Early Irish Myths and Sagas - Jeffrey Gantz [63]
‘After that, they saw a flock of swans before them. “Would the Ulaid think it better to bring these back dead or alive?” asked Cú Chulaind. “The bravest and most accomplished warriors bring them back alive,” answered the charioteer. Cú Chulaind aimed a small stone at the birds and brought down eight of them; he took a large stone, then, and brought down twelve more, with a stunning blow. “Collect the birds, now,” he said to the charioteer, “for if I go myself, the deer will spring upon you.” “Indeed, it will not be easy for me to go,” replied Ibor, “for the horses have become so wild I cannot go past them. I cannot go past the two iron wheels of the chariot because of their sharpness, and I cannot go past the deer because its horns have filled the space between the chariot poles.” “Step out on its antlers, then,” said Cú Chulaind, “for I swear by the god the Ulaid swear by, I will turn my head and fix the deer with my eye so that it will not turn its head to you or dare to move.” They did that: Cú Chulaind held the reins fast, and Ibor collected the birds. Cú Chulaind then bound the birds with strings and cords from the chariot, so that as they drove to Emuin Machae the deer was behind the chariot, the three heads were in the chariot and the swans were flying overhead.
‘When they arrived at Emuin, the watchman said “A man in a chariot is approaching, and he will shed the blood of every person here unless naked women are sent to meet him.” Cú Chulaind turned the left side of his chariot towards Emuin, and that was a geiss to the fort; he said “I swear by the god the Ulaid swear by, unless a man is found to fight me, I will shed the blood of everyone in the fort.” “Naked women to meet him!” shouted Conchubur. The women of Emuin went to meet Cú Chulaind gathered round Mugain, Conchubur’s wife, and they bared their breasts before him. “These are the warriors who will meet you today!” said Mugain. Cú Chulaind hid his face, whereupon the warriors of Ulaid seized him and thrust him into a vat of cold water. This vat burst, but the second vat into which he was thrust boiled up with fist-sized bubbles, and the third vat he merely heated to a moderate warmth. When he left the third vat, the queen, Mugain, placed about him a blue mantle with a silver brooch and a hooded tunic. He sat at Conchubur’s knee, then, and that was his bed ever after. The man who did this in his seventh year,’ said Fíachu son of Fer Febe, ‘no wonder should he prevail against odds or demolish an equal opponent now that he is seventeen.’
The Death of Aífe’s Only Son
Introduction
‘The Death of Aífe’s Only Son’ is an Irish Sohrab and Rustum story, more international than Irish in feeling and probably not very old. It is the title that is distinctively Irish; one would expect ‘The Death of Cú Chulaind’s Only Son’, but this title may reflect an older, matrilinear system of descent – just as the son of Deichtine is Conchubur’s heir, so the son of Aífe might be Cú Chulaind’s. The home of Scáthach and Aífe, not given here, is presumably in the north of Britain.
That Cú Chulaind has a son at all further suggests that the tale is late, for he is only a boy when he goes away to learn weaponry from the warrior-woman Scáthach, and at the time of the cattle raid of Cúailnge he appears to be only seventeen. Condlae, moreover, is simply a regenerated version of his father: he demonstrates the same arrogance, performs the same feats and is fully a match for Cú Chulaind in combat save for mastery of the gáe bolga, a kind of spear thrust. The reference to Rome and the un-Celtic lack of emotional restraint at the end of the tale also point to a late formulation. Even the rhetorical sections – where Condere calls Condlae ‘the stuff of blood’ and warns him against turning his ‘jaws and spears’ (turning the left side of one’s chariot towards an enemy signalled hostile intent), or where Cú Chulaind describes Condlae’s gore upon his skin as a ‘mist of blood’ and predicts that his spears will ‘suck the fair javelin’ – do not seem very