In a time before time King Ailil lay abed with Queen Medb in the royal chamber of their palace upon the plain of Cruachan Ai. The palace, though made only of wood, and though only two-stories high, was airily spacious. Beautifully carved supporting pillars, dividing panels of red yew, appointments of silver and gold, exquisitely crafted household goods and tools all clearly defined this as a place of wealth and power in iron-age Ireland.
So too, did the pillow talk of Ailil and Medb.
“Is it true”, asked Ailil of Medb, “that all is well for the wife of a wealthy man”?
Medb snaps back, “What puts this foolish question in your head”?
Ailil lamely replies, “I was thinking of how splendidly you live because of my great riches”. This is too much for Medb who reminds Ailil that she is the “highest and haughtiest” of the six daughters of Enchain Feidlech the Steadfast - High King of all Ireland. She enjoyed wealth and power long before she ever knew of Ailil. In fact, she chose Ailil from all the kings that courted her only because he alone seemed without meanness, jealousy, or fear. Ailil’s “riches” had nothing to do with her decision
“Maybe”, sputters Ailil, “ but I still own more than you do”
Ailil’s prickly retort sets off an extensive counting
of cattle, sheep, pigs, property, and people owned by each.
The totals were measured, matched, and noted. In the end,
the count turned out as even - with one exception - Ailil’s
fecund prize bull, Finnbennatch.
Medb had nothing like Finnbennatch.
This could not stand.
Thus begins, The Cattle Raid of Cooley.
The Cattle Raid of Cooley is known in Gaelic as, Tain Bo Cuailnge, which means, “the driving off of the cows of Cooley”. In modern times we call it rustling. Iron-age thinking regarded stealing from neighboring tribes as a righteous way of displaying valor. If you were caught and killed it was because the gods were against you; your raid was “wrong”. If your raid was successful, then you were in the “right”. Heroic poems and song would follow. It was an early understanding of what would later become notions of morality.
Iron-age notions of “rightful” valor may seem outrageously simple minded, even stupid, but consider, we still sing songs and make movies that glorify outlaws.
Howard Hawke’s 1948 film, Red River, has a scene that illustrates how much iron-age thinking is still with us. Tom Dunson (John Wayne) encounters a lone Mexican horseman on the open range - a sort of cowboy envoy, who rides up and declares that Dunson’s cattle are grazing on land that belongs to Don Diego.
Dunston dryly replies, “You go back and tell Senior Diego he stole this land from the Indians and now I’m stealin’ it from him”.
Impeccable iron-age thinking.
Might makes right.
Trial-by-Combat continued this same line of thinking into medieval times, and the concept is with us yet, only now we’re a little embarrassed to acknowledge how much it still applies.
Winners, not losers, write history. The larger-than-life characters in the Tain didn’t doubt the virtue of rightful violence for a second. Then too, the Irish have always been scrappy.
G. K. Chesterton wrote this of them:
“The great Gaels of Ireland,
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad”.
Which reminds me of another movie: John Ford’s 1953 film, The Quiet Man. The feisty contention between Medb and Ailil’s is reflected in the romantic contention between Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne. Queen Medb and Mary Kay Danaher were both prideful saucy colleens and both King Ailil and Sean Thornton were as stubborn as their ladies were saucy.
Celtic personalities haven’t changed too much in the last few thousand years.
Anyway, back to the Tain.
When Medb discovers she is one bull short of Ailil she sets out to correct this failing. She calls her councilors together. Where is there a bull to match White-Horned Finnbennatch? Her chief advisor, Mac Roth, tells her there is one such, and better - Donn Cuailnge, the Brown Bull of Cooley, owned by Daire mac Fiachna, cattle lord of the peninsula of Cooley.
Medb immediately sets Mac Roth and nine others off to make an offer to Daire. If Daire will give Medb the loan of Donn Cuailnge for one year she will give him in return: “fifty yearling heifers; Donn Cuailnge, returned; a portion of Cruachan Ai equal to Daire mac Fiachna’s own holdings; a chariot worth thrice seven bondmaids; and Medb’s own friendly thighs”.
Mmm, well . . . that’s an offer hard to resist.
Daire mac Fiachna does not resist. He celebrates the deal with a banquet. In the course of the feasting, the emissaries of Medb become increasingly drunk. In their cups, they boast that even if Mac Fiachna had turned down the request, the men of Medb’s mighty army would have taken the Donn by force.
That tears it! The deal is off.
Mac Roth returns empty-handed with all the details of the refusal. Medb waves off his complicated explanations saying, “There’s no need to polish the knots and knobs of the matter. Those Ulster idiots should have known that what isn’t given freely will be taken by force, and taken the brown Bull of Cooley will be”.
The hosts of Queen Medb set forth bristling with sword & spear. They travel for days from their fortress Rath in Connacht, to the province of Ulster, and from there to the peninsula of Cooley.
Though primed for fierce battle, they are strangely met with no resistance.
The fighting Ulstermen of Cooley have been laid low by mysterious illness. Their tribal champion, seventeen-year-old Cuchulainn (koo-hool-n), is off on a tryst. By the time he gets his pants back on, Medb’s army is marching home with Donn Cuailnge, and all the rest of Daire mac Fiachna’s cattle.
Cuchulainn, now back on the job, pursues Medb’s rustlers with no one but his trusted charioteer, Laeg, by his side. They fight a guerrilla campaign, appearing and disappearing, slashing first here, then there. Oceans of blood and headless corpses are left in their trail. Cuchulainn is occasionally wounded, but only by supernatural forces. Recovered Ulstermen eventually join them. Gods and demi-gods dart in and out of the action.
The greatest battle, lasts three days, during which Cuchulainn kills one hundred men in single-combat.
Nevertheless, Medb makes it back to Cruachan Ai with Donn Cuailnge.
Straight off, Finnbennatch and Donn Cuailnge sniff
each other out, lock horns and fight. Donn Cuailnge kills Finnbennatch, then, himself exhausted unto death, he walks back to Cooley with scraps of Finnbennatch’s flesh dripping from his horns. Wherever the scraps fell, place names mark
the spot to this day.
The story ends with no clear resolution. Pieces and parts have been combined over the centuries with little effort at coherence. The point was never to tell a single story. Preserving the ancient, misty tales of heroes & magic was the point.
Exaggeration and stylistic flourish define Irish stories from the iron-age until today. The story matters, but how the story is told matters more.
From the outrageous boasts of Mike Fink, to the well-crafted prose of Flannery O’Connor, to the poetic elegance of
W. B. Yeats, the Irish remain a people intoxicated with words.
The Gift of Gab; their gift to the world.
Donn Cuailnge - a statue honoring the Donn sited amidst forest & veld of his legendary iron-age home, Ulster, Ireland.