The Cattle Raid of Cooley

Before you read

Connacht and Ulster, in the heroic age

The Táin Bó Cúailnge is the central epic of the Ulster Cycle and the longest tale of early Irish literature. Its oldest versions survive in the Book of the Dun Cow (about 1100) and the Book of Leinster (about 1160), but its language goes back to the 8th century or earlier. In 1969 the poet Thomas Kinsella published a famous English translation, The Táin.

Medb, queen of Connacht, and her husband Ailill compare their wealth. They are equal in everything except that Ailill owns Finnbennach, the White-Horned bull, which had been born in Medb’s herds but had refused to be owned by a woman. So Medb decides to take Donn Cúailnge, the Brown Bull of Cooley, from Ulster. The men of Ulster cannot fight: long ago, the woman Macha had cursed them, after they forced her to race against the king’s horses while she was pregnant, to suffer the weakness of a woman in childbirth in their hour of greatest need. Only Cú Chulainn, too young to be under the curse, is free.

For months he holds the fords alone, demanding single combat each day, and kills champion after champion. The most painful fight is with his foster-brother and dearest friend, Ferdiad, whom Medb persuades to fight him. They fight for three days at a ford, sharing food and healing herbs each night, and on the fourth day Cú Chulainn kills Ferdiad with the Gáe Bulg, and weeps over him. In the end the Ulstermen recover and defeat Medb’s army. The two bulls meet and fight across all of Ireland; the Brown Bull kills the White-Horned, and then dies of exhaustion. Nobody wins.

Pride can start a war that no one wins.

The story

Retold for this lesson from the Táin Bó Cúailnge, as it survives in the Book of the Dun Cow and the Book of Leinster.

One night, in the royal fort of Crúachan in Connacht, Queen Medb and King Ailill lay talking in bed. “It is true what they say,” said Ailill. “The wife of a rich man does well.” Medb sat up. “I was rich long before I married you,” she said. And so they argued about who was richer, and in the morning they had everything brought out and counted: their pails and vats, their gold and jewels, their sheep and horses and pigs. They were exactly equal, except for one thing. Ailill had Finnbennach, the White-Horned bull, which had been born among Medb’s cattle but had refused to belong to a woman. Medb had no bull as good.

Medb asked her messenger if there was a bull as fine anywhere in Ireland. “There is,” he said: “the Brown Bull of Cooley, in Ulster.” She offered its owner rich gifts for the loan of it, but her drunken messengers boasted that they would have taken it anyway, and the deal was broken. So Medb gathered the armies of Ireland and marched on Ulster. And the men of Ulster could not rise to meet her, because of the curse of Macha: in their hour of greatest need, they lay as weak as a woman in childbirth. Only Cú Chulainn, a youth of seventeen, was free of the curse.

Cú Chulainn went to the border, to the fords where the armies had to cross, and he held them back alone. Each day he demanded that one champion come and fight him in single combat at the ford, and each day he won. Then Medb sent for Ferdiad, who had trained with Cú Chulainn under Scáthach and loved him like a brother. She gave him wine, flattered him, and accused him of cowardice until he agreed to fight.

For three days the two friends fought at the ford, and every night they sent each other food and healing herbs, and their horses shared one field. On the fourth day, Cú Chulainn called for the Gáe Bulg and killed Ferdiad, and then he carried him across the river so that he would lie on the Ulster side, and wept over him. “Yesterday he was greater than a mountain,” he said. “Today he is less than a shadow.”

At last the Ulstermen rose from their sickness and drove Medb’s army back. But she had already sent the Brown Bull to Connacht. There it met the White-Horned bull, and they fought for a day and a night across the whole of Ireland, until the Brown Bull came home with the White-Horned bull’s body on its horns, and its great heart burst, and it died. The war had been for nothing.

Talk and write

Discussion and writing

The pillow talk. In pairs, act out Medb and Ailill’s argument, then report it to the class with reporting verbs.

Discuss. 1. Is Medb a villain, or a proud queen in a world of proud men? 2. Why is the death of Ferdiad the saddest moment of the Táin? 3. Can you think of wars that began with pride?

Write (150–180 words). A war over a bull. Summarise the Táin, using comparatives, the more…, the more…, and reported speech.