Celtic Legends: Heroes and Warriors, Myths and Monsters (Histories) by Michael Kerrigan

Author:Michael Kerrigan [Kerrigan, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Amber Books Ltd
Published: 2018-02-06T23:00:00+00:00

Ulster in Action

While Cú Chulainn recuperated from his wounds, things were starting to happen further north. Only now were the men of Ulster shaking off their “labour” pangs. They mobilized at Emain Macha and marched south in their tens of thousands, Conchobar before them, ready at long last to engage the enemy. Ulster’s king summoned Ailill to a meeting, and the men agreed that they would do battle. Next day, the dawn was welcomed by the ghastly figure of the Morrigan, acclaiming the day on which she’d see “ravens chewing at the skin of men’s necks, blood gushing out … carved-up flesh and battle frenzy”. Gleefully impartial, she ended with the complicated cry:

Long live Ulster!

Down with Ireland!

Down with Ulster!

Long live Ireland!

She was to have her way: both sides would win and both would lose when the climactic battle was joined a few hours later. In their tens of thousands, Ireland’s bravest warriors clashed. Great deeds were done: with one stroke of his sword, Fergus in his fury took the tops off three adjacent hills; Medb herself led a charge that came close to breaking through. Connacht was carrying the day, indeed, the warriors of Ulster were on the point of despairing when Cú Chulainn joined the fray and turned the tables. By the time he was finished, the forces of Connacht were finished too, fleeing in disorder from a field deep with their dead.

But Medb was to have one final triumph before she fled the field. Cú Chulainn himself, it’s said, though invincible in the face of any normal foe, was in the end defenceless against her machinations. She persuaded Lugaid mac Con Roí, whose father Cú Chulainn had killed, to fling three enchanted spears: the first at Cú Chulainn’s charioteer; the second at his peerless horse, bringing his car to an unceremonious stop; then he hurled the third into the hero’s belly, spilling all his innards. Even then, Cú Chulainn refused to fall, tying himself to a standing stone so he might remain upright himself, until the treacherous Lugaid at last dispatched him with a poisoned sword.

Ulster’s triumph was tempered twice over: not only had her greatest hero effectively been assassinated, but there was the ignominy of having lost the great brown bull. For Donn Cuailnge was being herded before the Connacht army as it went. Connacht’s warriors might have won the war, but they’d lost the thing it had been fought for, a further ironic twist in what should have been a heroic tale. And more of these are to follow, for no sooner do Medb and Ailill get back to Cruachan with their Brown Bull of Cooley than he meets the great White-faced Bull, Finnenbach Ai. They fight and, although Donn Cuailnge wins and kills his opponent, he is fatally wounded himself. Rampaging around all of Ireland in his agony, he tears up the country, throwing up hills and gouging out valleys before he dies.

So the final reckoning for the war leaves countless thousands dead, and no one really victorious.

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