The Táin (The Cattle Raid of Cooley)
The Táin (The Cattle Raid of Cooley)
as translated by Thomas Kinsella
THE LITERARY WORK
A prose narrative with poetic inserts set in Ireland in the first century c.e.; composed in stages from the eighth through the twelfth century in Irish (as Táin Bó Cúailnge); translated into English in the nineteenth century.
SYNOPSIS
The hero Cú Chulainn stages a superhuman defense of Ulster from the invading forces of Medb, the queen of Connacht, who is in search of the great bull of the Ulstermen.
Events in History at the Time the Narrative Takes Place
Events in History at the Time the Narrative Was Written
Drawn from Irish oral tradition, the Táin Bó Cúailnge, or “Cattle-Raid of Cúailnge” (often anglicized as “Cooley”), invokes stories that may have been circulating since preChristian times (pre-fifth century c.e.). The manuscript based on these oral tales survives, albeit fragmentarily, in the Book of the Dun Cow (Lebor na hUidre), which was produced in the midlands of Ireland at the monastery of Clonmacnois in the late eleventh century. Portions of this version of the text, written in Old and Middle Irish, are datable to as early as the eighth or ninth century. A later version figures in the twelfth-century manuscript known as the Book of Leinster, and even later versions appear in post-twelfth-century manuscripts. Clearly The Táin, as the text is commonly called, was prized by the learned community of medieval Ireland; references to the work, and the story that it features, appear in other literature produced in the early Middle Ages. The fact that the manuscript appears in different versions reflects the oral tradition from which it emanates. Traditional Irish-speaking storytellers, as well as those of western Scotland (where Scottish Gaelic is spoken, a cousin to Irish), were well-known for their extraordinary memories and their abilities to regale an audience with stories, some of which could last an entire evening or longer. The stories these tradition bearers told were not so much memorized as creatively recomposed upon each performance. This was certainly true of their highly prized Táin —some of whose early characters and episodes would live on in the manuscript, as well as in the oral tradition of succeeding centuries. Embodied in The Táin, for example, are traces of a longstanding Celtic myth having to do with the creation of the world out of supernatural bulls, and with a primeval struggle between semidivine men and women.
Events in History at the Time the Narrative Takes Place
Reconstructing early Irish history
Literacy and the motivation to produce a literature came to Ireland with Christianity, beginning in the fifth century. The Irish of the “prehistoric” period (that is, before Christianity) left no literary record. According to the chronology of the past that was developed by medieval Irish writers, the cattle raid of Cooley took place in the early first century, c.e. (A separate tale, having to do with the death of Conchobar, the king of Ulster province at the time in which the story of the cattle raid is set, claims that it was brought about after he heard of the sad death of Jesus Christ, his contemporary.)
Arguably, The Táin, in at least some of its details, reflects a world even earlier than that: perhaps Ireland of the late first millennium, b.c.e., of which we know very little from classical (ancient Greek and Roman) sources. These same sources, however, tell us a good deal about the Celtic peoples of the European continent and of Britain as they lived and interacted with their neighbors in the period 400 b.c.e.-200 c.e. The Romans, in particular, had the opportunity to observe the Celts firsthand, for, with the exception of Ireland, which Roman legions never invaded—they conquered all of Celtic Europe, an area that extended from Iberia to today’s Turkey. Much of this information from classical authors is useful in reconstructing life in ancient Ireland, which was populated by Celts. However, it is important to keep in mind that Celtic, as used by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and even as used today, is a broad category, precise only in reference to a subset of languages (including Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton) within the larger Indo-European set of languages (including English, Greek, Latin, Persian, and other tongues from India to Europe). Furthermore, the Irish who produced the text of The Táin were in many respects as removed from their own ancient, pre-Christian, Irish past as we are, so, while the story, and the tradition that generated it, may preserve elements reflecting earlier stages of culture and society, it can hardly be viewed as a straightforward window on the past.
Given these circumstances, there is a question of whether the “world” of The Táin can be reconstructed. One strategy has been to find the intersections of sociocultural detail between medieval Irish literature (such as The Táin and other texts and stories belonging to the Ulster cycle) and the classical writings on the Celts in general. This overlap is compared with what we can learn from the archaeology of premedieval Ireland and then a cautious reconstruction of a historical context for the adventures of Cú Chulainn and the other Ulster heroes is generated, keeping in mind that this is only one of the contexts that has given rise to the elements of The Táin.
Early Irish life and society
What kind of picture of Ireland emerges through this process of mixing and matching different bodies of data? It is a world of ringforts (round-shaped settlements, often on hills), the traces of which still dot the Irish countryside; of nobles proud of their ancestors, bloodlines, and the number of their dependents; of cattle in profusion, susceptible to raiding in the strategic games played out among nobles and kingdoms; and of artistic creativity in relation to material goods, as displayed in museums throughout the world. The early Irish lived in small communities protected by surrounding ditches or earthen banks, in circular houses or huts that sheltered extended families, in which elder males (grandfathers or even greatgrandfathers) held the ultimate decisionmaking authority. Typically, a person was born, lived his or her life, and died all in the same tribal territory or kingdom (túath in later Irish).
It was a highly class-conscious society. Kings inherited their thrones, although contention frequently erupted among members of dynastic families, or between different families, each claiming a right to kingship. The sons of nobles were brought up to be warriors and proud possessors, as well as generous dispensers, of goods (the early Irish did not use money). The daughters of nobles were raised to be managers of households and, in their roles as wives and mothers, important players in familial and political alliances. (Queen Medb’s participation in warfare, as featured in the Táin, does not appear to have been typical of early Irish female activities.) Children of the upper classes normally did not live with their biological parents but with foster parents—neighbors, kinsfolk, or patrons who assumed responsibility for the raising and social training of their fosterlings, in return for a fee from the actual parents. The institution of fosterage served as a vital kind of social glue, as reflected in The Táin, in which some of the most tragic confrontations occur between foster brothers, or between foster son and foster father.
The servile classes produced what the ruling classes consumed, although artisans who fashioned items in metal, stone, or wood (such as weapons, jewelry, carved monuments, and musical instruments) constituted a respectable class of their own, with rights and privileges. Lords acquired clients, other nobles or freemen. In return for the loan of cattle and the prestige of being associated with the cream of the social crop, these clients would provide the lords with food, services, and military assistance. Clients, in fact, helped increase the status of a lord, constituting (along with cows) the basic standard for measuring rank and status in society. Agriculture and herding were the primary means by which both the free and the unfree could obtain food and wealth, the accumulation of which made it possible for individuals to ascend into the ranks of the nobility. Given this social structure, there was little need for professional warriors or standing armies, though warfare certainly preoccupied the menfolk in times of conflict. The ancient Irish, like their descendants, placed a high value on martial achievement.
According to a venerable tradition, the island was divided into provinces, called in Irish coiceda (“fifths”): Ulster, Leinster, Munster, and Connacht. (The identity of the mysterious fifth province, sometimes said to be Meath, was a matter of considerable confusion and debate for medieval Irish writers.) These divisions, still maintained in Ireland today, corresponded to genuine territorial, political, and perhaps even cultural differences. A man who lived within a province occasionally aspired to be king of the province, or perhaps even king over more than one province. In medieval literature, traits and relationships are traditionally ascribed to these distinct territories. (Munster, for example, seems much closer to or imbued with the supernatural world than the other provinces.) Within the Ulster cycle of stories, Ulster and Connacht are hostile to one another, although the Ulstermen’s relationships with the Leinstermen and the Munstermen are not exactly friendly either.
ON THE MEANING OF TÁIN
The Irish term táin, usually translated “cattle raid,” actually means “driving toward.” The same verbal root is used to describe the act of driving a ball in a game, for example, and there were in fact strong elements of sport and ritual in the activity of cattle raiding, as it was practiced in Ireland and western Scotland down to early modern times. Cattle were symbols of wealth, and, among the aristocratic owners of cattle, to steal cows from a rival’s herd—especially a prized bull—was a perfectly respectable, if cheeky, sign of challenge, or even an assertion of kingliness. The traditional response of the aggrieved party was to recover the stolen animals or steal from the cattle raider’s herd, in turn.
Poets and other possessors of lore
Much artistry and sophisticated technology went into the making of weapons (swords, spears) and armor, which were vital status symbols. However, words—particularly poetic or sung words—were arguably the most powerful weapons of all, just as poets and other masters of verbal lore were the most highly respected of all artists. Unlike the typical member of society, who, as described above, lived a rather circumscribed life, poets and other high-status artists (such as harpists) could travel from kingdom to kingdom, plying their trades in the confidence that their semi-sacred status and value to society would assure their safety. Local kings (usually members of families with traditional claims to kingship in an area), overkings (including kings of provinces), and the nobility in general (from which these royal dynastic families emerged) all relied upon the services of poets. The poets would sing a noble’s praises, thereby raising the great man or Women’s social standing. Or, if need be, the poets would correct the excesses of the noble’s behavior or exact due payment (cows, treasure, or other valuables) for their own poetic performances by threatening the noble with satire, the sinister “reverse image” of praise poetry. Making themselves indispensable as guardians of culture, poets developed, conserved, and conveyed legal, genealogical, and narrative lore as parts of their repertoire.
Druids—a Celtic term meaning “those who know or see a great deal”—played a role in this ancient pre-Christian, Irish society. They were advisers who foretold the future and mediated between this world and the supernatural realms beyond, which were often located, in popular imagination, beyond the sea, under the ground, or in the wildernesses, bogs, and forests that covered much of premedieval Ireland. In a famous scene from The Táin, Medb, the queen of Connacht, who is leading the cattle raid, and her army encounter a female prophetess (a druidess, in effect) who tells them of her vision and rhapsodically predicts disaster for the expedition. Later in The Táin, when Sualtaim (the father of the hero Cú Chulainn) is warning the Ulstermen and trying to rouse them to action, he is said to be violating a sacred rule, according to which only druids are allowed to speak before the king initiates conversation. The supernatural female known as the Morrigan—the closest we come to a divinity in The Táin—herself behaves like a superdruid, changing shape, predicting outcomes, and seemingly exerting a mystical influence on those outcomes, and on men’s minds.
A few things are known about the religious beliefs of the ancient Irish: they offered precious objects, and possibly even human victims, to their gods in sacrifice; they associated the sacred with springs and other bodies of water; they established Celtic sites (perhaps, for example, Emain Macha, the “capital” of Ulster in The Táin); and they thought of kingship as a sacred marriage to a divine protectress of the kingdom. There is little else that can be determined with certainty from the archaeological or literary record about the practices and beliefs of pre-Christian, Irish religious tradition. It does appear, however, that the pre-Christian Irish conceptualized their gods and goddesses in terms of related but separate, even competing, pantheons (such as the Tribes of the Goddess Danu, Túatha Dé Danann).
The Narrative in Focus
Plot summary
For a text that is a centerpiece of medieval Irish literature, The Táin tells a seemingly rambling story, at least by modern literary standards. It is also not a story complete in itself; both the Book of the Dun Cow and the Book of Leinster provide a dossier of “foretales,” or “pre-quels,” to go along with The Táin. The earliest version begins as the province of Ulster is being attacked by the forces of the king and queen of the province of Connacht. This royal pair, Ailill and Medb, seek to capture the famed Brown Bull of Cuailnge (an area in modern County Louth), as well as to wreak havoc on their traditional enemies, the Ulstermen. The Book of Leinster provides a humorous pretext for this invasion.
Queen Medb and King Ailill, says this source, were arguing in bed over which of them was wealthier and had more status. As a result of this exchange, Medb decided that she needed to obtain the Brown Bull of Cooley, in order to match Ailill’s mighty bull, the Finnbennach (“WhiteHorned”). The Brown Bull was the prize possession of the Ulsterman Dáire mac Fiachna, but had originally belonged to Medb: having a mind of its own, it had decided to leave her, unwilling to continue as the possession of a Women.
Despite the fact that she has offered to have sex with Dáire as part of the negotiation process, Medb cannot reclaim the Brown Bull peacefully. She thus decides to take it by force, with her husband and the Connachtmen honor-bound to assist her. The timing of the winter invasion is fortuitous because the menfolk of Ulster, including their king, are suffering from mysteriously debilitating pangs that (according to one of the “prequels”) were inflicted on them as punishment by a supernatural female whom they abused. This affliction tends to overtake them just when they need to be at their martial best. Fortunately, the “hound of the Ulstermen” (as he is sometimes called in the text), the hero Cú Chulainn, does not suffer from these pangs, and so is available to ward off the invaders. Unfortunately, he is committed to a tryst with one of his many lovers, and allows deep penetration of his province by the invading army (which includes not only Connachtmen but also “the men of Ireland,” meaning presumably warriors from the other provinces, Leinster and Munster). Returning from his assignation, Cú Chulainn embarks on a campaign of guerilla warfare, slaughtering the advance parties sent by the invaders and harassing the main army from afar with his deadly slingshot.
Among the invaders is a contingent of Ulstermen in exile, who left their king, Conchobar, in protest against his treatment of his errant mistress Deirdriu and her lover Noísiu.
Chief among the Ulster exiles is Fergus mac Roig (a name meaning “Manly Strength, son of Big Horse”), one of Cú Chulainn’s beloved foster fathers and mentors, who feels torn between his loyalty to his province (of which he was once king) and his hatred of Conchobar. Consequently, throughout the expedition, he is both helping and hindering the invaders. At the beginning it is Fergus who interprets the traces left by Cú Chulainn for the invaders as omens of the difficulties they will encounter in trying to overcome or avoid this opponent. Fergus and the other Ulstermen, in a famous flashback section early on in the text, brief the invaders on the formidable reputation of the youthful hero, telling them of his incredible boyhood deeds.
Through Fergus’s intervention, a truce of sorts is arranged between the invaders and Cú Chulainn, whereby Medb and Ailill stay where they are, sending out a different champion to fight with Cú Chulainn every day. These champions, before and after the truce, challenge the formidable Ulster hero in order to win glory, to fulfill their obligations to Medb and Ailill, or to win the prize of their daughter Finnabair (or, in some cases, Medb herself). Of course, these challengers prove to be nothing more than “cannon fodder.” They range from the supernaturally tinged Fróech—whose corpse is borne away by lamenting otherworldly females in a scene reminiscent of the death of the British King Arthur—to the brash Etarcomol, who provokes the hero into slicing him in two, to the hapless Láréne (“Little Mare”), the only man to walk away alive from his encounter with Cú Chulainn. (As a result, however, of the intense shaking that Cú Chulainn gives him, Láréne is never again able to digest or defecate properly).
THE DEIRDRIU STORY—A PREQUEL AND A SOURCE
One of the most popular stories told throughout Europe in the Middle Ages was the tragic tale of the doomed love of Tristan and Isolde, the wife of the king of Cornwall (Tristan’s uncle, Mark). The lovers are attracted to each other through the influence of a magic love potion, of which they both unwittingly drink. While the story of Tristan and Isolde comes from British Celtic sources, the existence of Irish Celtic stories such as that of the fatal love of Deirdriu and the young warrior Noísiu shows us that the romantic triangle was a basic plot device, perhaps of mythic significance, in Celtic storytelling in general Deirdriu—who, according to the earliest extant telling of the story, is the beautiful “possession” of Conchobar—finds a handsome Ulsterman, Noisiu, and forces him to elope with her. The lovers’ idyllic existence comes to an end when Conchobar treacherously slays Noisiu and reclaims Deirdriu. She ultimately rebels against her life as Conchobar’s mistress and commits suicide, while a contingent of distinguished Ulster-men abandon Conchobar for Connacht in protest against his slaying of Noisiu. Hence, as this “prequel” to The Táin explains, some of the staunchest warriors of Ulster accompany Medb and Ailill at the time when the raid commences.
As the story of the cattle raid unfolds, Cú Chulainn has to cope with the opposition of the Morrigan (“Nightmare Queen”), a supernatural female who hovers over battlefields like the Norse Valkyrie, and with whom Cú Chulainn, here and in other texts, enjoys a remarkably ambivalent relationship. Coming to him in the disguise of an attractive human female, the Morrígan offers herself to the hero, only to be rejected. Angered, she later attacks Cú Chulainn while he is engaged in one of his most desperate fights (in the waters of a ford, a typical setting for these duels). The Morrígan assaults him first in the form of an eel that coils itself around the hero’s feet; then in the form of a wolf that drives the cattle already captured by the invaders against Cú Chulainn; and finally, in the form of a hornless red heifer that stampedes its bovine colleagues against the beleaguered hero. Cú Chulainn manages to wound and drive off these animal incarnations of the Morrigan (who typically appears as a crow) and also to slay his opponent-of-the-day, Lóch the horn-skinned. Faced with Lóch’s magical invulnerability, Cú Chulainn resorts to the use of his secret weapon, the gat bolga —a mysterious spear that has to be launched at an opponent’s back in the water, enters through the anus, and seemingly permeates its victim’s body. Cú Chulainn learned to handle the weapon from his foster mother, Scáthach (“Spectral”), the mistress of martial arts.
The truce breaks down temporarily, on account of the treacherous attacks of the invaders, but Cú Chulainn manages to fend off their attacks nonetheless. The hero’s supernatural father, Lug, comes to his aid, inducing a healing sleep and taking Cú Chulainn’s place as defender of the province. During the hero’s rest, the sons of the Ulster nobles launch their attack on the invaders, but all the youths are slain. Upon waking to this news, the restored but distraught Cú Chulainn goes berserk and wreaks enormous damage on the enemy army. The truce is restored, and at the end of the series of single combats, Cú Chulainn comes face to face with his greatest challenge, another of Scathach’s fosterlings and trainees, the hero Fer Día (a name that tellingly means “One of Two”). Fer Día, like the hero’s previous opponent Loch, is horn-skinned and can be killed only with the aforementioned gae bolga. Cú Chulainn’s prolonged combat with Fer Día, extending over several days and mingled with scenes of cordial exchange as well as bitter recrimination, decimates the Ulster defender both physically and emotionally. Forced to retire from the battlefield and recuperate, Cú Chulainn is replaced for a while by a series of comical Ulster veterans. Then, with the coming of spring, the Ulstermen ready themselves to resume the battle.
Cú Chulainn sends his fosterfather Sualtaim to alert Conchobar and his warriors at Emain Macha to the impending invasion, a task that Sualtaim accomplishes, even though he loses his head doing so (he falls on his shield and is decapitated). The Ulster forces assemble and confront the invaders, just as Medb is about to order her forces to withdraw, having found the Brown Bull and collected enough plunder. The armies clash, and the Ulster exile Fergus—equipped with the sword stolen from him earlier by King Ailill after he found Fergus making love to Medb—attacks the Ulster king, Conchobar with gusto, striking Conchobar’s shield repeatedly. Conchobar’s son convinces Fergus to vent his rage on three nearby hills instead, the crests of which are subsequently lopped off by Fergus. The din awakens Cú Chulainn, who enters the battle and reminds Fergus of his oath to withdraw from combat upon Cú Chulainn’s request—the hero having earlier done the same favor for Fergus. After Fergus and the rest of the Ulster exiles depart, the invading force collapses.
Medb, having already sent ahead the Brown Bull, oversees the invaders’ withdrawal but pauses to urinate, much to the chagrin of Fergus. Cú Chulainn comes upon her as she is relieving herself, with the flow of her urine creating ditches and leaving its traces on the landscape, as, explains the text, can still be seen today. Not being a slayer of women (or so the text says, despite previous instances of Cú Chulainn’s slaying members of the opposite sex), the hero lets her go and “decapitates” three hills instead, matching Fergus’s earlier feat.
The text concludes with a climactic duel between the Brown Bull and the White-Horned Bull, who fight all day and night throughout Ireland and are watched eagerly by the weary human combatants. In the morning, the Brown Bull emerges from a lake in Connacht with the remains of Ailill’s Finnbenach (“white-horned” bull) on its horns. It heads back toward Ulster, dropping along the way pieces of its opponent (after which those places are later named). Upon reaching its own province, the Brown Bull dies. Peace is concluded between the victorious Ulstermen and the Connachtmen, and Cú Chulainn keeps Finnabair, Ailill, and Medb’s daughter, as a prize.
The battle of the sexes
Cú Chulainn is hardly the most disruptive element in The Táin. According to Fergus, the moral of the story is: “It is the usual thing for a herd led by a mare to be strayed and destroyed” (Táin, p. 251). Even in the earliest extant version of the text, which does not contain the “prequel” episode detailing the contentious pillow talk between Medb and her husband Ailill, it is clear throughout that Medb is the driving force behind the destructive cattle raid. Moreover, although the army of invaders withdraws in defeat from Ulster in the end, the expedition has not been a total loss, at least for Medb. She does obtain the desired bull, and with the climactic fight between the two bovines that ends in their death, the difference in property between Medb and her husband, which was the cause of their argument in the first place, is eliminated. As for Ailill’s control over his wife, it is virtually nonexistent. While he arranges for the theft of her lover Fergus’s sword and mocks him with its absence, he has seemingly no choice but to be cuckolded. Medb and what she represents are too powerful even for Cú Chulainn to assault. (Medb’s name means “drunken” or “intoxicating one,” perhaps in reference to her association with kingship, the prize of which is often conceptualized in Irish tradition as potable.) Meanwhile, what Medb has to offer (her own sexual favors, or those of her hapless daughter) are of interest to the hero. The text ends with the statement that Finnabair, Medb’s daughter, stayed with Cú Chulainn after the cattle raid drew to a close.
The Táin, for all of its detailing of single combat between males, seems at heart interested most of all in the battles involving women. Women is matched against Women in the episode of the invading army’s encounter with the female seer Fedelm, who warns of the destruction awaiting Medb and her forces at the hands of Cú Chulainn, and whose prophetic authority proves hard for Medb to challenge. In the “Boyhood Deeds” section of the text, which defines the character of Cú Chulainn as he operates through the rest of the tale, women loom large at both the beginning and the end of his heroic quest for adult identity and social recognition. He goes forth from his mother, who warns him about the dangers he will face from the Ulstermen; on his first expedition beyond the borders of Ulster, he is finally driven back by the cry of a Women lamenting her sons, slain by the ferocious young warrior; and upon his return to Emain Macha in a condition of such white-hot ferocity that he would be capable of attacking his own people, Cú Chulainn meets the women of Ulster, who slyly bear their breasts to him—giving the Ulstermen the opportunity to grab the diverted hero and dunk him in vats of cold water to “cool him off.”
These powerful females—who are unafraid to stand up to their menfolk or to each other and who virtually use their female traits as weapons—are, to some extent, vestiges of Celtic goddesses (whose names are still preserved in many of the river names of Ireland, Britain, and Europe in general—such as the Shannon, the Severn, and the Danube). However, the change in women’s status in medieval Irish society between the sixth and twelfth centuries is also worth factoring in. Historians, for instance, have noted that women of the aristocratic and higher free classes appeared to have gained rights as owners and marital partners during this period. Society was still dominated by males, but the coming of Christianity and then the turbulence of the Viking era brought changes in sexual, as well as social, politics. There are modern critics who characterize The Táin as a misogynistic text, but they perhaps go too far. After all, men are hardly less ridiculous in the world of the story than women. Still, The Táin is ambivalent about mythic stereotypes of women and of the increasing role played by queens and other powerfully placed women in the society of early medieval Ireland.
FEMALE PROPHET
Early in The Táin, Medb and her forces encounter a supernaturally gifted poetess, whose prediction bodes ill for their expedition. The detailed description of the inspired girl’s appearance is typical of medieval Irish literatures, as is the motif of the poetess’s ability, upon request, to conjure a vision of the future or of the past, and to put it into words—not unlike what the authors of this and other medieval Irish texts are able to do:
They saw a young grown girl in front of them. She had yellow hair. She wore a speckled cloak fastened around her with a gold pin, a red-embroidered hooded tunic and sandals with gold clasps. Her brow was broad, her jaw narrow, her two eyebrows pitch black, with delicate dark lashes casting shadows half way down her cheeks. You would think her lips were inset with Parthian scarlet. Her teeth were like an array of jewels between the lips. She had hair in three tresses: two wound upward on her head and the third hanging down her back, brushing her calves. She held a light gold weaving-rod in her hands, with gold inlay. Her eyes had triple irises. Two black horses drew her chariot, and she was armed. “What is your name?” Medb said to the girl. “I am Fedelm, and I am a Women poet of Connacht.” “Where have you come from?” Medb said. “From learning verse and vision in Alba [Britain or perhaps Scotland],” the girl said. “Have you the irnbas forasnai, the light of Foresight?” Medb said. “Yes, I have,” the girl said. “Then look for me and see what will become of my army.” So the girl looked. Medb said, “Fedelm, prophetess; how seest though the host?” Fedelm said in reply: “I see it crimson, I see it red,”
(Kinsella, Táin, pp. 60-61)
Sources and literary context
The world of the author(s) of The Táin (which probably went through several stages of development between the eighth and eleventh centuries) was similar in most respects to that of ancient Ireland. There were, however, some important differences. The most important of these was Christianity, which came to Ireland from Britain (the most famous missionary to Ireland, Saint Patrick, was British), and perhaps also from the Continent, in the fifth century c.e. The Irish embrace of the new religion was doubtless a slow, gradual process among the lower ranks of society (about whom, given the nature of the historical evidence, we know less than we do about the upper ranks), but the élite, including nobles and poets, quickly became supporters, patrons, and even leaders of the early Irish Church.
EXCERPT FROM WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS’S DRAMA ON BAILE’S STRAND (1930) INVOKES THE TÁIN
In yeats’s drama, an older, disgruntled Cú Chulainn refers back to the events of the cattle raid in his talk with Conchobar, king of Ulster:
And I must be obedient in all things;
Give up my will to yours, go where you please,
Come where you will, sit at the council-board
Among the unshapely bodies of old men!
I, whose mere name has kept this country safe,
I, that in early days have driven out
Maeve [Medb] of Cruachan.(Yeats, pp, 145-46)
The form of Christianity that succeeded in Ireland was monastic—that is, centered on communities of men and women who dedicated their lives to prayer and to the collective good of the monastery, and who prided themselves on being the followers of the saintly founder of the community. Monasteries begat other monasteries, which formed elaborate networks both in Ireland and western Europe, throughout which Irish monks went on pilgrimages, and where they often settled down as advisers to kings and scholars, and as members of ecclesiastical communities.
The major churches and monasteries of early Christian Ireland, such as Armagh, Derry (and its Scottish offshoot lona), Clonmacnois, and Kildare, grew into powerful, city-like communities, the foci of economic, political, and cultural activities. Among these activities were the production of elaborately detailed and decorated manuscripts, mostly in Latin, the language of western Christianity; the development of a written form of Irish, based on the Latin alphabet, and usable for practical as well as artistic purposes; the creation of an Irish-language literature through the fusion of the vernacular oral tradition with the learned community’s knowledge of Christian and classical Latin texts; and the writing of massive manuscripts (like the Book of the Dun Cow and the Book of Leinster) that preserve such “native” literature.
Hence, the author(s) of The Táin were not traditional poets, druids, or storytellers, but religious men educated in scripture and in the classics, as these were available to the West in the early Middle Ages. They were keenly aware of the cultural and political statement they were making by composing in their native tongue (a practice hardly widespread in Europe at that time) and aware also of the tension between their fascination with the Irish past and its ongoing traditions and their allegiance to a more cosmopolitan tradition of learning. The literature of medieval Ireland is full of dialogues—between angels and humans, between ancients and later humans, and between representatives of oral tradition and those of the written—just as the literature itself resulted from a dynamic conversation between different periods, cultures, and priorities.
Events in History at the Time the Narrative Was Written
Parallel invasions
The Táin is informed by the “backward look” (as the modern Irish writer and critic Frank O’Connor termed it) of its eighththrough twelfth-century writers. The tortuous itinerary of the raid itself, resulting in the coining of seemingly innumerable place-names, the heroism of Cú Chulainn as he withstands challenge after challenge, and the profound crisis that casts a shadow over the province of Ulster—all are presented by the author(s) of The Táin as elements of an ancient tribal history. They are also, however, the makings of an epic as this classical genre was understood in the medieval era. These competing motivations, which create a rather rowdy textual dialogue, should be kept in mind when attempting to understand medieval Irish works such as The Táin.
An important new ingredient in Irish society and culture of the ninth through eleventh centuries is the expanded scope of kingship. This institution developed considerably in the second half of the first millennium, c.e., as the Irish, along with the rest of western Europe, cultivated a nostalgic view of the once-glorious Roman Empire. This came about through extensive contact with the empire-building Merovingian and Carolingian kings of early medieval France and Germany. Another contributing factor was the response of Irish kings and ecclesiastics to the Viking incursions of the ninth and tenth centuries.
During this period, many of the invaders and traders from Scandinavia actually settled down in Ireland, forming what would become the major port cities of the country (Dublin, Limerick, Galway, Waterford, and Wexford). The wars between the Vikings and the Irish, and among the Irish kings themselves, resulted in kings and kingdoms striving aggressively to extend their power and build up their military might in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. A bold move on the part of Diarmaid mac Murchadha, a contender for the throne of Leinster, led in 1166 to the invasion of Ireland by the Anglo-Normans from England—an event that would prove over the course of the next several centuries, to be the beginning of the end for Irish political independence.
Because the earliest extant text of The Táin that has come down to us was produced in the midst of this turbulent and dynamic period, we would be justified in seeing reflections of this history in the massive scale of the cattle raid—surely more an invasion than a “raid”—and in Medb’s ambition as monarch. The entrance of the Vikings onto the Irish political scene seemed to exacerbate the struggles among Irish political forces, and even to encourage entrepreneurial moves on the part of those desirous of greater power and dominion. Likewise in The Táin the enemy who comes pillaging across the border exposes the tensions among kinsmen, old acquaintances, and even fellow countrymen.
Reception
The Táin was translated from the Irish in the second half of the nineteenth century—a period in which the study of medieval Celtic literature grew into a scholarly field as well as a source of inspiration and fascination for many readers and artists throughout Europe. At the time, the story of Cú Chulainn’s heroic defense of the province of Ulster against invading forces served as an emblem for nationalistic leaders of Ireland’s own struggle to gain independence from its English conquerors. In the early twentieth century, activists in Northern Ireland (still part of the United Kingdom), who resisted reunification with the Irish Republic, used Cú Chulainn as a symbol of their cause as well.
Cú Chulainn, Medb, and other characters from the Ulster cycle of heroic tales, as well as the situations depicted therein, are echoed in the works of modern Irish writers such as J. M. Synge, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, James Stephens, Thomas Kinsella, and Seamus Heaney. A visitor to modern-day Ireland cannot avoid references to these characters and heroic episodes in placenames, as well as the public sculpture, decorative arts, and popular culture of the country. Although The Táin certainly did not start out as a national epic, in many respects it has come to serve as such for the people of modern Ireland.
—Joseph F. Nagy
For More Information
Kinsella, Thomas, trans. The Táin, Translated from the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cúailinge. Dublin: Dolmen Press and Oxford University Press, 1970.
MacCurtain, Margaret, and Donncha Ó Corráin, eds. Women in Irish Society: The Historical Dimension. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1979.
Mallory, James P., ed. Aspects of the Táin. Belfast: December Publications, 1992.
Mallory, James, and Gerard Stockman, eds. Ulidia. Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales, Belfast and Emain Macha, 8-12 April 1994. Belfast: December Publications, 1994.
O’Connor, Frank. A Backward Look: A Short History of Irish Literature. New York: Putnam, 1967.
Ó Cróinín, Dáibhí. Early Medieval Ireland, 400-1200. London: Longman, 1995.
——. “Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland.” In The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland. Ed. R. F. Foster. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989).
O’Rahilly, Cecile, ed. and trans. Táin Bó Cúailnge from the Book of Leinster. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1967.
——. Táin Bó Cúailnge: Recension I. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1976.
Radner, Joan. “Fury Destroys the World: Historical Strategy in Ireland’s Ulster Epic.” Mankind Quarterly 23 (1982):41-60
Yeats, William Butler. Yeats’s Poetry, Drama, and Prose. Ed. James Pethica. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2000.