The Tain Bo Cualinge: Cuchulainn

#2

Now for the meat and bones of The Tain. And by that, I mean I'll spend a paragraph or so summarizing it and then talk about Cuchulainn for the rest of the time. Though essentially that's not too far off from the structure of The Tain itself, since the majority of its length is spent talking about Cuchulainn and the people he kills. The basic idea is that Ailill and Medb, rulers of Connacht, are comparing all their stuff and then Ailill one-ups his wife with this really sweet white bull he has. Like basically every other ancient civilization of the western hemisphere, these guys are obsessed with bulls, so in order for Medb to get her mojo back she decides to steal the brown bull of Cualinge from Ulster. Ailill for whatever reason is ok with devoting his entire kingdom's military and resources to helping his wife beat him in a bovine pissing contest. It could have something to do with the fact that at that moment every single man in Ulster was incapacitated and that this endeavor should have been as easy as taking cattle from a country defended by women and children. Literally.

Now readers not familiar with the story (there should be none since the only audience I'm aware of is the class I read it in) will be asking what's so serious that the Ulster men can't stand up for themselves and protect their precious livestock. It's a humorously misogynistic little plot device called the pangs of Ulster. Long story short, some magic lady went into labor during a chariot race and no one would help her and made her keep racing.

Oh, she's just faking it to get out of the race. She's fine

This, understandably, made her a little upset. After birthing twins, she then curses all of Ulster so that in their time of greatest need the men would all experience the pain of labor for a week or so (it turns out being a lot longer than that). This is really telling of the views on women throughout The Tain (and presumably the culture of its creation), since to the originators of the story the greatest punishment that could be put on the men is to be womanly. There are countless other examples of blatant misogyny, most notably the instance where Medb is forced to leave the front lines because of her menstruation, or the fact that the most powerful female warriors, Scathach and Aife, are both only as good as their gender allows until they're defeated by a man (but more on that one later).

Anyway, Ailill and Medb are all geared up for the easiest cattle raid of all time until they realize they forgot one little detail...

CUCHULAINN

Cuchulainn is essentially The Tain's Achilles if Achilles did tons of steroids and had a massive rage-induced glandular disorder. Under normal circumstances Cuchulainn is known for cutting people in half, jumping around on spear points (apparently while they're still in the air...), and punching heads into 93% lean ground beef. However, a funny thing happens when the normally short-tempered warrior gets especially pissed off: he transforms into a freakish, uncontrollable, genocidal murder machine. Anyone not living under a rock since 1962 will notice the similarity to a certain green pop culture icon.

...Kermit the frog?

So like that, but scarier looking. I won't quote the whole description of Cuchulainn's "warp spasms" because it's nearly two pages long, but essentially his body contorts in ways that would impress Cirque du Soleil, one of his eyes shrivels and the other bulges, his muscles get "Macho Man" Randy Savage huge (each muscle as big as a the late professional wrestler, rest in peace), and just for the hell of it a fountain of blood mist erupts from his head. The fact that the army of Connacht fought this man for three months really says something about their bravery or their intelligence.

Originally named Setanta, Cuchulainn is the son of Conchobor's sister, Deichtine, and the river god, Lug. As a child he killed the massive guard dog of Cullan and then offered himself as the new guard until another dog could be trained, earning him his name which means the Hound of Cullan. No, not that "The Hound," though I wouldn't be surprised if George R. R. Martin was making a reference.

I'm 2 for 2 on Game of Thrones references in this blog. How long can I go?!

In his youth Cuchulainn was so far above everyone else's level that they were all scrambling to get him a wife so he wouldn't steal all of their wives, daughters, sisters, nieces, cousins, grandmothers, etc. He falls in love with a girl named Emer, but for whatever reason her dad doesn't want them together, probably because he's so envious of Cuchulainn's overwhelming manliness. So he gets Cuchulainn to go off for training. Throughout his training he continues to do amazing things and learns how to be an even more ridiculously overpowered character. He even fathers a child on Aife, one of the greatest female warriors...that he held at swordpoint...eh...(it was basically rape. Also, so much for being faithful to Emer but whatever she's just a woman). When he finally returns to Ulster to marry Emer, some pedantic smart ass points out the rule about Conchobor sleeping with every bride first (while Conchobor was presumably hiding around the corner making frantic gestures and mouthing "noooo shut up shut up shut up!"). Conchobor, up until now the baddest dude of the story, is so scared that he puts the sheets between them and they just talk. Also Fergus and Cathbad are there to make sure everything stays strictly PG. Oh, and all of this happened by the time Cuchulainn was 7 years old.

I played Gameboy when I was 7

Anyway, back to the story at hand. While all the men of Ulster are at home eating Ben & Jerry's and watching the Breaking Bad marathon on AMC (September 28 season finale, let's go!), Cuchulainn dons his try-hard pants, sets his iPod to his Megadeth playlist, and proceeds to single-handedly hold of the army of thousands at every ford along the countryside. At first he's taking them out in the hundreds by playfully slinging stones at their camp, but then they work out a deal where he fights one challenger in single combat each day, and some of these get pretty interesting. He is forced to fight Ferbaeth and Ferdia, two other warriors who trained under the same warrior woman, Scathach. They're basically his brothers, but he kills them nonetheless because he is one hard bastard, though he does get pretty bent out of shape after Ferdia and goes into a Hamlet-level whiney soliloquy. The Ferdia fight was actually really close until he whips out his secret weapon, the gae bolga, which is essentially a spear that shoots out barbs as it enters its target so it has to be cut out of the body. Also, it's apparently thrown with your toes. A personal favorite of his battles is against a random fighter called Nadcranntail who refuses to fight a boy so young (Cuchulainn is still only 17 at this point) because it wouldn't be honorable in the extremely unlikely chance that he actually won. So Cuchulainn resolves this issue by putting on a fake beard.

I just wanted an excuse to draw Cuchulainn with Groucho glasses

Eventually Conchobor and the rest of Ulster change out of their sweatpants, clean up their half-eaten bowls of soggy Lucky Charms, and go to back up this 17 year old boy who has been holding off an army for three months with only his charioteer and his teenage-angst-and-hormone-driven fury at his disposal. What little of the Connacht army is left after months of single combat and warp spasms is easily trumped by the Ulster men. Medb does still get away with the bull, but when the two bulls fight the white one is killed and then the brown one dies from heart failure shortly after. I feel that the creators of the story were trying to make some point about the futility of war, but that doesn't really matter because it's primarily about Cuchulainn.

On a more serious note, Cuchulainn's role as a hero is a very interesting one. He risks his life for his countrymen, defeating hordes of enemies and even his own previous comrades, and yet he's something of an outsider figure. His kinsmen fear him because of his immense power and bad temper and so despite his great deeds he is treated less as an ally and more as a force. His power is to turn into a grotesque monster, but even in his normal state he's hardly human. He's described as having 7 pupils in each eye, 7 fingers on each hand, and 7 toes on each foot. He's the son of a god, and from his childhood his actions have been superhuman. Aside from the extra digits and warp spasms, Cuchulainn actually bears a very close similarity to Achilles who was also valued for his power but feared and uncontrollable by his allies. The Tain, which allegedly takes place around the first century, makes passing mention of Greece (Fergus on page 225: "...from Greece and Scythia westward to the Orkney Islands and the Pillars of Hercules...") so though it is incredibly unlikely, is it possible that the old Irish knew the story of The Illiad in some form or another? More likely is that this type of isolation is part of the territory of the archetypal hero, being beyond the potential of any normal human. Anyway, that's just what I think. This post felt like it was a lot more regurgitation than analysis, so I did want to get into my own thoughts on the material. Though hopefully the rest of it was entertaining, since that's my primary goal here. No thoughts on the next post yet, might be more on the Tain or a start on the next book we read.

The Tain Bo Cualinge (1st Post)

#1

So this will be the first post in my blog dedicated to my Ancient Celtic Literature class. I'm not entirely certain how this is supposed to go, so I'll just try to summarize the main points and give my reactions to the readings as I go along. I'll be including some (very rudimentary) illustrations as it occurs to me to do so, and hopefully some humor as well (as with the illustrations, the quality will be pretty subjective and not just a little crude). The reason I wanted to make this blog and take this entire class in the first place is that I've always had an interest in the mythology, folklore, and epics of ancient cultures, but until now my knowledge was limited to mainly the Greek and Norse. After starting the reading I've come to realize that the Celtic stories follow many of the same tropes and are just as awesome, if not more so in certain cases. Anyway, with that out of the way, time to jump into...

THE TAIN BO CUALINGE

The Tain Bo Cualinge (or the Cualinge Cattle Raid) is part of the Ulster Cycle, one of the four cycles of the compiled ancient Celtic literature. Literature is a loose term in this case, as most of the stories would've been spread by oral tradition until they were recorded by Christian monks centuries after they were first told. In that way, it's a lot like Homeric myth and The Tain in particular is a lot like The Iliad, except instead of fighting for the most beautiful woman of the Greek world or supremacy over the Trojan people, the forces of Ireland were fighting over...cows... I get the feeling you have to be much more Irish than I am for this to make sense, and I'm pretty Irish. Speaking of Irish heritage, according to Barry Cunliffe's The Celts: A Very Short Introduction which we read as a prelude to the class, the Irish have had the stereotype of being belligerent, violent alcoholics since before the Roman Empire. The events and characters of The Tain do nothing to refute this reputation.

Hooray for historic validation!

Now the main hero of the Ulster Cycle is Cuchulainn, who is essentially the Irish Heracles except angrier and more violent (yeah, he's that bad), but we'll get to him later. First let's talk about Conchobor, the king of Ulster during the events of the story:

Conchobor

Conchobor comes from humble beginnings. He wasn't born in a fancy castle with his future royalty guaranteed. He had to earn his kingship, and by that I mean his mother had to sleep with a dirty magic vagrant at tea time or something like that. Seriously, that's his story. The story of Conchobor's conception is also the story of the ballsiest pickup line and the most gullible woman in the British Isles. The story goes that his mother Nes was just hanging out, herding sheep and listening to Van Morrison with a pint of Guinness when the druid Cathbad comes strolling along. Since druids were apparently sentient walking clocks as well as being the primary intellectual and spiritual figures of Ireland at the time, Nes asks Cathbad "What is the present hour lucky for?" At this Cathbad looks around, sees he's the only guy for miles and that a woman in this ridiculously misogynistic patriarchal society is addressing him, and responds with "For begetting a king on a queen."Since he's a druid and therefore very wise and not at all capable of abusing his position of respect and trust, Nes believes him and sees the next logical step as sex with a complete stranger. From this Conchobor is born. The fact that he did eventually become king must have saved Cathbad a lot time making up unwanted excuses.

Dating was much easier in the old days

Now the incredibly brief description of Nes in the book leads us to believe that she has some royal blood, or is at least part of the aristocracy, but being the illegitimate son of a man who is one druid school education and a few magic tricks away from being a hobo isn't a very good foundation for ascending to the throne. So Nes being in full possession of a female anatomy decides to use the tools she's got to make life for her son a little more regal. When Fergus, the then king of Ireland who is already an epic warrior in his own right, asks her to marry him she agrees on the seemingly innocent condition that her little boy gets to play king for just a year and he'll give it right back, promise. Fergus, disadvantaged by the fact that he really wanted to sleep with this lady, agrees. Now little King Conchobor, at his mother's suggestion, takes half of his kingdom's stuff and gives it to the other half. This serves to make one half pissed off at Fergus for putting this kid in charge and the other half fall in love with their new boy king who they vote into office. This must've made for a pretty awkward honeymoon for Fergus and Nes. So now we have an inexperienced and immature child king ruling while receiving instruction from his scheming mother who uses her intellect and sexuality to take advantage of the unthinking men who run society. I could make some connections to modern popular literature and television here. In fact, I insist:

What could possibly go wrong?

Now for whatever reason, the Irish are really into Conchobor. Like, really into him. So much so that "every man in Ulster that took a girl in marriage let her sleep the first night with Conchobor."It's not clearly stated in the book, but I'd be interested to know at what age he started making good on this practice. Now Conchobor is praised by all for his fighting ability, fairness, and intelligence, but let's be honest here, he could be kind of a dick sometimes. Who can blame him with an entire kingdom blowing up his ego since he was still driving his chariot with training wheels? A great example of this is the story of the exile of the sons of Uisliu. A very brief synopsis is soon told: a girl named Derdriu is born and she is prophesied to be so hot that everyone from Brad Pitt to Eric Bana will rip each others throats out to get at her. Or is that Helen from the Iliad and the cast of the 2004 Troy movie? Still, it's essentially the same which is the point I'm trying to make. Anyway, Conchobor being the kind and selfless king he is says "hey guys, don't worry. I'll take this kid and keep her with me so when she's the sexiest thing in existence she'll just be my problem and we can all be bros still." What a great guy. Now, as you would expect, Derdriu isn't too attracted to the man who's basically been her foster father for her entire conscious life. Instead she likes this guy Noisiu, who despite his valiant efforts is unable to refuse the advances of the most beautiful woman ever. This made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. So Noisiu, his brothers, and Derdriu got the hell out of Dodge and were living it up Alba until they started trouble there, too. Now Conchobor tells them that they can come back to Ulster and he guarantees their safety. He even sends Fergus and some other upstanding guys as a guarantee. And then (and here's where he's kind of a dick) he plots to separate Fergus from them so he can have Eogan mac Durthacht kill them and capture Derdriu. One wonders why he didn't send Eogan in the first place, and the only explanation is that Conchobor was making a point about other men stepping in on his hot foster daughter game.

Not cool, bro. Not cool.

Now this leads me to a discussion on honor in ancient Celtic culture. In these stories, men fight and die at the slightest hint of insult. In some instances (see the death of Cuchulainn's son) men practically set themselves up for the chance to murder to prove their honor. So essentially, honor is everything. And yet you have cases like this in which these honorable men are clearly being very sneaky and traitorous. The only clear explanation there seems to be for this has something to do with the fact that most of these instances have to do with women. So it would seem that the Celtic idea of honor really only extended to their status as warriors and members of society, but were fairly flexible on the matter of women. Again, not too different from modern civilization. This could open into a discussion of women's roles in the Celtic stories, except it won't because I'll save that for another time. Needless to say, they don't have the best place in society at this time, and even the best of them get the short end of the stick when they go up against the male heroes. Anyway, that topic can wait for another time. And next time...CUCHULAINN!