SOURCE: "Cú Chulainn—An Ill-Made Hero?" in Text und Zeittiefe, edited by Hildegard L. C. Tristram, Gunter Narr, 1994, pp. 185-215.

[In the following essay, Bruford argues that the Tain was originally set down in writing by a cleric who intended it for secular aristocrats. According to Bruford, the popular interpretation of Cú Chulainn reveals the tension arising from the poem's exposure to a wider public.]

Táin Bó Cuailnge (hereinafter "the Táin") is sometimes described as the national epic of ancient Ireland. In fact it is a prose epic (with a very poor epic structure) from a country which had hardly begun to think of itself as one nation. The obvious comparison with artificial national epics, such as Virgil's Aeneid, Macpherson's Ossian, or Lönnrot's Kalevala, may not be so inappropriate as Celtic scholars of the last generation might have thought. Indeed Ossian was composed using very similar materials and, I would suggest, with very similar aims to the Táin, and both of them were forgotten when literary fashions changed, though in their time they had considerable influence, particularly on styles of narration and attitudes to the past, whose effects lingered on.

At any rate there is no longer any need for modern scholars to study the Táin as if it were a folk epic as defined by Parry and Lord, orally improvised in sung verse on a basis of traditional themes and formulas. Whatever its basis, the Táin as we have it was composed in prose, and I think most scholars today would agree with me that it was also composed in writing. The considerable variations between the various surviving manuscript texts of the Táin, and in the style of different parts of the older texts, are quite consistent with the way in which Irish scribes up to the eighteenth century have been prepared to rewrite or add to the texts they were copying whenever they felt they could improve them. This need not be a sign of oral transmission, though oral tradition as well as copying or imitation of other texts—not necessarily Irish or secular—and a good measure of pure creative invention may all have contributed to the additions. What I have argued in the past has not been that scholars like Gerard Murphy were wrong in seeing elements of oral tradition in the make-up of mediaeval Irish tales, but that they were wrong in assuming—as I think is implied generally—that they were (a) communally created by "the folk" in some immemorial past as complete and consistent tale-types, and (b) taken down word for word from the mouths of gifted peasant narrators.¹ A quarter century's involvement in collecting folktales (and ballads) from living traditional storytellers of several culture and dialect areas, and sometimes attempting to re-tell tales orally in my own language, has given me some insight into the ways in which oral narrative may be created, transmitted and sometimes very consciously re-created, and I still feel that (a) all tales are created by someone, and mediaeval Irish tales, which name people and places constantly, unlike Märchen (international folktales), are likely to have been composed by members of the literary class rather than the peasantry; (b) nobody before the invention of tape-recording ever recorded an oral tale in writing in the exact words anyone else used to tell it, and an element of reconstruction, if not complete re-writing, must be expected in any early text, whether it be the Iliad or the Tain.

What I want to suggest in this paper is that (a) the Táin was originally an artificial composition in writing by a cleric, though one with a wide knowledge of historical legends, pagan myths and indeed Märchen preserved by the poetic class, and deliberately designed as a work of art which could be used to gain political credit; (b) it was written originally for people like the author, added to so that it could be performed and enjoyed by secular aristocrats, and never appealed to a wider public, so that the few versions recorded from "peasants" in the past century tend to treat the over-glorified central figure, Cú Chulainn, as a figure of fun rather than a noble hero. I am assuming here that the early accounts of how the Táin was written (or one might say literally "ghost-written", dictated by the spirit of the eye-witness Fergus mac Roich) have some reason based on genuine tradition for dating this in the middle of the seventh century, though what was written then need not have been much like any form of the text we have now: indeed that shows every sign of having been rewritten again and again to suit the political and literary prejudices of different periods. I am also assuming that Thumeysen's analysis of the different redactions and interpolations which go to make up its surviving written texts is basically correct, and that the sequence in which he places them may still generally be accepted, though better linguists than myself may be able to say that his datings are centuries out. The stylistic differences are obvious, though I would not be too sure that a single author could not change his style drastically for a tour de force equivalent to the "runs" of later mediaeval romances and modern Gaelic folktales.

Why write an epic?

Why the vernacular narrative we have in Irish as against any other language of Western Europe before 1000 A.D. is in prose I have tried to explain elsewhere², but to resume the argument briefly, it seems very likely that in pagan times there was alliterative, regularly stressed verse in Irish which could have been improvised in the performance of oral epics. However, the later poetic order was part of the druid caste, the pagan priesthood which was naturally suppressed by the early Christians. Those who wrote verse in praise of the aristocracy soon regained their status at the price of using syllable-counting metres with increasingly complex schemes of rhyme rather than alliteration and stress, apparently based on Latin hymns. The others, including the most learned members of the druidic order who knew the tribal histories and charter myths, clung to the few surviving pagan rulers or perhaps took to the hills with the young warriors or fénnidi, who in any case formed a sort of licensed robber band, not subject to the normal laws of the settled kingdoms whose borders they defended.³ But the Church soon developed into an organisation built round large, rich monastic settlements, the nearest thing to towns early Ireland produced. Their wealth was largely based on their endowment of land from the secular aristocracy, and they had no written charters to their land: the charters were in the tribal myth, legend and history known to the learned men of the druidic order. So some of those who remembered these stories were sought out and brought back into the fold, but a generation or two had passed. They might still know the stories, but they had lost the technique of improvising them in verse, though a few lines of the old style of alliterative verse, whether fossilised by frequent repetition or reconstructed from fragments that stuck in someone's memory, do seem to have survived. In any case when the stories were first written down, they were written for the record as prose summaries with occasional pieces of archaic verse interspersed, and that gradually developed into a more artistic form of narrative, written now with an eye to reading aloud (the only way in which a book could be communicated to the mediaeval laity, most of whom would have remained illiterate even in the unusually learned society of Ireland) and from that passed on to generations of oral storytellers.⁴

But why was the Táin written—and I am sure it was literally written: it has very little resemblance to genuine oral literature—and why was the Ulster Cycle, which seems to have grown up around it, the most highly-esteemed matter for narrative in Ireland, until it was supplanted by the Fenian Cycle around the time of the first English incursions? The Fenian Cycle as we have it has the makings of a national epic, as James Macpherson realised when he changed the setting to Scotland and rewrote the only later mediaeval body of Gaelic narrative verse as turgid romantic prose. The heroes are employed by a king of Tara, or "king of Ireland" as he was by then claimed to have been, and spend much of their time on beaches all round the country fighting off invaders, mostly of a vaguely Scandinavian appearance. But the heroes of the Ulster Cycle fight other Irishmen, sometimes referred to simply as "the men of Ireland", but led by the nobles of Connacht who were in fact ancestors of the kings of Tara, under Queen Medb who is represented as daughter of a king of Tara and in another avatar is Medb Lethderg, tutelary goddess of Tara. The Ulster headquarters, Emain Macha, is a fortress (or more likely a ritual centre) from which the Ulstermen had been expelled by the kings of Tara centuries before the stories were written, and was then in an area, Airgialla, whose very name implied that it was a dependency of the kings of Tara, while the descendants of the Ulster kings huddled in a corner of their former kingdom, not daring after the battle of Moira in 637 to challenge the pre-eminence of the kings of Tara in the northern half of Ireland—indeed by the eighth century the kings of Tara were beginning to claim the high-kingship of the whole island. What sort of basis is that for a national epic?

The answer is surely that it was an epic designed to honour a particular part of Ireland, not as large an area as the whole theoretical province of Ulster, while taking care not to dishonour the kings of Tara. The time when the nucleus of the Táin was written, we assume, was towards the middle of the seventh century. In that case the place where it was written, most likely by an educated author who used Latin artificial epics as his model and wanted to add to the credit of his home area, must surely be the monastic city of Armagh, which used relentless pressure and the patronage of its secular overlords, the Uí Néill kings of Tara, throughout the 7th and 8th centuries until it attained the primacy of the Irish church which it has enjoyed ever since. Part of this pressure took the form of exalting its founder, St. Patrick, as the sole apostle of Ireland—a claim which has only recently begun to be questioned—and probably the most politically effective part consisted in persuading the rulers of other parts of Ireland to promulgate the "Law of Patrick"; but the land they owned, as I have said, was also important to Irish monasteries, and along with literature in praise of the founding saint it was natural to produce literature to exalt the importance of the place itself—what later Irishmen have called "the Ould Sod" or "the Holy Ground", but here in a quite restricted sense. The early Irish valued books highly—a quarrel over the mere ownership of a gospel book is supposed to have led to St. Columba leaving Ireland—and the performance of praise-poetry and other secular, orally delivered literature continued to add prestige to the households of Gaelic kings and chieftains throughout the next thousand years. The possession of a book with a finely written heroic epic, claimed to be about the history of their own region at the time of Christ, might have been as much to the credit of the monastery of Armagh in the eyes of outsiders as, say, the possession of St. Patrick's bell or staff, or some of his bones in a finely ornamented jewelled golden reliquary. The monk who undertook to write the epic could have had a good knowledge both of Latin secular works by such authors as Virgil, Lucan and Livy and of native oral tradition. He probably already had practice in manipulating the latter by mixing traditional names of kings and heroes with fragments of legend and a great deal of new invention to compile the genealogies and pseudo-historical tracts which we know now in later forms, not to mention works such as the early Lives of St. Patrick.

It has been suggested that Patrick chose to make his most important foundation Ard Macha, Armagh, because it was very close to Emain Macha, the traditional capital of Ulster before its conquest by the Connachta of Tara. I wonder whether the reverse is not true, and Emain became the capital in the literature because it was close to Armagh. The Irish were not city-builders, and the only settlement which was anything like a king's capital in early Christian Ireland was the Rock of Cashel, whose very name seems to be an import derived from Latin castellum. Other centres named in royal titles, such as Cruachu, Ailech or Tara itself, were not permanently inhabited settlements but ritual sites, in the case of Tara at least deliberately abandoned in early Christian times because of its pagan associations. Emain seems to have been such a ritual site, though we await full publication and interpretation of the excavations there; but was it the most important one in Ulster? Certainly before the Ui Neill took Tara, Emain was not the most sacred site in Ulster. There is clear evidence that at that time the Boyne was the frontier between Ulster and Leinster, and Brugh na Bóinne, the Neolithic chamber tomb at Newgrange with its neighbours on the north bank of the Boyne, appears in later sources as the most celebrated seat of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the euhemerised pagan gods. Surely it would be the most sacred site of Ulster: indeed Tara, at one time Leinster's equivalent to the south, with just the little chamber tomb at the Mound of the Hostages, looks like a rather feeble rival. Or was the Brugh too sacred to be a royal inaugural site?

The title of the epic

The name Táin Bó Cuailnge itself, though its fame in later literature is undoubted, is a puzzle. Some cattle-raiding by the Connacht forces in the Cooley peninsula does form part of the story as we have it, but it is far from central, and could very well have been inserted just to make sense of the title. The aim of the invasion is taken by most of the later redactors of the Táin as being to take possession of the bull Donn Cuailnge, which could hardly be described as a Táin Bó, literally a raid of cows. It is accepted that cattle-raiding had more than an economic significance in early Ireland: not only did it form part of most regular warfare and the imposing of authority by over-kings on under-kings, but there is evidence that a crech ríg or 'royal raid' on a neighbouring tribe was a necessary part of the inauguration of any new king.⁵ We would expect that Táin Bó in the titles of tales would be followed by the name of the raided tribe, but in fact apart from Táin Bó Cuailnge itself all the other titles of surviving tales of this class, and as far as we can tell all those listed for lost tales except possibly Táin Bó Rois, and Táin Bó Aidne in the Edinburgh list,⁶ are formed with the names of individual persons, two of them (Dartaid and Flidais) women, who would not normally own cattle in their own right. Moreover Cuailnge (like Aidne) is not the name of a tribe or kingdom either—it is the name of a district: and what is the importance of that district? It consists now mainly of heathery hills, with a sloping coastal strip of arable land, and can hardly have been especially good cattle country; it is certainly not on any direct route from Connacht or Tara to Emain; it is beyond the part of the present County Louth in which most of the existing story is set. Its only significance seems to be bound up either with the name of the story or that of the bull Donn Cuailnge.

Of the other surviving Tana, the main part of Táin Bó Fraich seems to have nothing to do with cattle-raiding, and was probably given a title of this class just because of the prestige it carried. The others are all told, as might be expected, from the point of view of the raiders, unlike Táin Bó Cuailnge, where the heroes are clearly the defenders. I wonder whether the title may not have been borrowed from an already celebrated tale (of which perhaps, as the stories of the finding of the Táin imply, nothing but the name was remembered) and a new, epic, Ulster story written round it? I say this because there is a tribe, or at least a sub-tribe called Cualnge in the genealogies. They are apparently a branch of the Corcu Baiscinn in the south-west of the present County Clare: though St. Patrick is said to have baptised the great-grandfather of their eponym Cualnge, the names of his ancestors suggest he belongs to a mythological stratum.⁷ The raiders who might have taken their cattle would most likely have been from a neighbouring tribe, either the Ciarraige across the Shannon to the south, or more likely the Corco M(od)ruad in the Burren, poor cattle country, to the north of them. The mythical ancestor of both these tribes is Fergus mac Roich, who by later accounts dictated the Táin to the poets from his grave,⁸ and could well have been the hero, on the invading side, of the original story. Whether or not more than this was remembered in Co. Clare, the Ulster epic-makers would simply have needed to take the famous title (perhaps remembered for the finest or longest piece improvised by one of the last pagan epic singers) and mis-apply it to a district of Ulster, follow the tradition which made Fergus ancestor of the Érainn of Ulster as well as Munster, and turn the story round, perhaps using parts of an Ulster myth, to make him an exile invading his own country. If in the original story he was raiding southwards from the Burren, he could well have had support from the over-kings of Connacht, for until late pagan times Co. Clare was part of Connacht.⁹ It is just possible, indeed, that the defender Cú Chulainn comes from this Clare background, too: several seemingly old tales connect him with the hero of the Munster Erainn, Cu Roi, and possibly the only surviving place-name incorporating his name, Léim Chon Culainn, Cu Chulainn's Leap or Loop Head, is at the extreme south-west corner of the territory of the Corcu Baiscinn.¹⁰

Casting the hero's role

Another strange fact about the Táin is that neither the king of Ulster, Conchobor, nor the central hero, Cú Chulainn, appears as an ancestor of any of the many Irish royal lines whose genealogies are recorded, and Cú Chulainn's friend and nominal foster-father Fergus, who appears in many such lines, is represented as an exile fighting on the other side. It was obviously to the advantage of the monks of Armagh to keep on the right side of their overlords, the Uí Néill, rather than supporting the claims of the Dál Fiatach, the surviving descendants of the Ulaid kings who had once ruled the whole province. Kings of that race, and of the Dál nAraidi who now sometimes claimed the overlordship of the whole province, still might occasionally be more powerful than the current Uí Néill king of Tara at times into the seventh century, but never apparently got anywhere near reconquering the territory of the Airgialla where Armagh lay. There are however considerable traces of an attempt to build a major literary cycle round the figure of Mongán mac Fiachnai, the son of Fiachnae mac Baetáin, a king of Dál nAraidi who was killed in 626 (a year after his son) and seems to have had a serious claim to be more powerful than the king of Tara:" it is not unlikely that the Táin was created as a direct response to this propaganda exercise. Even more important to Armagh could be the fact that the Dal Fiatach's remaining territory included the actual burial-place of St. Patrick at Downpatrick, which might profit more than Armagh itself from Armagh's campaign to aggrandise the saint, unless something else was done to underline where he had established his seat. Byrne says (of the eighth century) that "the Ulaid had always accepted Armagh's primacy",¹² but they might have felt differently if their successes before and after 600 had lasted longer. Obviously, then, Armagh did not want a main hero who was an ancestor of the present rulers of the Ulaid, and preferred to treat the latter as degenerates who could claim no part in the high deeds of the Golden Age.

One puzzle which probably cannot be solved at this date is who the ancestors of the kings of Airgialla actually were. They are represented as descendants of the Three Collas, members of the Connachta line who were barred from the succession because they had committed the crime of fingal, kin-slaying, having killed their uncle, a legendary king of Tara and great-grandfather of Niall of the Nine Hostages. O'Rahilly suggested that they were disguised versions of three of Niall's own sons, who probably really conquered much of Ulster for the Connachta, and Byrne points out the incongruity of the account: in practice many members of early Irish and Scottish dynasties killed an uncle or a cousin and took over his throne without anyone accusing them of a crime, and the direct father-to-son inheritance of Niall's ancestors is unparalleled in the historical record. Byrne also suggests that the Airgialla (whose name simply means "hostage-givers") may actually have descended from vassal tribes who joined the invading Connachta in ejecting their Ulaid overlords.¹³ The linking of their line to that of the conquerors would have been a political reward for their support, giving them prestige but with an inbuilt safeguard against their actually claiming a right to the throne of Tara. This sort of dynastic manipulation has probably been used by many cultures, though earlier historians did not pay enough attention to genealogy as a source. Unfortunately it means that we cannot tell whether heroes of the Ulster Cycle like Conchobor who seem to have left no descendants among the Ulaid may have been legendary ancestors of an Airgialla royal line, ousted from the genealogies by the Three Collas and revived by a descendant composing the Táin.

Fergus mac Roich poses no such problems. He is always depicted in the surviving literature as an Ulster hero, but as we have seen is an ancestor-figure for families of the Érainn, the racial group to which the Ulaid or Dál Fiatach belonged, in different parts of Ireland, especially Munster. His patronymic or more probably metronymic, 'son of the great horse' or 'mare', may underline his royal nature: it recalls the inauguration ceremony reported by Giraldus Cambrensis as a pagan survival in a remote part of Ulster, in which the king was symbolically reborn from a cauldron containing the flesh of a newly-sacrificed mare. I have suggested elsewhere¹⁴ that Fergus provided all pagan Ulster kings with their role-model and title, so that the divine Fergus of myth and the reigning Fergus of Ulster might both appear in the same legend. The author of the original Táin, whether he was a monk, a poet or a committee, was governed by political considerations: he could not make Fergus, the ancestor of a hostile dynasty, either king of Ulster or the hero of his story. On the other hand the name was too important to be left out. He therefore drew on the myth of the divine Fergus, whose mate was a goddess one of whose names was Medb. She represented the sovereignty of Ulster, as well as the sovereignty of Connacht and its ritual centre Cruachu, and (under the title of Medb Lethderg, "the Red-sided") that of Leinster and the ritual centre that belonged to that province until the 5th century, Tara. Fergus thus becomes an Ulster exile in the camp of Medb of Connacht and a rival of her consort Ailill. That this is happening on the level of myth is clear from the way that Medb is depicted as more important than her husband: masterful women often appear in Gaelic literature and folktale, but always with a trace of the supernatural—early Irish law subordinated women so firmly to men, preventing them from inheriting property or rank or even having these things inherited through them, that it suggests a violent reaction to a previous state of affairs which had not entirely died out among the Celts of southern Britain at the time of the Roman invasion, where Boadicea and Cartimandua led armies and ruled tribes, or among their northern cousins the Picts whose kingship was still inherited in the female line at the time when the Táin was written. By some accounts Medb's two consorts, Ailill and Fergus, are themselves known by their mothers' names, and have the same father, Rús Ruad, who as I have pointed out,¹⁵ bears a transposed and syncopated form of the name Ruad Ro-fhessa, one of the titles of the Dagda, the father of the Irish pantheon. Incidentally, calling the enemy queen Medb of Cruachu rather than Medb of Tara helps to make the epic more acceptable to the kings of Tara, whose special relationship with Connacht had long been less important than that with the Airgialla, while keeping what I take to be a historical background based on memories of the actual fifth-century invasion of Ulster by the Connachta.

Fergus is thus left in the enemy camp, but reluctant as he is to fight his fellow-countrymen and especially his protége Cú Chulainn, he functions much more in his divine capacity, advising Cu Chulainn in nocturnal visits much like one of the gods in the Iliad. His replacement as king of Ulster, Conchobor, appears in no genealogy of a surviving royal line, and may be entirely a literary creation, though the fact that earlier sources give him too a metronymic and make him the son of his own high priest Cathbad the druid suggests that he may originate from a myth, perhaps one more like a folktale such as the one that brings Cormac the Bear's Son to the throne of Tara.¹⁶ Perhaps Conchobor's name ("hound-" or "wolf-help") implies that like Cormac he was fostered by wolves,¹⁷ and he was originally the culture-hero of Emain as Cormac was of Tara.¹⁸ However, the name was not uncommon among early Christian kings (not to mention being used for a stream, after which the child was called according to the later and longer version of his birth-tale, Compert Conchobuir). It is not impossible that it was chosen for the king of Ulster in the Táin simply to underline his role in the story, as the person who most benefits from the help of the "hound" Cú Chulainn. There must be some significance in the name of an Ulster kinglet killed in 698 at a battle in Fernmag, to the west of Armagh, named by the Annals of Ulster as Conchobor Machae, Conchobor of Macha, son of Mael Duin, especially as Byrne identified him as the king of Airthir, the dynasty of the "eastern region" of Airgialla which surrounded Armagh and in the following centuries abandoned secular ambitions to concentrate on establishing a hereditary claim to the abbacy.'9 I doubt whether he was the model for the king in the Táin, but he may have been given his name and epithet as a future defender of an area whose local patriotism had recently been rekindled by the epic.

In any case the king himself could not be the real hero. In later Irish literature and Gaelic folk herotales the active protagonists are always kings' sons, and this may reflect an element in the structure of pagan Irish society, surviving against the condemnation of the Church into early Christian times, which has been made much of in recent scholarship,²⁰ as the basis of the Fenian Cycle and a good deal else. Well-born young men, it is suggested, spent the years between the ages of fourteen and twenty as members of a fian, a peer-group outside the law and outside the cultivated fields of the tribal territory, living largely by hunting in the hills and forests, training for war and acting as a mobile defence force on the frontiers. After the age of twenty they could and usually did hold land and marry, and formed part of the settled tribe under the law, of which the king was legal and symbolic head. The king symbolised the kingdom, and his health ensured its health, fertility and justice, so in the original pagan theory, he should not lead his men into battle, but at most direct the action from the rear, or invoke divine support, like Brian Ború praying in his tent at Clontarf while his sons fought. The annals show many kings taking the field in practice, and being killed there, but the theory continued to dominate in works of fiction up to the modern Gaelic folktales.

The most obvious younger hero for the Táin might have been Conall Cernach, who appears in other tales as Cú Chulainn's closest rival, occasionally (as in Scéla Muicce Meic Da Thó or Togail Bruidne Da Derga) replaces him as main Ulster hero, and eventually avenges his death. He is also the eponymous ancestor of the Conailli of Muirthemne, the tribe which in early Christian times occupied most of the area in which the Táin is set, and that which is depicted as Cú Chulainn's own homeland. The Conailli Muirtheimne, however, seem to have had little political importance, and were only recognised as a separate small kingdom between the late seventh and eleventh centuries.²¹ Conall Cemach, like Fergus, features in the genealogies of several other kingdoms, and most notably perhaps as the distant ancestor of the kings of Dál nAraidi. The Armagh abbacy may have helped the Uí Néill to divide their enemies by sometimes supporting, perhaps indeed inventing the claim of the Dál aAraidi to be the fir-Ulaid, the real descendants of the ancient Ulaid kings as against the Dál Fiatach, whose line of descent, as recorded by scholars from other regions, does seem rather patchy in places. A king of Dál nAraidi died in 698 in the same battle as Armagh's Conchobar Machae and apparently as his ally against rivals within Airgialla. On the other hand the Uí Néill would not want too much favour shown to Dál nAraidi, since the last two Ulster kings who were a serious threat to their primacy in the Northern half of Ireland, as recently as 637, had been of that line,²² so Conall can be allowed some glory but certainly not the central role in the Táin. In fact he is given contradictory roles to play in different redactions: he is one of the exiles with Fergus in the earlier parts of the earlier (LU) text, and on the Ulster side in other parts and throughout the later (LL) text, and in both cases is rather outshone by his own ageing father.

The late James Carney deduced from an early 7th-century poem, Conailla Medb míchuru²³, that the young hero in the original form of the story was Fergus's own son Fíacc. The name Fíacc has various mythological connotations, most notably its association with the pool on the Boyne, Linn Féicc, where Finn mac Cumaill acquired his thumb of knowledge by tasting Fíacc's salmon (eo Féicc); where his predecessor as deity and féinnid, Fothad Canainne, was killed by a jealous husband; and where according to one early account Cú Chulainn killed Fráech.²⁴ The name could be related to féic(e), a roof-tree or summit (hence a supreme hero), but the association with the salmon of knowledge suggests a form connected with the (Middle Irish?) verb féccid or féigaid, implying the power of a seer, connected with derivations proposed for the term éces, poet, and the name Find.²⁵ Fíacc son of Fergus does not appear in the Táin, but he may be represented in other Ulster tales by Fiacha son of Fergus, who is killed protecting the heroes of Longes mac nUislenn, and an apparent doublet, Fiachra Caech, killed at Bruiden Da-Chocae.²⁶

I heard with interest Garrett Olmsted's "Conailla Medb michuru and the Origins of the Táin" at the International Celtic Congress in Paris, and have tried to follow the edition of the text he gave me. He argues that Fíacc in the poem is an early form of these last two, and that the poem mentions incidents in both these tales as well as the Táin, and his intention is to disprove Carney's suggestion in his Galway paper that the poem is an account of a historical 5th-century campaign between Ulster and the Leinster kings of Tara, and the principal characters are historical characters. I am not convinced that Olmsted is any better equipped than Carney to translate obscure archaic Irish alliterative verse, and he shows scant regard for the metre of the poem, but in any case I accept Carney's contention that when this poem was written the Táin as we know it did not exist, and the corollary that the other Ulster tales as we know them did not exist either. It may eventually be possible to interpret the poem as telling, or more likely referring to, a single coherent story which may have contributed elements to the Táin, Longes mac nUislenn and Bruiden Da-Chocae, but I think that story will be myth rather than history. It is interesting evidence that Conchobor's replacement of Fergus as king of Ulster is a central feature of the story. Whether Fiacc is a prototype for Cú Chulainn, or for his son Conlaech who dies in a later tale fighting his father, or both or neither, we may eventually discover, but not yet.

In any case the Táin, as an epic written at least partly to be published to secular audiences in the usual mediaeval from of reading aloud (presumably in instalments or extracts), and designed like the Aeneid to enhance the political as well as the cultural credit of its sponsors, may have drawn on the plots and characters of existing legends and myths, but was in no way bound to follow them. I see no reason to doubt the assumption implicit in early Irish scribal comments and headings that at least the setting and the central dramatis personae for the whole Ulster Cycle were laid down by the Táin, and there was nothing like the cycle we now have before it was written. Certainly the one hero who dominates the greater part of that story has no obvious background as an individual in any material outside his own cycle, and is conspicuously absent from tales such as Togail Bruidne Da Derga, set by the author of the surviving version at the same period, in which Cú Chulainn could not well replace the doomed central hero. In the Táin Cú Chulainn takes the place which might have been filled by Fergus or Fergus's son or by Conall Cernach, because they were politically undesirable candidates: his characteristics (before later interpolations like the fight with Fer Diad) are almost entirely those of a stereotyped, indeed an exaggerated version of the typical young hero: I feel he is the creation of the original author of the Táin. His original name Sétanta, if we accept a derivation from sét, path, is very suitable for a model hero, a pagan Galahad; but where did Cú Chulainn come from, and what does the second element of his name mean?

If he were a totally new invention one would expect a more obvious meaning, so I suggest that the Armagh author may have borrowed the name of a local hero, perhaps one who actually helped to defend Ulster against the early attacks of the Connachta a few years before the fall of Emain in the fifth century. In that case his name may involve a placename, which makes more sense than any other explanation of the second element. The name of the smith whose hound he killed, replaced, and took as his name "the hound of Culann" is Caulann, not Culann, in the older texts of the Táin and Compert Con Culainn. This may be evidence for the antiquity of the form Cú Chaulainn, which does appear occasionally in genealogical tracts and the like²⁷, and may have been regularised by generations of scribes, if not modern editors, in other texts. It is no evidence for the existence of, say, a pagan smith-god called Caulann. Why he is a smith I will try to explain below, but unless there is some vastly significant connection with the word caull, a testicle, I doubt if the character or his name can be anything but our original author's invention. There is a word or name culaind or Culuinn in one very obscure archaic text from the Book of Ballymote, but it would probably take a year's study to interpret the three words involved,²⁸ unless someone has already done it. Names in Cú were common enough in seventh-century Ireland, and one historical Leinsterman of the period actually seems to have borne the name Cú Cholainn, with an O: his son Cairpre was killed in the aftermath of a battle involving the Uí Cheinnselaig in 709 according to the Annals of Ulster. The word involved can hardly be colainn, body, whose genitive is colna: might it be an early borrowing of the hero's name from the new best-seller, which his mother fancied—or rather, since I have argued that uncommon names at this period probably usually began as nicknames given during fénnidecht,²⁹ which other boys gave him in admiration, or possibly mockery? It seems unlikely that the real name, at least from this obscure Leinster nobleman, was the source of the literary one.

Culann could however be a variant, perhaps in a local dialect, of cuilenn, "holly-tree"—this is the only meaning we know for sure, though the compound cuilennbocc, a he-goat, is difficult to explain by this. The reference to dangerous forest creatures called na Coin cuilind (sic!) in Echtra Airt meic Cuind³⁰ may be just a later author having fun with our hero's name. Names beginning with Cú often follow it with a place-name—there are examples such as Cú Ulad, Cú Macha, and even Cú Chuailnge in the annals and genealogies which might have been more obvious choices for our hero—and Cuil(l)enn (like some other names of "noble trees", (airigh fedha)) is common as a place-name, and several instances are recorded in the neighbourhood where the Táin is set. The best-known today is Slieve Gullion (Sliab gCuilinn) in Co. Armagh, perhaps too far north to be relevant, though it is a landmark on the present border, and is mentioned in the Táin as a refuge of the bull Donn Cuailnge. Another Slieve Gullion is west of Crossakeel, the village west of Kells identified as the Iraird Cuilenn where the Connacht forces found the first trace of Cú Chulainn in the Táin. More relevant to the central scenes of the story are references to a place called Cuilend in Muirthemne, probably the Cuillenn Cinn Dúin where Cú Chulainn killed a hundred men, and a river of the same name in the territory of the Conailli on which it may have stood—perhaps the Cully Water north of Dundalk. The most interesting name to me, however, is (Ochtar) Colland in Druimne Breg, the hilly area of Co. Louth north of the Boyne: this is presumably the village now called Collon, west of Monasterboice. A later reference to a Cuillend, a grange of Mellifont Abbey, is no doubt the same place, and a form Culann or Caulann would come somewhere between these two. The place is only a few miles up the River Mattock from the probable site of Ath Gabla, where Cú Chulainn first holds up the invaders and the Ulster exiles tell of his boyhood deeds.³¹ Until someone comes up with a more convincing explanation, I suggest that "Cú Chulainn" may simply mean the Hound of Collon.

The too perfect hero

For modern readers perhaps translating the placename and calling the hero "Hound of Hollywood" might not be so far from the mark. Cú Chulainn in the Táin and most of the other early Ulster tales is too good to be true, a perfect and invincible hero. Throughout the earlier part of the Táin he simply displays his skill in martial arts by killing people without getting a scratch himself, or behaves like a modern sniper firing unexpected shots into the Connacht camp. The only relief is in the Ulster exiles' accounts of his boyhood deeds, which derive directly from conventional accounts of the young hero and show little individual character. John Kelleher and Kim McCone have drawn attention to some ways in which the life of Cú Chulainn (as described in the tales of his birth and death and as dated in the annals), as well as that of Conchobar, is not only linked to Christ's incarnation but made to parallel it.³² If a perfect secular hero was being created by a monastic author using the Saviour himself as his model, but with victories in place of miracles, it is no wonder that he seems too good to be true, a forerunner of the comic book "Super-hero" who eliminates the would-be destroyers of his community. Like Superman he has superhuman strength and endurance, like Batman he also has special skills, which the Early Modern text Tóruigheacht Gruaidhe Griansholus makes fun of by turning them into special equipment that his charioteer has to lug around,³³ on the basis of the one which from the first involves a secret weapon, the gae bolga. In addition he is a beardless youth of seventeen (in the middle of the years of fénnidecht which extended between the ages of fourteen and twenty),³⁴ so he has an element of Peter Pan as well. All this adds up to a figure who may very easily seem ridiculous to a modern reader, though it is difficult to know how it would impress Irishmen hearing it recited in the seventh or eleventh century. (It is arguable that an element of burlesque and self-mockery is built into the story from the first, and may have been as traditional in seventh-century Ulster as it is in twentieth-century Connemara folktales, where the hero dons his battledress of slippery eelskin or india-rubber, and sallies out to slay hundreds or wrestle a single giant as appropriate. The freedom to exaggerate for effect has always been taken for granted in Irish literature, and does not imply that stories containing such exaggeration should not be taken seriously. It merely implies acknowledgement of the fact that a story, whether it is meant as history, instructive parable or pure entertainment, need not obey the same rules as real life.)

The unique hero

Apart from bombastic set pieces like the Seisrech bresligi, where Cú Chulainn drives in his chariot at top speed round the entire enemy host mowing them down in a circle six deep, and the series of lists which explain half the place-names of the present County Louth as derived from men he killed, the most unbelievable piece of exaggeration in the Táin is the claim that he held off the enemy (or at least conducted a punishing guerilla campaign against their basically successful cattle-raid) single-handed for three months. The period, from (the week after) Hallowe'en (Samain) to (the week after) Candlemas (Imbolc), has a fairly obvious mythical significance and no doubt derives from the myth which must have been one source for the Táin. The reason why the author used this claim is clearly to exalt the status of his hero. But he surely cannot just have invented the affliction which kept any of the other Ulster warriors from joining him, from nothing but his own imagination, proclaimed his hero free from it, and expected to be believed. This "debility of the Ultonians" has two names, each used several times throughout the Táin, ces or noínden. The second apparently means a period of nine days (though the same word can be used in some sense like "hosting" or "affray"), while early versions of the story of Macha's curse, which is given as an origin-legend for the first name, explain it as half that time, five days and four nights or four days and five nights.³⁵ If the true form is one that seemingly first appears in rather later texts, ces noíden, "weakness of travail"—a cliché that may have been borrowed from the Old Testament—the period of three months seems no more appropriate, though the fact that it ends around Imbolc, the feast of Brigid, patroness of childbirth, could be more to the point.

It may help to consider why Cú Chulainn should be free from the curse. One simple explanation would be his divine parentage, but this will not do: he shares the exemption with his nominal father or mortal stepfather Sualdam, as Fergus plainly states in introducing an episode of the boyhood deeds, but giving no reason. Women and outsiders, and according to the Macha story children, are also exempt, so it can hardly be meant to describe a natural epidemic (though this could explain the discrepancy in duration: it might run its course in nine days for one person, but effectively tie up the whole population for three months, except for a few who like Cú Chulainn and his father lived near the frontier and escaped the infection.) It is also not clear what brings it on: Macha's curse apparently is to take effect when it will do most damage, surely meaning when Ulster is under attack, but at the beginning of the Táin Medb has evidently sent spies to make sure that the Ulstermen are already suffering from it before she ever sets out, while the episode in the boyhood deeds involves a surprise raid also apparently taking advantage of an existing noínden. It is possible that it is conceived in the Táin as an annual event starting at Samain, a sacred season when spirits were about and an enforced truce for a few days—but not three months—might be expected; it could even be a ratio-nalisation of a fairly normal understanding that the winter months were not suitable for campaigning. But why is Cú Chulainn exempt? The Macha story (redaction 1) baldly states that Cú Chulainn was not an Ulsterman, and this has been accepted by later writers up to Thomas Kinsella, whose excellent translation of the Táin adds it to Fergus's statement.³⁶ But Thurneysen's interpretation of this as meaning that he is an Elfensohn, son of Lug, contradicts the inclusion of Sualdam, as we have seen. Cú Chulainn's mother Dechtire is Conchobar's sister³⁷ and unquestionably belongs to Ulster; his mortal father is called a son of Roich, like Fergus, in the earlier version of his birth-tale, and should be just as much an Ulsterman (but clearly Fergus and his fellow-exiles have become outsiders and are now free of the ces.) Sualdam's more frequent patronymic suggests that he may be a son of the seemingly supernatural owner of the house where Cú Chulainn is begotten in the other redaction of the birth-tale,³⁸ so the Elfensohn interpretation may apply after all; but he is given no patronymic in the first redaction of the Táin as far as I know.

My feeling is that this motif has been deduced from an element of the myths used to construct the Táin, but used quite ruthlessly to ensure that Cú Chulainn alone defends Ulster for the three months. The myth I am reconstructing would have been acceptable to anthropologists a century ago, and in fact the theory of sacral kingship on which it depends now seems to be less ridiculed than it was thirty years ago. I suggest that it is the narrative account of the arrival of Fergus, who as I have proposed elsewhere is the divine paradigm and also a title for every early king of Ulster,³⁹ to claim the kingship from the preceding Fergus. He is therefore accompanied by the goddess of sovereignty, who may be called either Medb or Macha, and is certainly able to impose her curse on the Ulstermen at least for the nine days of the installation festival (which may have involved the killing, even the eating of the previous king, or some ritual which symbolised these.) The curse, however, applies only to adult men, with wives and land: the youthful fénnidi arrive at the frontier to hold off the invaders. At this point in the ritual I would expect a brief mock battle after which the fénnidi are convinced that the new Fergus has a legitimate claim and welcome him in: how the myth would reflect this I am not sure, but in any case this is all the original author of the Táin needed, and he used legend or his own imagination to supply further details of the battle.

He also changed the myth to suit his own purposes, by making Medb's Connacht army include men from other parts of Ireland (which may also come from recent historical legends), and to make the combat more uneven and his hero more glorious, he erased all but one member of the Ulster fian. Cú Chulainn, as one might say of a schoolboy, has no friends of his own age: the macrad which comes to help after he is wounded and a little ahead of the adult army is the under-fourteen age group, and all the other heroes who are summoned shortly afterwards are adults and hold lands from which they are summoned. Cú Chulainn is not "Cuchulainn of Muirtheimhne" as Lady Gregory put it, but a landless fénnid, outside the law (and the disadvantages which go with the law, such as the ces): he is also the only one, the paradigm of fénnidecht as Fergus is of kingship, and the whole institution is conspicuously absent from the Ulster Cycle, perhaps because the Church manifestly disapproved of it.

There is one possible alternative explanation for Cú Chulainn's uniqueness in this situation. In some cases, it has been suggested, sacred kings might avoid death at the end of a given period by providing a surrogate, sometimes a youth or child, who reigned for a while and was then sacrificed as "the king" in place of the real king, who was spared to resume his throne for a second term of office.⁴⁰ This has been put forward as the origin of more recent customs involving "kings for a day", "Lords of Misrule" and similar role reversals, often associated with midwinter festivals such as the Satumalia or Twelfth Night. Cú Chulainn might represent such a surrogate, keeping Fergus out of his kingship for the full three months of the winter quarter, until his return with the lengthening days of spring. In addition to doubts as to the evidence for the surrogate system, however, I have misgivings about the roles involved here: Cú Chulainn is obviously the warrior rather than the reigning king, and I prefer to see him as a fénnid with his personal achievement exaggerated by the first writer of the Táin.

Myths and folktales as sources

Of course, any reconstruction of the mythic element in the Táin must be speculative. It is tempting, for instance, to suggest that Donn Cuailnge, the bull which Medb wants to carry off, is a metaphor for the king whom Fergus wants to kill and replace, the 'bull of the province' as Derdriu actually describes Conchobor to Noísiu in Longes mac nUislenn. In the article cited above I suggested that Fergus might be equated with Finn, or even the Connacht bull Finnbennach, and opposed to the dying god or ancestor deity Donn; and I drew attention to the magical significance of the one eye (one arm, one leg) given up in exchange for wisdom by the children of Calatín who are destined to cause Cú Chulainn's death, and other Irish heroes, as it is by Odin in Norse mythology.⁴¹ Though Cú Chulainn mainly represents the valorous hero rather than the wise hero like Finn, one consistent element of his famous, fearsome distortion (ríastrad) before a crucial battle is that one eye shrinks to almost nothing while the other is distended: I suggest that the significance of this is connected with the one lost eye as a sign of magic power, and may be borrowed from Fergus's son Féic or Fiachra Caech (the One-Eyed). However, that is as far as I am prepared to go now in looking for mythical elements in the Táin. What matters is that it should be recognised that memories of some such pagan myth were available to the original author; so almost certainly were historical legends based on the fifth-century campaigns between Ulaid and Connachta; so were materials comparable to modern international folktales, which I want to consider next. All these forms of oral tradition contributed elements of narrative plot and the character of a hero to the politically motivated epic which I believe an Armagh monk deliberately set out to compose in writing.

The folktale elements do not necessarily come from the peasantry. As Kenneth Jackson put it in introducing similar elements in the Mabinogion,⁴² "the popular tale is a kind of general common denominator of narrative—I do not say 'lowest common denominator'—whose nature has been dictated by its essentially oral and universal character, but which was formerly as much at home in the baronial hall as in the cottage of the serf." They could as well be called myths, since many of the ancient Greek myths are similar stories, but I have preferred to restrict that term to narrative closely linked to religious belief and practice, which may have been told to reinforce such belief The episode in the boyhood deeds where Cú Chulainn wakes up one night to find the Ulstermen losing a battle against Eogan mac Durthacht (elsewhere represented as an Ulster under-king and ally) and goes to help them, is strongly reminiscent of an anecdote often told in twentieth-century Ireland about a man who after confessing in a strange house that he has no story to tell, goes to bed there and dreams that he wakes in the night to be forced, for instance, to carry a corpse for a stranger. In the morning his host remarks that now he has a story to tell.⁴³ Cú Chulainn, less easily intimidated, kills the man (or demon) who throws half a corpse on to him and another who is cooking a wild boar in the woods, and feeds the boar to Conchobor. The point of the story is not Cú Chulainn's ability to kill men, lift the king out of a pit or carry the latter's wounded son on his back, so much as his lack of fear among corpses and demons in pitch darkness on the battlefield: Conchobor asks why he has come there in search of horror, which is reminiscent of the title of a more international Märchen, AT 326, "The Youth Who Wanted to Learn What Fear Is." It is likely enough that horror stories of this sort were already circulating orally in early Ireland, and could be easily adapted by the author of the Táin.

The most important use of a folktale in the Táin, I think, is also in the childhood deeds. It has not to my knowledge been recognised before because the ancient and very widespread hero-tale which opens the "Tales of Magic" section of the Aarne-Thompson index, AT 300, is labelled as "The Dragon-Slayer", but recent Irish and Scottish Gaelic versions often replace the dragon with a giant, or a series of three gaints, each with extra heads, on three successive days. Still more frequent are versions where, as a prelude to the main fight with dragon or giant(s) to save a princess, the hero's first task is to herd cattle which tend to stary on to land claimed by giants and be lost to them, along with the herdsman's life; so he has to fight three successive giants here, and finally their still more terrible mother. Sometimes the hero takes weapons from them, or is given them to spare their lives (which of course he does not.)⁴⁴ At any rate it seems to me that this could have been the model for Cú Chulainn's first feat of arms, when he tricks Conall Cernach into handing over the watch on the frontier—cattle-herding obviously is beneath him—and promptly leaves it, to fight against the three sons of Nechtan Scéne who have killed many Ulstermen. Their more terrible mother is only heard crying out after Cú Chulainn has killed them, using a word (faíd) which could suggest lamentation as much as threats of vengeance: but in any case the author had decided that Cú Chulainn would never wittingly harm a woman, so he could not meet her. (It may be pointed out that in this he differs from most other Gaelic heroes, who frequently battle with supernatural hags—Cú Chulainn is attacked by the Morrígan and fights back, but only when she is in animal form, and he does not kill Medb when he has the chance. This doubtless reflects a feeling among the Irish clergy that the traditional involvement of women in warfare should be stopped, well before the Cáin Adamnáin which forbade killing women and children was promulgated in 697.) Another folktale motif is suggested by the charioteer's advice—this character too being a typical folktale helper, who knows everything and can warn the hero—that the first of the three sons of Nechtan, Foill, should be killed with the first blow or he will never be killed. It is a regular trick of dying giants to ask for a second blow, which brings them back to life.

Much that comes before is also typical of this tale-type, notably the taking of arms, where he breaks all the shields and spears he is offered until he gets the king's own set (except that in the folktales this usually happens with a sword.) The taking of arms on an auspicious day overheard from Cathbad the druid, however, is a re-working of the folktale to suit an aristocratic setting. This does not mean that the folktale was a peasant version: in fact it probably began with something like the birth-tale Compert Con Culainn. Version I of this has preserved a detail which clashes with the account in the Táin, and has therefore been erased by the interpolator in LU and replaced with a text from Version II. Other manuscripts leave it: "Gabsi Caulann cerd. Ba sí a aite." "Caulann the smith took him. She was his foster-father."⁴⁵Cerd means a metalworker or other craftsman, and also his craft: in the latter sense it is feminine, in the former normally treated as masculine in surviving texts—the feminine pronoun may reflect an archaic usage, but it could also reflect a typical folktale introduction in which an unmarried smith found the abandoned baby and brought it up himself as both mother and father. Obviously this would make a tougher, more masculine, less ordinary hero, though the class-conscious author of the Táin turned the fosterage—during which according to the Compert the boy killed the dog while playing (oc cluichiu) and took his place and name—into a mere visit.⁴⁶ The smith himself can then obviously provide his foster-son with weapons.⁴⁷ The best-known literary example of the smith as foster-father or at least tutor is in the Norse Völsunga Saga and the much older Reginsmál, but the treacherous smith Regin there hardly fits into our story, though he does invite comparison with written and oral versions of the childhood of Finn.⁴⁸

The reception of the epic and the hero

Most of this paper has concentrated on the creation of the Ur-Táin, as it might be called, as a conscious literary work composed in written form,⁴⁹ but using materials from oral tradition, including survivals of pagan myth, folktale and local historical legends. This was added to, as jewels might be added to a reliquary, by generations of later authors who in most cases wrote more enjoyable prose than the original, and produced exuberant set-piece descriptions and lists which must have sounded magnificent when read aloud, though they did little to improve the patchy and incoherent structure of the epic as a whole. They also added the rest of the Ulster Cycle, which includes many more attractive tales than the Táin, though shorter, the best of them apparently constructed largely by using well-known international themes from oral tradition—birth of the hero, training of the hero, contest between rival heroes, otherworld visit, battle between father and son, death of the hero—and slotting in the hero of the Táin, Cú Chulainn, who is often more vulnerable and likeable in these situations. But hero and epic were apparently adopted as centrepieces for a "Matter of Ireland" at the time when the first Irish manuscripts of secular narrative prose were being compiled, and have been accepted as such by modern scholars, less on their merits, I think, than because of a "hard sell" from Armagh, which I contend manufactured them and had one of the leading monastic scriptoria of early Ireland ready to circulate copies as soon as they were written. Every publisher knows that good publicity can make a best-seller of anything, and on a smaller scale this could apply even to seventh and eighth-century Ireland.

But how did the public react? It is well-known that the Fenian cycle, with its much clearer-cut distinction between the right side and the wrong side—the opponents are normally malevolent supernaturals or invading foreigners, not almost-as-good warriors from another province—and its companionable group of young fénnidi with different skills and characters, rather than one super-hero, was more favoured than the Ulster Cycle by authors, scribes and presumably audiences from the Middle Irish period onwards, and soon drove it into second place and by the end of the Middle Ages into third place in public esteem, behind "Romantic" tales of overseas adventure. So Cú Chulainn becomes a not-quite-assimilated Fenian in Scottish Gaelic oral tradition, and passes into Macpherson's Ossian in that guise; so fianaíocht is the modern Irish term for all hero-tales. In 15th-century and later manuscripts a few copies of the Táin still appear, but they are less popular than the tale of Cú Chulainn's death and his training in arms, much less popular than the Ulster tale Oidheadh Chloinne Uisneach which does not include Cu Chulainn,⁵⁰ and soon swamped by Fenian and Romantic tales.

Occasionally Early Modern Irish romances, surviving in the MSS of scribes from the 17th to early 18th century South-East Ulster school, use heroes from the Ulster Cycle, no doubt through local loyalty. In the only one where Cú Chulainn is the main hero, Tóruigheacht Gruaidhe Griansholus, the author, as noted above, while "evidently well versed in the Cúchulainn saga",⁵¹ treats the hero's accurately listed feats as weapons that can be bundled up and taken aboard ship, and makes the hero himself boast and bluster comically and behave with exaggerated chivalry, more like an Irish Don Quixote than his laconic prototype. Nevertheless the plot of the story is close enough to folktale for it to have been adopted in Donegal oral tradition. The story is not likely to be much older than its surviving MS, 1679. The title of one of the five tales published as Sgéealta Rómáinsuíochta gives a typical lineup for later members of the series: Eachtra Chonaill Cheithearnaigh [sic!] agus an Fhir Dia, Lughaidh Mhac Nós, Bhricin, agus Chú Chuilin go hOileán an Ár a rígheachta Rígh Innse Toirc.⁵² Bricin is the form which the Ulster trouble-maker Bricriu's name usually takes in folktales, but he seems to be just another hero here, and he and Fer Diad from Connacht and Lugaid mac Nois from Munster, both friends of Cú Chulainn though on the enemy side in the Táin, are all sent without comment as defenders of Ulster in the same boat on an overseas quest. In Eachtra na gCuradh Bricin is not in the line-up, but a much longer adventure begins with the other four accompanied by Fergus, Cú Roí (Munster), Ailill Finn (Connacht) and Deirdre's future lover "Náos mhac Uisneach" sailing away in search of glory together. Its companion Coimheasgar na gCuradh centres on Cú Roí, Ailill Finn and Conall Cernach and leaves out Cú Chulainn because he was a mere infant at the time. The others and two more of the Sgéalta Rómánsuíochta include him as primus inter pares at most, perhaps the best fighter among the group but not usually the leader, who tends to be Conall.⁵³ The pattern is thus much closer to that of Fenian romances: pre-eminent heroes were not popular with the readers.

Finally, the oral tradition. Those Ulster tales which have been recorded as folktales in Scotland and Ireland in the past century correspond fairly closely in popularity and form to those found in seventeenth-century or later manuscripts, which we know continued to be read aloud in Munster farm kitchens until the last century, and were probably similarly used in other Gaelic-speaking areas until after 1700.⁵⁴ Of the tales about Cú Chulainn, the most popular is certainly the story of how he got his name, collected in Scotland as well as all four provinces of Ireland, where it may well come from Keating's Foras Feasa ar Éirinn: I leave it to Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith to comment on the influence which this compendium of legend and history had in Ireland.

Three different selections of episodes from the hero's life seem to have been the standard "Cú Chulainn story" in different regions: Connemara around Cárna, Co. Donegal around Ranafast, and the Hebrides in the Uists and Benbecula.⁵⁵ All include the naming, but in Connemara this is the only episode from the Táin itself: the others are a version of the Macha story from Keating; Cú Chulainn's training in arms (Oileamhain Con Culainn) and the sequel in which he unknowingly kills the son he begot then (Oidheadh Chonlaoich)—both of these are also in the Donegal compendium, and less regularly in the Hebridean one; and at the end the deflating folk anecdote Cú na hAdhairce which we shall consider shortly. The Donegal compendium begins with a simplified but recognisable version of the hero's birth-tale, follows the naming with what may be a version of another boyhood deed from the Táin, the killing of three giants like the sons of Nechtan Scéne, and ends with his death-tale. (While this is reasonably heroic, other Donegal combinations include versions of Tóruigheacht Gruaidhe Griansholus where the hero is satirised with even more gusto than in the written romance—after a defeat he pulls out his heart through his wounds to see how small it is, or he lies down in a huff to sulk himself to death.) The Hebridean compendium is the only one which regularly includes episodes from the main body of the Táin, beginning with the opening of the LL recension—the pillow-talk and Medb's first unsuccessful attempt to buy the bull Donn Cuailnge, in which one version conflates Medb's envoy Mac Roth and Fergus mac Roich into "Fearchar Mac Ro". This is usually followed by a reasonably accurate telling, in spirit at least, of Cú Chulainn's fight with his friend (or brother) Fer Diad mac Damain ("Fear Fada Diag mac Daimhein" to Angus MacLellan). But while several versions end with an equally good version of Cú Chulainn's heroic death tale and even its sequel of Conall Cernach's vengeance (Deargruathar Chonaill Chearnaigh), they may also include one or both of two much less heroic folktales about the hero, also known in Argyll and Connemara.

One of these is told only in Scotland of Cú Chulainn and a giant opponent, usually Garbh mac Stairn, whom he kills in a late mediaeval ballad well known in Scotland. The oldest known text of the story, I believe, noted as a free-verse supplement to the ballad by Dr. Irvine in 1801, actually substitutes Fionn for Cú Chulainn in both ballad and story,⁵⁶ and the story is now widely known in Ireland with Fionn as hero and a rival "giant", occasionally named as Cú Chulainn, as his victim. The point of the story, surely, is that the hero is small—as the youthful Cú Chulainn is often felt to be in oral tradition at least—but strong: he lies in a cradle pretending to be his own baby and bites the visitor's finger off, so that the latter is convinced that if the baby is so strong the father must be more so. There may be other tricks like making the giant break his teeth on an oatcake with the iron girdle (griddle) baked inside it, or asking him to turn the whole house round to keep the wind out of the door as Cú Chulainn would—very much in the tradition of international "stupid ogre" Marchen (AT 1000 ff.) This is nothing like the dauntless hero of the Táin: nor is the sequel.

Irvine's version goes on to an episode where a bull is torn in half, and this is usual in Scottish Cú Chulainn stories as the anti-climax of the Táin: Garbh has been sent for the Donn Cuailnge (interpreted as "Donn-Ghuailffhionn", the brown white-shouldered one),⁵⁷ and he and Cú Chulainn tear it, or in some versions another bull which Cú Chulainn pretends is it, in half.

There may follow the tale which in Connemara may be the end of Cú Chulainn's biography or an anecdote on its own, though Scottish versions precede it with at least the naming incident.⁵⁸ Cú Chulainn sees an enormous giant driving a huge bull (ox, bullock) and helps him, usually, to kill, cook and eat it. An even larger giant comes in pursuit of the bull, which he claims was stolen from him; the two giants fight, and Cú Chulainn tries to help the one he first met, but is flung off like a fly and lands inside the dead bull's horn. The sequel in at least one Scottish version and all the Irish ones is that he brings his broken sword to a blacksmith to be mended. The smith will only mend it if he is told a story (of how the sword was broken), but Cú Chulainn will not tell it if a woman is present. One hides in the smithy to hear the tale, and when Cú Chulainn tells how he was stuck in the horn, she shouts out: "So now you are called the Hound of the Horn (Cú na hAdhairce)!" This seemingly pointless gibe seems difficult to explain without recourse to irrelevant ideas about horns and cuckoldry, but it is tempting to think that we have a recrudescence in oral tradition of something like the mythic basis of the story—two great supernatural heroes (both called Fergus?) fighting for the kingdom, symbolised by a bull which is eaten at the inaugural feast—and the little interpolated hero thrown away like a midge. There could be an echo of the folktale source in the smith mending the sword, as Regin re-forged Sigurd's father's sword: the breaking of the taboo against a woman hearing the story leads straight on to Cú Chulainn's death in Carmichael's South Uist text. In any case, my point is made: Cú Chulainn was created too perfect to be credible, and he has not lasted well, ending up as an object of ridicule, a dwarf among giants, in oral tradition.

Notes

¹ This statement of my own position is partly a reaction to finding myself cited as a diehard defender of written as against oral origins in J. F. Nagy's article, "In Defence of Rómán-saíocht", Ériu, 38 (1987) 9-26. In fact, though I felt I had given sufficient evidence in my Gaelic Folk-Tales and Mediaeval Romances (Dublin, 1969) to show that most of the stories considered there were composed by the persons who first wrote them down, I believed when I wrote it that Old Irish "sagas" were essentially oral in origin, though composed by members of the poetic class rather than "peasants"—the fact that aithech, a rent-payer, has come -to mean an ogre in Modern Irish folktales is proof enough of that. After twenty years of collecting and editing folktales, asking myself where the Gaelic prose tradition could come from, and reading some convincing arguments from "non-nativist" scholars like Kim McCone and Liam Breatnach, I have changed my mind about this.

On scribal practice, I had written: "Considering the general archaism of the tradition … it may be fair to infer that many of the liberties taken were of a kind which might have been sanctioned at an earlier period. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scribes show no compunction about improving on their exemplars: the differences are far greater than can be explained by textual misreadings or mishearings" (op. cit., p. 48.) Cf. Edgar M. Slotkin, "Mediaeval Irish Scribes and Fixed Texts", Éigse 17 (1978-9) 437-50, p. 450: "Given the attitude of scribes towards their work, we can think of each one of their productions as a kind of multiform of their original … we may treat such a manuscript as if it were a somewhat specialized separate performance." Slotkin is the only scholar working in the early Irish field who to my knowledge has paid sufficient attention to scribal practice, though he is still mainly searching for evidence of oral style.

² Alan Bruford, "Song and Recitation in Early Ireland", Celtica, 21 (1990) 61-74, pp. 72-4.

³ Kim McCone, Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature (Maynooth, 1990) Ch. 9, "Druids and outlaws", pp.203-32, sums up most of the arguments for the historicity of the institution.

⁴ A recent parallel to this process can be seen in the Lowland Scottish travellers (tinkers), who, though some are still illiterate and nearly all were in the last century, have nevertheless amassed a vast repertoire of narrative, much of it based on recognisable sources such as Hans Andersen and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Wonder Book, and probably many unidentifiable Victorian magazine stories, because a literate few and probably visiting do-gooders read aloud to them. See Alan Bruford, "Legends Long Since Localised or Tales Still Travelling?", Scottish Studies, 24 (1980) 43-62, pp. 47-9.

⁵ Francis John Byrne, Irish Kings and High-Kings (London, 1973), p. 46; Proinsias Mac Cana, The Learned Tales of Mediaeval Ireland (Dublin, 1980), pp. 79-80, citing an article by Pádraig Ó Riain in Éigse 15 (1973-4) 24 ff.

⁶ Mac Cana, op. cit., p. 64. Rudolf Thumeysen, Die irische Helden- und Königsage bis zum siebzehnten Jahrhundert (Halle (Saale), 1921), pp. 535-6, suggests that Táin Bó Rois is another name for Aided Chonchobuir, which involves a Connacht raid on the Fir Rois in the south of Ulster. I apologise for the use of "tribe" to render tuath, a petty kingdom, which is rather misleading, but conventional and difficult to avoid.

⁷ M. A. O'Brien, Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae (Dublin, 1962), pp. 382-3. The orthographic difference between Cualnge and Cuailnge is of no significance.

⁸ Thurneysen, Heldensage, pp. 251-67.

⁹ Byrne, Kings, pp. 76, 169, 180, 239, 241 (the last two references suggest that the Munster conquest may not have been complete until the mid-seventh century, in the reign of Guaire Aidne, the Connacht king for whom most of the accounts referred to in note 8 say the Táin was "recovered").

¹⁰ Cf. Bruford, Gaelic Folk-Tales, p. 98. The recent onomastic legend seems to be English, and the original name may be simply Léim Chon: the identification of the dog who made the leap as Cú Chulainn could be the work of some antiquary in the past two or three centuries. "Loop" is apparently a dialect form of "leap", cf. Scots "loup".

¹¹ Byrne, Kings, p. 112: see also Nagy, op. cit.

¹² Byrne, Kings, p. 117.

¹³Ibid., pp. 72-4; T. F. O'Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology (Dublin, 1946), pp. 222-32.

¹⁴ Alan Bruford, "The Twins of Macha", Cosmos, 5 (1989) 125-41, pp. 133, 136.

¹⁵Ibid., p. 132.

¹⁶ Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, The Heroic Biography of Cormac mac Airt (Dublin, 1977), pp. 81-3; see further note 18 below.

¹⁷Ibid., pp. 33-8.

¹⁸I have argued in an as yet unpublished paper read at the Ninth International Congress of Celtic Studies in Paris, July 1991, "Some implications of Early Irish and Scottish names and epithets", that Cormac's name reveals him to be specifically the culture-hero of Tara when it belonged to Leinster, and he and his bear father must have been incorporated in the genealogy of the Connachta after they had conquered Tara, to strengthen their hold on it.

¹⁹ Byrne, Kings, pp. 117, 125.

²⁰ Cf. note 3, and Joseph Falaky Nagy, The Wisdom of the Outlaw (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985).

²¹ Byrne, Kings, pp. 90, 118, 125.

²²Ibid., pp. 111-14.

²³ James Carney, "Three Old Irish Accentual Poems", Ériu 22 (1971) 1-80, pp. 78-80; id., "Early Irish Literature: the State of Research", in Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Celtic Studies, ed. Gearóid Mac Eoin (Dublin, 1983) 113-30, pp. 122-5.

²⁴ Cf. Nagy, Outlaw, p. 155; Kuno Meyer, Fianaigecht, RIA Todd Lecture Series 16 (Dublin, 1910), pp. 9-10; Thumeysen, Heldensage, p. 140, n.3.

²⁵ Royal Irish Academy, (Contributions to a) Dictionary of the Irish Language (Dublin, 1913-76), s.v. éices, féc(c)id, fégaid, féic; cf. Nagy, Outlaw, pp. 22, 236 on Finn, and also Byrne, Kings, pp. 141-2 on Fiachu ba hAiccid. However, Holger Pedersen, Vergleichende Grammatik der keltischen Sprachen, (Göttingen, 1909-13), 2, pp. 489-90, insists that verbal forms in fécc- are Middle Irish, not from ^*fo-in-ci, and the different origin he suggests for fégaid can hardly explain an archaic Fíacc.

²⁶ Cf. Thurneysen, Heldensage, pp. 326, 593.

²⁷Ibid., p. 270 (the earlier redaction of Compert Con Culainn); O'Brien, Corpus, pp. 284-5. Ibid., p. 154 refers to a family among the Conailli or Dál nAraide (i Cruithniu) called Corco Caullain, descended from Caulnia, one of the twins whom Lebarcham the woman satirist (!) bore to Cú Chulainn: this could be a sighting of the original local hero concealed in a later note in the Book of Leinster genealogies. Their version of the hero's own genealogy (ibid., p. 285) through Sualtam son of Dubthach to Cermat son of the Dagda (and on to Mil Espáin!) is also interesting in giving a completely different "divine" ancestry from that through Lug.

²⁸Mulan Culuinn (mo lan culaind) cumlachta: differently transcribed in RIA Dictionary, s.v. cuimlecht and culaind.

²⁹ Bruford, "Implications" (see note 12 above).

³⁰ Ed. Osborn Bergin, Ériu 3 (1907) 149-73, pp. 166, 168.

³¹ Cf Edmund Hogan, Onomasticon Goedelicum (Dublin, 1910), s.v. Ath Gabla, Colland, Cuilend, Cuillend. The possibility of a Co. Clare origin remains, but Máirtín Ó Briain noted with interest the proximity of Collon to Monasterboice, "cradle of Lebor na hUidre" and Knowth, seat of an Uí Néill dynasty whose last king of Tara, Congalach Cnogba son of Mael Mithing, killed nearby in 956, seems to have been a notable patron of literature, including perhaps the Táin as we know it.

³² McCone, Pagan Past, pp. 197-8, citing J. V. Kelleher, "The Táin and the annals", Ériu 22 (1971) 107-27, pp. 112, 121-2.

³³ Cecile O'Rahilly, ed., Tóruigheacht Gruaidhe Griansholus, Irish Texts Soc. vol. 24 (London, 1924), pp. 20-31 and passim.

³⁴ McCone, Pagan Past, pp. 203-5.

³⁵ Cf. RIA Dictionary s.v. noínden (1) and (2); Thurneysen, Heldensage, pp. 97-8, 361-3.

³⁶ Thumeysen, Heldensage, p. 363; Thomas Kinsella (transl.), The Tain (Oxford, 1970), p. 81: "… This affliction," Fergus said, "never came to our women or our youths, or anyone not from Ulster—and therefore not to Cúchulainn or his father."

³⁷ Or his daughter, according to the oldest text of his birth-tale (Thumeysen, Heldensage, p. 268; A. G. Van Hamel, ed., Compert Con Culainn and other stories, Mediaeval and Modern Irish Series 3 (Dublin, 1933), p. 3). This makes better sense than the later version which makes both her and Conall Cernach's mother Finnchóem into Conchobor's sisters, if Conchobor's mother died giving birth to him as some texts seem to say (Thurneysen, Heldensage, p. 276), but it makes the generation gap between him and Cú Chulainn ridiculously large.

³⁸ Cf. Thurneysen, Heldensage, pp. 271-3: the man of the house is Becfholtach ("Little Wealth"), and Sualdam (perhaps from suaill-dáim, "Insignificant Retinue", ibid, p. 91) in the LL Táin and Rawl. B.502 genealogical tracts (O'Brien, Corpus, p. 285) is son of Becaltach (son of Móraltach). Some of these texts show the change of Sualdam to the later form Sualtach, and assonance at this point may be more important than meaning; but the earlier forms suggest that Cú Chulainn was at one point presented as the typical folktale hero, son of a poor nobleman if not a woodcutter or a widow.

³⁹ Cf. note 7 above.

⁴⁰ Cf. Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (Harmondsworth, 1955), 1, pp. 18-19.

⁴¹ Bruford, "Twins of Macha", pp. 138-9; 134-6.

⁴² Kenneth H. Jackson, The International Popular Tale and Early Welsh Tradition (Cardiff, 1961), p. 6.

⁴³ Cf. Seán Ó Súilleabháin and Reidar Th. Christiansen, The Types of the Irish Folktale, FF Communications No. 188 (Helsinki, 1963) p. 343, type 2412B; Sean O'Sullivan, Folktales of Ireland (Chicago/London 1966), pp. 182-4, is an accessible example. For another comparison to this episode of the Táin, cf. William Sayers, "Airdrech, Sirite and other Early Irish battlefield spirits", Éigse, 25 (1991) 45-55.

⁴⁴ Cf. Reidar Th. Christiansen, Studies in Irish and Scandinavian Folktales (Copenhagen, 1959), pp. 64-7, though this makes as much of the variations as of what I would consider the basic pattern.

⁴⁵ Van Hamel, op. cit,, p. 6 and n. 10: after noting masculine forms in two other MSS, the editor says simply "But cerd is fem. in 0. Ir." But cf. RIA Dictionary, s.v. cerd.

⁴⁶ In Recension II, after a passage in which various heroes promise their own gifts to the child much in the manner of fairy godmothers in Sleeping Beauty and other contes des fées, Conchobor hands him over, apparently at birth, to his other sister Finnchóem and her husband Amorgein. Thurneysen, Heldensage, p. 273, n. 1, suggests that this is because Cú Chulainn generally appears as their son Conall Cernach's fosterbrother, though Fergus seems to be his foster-father in the Táin. But Cú Chulainn addresses Conall as "a phopa" in the boyhood deeds, the same form he uses to Fergus and Conchobor there—is this merely a polite form of address to elders (in which case Conall must be considered more like a father than an older brother, or is this exaggerated respect?) or does it imply some form of joint fosterage?

⁴⁷Cerd is sometimes used (e.g. in Cath Maige Tuired, see T. F. O'Rahilly, op. cit., p. 14) specifically for a bronze-smith as against a blacksmith (goba), who would be more likely to make swords or spear-heads, and provide him with magical protection, like Cormac mac Airt's grandfather, the druígoba Olc Aiche (cf. Ó Cathasaigh, Cormac, pp. 48-51). But if the original author supplied the name he may have been more concerned with alliteration than such incidents which he dropped from the story. Christiansen, op. cit., p. 78, n. 3, describes the weapon-breaking sequence as "well-known both from romance and from folktales".

⁴⁸ Cf. Alan Bruford, "Oral and Literary Fenian Tales", in The Heroic Process, edd. Bo Almqvist, Séamas Ó Catháin & Pádraig Ó hEalaí (Dun Laoghaire, 1987) 25-56, pp. 44-7.

⁴⁹ Later versions of the story of the Táin's discovery certainly depict the epic as having been written down from Fergus's dictation (Thurneysen, Heldensage, pp. 254, 267) but by Thurneysen's summary it seems that his (1) and (2) versions do not specify writing.

⁵⁰ Cf. Cecile O'Rahilly, op. cit., p. xxi.

⁵¹Ibid., p. xix.

⁵² Máire Ni Mhuirgheasa & Séamus Ó Ceithearnaigh, edd., Sgéalta Rómánsuiochta, Leabhair ó Láimhsgríbhnibh 16 (Baile Átha Cliath, 1952), p. 123.

⁵³Ibid. pp. 1-62 (Tóruigheacht na hEilite le Cú Chuilinn agus Oillioll Fionn, where the latter has most of the adventures); pp. 63-122 (Tóruigheacht Eileann Sgiamhach) and pp. 123-183 (Eachtra Chonaill Cheithearnaigh: in both of these Conall is the leader of an overseas adventure including Cú Chulainn); in pp. 184-240 (Eachtra Foirbe mac Chonchubhair mhic Neasa Rígh Uladh) Conall takes part in an early episode and Cú Chulainn merely turns up with Conall and Conchobor at the end. Eachtra na gCuradh and Coimheasgar na gCuradh, both edited by Meadhbh Ní Chléirigh, were also published in the series Leabhair ó Láimhsgríbhnibh, I (Baile Átha Cliath 1951) and 6 (Baile Átha Cliath 1952).

⁵⁴ Bruford, Folk-tales and Romances, Chapters 6 and 8.

⁵⁵Ibid., pp. 93-6, 256-7. Though I said then (p. 95) "In Scotland one cannot speak of an oecotype", I feel now that while Uist versions differ more than Connemara ones, it is possible to see a fairly consistent oral compilation behind them, taking into account a long version from Benbecula in Alexander Carmichael's MSS, quite close to Carmichael's HI from South Uist, which D. A. MacDonald and I found in 1979, and the fact that A3, which J. F. Campbell noted in Mull, was from William Robertson, a North Uist man who had settled in Tobermory.

⁵⁶Ibid., p. 104, n. 2; Ó Súilleabháin & Christiansen, Types, pp. 218-9, under AT 1149; J. F. Campbell, Leabhar na Féinne (London, 1872), pp. 6-8.

⁵⁷ I owe this identification and clearer spelling of the traditional cattle-name Guailjhionn (usually transcribed Guailleann, cf. the better-known Druimeann) to my colleague D. A. MacDonald, who remembers hearing it in North Uist in the 1930s.

⁵⁸ Ó Súlilleabháin & Christiansen, Types, under AT 1376A^*: a version is translated in O'Sullivan, Folktales, pp. 74-9. Published Scottish versions in J. F. Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands, 2nd ed., 3, pp. 194-7 (from John Dewar, Arrochar: without smith's wife); A. A. Carmichael, "Toirioc na Taine" (from Eachann Maclosaig, Iochdar, S. Uist) in Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 2 (1873) 25-39, pp. 36-7.