Ireland's Iliad: a war fought over one bull, an army of four provinces held at a ford by a seventeen-year-old, and a hero who chose a short life with everlasting fame over a long one without it.
The Ulster Cycle, formerly the Red Branch Cycle, is set in a pagan heroic age around the first century, in what is now Armagh, Down and Louth. Its king is Conchobar mac Nessa at Emain Macha; its enemy is Medb, queen of Connacht at Cruachan; its hero is Cú Chulainn, born Sétanta, who got his name at seven by killing the smith Culann's guard dog with a hurling ball and offering to guard the house himself until a pup was reared.
The central text is Táin Bó Cúailnge, the Cattle Raid of Cooley, often called Ireland's national epic. It starts in bed: Medb and her husband Ailill compare their possessions and find themselves exactly equal except for one bull, so Medb marches the armies of four provinces into Ulster to take the Donn Cúailnge, the brown bull of Cooley. The men of Ulster cannot fight — Macha, forced to race the king's horses while pregnant, cursed them to suffer the pangs of childbirth in their hour of greatest need. So the invasion is opposed by one seventeen-year-old, who holds the ford by demanding single combat, day after day, all winter.
What makes the Táin more than a war story is what it costs him. His ríastrad, the warp-spasm, turns him into something neither friend nor enemy can recognise. He kills his own son Connla, not knowing him. At Áth Fhirdia he fights his foster-brother and dearest friend Ferdia for three days, kills him with the gae bolga, and carries the body across the ford weeping — the town of Ardee is named for the man who lost. And at the end he ties himself to a standing stone so that he will die upright, facing them; his enemies only approach when a raven settles on his shoulder.
The other great Ulster tale is Deirdre's. Prophesied at birth to bring ruin on Ulster, raised in isolation to be Conchobar's bride, she elopes with Naoise; the king lures them home under guarantee of safety and has Naoise killed. James MacKillop reckoned Deirdre the best-known figure in modern Irish legend, and Yeats, Synge and a dozen others have written her.
7 places on the atlas belong to this cycle. They are real: you can stand in every one of them.
Táin Bó Cúailnge, the Cattle Raid of Cooley — the central epic of the Ulster Cycle and often called Ireland's national epic. Queen Medb of Connacht invades Ulster to steal the brown bull of Cooley; a curse leaves the Ulstermen helpless, and the seventeen-year-old Cú Chulainn holds the invasion alone at a ford.
The hero of the Ulster Cycle, son of the god Lugh and born Sétanta. He killed the smith Culann's guard dog as a child and took its place, earning the name 'Hound of Culann'. He chose fame and a short life over a long obscure one, and died tied upright to a standing stone.
Macha, made to race the king's horses while heavily pregnant, cursed the men of Ulster to suffer the pangs of childbirth for five days and four nights in their hour of greatest need. That is why one teenager faced four provinces.
No. It is set in a pagan heroic age around the first century but was written down from the eighth century onward by Christian scribes. Its Ulster is a political memory, the Ulaid before their power shrank, rather than a record.
Christian monks, from about the eighth century onward — the only literate class in early medieval Ireland. They were recording an oral tradition that was already old and pagan, and they revised it to fit Christian learning, which is why the gods appear as an ancient people rather than as gods.
Is there a version your family tells? Half of this survived because somebody kept saying it out loud. If the story is different where you are from — a different ending, a different hill — we would like to hear it.
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