Article July 3, 1998
Cuchulainn
The Achilles or Hercules of Irish myth, this hero of the Tain Bo Cualnge ('Cattle Raid of Cooley', perhaps first century AD) was the son of Lug, the god of all arts who had slain his own grandfather, Balor. Aged five, this Irish wonder-child overcame 150 other boys attacking him with spears: as he fought his hair stood up and caught fire; one eye shut as the other rolled wide in its socket (memory of the one-eyed Balor?).
He got his name ('Hound of Chulainn') when, still a boy, bare-handed he killed the ferocious hound belonging to Chulainn, smith of King Conchobar (his uncle), and so agreed to take its place until another could be found.
Later, as a man, his battle-fury was such that only 150 naked woman (as with Bellerophon) sent out to meet his chariot could distract him. Each carried a tub of cold water. they put him in first: it burs apart with heat. They put him into the second: it boiled. The third only got hot as Cuchulainn cooled down. The fort he had attacked was spared.
At the feast of the troublemaker Bricriu he was the only hero present brave enough to accept the challenge of the beheading game later known in the Arthurian tale, Gawain and the Green Knight: chopping off the head of the giant in return for his promise that he would offer his own head in response, when called upon to do so.
Fostered and trained by the greatest Red Branch Knights of Ulster, he wooed the lovely Emer, but her father demanded that he train further with the warrior-queen Scathach in Alba (Scotland). Through her enemy, he had a son, Conlaoch, whom years later he killed ignorantly, for Conlaoch was bound by Aiofe never to refuse a challenge nor tell his name. When Conlaoch landed in Ireland and found his father but Cuchulainn did not know his son, who was bound by the geis never to reveal his name. Conlaoch refused to strike a fatal blow: only after killing him did Cuchulainn see on Conlaoch's finger the ring he had left as a gift for his abandoned infant son, so realising his crime.
Then, despite his great skills (the Salmon-leap that let him jump over any obstacle); his weapons (the gae-bolg, an invincible spear), and the Battle-fury that protected Ulster when Maeve of Connaught came to seize the Great Brown Bull of Cooley and all Ulster's other warrior were cursed by a magical weakness, he knew he was doomed. No more could he break the geasa set on him than his son had been able to do. After a single combat lasting many days and nights against his foster-brother Ferdiad, whom Maeve had sent against him and whom at last he sle in sorrow, en route to his final battle he met the Morrigan, who invited him to share a feast of roasted dog-meat. (He could not refuse a feast, nor eat dog.) the badb or crow-goddess, Triple Goddess of the Fates, sealed his doom.
So in his final battle he was mortally wounded. Binding himself to a pillar-stone (stone tree), he fought until he fell. His head was no doubt taken: his body was probably roasted and eaten, though with great respect and humility, by those who had survived the final battle of the great hero whose name has survived another two millennia of human history. An old belief is: why give the earth brave meat that might fortify those still living?
If you wish to read previous article of myth, click below: