats. She came first as a white heifer at the head of a stampede of fifty cattle, churning the ford to mud and obscuring his footing; Cú Chulainn smashed her leg with a cast of his javelin. She came then as an eel, coiling three times around his legs in the rushing water, and he broke her ribs with his heel. Finally she came as a grey wolf, stampeding cattle across the ford from the other direction; he threw his javelin through her eye. In each assault he was wounded by his opponent, she prevented the clean victory, but each time he landed the blow he had foretold and wounded her in return.

After the battle, as Cú Chulainn rested from his wounds, an old woman appeared leading a cow with three teats, her body bearing three injuries that corresponded precisely to those Cú Chulainn had inflicted. She asked him for a drink of milk from each teat in turn, and he granted each request with a blessing. With each blessing she was healed. When the last wound closed she revealed herself as the Morrígan. Cú Chulainn told her that had he known it was she, he would never have healed her, and that had she asked in her own form, he would never have yielded. The Morrígan said nothing to this. She had wrested her blessings from him by guile, and the debt was paid.

Lug’s healing sleep

The single combats continued. Cú Chulainn was wounded daily, sometimes gravely, sustaining injuries no mortal could long survive. His charioteer Láeg watched over him, but Lug mac Ethlend, the divine father he had barely known, came to him at night while he lay on the ground. He put Cú Chulainn into a healing sleep of three days and three nights and worked his skills upon the wounds. While Cú Chulainn slept, the boy-troop of Ulster, young warriors who should not have been called to battle at all, rose up and attacked the Connacht army on their own initiative. They were slaughtered, all one hundred and fifty of them. When Cú Chulainn woke and heard what had happened, he underwent his ríastrad, the battle-contortion in which his body twisted within his skin, his face slid from its place, heat shimmered from his crown, and the Hero’s Light, it was said, blazed above his head. Unrecognisable, unknowing friend from foe, he fell on the Connacht camp in a fury without parallel, and exacted sixfold vengeance for each of the dead boys.

Fer Diad at the ford

The hardest challenge remained. Medb, unable to defeat Cú Chulainn by champions alone, resolved to use his heart against him. She sent envoys to Fer Diad mac Damáin, Cú Chulainn’s foster-brother and closest companion from their training together under the warrior-woman Scáthach in Alba. They had learned every feat of arms side by side; Cú Chulainn was the only man alive who knew how to fight through Fer Diad’s impenetrable horn-skin. Medb offered Fer Diad Finnabair, her own daughter, as bride, and her own “friendly thighs” as an additional inducement. She threatened him with poets to compose satires that would strip his honour. Fer Diad resisted long, but the combination of threats and promises broke him. [The full exchange of messages between Medb and Fer Diad, and the lament that passes between the two foster-brothers on the eve of combat, is preserved at length in Recension I.]

The combat lasted four days at the ford. [The Fer Diad episode shows marked differences between Recension I and the Book of Leinster version: Recension I is compressed in the actual fight sequences; the Book of Leinster (Recension II) is elaborate and pathetic, dwelling on the slow emotional unravelling of the two men across four days, with extended lamentation and night-time truces. Kinsella (1969) follows the Leinster pattern here, which gives the most emotionally vivid account.] On the first day they fought with their hardest spears and drew equal blood. On the second with their swords. On the third with their spears. On the fourth Cú Chulainn, weakened almost to breaking, called for his Gáe Bolga, the lethal barbed spear that could only be cast from between the toes in a river current and which opened into thirty points upon entry. Láeg threw it up the stream to him. Cú Chulainn caught it and drove it through Fer Diad’s body.

Fer Diad fell. Cú Chulainn ran to him and carried him out of the ford to lay him on the Ulster side, “for it is not right,” he said, “that you should fall on the western bank.” He wept over the body and spoke a lament: his foster-brother, his playmate, his equal, the man who should not have been sent against him, the man no one could have stopped him killing once Medb had set them on each other’s paths. The lament is one of the great poems in the Táin: grief without exculpation, friendship consumed by war.

Cú Chulainn was carried from the ford more dead than alive.

The rising of the Ulstermen

The debility of the Ulaid had run its term. One by one, then in groups, the men of Ulster shook off the curse and reached for their weapons. King Conchobor mac Nessa rose from his sickbed and swore an oath: as the sky was above and the earth beneath, he would restore every stolen cow to her stall and every abducted woman to her home. The Ulaid assembled and marched.

[The events of the great battle, fought at Gáirech and Irgáirech, following the earlier climactic engagement at Breslech Mór in Mag Muirthemne, involve a large cast of named champions and numerous individual encounters that are omitted here.]

Cú Chulainn, still barely recovered from his wounds, held back at first at the order of the Ulaid, watching the battle proceed. Conchobor fought his way through the Connacht host; Fergus, given back his true sword by Ailill at last, found Conchobor and had him at his mercy. But Cormac Cond Longas, Conchobor’s own son, one of Fergus’s foster-children, threw himself between them and begged Fergus to spare his father. Fergus turned his fury aside and struck off the tops of three hills with three blows of his sword, hills that, the dindshenchas attests, stood blunted from that day forward.

Then Cú Chulainn entered the fray. He found Fergus in the midst of the press and called in the debt that had been established months earlier at a ford: “Yield to me now, Fergus, as you pledged.” Fergus remembered his word. He drew back and ordered his three thousand men from the field. When the Connacht allies saw Fergus withdraw, panic ran through them like a wave. The retreat became a rout. Medb’s army collapsed.

Cú Chulainn came upon Medb near the end, catching her in a condition of physical vulnerability, the manuscripts state plainly that her menstrual flux had come upon her at the worst moment, and she appealed to him not to kill her in such a state. He not only spared her: he formed a protective shield around her retreat with his own body, guarding her back to the Connacht border. He would not kill a woman, even this woman.

The battle of the bulls

Medb brought Donn Cúailnge back to Connacht. She had won the object of the raid, though not the war. At Cruachan, the Brown Bull of Cooley scented his rival and Finnbennach came. The two great animals, each of supernatural origin, the last incarnation of the two rival swineherds who had been enemies since before the beginning of human memory, met on the plain near Crúachain. [Rathcroghan preserves a large enclosure known as Ráth na dTarbh, “The Fort of the Bulls,” traditionally identified as the site of this final combat.] A man called Bricriu of the Poisoned Tongue was chosen as judge of the fight because he was held to be no fairer to friend than to foe. The bulls circled, their hooves shaking the earth, their eyes burning, and when they charged they trampled Bricriu to death between them.

They fought all through the day and all through the night. In the morning, the men of Ireland saw Donn Cúailnge moving westward with the mangled remnants of Finnbennach hanging from his horns. He carried the pieces of his rival across the length of Ireland: the shoulder-blade fell at Finnleithe in the north; the loin fell at Áth Lúain (Athlone), giving the ford its name; the liver fell at Troma. And so the body of the White-Horned was distributed across the landscape, each fragment naming a place. Donn Cúailnge turned then toward his own home territory of Cooley.

He bellowed three times, a sound heard throughout Ulster. Then he lay down and died at Druim Tairb. The oldest quarrel in the tale was finished at last.

Seven years of peace

Ailill and Medb made peace with the Ulstermen and with Cú Chulainn. For seven years afterwards no one was killed between the two provinces. Finnabair, Medb’s daughter, was given to Cú Chulainn. The men of Connacht returned to their own land. The men of Ulster went in triumph to Emain Macha.

Finit. Amen., as the scribes of Recension I wrote.

[Recension I ends here, without the retrospective moral weight that some later retellings impose. What the text leaves behind is the landscape itself: hills blunted by Fergus’s sword-stroke, fords marked with the names of the dead, a bull’s journey written in dismembered flesh across the midlands of Ireland, and two provinces exhausted by a war fought over a debt of pride no peace could fully settle. Medb returned to Crúachain as she had left it, queen, unbroken, already planning what came next.]