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.
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