Early Irish Myths and Sagas Read Online Free PDF Page B

butprimarily, and significantly, from Ailill – in ‘The Cattle Raid of Fróech’, while Cú Chulaind has to win Emer from Forgall in ‘The Wooing of Emer’. Sometimes, the dying king is absent, and the regeneration theme is embodied in the wooing of a mortal hero by a beautiful otherworld woman (whom he often loses or leaves): Cáer Ibormeith seeks out Óengus in ‘The Dream of Óengus’, Macha comes to Crunniuc in ‘The Labour Pains of the Ulaid’, Fand appears to Cú Chulaind in ‘The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulaind’. (This variant persists even into the Find Cycle, where Níam’s wooing of Oisín becomes the basis of Yeats’s ‘The Wanderings of Oisín’.) And sometimes the theme treats only of the dying king: in ‘The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’, Conare Már is slain, at Samuin, in the hostel of a chthonic red god; in ‘The Intoxication of the Ulaid’, Cú Chulaind is nearly burnt, also at Samuin, in an iron house in the southwest of Ireland (where the House of Dond, an Irish underworld deity, was located). Centuries of historical appropriation and Christian censorship notwithstanding, these regeneration themes are never far from the narrative surface; and in their ubiquitousness is apparent their power.
    As history, the early Irish tales verge upon wishful thinking, if not outright propaganda. The Ulster Cycle, however, does appear to preserve genuine traditions of a continuing conflict between the Ulaid (who appear to have concentrated in the area round present-day Armagh) and the Uí Néill (who were probably centred at Temuir, though for reasons suggested earlier – see page 7 – they have been moved to present-day Connaught by the storytellers); in any case, it is a valuable repository of information about the Ireland of prehistory – what Kenneth Jackson has called ‘a window on the Iron Age’ 13 – with its extensive descriptions of fighting (chariots are still the norm) and feasting (an abundance of strong words and strong drink) and dress (opulent, at leastfor the aristocracy) and its detailing of such institutions as fosterhood, clientship and the taking of sureties. The important but not very surprising conclusion generated by this information is that the Irish society represented by the Ulster Cycle is still very similar to the Gaulish civilization described by Caesar; and there are good reasons to think it not very different from the Celtic world of an even earlier period.
    What is surprising, though, is that these tales – which betray a natural and unmistakable bias towards the Ulaid and against the Connachta – do not more consistently depict Ulster society at its zenith. Cú Chulaind is the only true hero in the Ulster Cycle, and his deeds are more often superhuman than heroic; Conchubur, as early as ‘The Boyhood Deeds of Cú Chulaind’, serves notice that he will be largely a
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; and among the Ulaid warriors there is, ‘The Cattle Raid of Cúailnge’ excepted, more talk than action. Odder still, in many of the best-known and most important tales, there are clear instances of parody. In ‘The Death of Aífe’s Only Son’, the Ulaid are awestruck by the feats of a seven-year-old boy; in ‘The Tale of Macc Da Thó’s Pig’, Ulaid and Connachta are reduced to fighting over a dog (at least, in ‘The Cattle Raid of Cúailnge’, the bone of contention is a bull), and the Ulaid are ridiculed and put to shame by the Connachta champion; in ‘The Intoxication of the Ulaid’, Cú Chulaind loses his way and leads the Ulaid on a drunken spree across Ireland, while the two druids guarding Cú Ruí’s stronghold bicker and quarrel; and in ‘Bricriu’s Feast’, the wives of the Ulaid warriors squabble over precedence in entering the drinking hall, while Bricriu is accidentally flung out of his house and on to a garbage dump. Conchubur’s treachery (equivalent to Arthur’s murdering Lancelot) in ‘The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu’ eliminates any