The literature of the Celts

The golden age of Gaelic romance—Number of the tales—Cuchulinn—His early adventures—The Wooing of Eimer—Training in Skye—The Bridge of the Cliffs—Tragedy of Conlaoch—Elopement—The “Táin Bó Chuailgné,” and exploits of Cuchulinn—Ferdia at the ford—The two champions of Western Europe—Cuchulinn in the Deaf Valley—Death—The Red Rout of Conall Cearnach—Instruction of Cuchulinn to a prince—His “Phantom Chariot”—Modern translations of these rare sagas.

The Heroic, or, as it is sometimes called, the Cuchulinn, or Red-Branch cycle, corresponds with the period immediately before and after the opening of the Christian era.

This was really the golden age of Gaelic romance, at once the most complete, productive, and brilliant of the three traditional epochs. And happily of it almost all the larger and more important tales have been preserved. What a world of human interest is conjured up even by the names and titles of these old-world sagas. Among them we find the “Táin Bó Chuailgné”; Deirdre and the Sons of Uisneach; Conchobar’s Vision; The Battle of Rosnaree; Conchobar’s Tragedy; The Conception of Cuchulinn; His Training; The Wooing of Eimer; Death of Conlaoch; Cuchulinn’s Adventure at the Boyne; Intoxication of the Ultonians; Bricriu’s Banquet; Eimer’s Jealousy; Cuchulinn’s Pining; Conall’s Red Rout and the Lay of the Heads; The Capture of the Sìdh; The Phantom Chariot of Cuchulinn; and that hero’s Death; The Recovery of the Táin through the Resurrection of Fergus. These and many other episodes, quaint and suggestive, give us curious glints into the past.

In her recent book on the Cuchulinn saga, Miss Eleanor Hull has classified the tales of this cycle under eight heads, which may be briefly summarised as follows:—

A goodly aggregate, indeed, to survive the dim forgetfulness of time! These narratives now constitute the main body of early Celtic tradition. They breathe the spirit of the race in the long distant past, and consequently are of unique value and import.

It is evident they bear marks of pre-Christian origin, but we must remember they have reached us through the transcription of monks, and hence be prepared to find in them many interpolations, suppressions, and alterations. Indeed one very old legend represents the longest—the “Táin,” as having been taken down by St. Ciaran at the grave of Fergus Mac Roich, and to the dictation of that hero, who, it appears, was conjured up from the dead for the purpose. St. Columba and the other chief saints of Ireland are reported as witnesses of this proceeding, and on their departure with the coveted writing, after they had offered up thanksgiving, Fergus also retired to his lone tomb.

There are Scotch versions of some of the sagas, but the vast majority are Irish. The earliest written copies are those in the Leabhar Na h’Uidhre and Book of Leinster—the latter the fullest of all the saga documents.

Ulster was the chief theatre of the Heroic drama. In that province, under the patronage of King Conchobar, arose the renowned order of knighthood which included such celebrities as Conall Cearnach, Cuchulinn, and the sons of Uisneach. Yet of all the knights of the Royal Branch, the second, above-named, was facile princeps, the most outstanding and representative man; in fact, a kind of demigod, round whom whole armies and many champions fatefully gyrated.

Fortissimus heros Scotorum, says the Annals of Tighernach, “vii years was his age when he took arms, xvii when he was in pursuit of the ‘Táin Bó Chuailgné,’ xxvii when he died.” The Book of Ballymote, a later MS., gives him a much longer career, asserting that the year of the “Táin” was the fifty-ninth of Cuchulinn’s age, from the night of his birth to the night of his death.

To get at once a direct and luminous glimpse into the literature of his cycle, we have only to follow this champion in his varied fortunes and exploits. And so we turn to the story of his extraordinary career, recognising that the Celtic imagination has here full play, untrammelled by the limitations of physical science or modern thought, and that in these rich and varied creations of fancy we have fact and fiction so intricately commingled that it is vain to try to differentiate between them.

Some of the sagas tell us that Cuchulinn was supernaturally descended from the god Lugh. But later versions with more restraint affirm that his father’s name was Sualtam, his mother’s Dechtine, and that she was a sister of King Conchobar. When a boy he was known as Setanta, till he got the name Cuchulinn, which came to him in a manner quite characteristic and worthy of mention.

Culand, a smith and Ulster retainer, it appears, had asked the king and his retinue to spend a night and a day with him. In response to this invitation “all the Ultonian nobles set out: a great train of provincials, sons of kings and chiefs, young lords and men-at-arms, the curled and rosy youth of the kingdom, and the maidens and fair-ringleted ladies of Ulster. Handsome virgins, accomplished damsels, and splendid fully-developed women were there; satirists and scholars were there; and the companies of singers and musicians, poets who composed songs and reproofs, and praising-poems for the men of Ulster. There came also with them from Emania, historians, judges, horseriders, buffoons, tumblers, fools, and performers on horseback. They all went by the same way behind the king.”

Late that evening Culand inquired if any more were expected, and on receiving a reply in the negative, he closed the doors and let loose the house-dog. No sooner was the place thus shut up for the night than the boy Setanta arrived, and was set on by the dog. A fierce struggle followed, but the youth got the better of his canine assailant and laid him lifeless. For this loss Culand demanded eric. Unable to pay, Setanta offered to watch the house himself until a pup of its slain guardian grew up. Hence the name Cu-Chulaind, that is, Culand’s dog, by which he was subsequently known. So runs the myth.

Afterwards, with the consent of his mother, he paid a visit to his uncle the king. Happening to arrive at Emania when the boys were playing shinty, the mischievous frolics began to throw their balls and camags at him. Whereupon Cuchulinn’s “war-rage seized him,” and “he shut one eye till it was not wider than the eye of a needle; he opened the other till it was bigger than the mouth of a meal goblet.” No wonder that the terrified youngsters fled in every direction.

Presently King Conchobar recognised his nephew when he presented himself at the Court, and he introduced him to his youthful compeers. Suitable arms, a suitable chariot and charioteer were given him, and he soon proved himself a unique warrior.

The women of Ulster admired him “for his splendour at the feat, for the nimbleness of his leap, for the excellence of his wisdom, for the melody of his language, for the beauty of his face, and for the loveliness of his look.” “There were seven pupils in his royal eyes, four in the one and three in the other; seven fingers on each of his two hands, and seven toes on each of his two feet.” “I should think,” says the writer of one text, “it was a shower of pearls that was flung into his head. Blacker than the side of a black cooking-spit, each of his two eyebrows, redder than ruby his lips.”

He was too young, too daring, too beautiful, in the opinion of the chiefs, to be a gallant unwed; for their women and maidens loved him greatly. So they took counsel with the king to have him married.

Emissaries were sent to the courts and princes of all Erin in quest of a partner whom it might please Cuchulinn to woo, but they returned after a year unsuccessful.

Left to fend for himself, the hero got ready his chariot and set out for the house of Forgaill of Lusk, whose daughter Eimer was renowned for the six victories she had upon her: the gift of beauty, the gift of voice, the gift of music, the gift of embroidery and all needlework, and the gifts of wisdom and virtuous chastity. In the pleasure-ground of the mansion, surrounded by the fair daughters of the neighbouring chiefs and men of wealth, the lady descried the famous chariot in the distance, and one of her maidens describes the appearance of the horses, the chariot, charioteer, and hero. The latter she reports thus:—

Within the chariot a dark sad man, comeliest of the men of Erin.

Around him a beautiful crimson five-folded tunic, fastened at its opening on his white breast with a brooch of inlaid gold, against which it heaves beating in full strokes. A shirt with a white hood, interwoven red with flaming gold. Seven red dragon gems on the ground of either of his eyes. Two blue-white, blood-red cheeks, that breathe forth sparks and flashes of fire. A ray of love burns in his look. Methinks a shower of pearls has fallen into his mouth. As black as the side of a black ruin each of his eyebrows. On his two thighs rests a golden hilted sword, and fastened to the copper frame of the chariot is a blood-red spear with a sharp mettlesome blade, on a shaft of wood well-fitted to the hand. Over his shoulders a crimson shield with a rim of silver, ornamented with figures of golden animals. He leaps the hero’s salmon-leap into the air and does many like swift feats.

Such was Cuchulinn in the damsel’s eyes. Eimer declined his suit at first on the plea that she was a younger daughter, and advised him to approach her father for leave to pay court to her elder sister, whose brilliant accomplishments she fully rehearsed. This suggestion the hero spurned and love sprang up between them.

After he departed Forgaill heard of the visit of the remarkable unknown stranger, and quickly divined who he was. Not wishing to have this professional champion as son-in-law, the wily father disguised himself as a Gaulish or Scandinavian envoy and set out for Emania. There he was well received by the king, and while witnessing the feats of the knights he took occasion to recommend the king to send his nephew to Skye to complete his special training in arms, at the celebrated school of the lady Scathach. His sinister idea was that so many dangers and difficulties would beset Cuchulinn on the way that he would never return. The latter vowed he would go. And on setting out he encountered many perils. Among others he had to traverse “the plain of misfortune,” which he did by the aid of a wheel and of an apple given him by a chance acquaintance. He took instruction from the Albannach Donall by the way, and declined the love of his ugly daughter. But departing from their home he arrived in safety at Dun Scathach.

The Grianan or sunny house of his future instructress, “built upon a rock of appalling height,” “had seven great doors and seven great windows between every two doors of them, and thrice fifty couches between every two windows of them, and thrice fifty handsome marriageable girls in scarlet cloaks and in beautiful and blue attire, attending and waiting upon Scathach.”

Here he met his one match in arms, Ferdia Mac Daman, the Firbolg champion. Naois, Ardan, and Ainnle, the three sons of Uisneach, were also pupils. To pass the “Bridge of the Cliffs” was the first great feat to be learned. “Wonderful was the sight that bridge afforded when any one would leap upon it, for it narrowed until it became as narrow as the hair of one’s head, and the second time it shortened until it became as short as an inch, and the third time it grew slippery as an eel of the river, and the fourth time it rose up on high against you until it was as tall as the mast of a ship.”

It was while practising the feat of the bridge that Scathach’s lovely daughter Uathach fell in love with him as she spied the hero from one of the windows of the Grianan. And then “her face and colour constantly changed, so that now she would be as white as a little white flowret, and again she would become scarlet.” Cuchulinn and she were afterwards married. During his sojourn at the Dun, Scathach was carrying on war against other tribes over whom her rival the Princess Aoife (Eva) ruled. When the two hosts met, Aoife challenged Scathach to single combat, and Cuchulinn went out instead to encounter the heroine. This was his chance introduction to the lady who bore him his famous son Conlaoch. Before he went back again to his native land, he left instructions with her that the child to be born if a girl would be hers, if a boy she was to train him In all hero feats, except the gaebolg or belly dart—a mysterious weapon that could only be cast at fords on water. Then she was to send him to Erin, bidding him tell no man who he was.

Conlaoch’s amazing exploits in his father’s country are related in a special tale, which tells how he killed the Ulster warriors sent against him, and how Cuchulinn himself unwittingly opposed him in arms till, hard pressed by his skilful opponent, he called for his gaebolg and despatched him.

It was then the unhappy father discovered that he had killed his own son.

This is apparently the Gaelic version of the well-known Persian tale of Sohrab and Rustum—a story of Aryan origin. Just as Cuchulinn recognised when too late his kinship with Conlaoch, and mourned over him, so did the father of the young Tartar, for the brief moments the latter survived his mortal wound.

On his return from Skye, prior to the birth of his ill-fated son, Cuchulinn had been joyously welcomed home by King Conchobar and his knights. Losing no time he proceeded to Lusk to claim Eimer. The young lady had in his absence become deeply enamoured of him, though her father and brothers remained obdurate. Fortifying themselves against the intrusion of the champion for a whole year, they denied him entrance, or even a sight of his faithful lover, until Cuchulinn, getting desperate, scaled the walls, overcame his opponents and carried off Eimer, her maid, and much treasure in his chariot. All the way north to Emania he had frequent combats with the men who followed to frustrate this heroic elopement.

Commenting on the story, O’Curry makes the interesting remark that “there is scarcely a hill, valley, river, rock, mound, or cave in the line of country from Emania in the present county of Armagh to Lusk in that of Dublin of which the ancient and often varying names and history are not to be found in this singularly curious tract,” namely, the Wooing of Eimer. “So that, if we look upon it even as a highly-coloured historic romance, it will be found one of the most valuable of our large collection of ancient compositions on account of the light which it throws not merely on ancient social manners, and on the military feats and terms of those days, but on the meaning of so vast a number of topographical names. And it records, too, I may add, very many curious customs and superstitions, many of which to this day characterise the native Irish people.”

Other exploits of the wonderful Cuchulinn are related in the “Táin Bó Chuailgné” or “Cattle Raid of Cooley”—the greatest and longest of the heroic sagas. Here we encounter that remarkable Amazon, Queen Meve of Connaught, and her third husband, Ailill. When at Rath-Cruachan it seems they had spread their royal couch, and between them there ensued a pillow conversation, ending in a controversy as to which of the two was the richer. In this debate comparison was made between their mugs and vats and iron vessels, their urns and brewers’ troughs, and kieves. Their jewels also were brought out, such as finger-rings, clasps, bracelets, thumb-rings, diadems, and gorgets of gold; their apparel of crimson, blue, black and green, yellow and chequered and buff, wan-coloured, pied and striped. Comparison was made between their flocks of sheep and steeds and studs, and herds of swine and droves of cows. But all were found to be exactly equal.

Then Ailill recollected that he had a young bull named “Finn-bheannach” or “White-horned,” which had been calved by one of the Queen’s cows, but which had left her herd and joined his own because the high-minded animal did not “deem it honourable to be under a woman’s control.” Meve’s disappointment was keen that no bull of hers was found to match this one; so, when Fergus Mac Roth the herald assured her that Daré, in Cuailgne, Ulster, possessed a brown one, the best in all Erin, she immediately sent him with nine subordinates to fetch it, offering its owner liberal terms for a year’s loan. Daré treated the messengers with kindly hospitality, and agreed to the royal request. But, unhappily, while the men were imbibing too freely that night, his steward overheard one of them boasting that if the bull had not been willingly sent they would have taken it by compulsion.

On this coming to Daré’s ears, he swore by the gods that now they would not have his Donn Chuailgne either by force or consent.

Meve was not a woman to be thus lightly denied or insulted. Nolens volens she would have the bull, and summoned her native forces for action. She also invited the men of Leinster and Munster to join her in avenging past indignities received at the hands of the men of Ulster. Fifteen hundred men from the latter province, who happened to be at feud with King Conchobar for his treachery to the sons of Uisneach, were prevailed upon to answer her summons, and a great army set out. At a place near modern Louth, where they halted on the march, a feast was held, at which the Queen contrived to promise to each of the leaders, without the knowledge of the rest, the hand of her beautiful daughter Finnamhair in marriage as a stimulus to valour and fidelity. “On one of the nights the snow that fell reached to men’s legs and to the wheels of the chariots, so that it made one plain of the five provinces of Erin, and the men never suffered so much before in camp. None knew throughout the whole night whether it was his friend or his foe who was next him until the clear shining sun rose early on the morrow.”

Though the Ulster men had sufficient warning of the approach of this host, they were not in readiness. A childish helplessness, to which they were subject for an unmanly crime, had overtaken them and left them at the mercy of their foes.

It was Cuchulinn’s country the enemy had invaded, and he kept them at bay. Hovering around them unseen all day, he killed as many as a hundred each night with his sling. In vain Meve tried to buy this boyish hero off, first by a mutual conference, with the glen between them, and second by sending an embassage with Mac Roth as messenger-in-chief. On this occasion Cuchulinn discarded the twenty-seven cunningly prepared undershirts which with cords and ropes were secured about him. And this he did to escape the difficulty that would arise in throwing them off, should his paroxysm come to boiling point and he in them still. Anon for thirty feet all round the hero’s body the snow melted with the intense heat generated in his system. His charioteer, we are told, durst not come nigh him. From a safe distance he informed his master of Mac Roth’s approach and described him.

Cuchulinn demands single combat, enjoining his opponents by the laws of Irish chivalry not to pass the ford till he was overcome. Queen Meve reluctantly consents, deeming it better to lose one warrior a day than a hundred each night. With her messenger came a youth anxious to see the renowned hero, and he, deceived by the boyish appearance of Cuchulinn, determined to fight him. To warn the rash stripling of his danger, the latter plays upon him two sword-feats. By the first, “the under-cut,” he slices away the sod from under this Etarchomal’s soles and lays him supine, with the sod upon his upturned chest. By the second, “the vigorous edge-stroke,” he takes off all his hair from poll to forehead and from ear to ear, as clean as though he had been shaven with a razor, but without drawing blood. Finally, he despatches him with the “oblique transverse stroke,” whereby in three simultaneously fallen segments the youth reaches the ground.

Champion after champion falls in single combat, until Meve, getting desperate, had at length to call in the aid of magic. So we read that one warrior was helped by demons of the air in bird shape, but in vain; and the great magician Cailatin and his twenty-seven sons, despite their spells, also met their doom. Cuchulinn was further persecuted by the war-goddess, the Morrigan, who appears in all shapes to plague him and to frighten the life of valour out of his soul. He himself is not behind in demoniac influence, for with the help of the Tuatha de Danann—Manannan especially—he does great havoc among Meve’s troops, circling round them in his chariot and dealing death with his sling.

It was during one of these exploits that he gave his chariot the heavy turn, so that its iron wheels sank into the earth and their track was in itself a sufficient fortification, for the stones and pillars and flags and sand rose back high on every side round the wheels.

His foes are baffled. Impatient Meve cannot forget that the Ulster men will soon be rid of their childish feebleness, and then the game is up. So she approaches Ferdia, the only warrior fit to match Cuchulinn, with the view of arranging a combat whereby the latter may be laid low. Ferdia at first refuses to fight his former comrade, with whom he had made a compact of undying friendship while attending the lady Scathach’s school in Skye. The Queen then promises him Finnamhair for wife, with land and riches. It is probable that even this bait would not have fetched the unwilling warrior had she not further threatened that her druids and ollamhs would “criticise, satirise, and blemish him,” enough to “raise three blisters on his face,” if he refused. Thereafter he consented, thinking it better to fall by valour and championship than by druids and reproach.

Fergus was accordingly sent forward to tell Cuchulinn that his friend Ferdia was coming to fight him. “I am here,” retorted the champion, “detaining and delaying the four great provinces of Erin from Samhain till Feill Brighde, and I have not yielded one foot in retreat before any one during that time, nor will I, I trust, before him.” The charioteer gets ready the chariot, and into it sprang “the battle-fighting, dexterous, battle-winning, red-sworded hero, Cuchulinn, son of Sualtam, and there shouted around him Bocanachs and Bananachs and Genîtî Glindi, and demons of the air. For the Tuatha de Danann were used to set up shouts around him, so that the hatred and the fear and the abhorrence and the great terror of him should be greater in every battle, in every battlefield, in every combat, and in every fight into which he went.”

The heroes met at the ford. After the first day’s fight, “each of them approached the other forthwith and each put his hand round the other’s neck and gave him three kisses. Their horses were in the same paddock that night, and their charioteers at the same fire; and their charioteers spread beds of green rushes for them with wounded men’s pillows to them. The professors of healing and curing came to heal and cure them, and they applied herbs and plants to the stabs and cuts and gashes and to all their wounds. Of every herb and of every healing and curing plant that was put to the stabs and cuts and gashes and to all the wounds of Cuchulinn, he would send an equal portion from him westward over the ford to Ferdia, so that the men of Erin might not be able to say, should Ferdia fall by him, that it was by better means of cure that he was enabled to kill him.”

As the days pass the fighting becomes more serious. Early on the fourth Ferdia arose and went forward alone to the ford. He knew that that day would decide the contest, and that either or both of them would fall. Having put on his wonderful suit of battle, he displayed many extraordinary feats which he never learned from any other,—not from Scathach, or Uathach, or Aoife, but which were invented by himself.

On seeing these, Cuchulinn said to his charioteer, “I perceive there, my friend Laeg, the noble, varied, wonderful, numerous feats which Ferdia displays on high, and all these will be tried on me in succession. Therefore if it be I who shall begin to yield this day thou must excite, reproach, and speak evil to me, that the paroxysm of my rage and anger shall grow the more. If it be I who shall prevail then thou shalt laud and praise and speak good words to me, that my courage may be the greater.”

“It shall be so done indeed, O Cuchulinn,” replied the faithful Laeg.

The champions then arranged to try the ford feat. And the saga remarks: “Great was the deed, now, that was performed on that day at the ford—the two heroes, the two warriors, the two champions of Western Europe, the two gifted and stipend-bestowing hands of the north-west of the world, the two beloved pillars of the valour of the Gael, and the two keys of the bravery of the Gael, to be brought to fight from afar through the instigation and intermeddling of Ailill and Meve.”

First, they began to shoot with missive weapons, till, getting more furious, Cuchulinn sprang at his opponent twice for the purpose of striking his head over the rim of his shield, but each time Ferdia gave the shield a stroke of his left knee or elbow, and cast Cuchulinn from him like a little child on the brink of the ford.

Laeg perceived that act, and, true to the instructions of his master, began taunting him. “Alas! indeed,” said he, “the warrior who is against thee casts thee away as a lewd woman would cast her child. He throws thee as a mill would grind fresh malt. He pierces thee as the felling axe would pierce the oak. He binds thee as the woodbine binds the tree. He darts on thee as the hawk darts on small birds, so that henceforth thou hast not call, or right, or claim to valour or bravery to the end of time and life, thou little fairy phantom.”

At that word up sprang the fallen hero with the rapidity of the wind, and with the readiness of the swallow, and with the fierceness of the dragon, and the strength of the lion, into the troubled clouds of the air the third time, and he alighted on the boss of the shield of Ferdia, but with the same humiliating result.

“It was then that Cuchulinn’s first distortion came on, and he was filled with swelling and great fulness, like breath in a bladder, until he became a terrible, fearful, many-coloured Tuaig, and he became as big as a Fomor, or man of the sea, the great and valiant champion in perfect height over Ferdia.”

So close was the fight they made now that the Bocanachs and Bananachs, and wild people of the glens, and demons of the air screamed from the rims of their shields, and from the hilts of their swords, and from the hafts of their spears.

At length Ferdia found an unguarded moment upon his opponent and wounded him sorely. Cuchulinn, unable to endure this, or Ferdia’s stout quick strokes and tremendous great blows at him, called for the gaebolg. It was a weapon that used to be let down the stream and cast from between the toes. It made the wound of one spear in entering the body, but it had thirty barbs to open, and could not be drawn out of a person’s body until it was cut out. So Laeg set the gaebolg down the stream, and Cuchulinn caught it between the toes of his foot and threw an unerring cast of it at Ferdia.

“That is enough now indeed,” said the wounded man. “I fall of that.”

Thereafter a trance, a faint, and a weakness fell on Cuchulinn as he saw the body of Ferdia. But Laeg roused him, and then he began to lament and mourn, and to utter a panegyric over his slain rival as David did over Jonathan:—

He continued to gaze on his fallen friend, and when at length, tempted by his charioteer to come away and get healed of his grievous wounds, he said, “We will leave now, O my friend Laeg, but every other combat and fight that ever I have made was to me but as a game and a sport compared to the combat and the fight of Ferdia.”

There is a most beautiful rendering of his further eulogy in Dr. Sigerson’s Bards of the Gael and Gall. Here it is. The repetition and rhythm have been adapted from the original:—

Queen Meve with her army ravaged the province of Ulster and secured the Donn Chuailgne. Ultimately, through the recovery of the Ultonians from their temporary debility, she was thoroughly defeated. Yet, notwithstanding the loss of so many warriors, the masterful woman congratulates herself on having accomplished the two great objects of her expedition—the securing of the brown bull and the chastisement of her former husband, King Conchobar.

The story of the Táin ends in an anti-climax, relating in the most ludicrous and fantastic manner the tragic fate of the bulls,^[19] the unwitting cause of all this frenzy.

But Queen Meve was determined to avenge herself on Cuchulinn, and in the course of time collected another large army. Among all his foes none was more venomous than were the descendants of the wizard Cailatin, who, with his twenty-seven sons, had been killed at the ford combat. The malignant efforts of these sorcerers to get the warrior into their power are vividly described. For a time he was kept and entertained in the royal palace by his wife Eimer and the ladies of Emania, and poets, and musicians, and wise men. The wizards made noise as of battle, and when Cuchulinn looked out he imagined he saw battalions drawn up upon the plains smiting each other unsparingly. It was with difficulty he was withheld from going out.

So, by Conchobar’s command he was taken at length by the druids and ladies of the Court to a far away lonely glen, called the Deaf Valley. Even here the wizards found him, and in consequence the very dogs were terrified with the goblins, prodigies, and eldritch things with which the place was haunted. A full account is given of the manner in which they ultimately decoyed him from his retreat, and it is related how all the omens were against him. For example, his brooch fell and pierced his foot. His noble steed, the Liath Macha, refused to be yoked, and when finally persuaded, let fall down his cheeks two large tears of dusky blood.

But Cuchulinn met his foes in battle array. And as many as there were of grains of sand in the sea, of stars in heaven, of dewdrops in May, of snowflakes in winter, of hailstones in a storm, of leaves in a forest, of ears of corn in Magh Breagh, of stalks of grass beneath the feet of the herds on a summer’s day, so many halves of heads and of shields, so many halves of hands and of feet, so many red bones, were scattered by him throughout the plain of Muirtheimhne. Grey was that field with the brains of his enemies, so fierce and furious the hero’s onslaught.

When he fell, he fell pierced with his own spear, which Lewy, the son of Curigh, had hurled back upon him, but rising again, he went against a pillar of stone that he might die standing up. And the Liath Macha defended him with teeth and hoofs to the last, killing as many as thirty in the struggle. So died the mighty Cuchulinn.

In the Red Rout of Conall Cearnach we read how that famous knight, who had been previously sent for, came back from Pictland to avenge the death of his friend, and how he brought the heads of the chief offenders to Eimer.

Satisfied with this retribution, Eimer desired Conall to dig a grave for Cuchulinn wide and deep; and she laid herself down in it with her mate, saying, “Love of my soul, O friend, O gentle sweetheart, many were the women who envied me thee until now, and I shall not live after thee.” After she expired Conall performed the customary funeral obsequies, wrote their names in Ogam, and raised the stone over their tomb.

In the Leabhar Na h’Uidhre there is a detached episode entitled, “The Instruction of Cuchulinn to a Prince.” It occurs in the romance known as “The Sickbed of Cuchulinn,” and on the authority of the Brehon Law we know that many of the precepts therein enjoined were rules legally incumbent on the chieftains in aftertimes.

The occasion was the election of a king to rule over Erin in Tara.

Lugaid, destined for this exalted office, was at the time the pupil of Cuchulinn, sitting over his pillow as he lay ill. When news came, suddenly the prostrate hero arose and began to instruct the young prince. Among other precepts he gave voice to these, which show not only the traditional estimate of the hero’s character, but also the high moral qualities expected in the chief ruler of Erin and his satellites.

“Speak not haughtily. Discourse not noisily. Mock not, insult not, deride not the old. Think not ill of any. Make no demands that cannot be met. Receive submissively the instructions of the wise. Be mindful of the admonitions of the old. Follow the decrees of your fathers. Be not cold-hearted to friends; but against your foes be vigorous. Avoid dishonourable disputes in your many contests. Be not a tattler and abuser. Waste not, hoard not, alienate not. Submit to reproof for unbecoming deeds. Do not sacrifice justice to the passions of men. Be not lazy lest you become weakened, be not importunate lest you become contemptible.”

“Do you consent to follow these counsels?” the distinguished tutor asked.

To which the prince made answer, “These precepts without exception are worthy to be observed. All men will see that none of them shall be neglected. They shall be executed, if it be possible.”

Little wonder that in later Christian times the old pagan hero was held in high esteem, and even exalted into a medium for the conversion of King Laoghaire, whom the preaching of St. Patrick himself failed to convince. In the “Phantom Chariot of Cuchulinn” it is related that Patrick went to Tara to enjoin belief upon the King of Erin, that is, upon Laoghaire, son of Nial, for he was King of Erin at the time, and would not believe in the Lord, though he had preached unto him. “By no means will I believe in thee, nor yet in God,” said the heathen monarch to the saint, “until thou shalt call up Cuchulinn in all his dignity, as he is recorded in the old stories, that I may see him, and that I may address him in my presence here; after that I will believe in thee.”

Upon this St. Patrick conjured up the hero, so that he appeared to the King in his chariot as of old. Laoghaire’s description of Cuchulinn as thus seen in his phantom chariot is even more graphic than that of the maid in the Wooing of Eimer.

The spectre proved a most earnest preacher, endeavouring to persuade his royal hearer to believe in God and Patrick, and so escape the pains of hell, of which it appears he had had some experience.

It is somewhat ludicrous to read that he practised the gaebolg even on the spiteful units of the under world, though apparently with less success than on Ferdia and the rest.

The tale consistently enough concludes that “great was the power of Patrick in awakening Cuchulinn, after being nine fifty years in the grave.”

To appreciate the vigour and spirit of these remarkable sagas as they figure in the original, one requires to read them through. No quotations, however well chosen, can do full justice to their wealth of imagination and descriptive power, especially when depicting stirring incidents, curious customs, men, horses, chariots, arms, ornaments, vesture, and colours. Then they are profuse, fantastic, minute, and boldly original, tedious, sometimes through the very prodigality of their adjectival resources. In perusing them the reader feels that he is in a fresh field of literature and breathing an atmosphere entirely different to anything modern.

Though Homeric in form, there is always the Celtic tinge in the literary style as well as in the facts seized on and made prominent. Within the last half century these early tales have been frequently translated into various languages, and excellent versions are now available from the pens of such distinguished scholars as Eugene O’Curry, Dr. Whitley Stokes and O’Flanagan, M. d’Arbois de Jubainville and M. Louis Duvan, Dr. Ernst Windisch, Dr. Kuno Meyer, Standish Hayes O’Grady and O’Beirne Crowe.