Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [140]
When Medb’s husband proves that he indeed owns more than she does—he has one more bull than she does, a special white one—the queen, determined not to be outdone, orders her men to steal a famous bull called Donn Cúailnge, the Brown Bull of Cooley, which is held in rival Ulster. But her men are thwarted by Ulster’s hero, Cuchulainn, who single-handedly fights off the invaders. Frustrated by the hero of Ulster, Medb plots to kill him and employs army after army without success.
The story ends with grim irony. While all the blood is being shed by men, the Brown Bull of Cooley is off fighting with King Ailill’s White Bull of the Connacht, an epic contest that rages all over Ireland. Finally, the Brown Bull—the prize first sought by Maeve—defeats the White Bull. But as it returns to Ulster, the exhausted animal dies, collapsing in blood, vomit, and excrement—not a pretty picture. All of the fighting and death have essentially been for naught, and the hero Fergus, Medb’s lover and leader of the men of Connacht, offers a moral that could just as well have been applied to the Iliad: “We followed the rump of a misguiding woman. It is the usual thing for a herd led by a mare to be strayed and destroyed.”*
As the Táin ends, the story is not yet finished. Other tales in the Ulster Cycle complete the legend of Cuchulainn. Medb recruits sorcerers—children of a man that Cuchulainn has earlier killed—who will do away with the supernatural hero. Finally, either killed by his own magic spear or struck by a magic spear thrown by one of these sorcerers, Cuchulainn is mortally wounded. But he secures himself to a rock, so he can die in an upright position. For three days—the Celts did love the number three—he throws back the invaders, time and again. But even his courage and superhuman strength are not enough. Finally a raven, the symbol of the war goddess Morrigan, lands on Cuchulainn’s shoulder, and Ulster’s great hero expires. A legendary warrior, Cuchulainn grew in Irish folk stature until he came to be treated as a defender of all Ireland. At Dublin’s main post office, scene of the famous 1916 Easter Uprising, in which Irish republican fighters battled British forces, there is a statue of the mythical hero in death, almost a Christlike figure from a Pietà, with the raven of death alighting upon his shoulder.
As for Medb, she dies when her nephew, using a sling, hits her in the head with a lump of hard cheese.
How does eating a mythical fish make you really smart?
For years, mothers told children to eat fish. “Brain food,” they always called it. It was advice not lost on Finn MacCool, an Irish superhero who stars in the Fenian* Cycle of tales, set in the province of Leinster around 200 CE. One popular legend tells how MacCool came to possess great wisdom by burning his thumb while cooking the Salmon of Knowledge. Yes, you read that right. MacCool is a young man working for the Druidic poet Finnegas, when he is given a fish to cook. But it is no ordinary fish. The Salmon of Knowledge possesses all the world’s wisdom, and the bard Finnegas has spent seven years trying to catch it. When the old poet gives the boy the fish with instructions on how to cook it, he warns young MacCool not to eat even a bite. But while cooking the fish, MacCool burns his thumb and puts it in his mouth to ease the pain. Finnegas realizes immediately that the boy will gain all the knowledge, and tells him to eat the rest of the magical salmon. From that day on, MacCool needs only put his thumb in his mouth when he has a problem, and the solution is revealed.
The Fenian Cycle includes other stories featuring MacCool. Among the most famous and popular stories is “The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne,” a bittersweet tale of lost love in which MacCool is about to marry Grainne, the beautiful daughter of