Cuchulainn and Scaithag - Alba

[emma25]

What are you discussing?

[TheVoyageur]

Originally posted by Scottish_Republican

Cuchulainn's stomping ground in Scotland was Skye.....

[/b]

Hence why the 'Cullin' Hills are so called.

[Laeg]

Just a few excerpts from an article in the 'Ulster-Scot Newspaper'

CUCHULAINN CONNECTIONS BY DOREEN McBRIDE.

''The Ulster Cycle of Tales' are said to give an insight into life during the Iron Age. They are important literary tales uniting Scotland and Ulster and can therefore be regarded as Ulster Scot in origin.

They have been compared to the great Greek epics and are about the life and times of Cuchulainn [or Setanta] The Hound of Ulster.

Cuchulainn trained as a warrior near Armagh at Emain Macha,[now known as Navan Fort],then went for advanced warrior training on the Isle of Skye before going to live in Dun Dealgan,an ancient rath on the outskirts of Dundalk.

The Ulster Cycle tells of Cuchulainn being in Ulster, Ireland, the Isle of Skye and Arran.

Helen and Sam McSkimming and Lorraine MacDonald,who live on Arran Island,tell stories about Deidre of the Sorrows that are not available in Ulster or Ireland,but had never heard stories about Emer, Cuchulainn's wife.

George McPherson, a traditional storyteller from the Isle of Skye,tells of how Cuchulainn was buried on Skye. Cuchulainn went there to improve his warrior skills because there was a famous school of martial arts on the island,run by a ferocious female warrior,called Skya.

Skya overpowered Cuchulainn and held a dagger to his throat. She spared his life but put him under a gazza,that is a very serious oath,to come to her if she ever needed help.

Skya bore Cuchulainn's only son. Cuchulainn returned to Ulster.

According to McPherson the lad came to Ulster and told Cuchulainn his mother was under attack by 'small brown men'
Cuchulainn gathered a band of warriors went to Skye and died in battle,mortally wounded by a terrible blow that damaged his intestines. He washed in a nearby stream,tied himself to a rocky outcrop,continued fighting,dying with his sword raised and is buried behind the outcrop.

In the Irish version he tied himself to a standing stone in a field outside the village of Knockmore near Dundalk.
However,the wild Scottish glen fits the story better.

There it is almost possible to see the hero shouting defiance to the sky and dying a hero's death,uniting Scotland and Ulster in one of the first great Ulster-Scots legends.

He is depicted by a mural in loyalist East Belfast,by a statue in Dublin and in place names. The Cooley Peninsula and the Cullin Mountains on the Isle of Skye,commemorate him.

[irishuna]

I FOUND THIS ON A BBC WEBSITE - THOUGH YE MIGHT FIND IT INTERESTING !

The Hound of Ulster
Of all the early literatures of Europe, two from opposite corners of the continent, have obvious comparisons, the Greek hero Achilles and the Irish champion Cuchulain. Both display similar characteristics: mortal and immortal parentage, reckless courage, an ability to inspire fear in their enemies, a sense of personal worth and frankness of speech.

In Irish legend, Cuchulain is the central figure of the Ulster Cycle, a series of tales revolving around the heroes of the kingdom of Ulster in the early 1st Century. The tales are so old that they were almost forgotten before they were revived by a 7th Century bard, Sechan Torpeist.

© BBC
One of these sagas, Tain Bo Cuailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley) is the oldest vernacular tale in western Europe. It tells the tale of our hero, Cuchulain, fighting off the armies of Queen Maeve of Connacht, over a prize brown bull.

Cuchulain was an old, Irish version of the Incredible Hulk, terrifying, with superhuman rage; yet who returns, when the need for anger has passed, to a gentle and sensitive mortal. His name at birth was Setanta, possibly a connection with the north-western English tribe, the Setantii. They were included in Ptolemy's (an Egyptian mathematician and geographer) text, The Geography. This was written around 140 AD and listed many of the place Ptolemy felt it was important for people to visit, it included details of the major coastal sites in Britain.

Setanta was the nephew of King Conor of Ulster, son of his sister Dechtire, and it is said that his father was the sky god Lugh. The hero-to-be was brought up by King Conor himself, at Emain Macha, (Armagh) and while he was still a child his fame spread all over Ireland, thanks to his prowess as a boy warrior.

The name change

King Conor was invited to a banquet at the house of Culain, a blacksmith and he asked Setanta to accompany him. Setanta was playing a game of hurling at the time and said he would follow his uncle shortly. When the guests were seated at the feast, Culain asked the King if all the expected guests had arrived and King Conor replied that they had, forgetting about Setanta. Culain unchained his huge hound to guard the house.

Unaware of the danger ahead the young boy arrived at Culain`s house .The vicious dog leapt at Setanta, who had only his hurling stick and ball with him. Undaunted by the ferocious beast the boy flung the ball down the animal’s throat. The hound was forced back by the blow and Setanta was able to grab the hound by its legs and smash its head on the stone courtyard.

When Conor heard the hound howling he remembered Setanta and ran outside expecting to find him torn to pieces. He was amazed to see him unharmed, standing above the dead hound. The blacksmith, Culain was distraught on the sight of his fallen dog. Setanta, although without blame in the duel, vowed to take the place of the dog, protecting the pass into Ulster, and became the hound of Culain – CuCuhulain, pronounced ‘Koo hoo lin’.


These sagas contain a wealth of material for the historian. They show us a land where the men were herdsmen, tillers of the soil, hunters, bards, seers, but, above all, warriors. The pagan Irish did encounter the peoples of Britain or of Continental Europe, whether in trade or in piracy, but their chief interest lay in the deeds within their own borders.

There were high kings of shadowy power, whose sway was vaguely recognized as extending over the island, but whose practical supremacy was challenged on every hand whenever an under-king felt a fierce whim seize him. There were chiefs and serfs; there were halls and fortresses; there were huge herds of horses, cattle, sheep and swine. The Kings and Queens, the great lords and their wives, the chiefs and the fighting men, wore garments crimson and blue and green and saffron, plain or chequered, and plaid and striped.

They had rings and clasps and torques of gold and silver, urns and mugs and troughs and vessels of iron and silver. They played chess by the fires in their great halls, and they feasted and drank and quarrelled at the drop of a hat.

Heavenly proof?

Most of the translations of the Ulster Cycle and the story of Cuchulain have been filtered through different languages and interpretations, and the long memories needed ( up to 6 centuries) to decipher any factual events from the romantic and passionate story telling.

Arthurian stories talk about gods appearing in the sky – of which Cuchulain`s immortal father, Lugh is one. There is a time-dependent connection between the death of Arthur, around AD540, and a bright Celtic sky god who is described in terms reminiscent of a comet.

According to recent scientific research debris from a comet nearly 1,500 years ago, may have caused a catastrophic change in the global climate, leading to plague, famine, the fall of the Roman Empire, the birth of the Dark Ages and even the legend of King Arthur.

Could this galactic intervention have inspired the Irish to recount stories of brightly light sky Gods, albeit slightly exaggerated, based on factual events?


Whatever the true facts linked to the Ulster Cycle, the stories themselves make for wonderful reading and storytelling. Our hero, Cuchulain is sent on a training mission to Alba (Scotland), which including the use of his deadly Gae Bolga, also known as the “Bellows Spear”, which makes a single wound upon entry, but is covered in barbs which makes removal very difficult.

© BBC 2003

While there, he is ‘romanced’ by Aife, the sister of Scathach, who runs the warrior camp. Once back in Emain Macha, Cuchulain woos and marries Emer and continues to develop his fame as a enigmatic fighting machine.

However, one day Cuchulain meets his match in the form a young stranger who arrives on the shores of Ulster alone. He refuses to speak his name or his purpose and has already disposed of the best of the local warriors before Cuchulain arrives.

The stranger continues to refuse to answer questions put to him and so a fight ensues. The young challenger incredibly has the champion of Ulster struggling until he uses his Gae Bolga to seriously wound the boy.

As Cuchulain studies the body of the brave stranger, to his horror he notices a gold ring worn by the boy and recognises it as the ring he entrusted to Aife while on Alba. Cuchulain had killed his own son, Conla, who Aife had kept secret from him. Cuchulain carried the dead body of Conla back to his people and cried, “Here is my son for you, men of Ulster”.

The death of Cuchulain is as dramatic: “Then Lugaid (King of Munster) threw the spear, and it went through and through Cuchulain's body, and he knew he had got his deadly wound; and his bowels came out on the cushions of the chariot. Cuchulain said: "There is great desire on me to go to that lake beyond, and to get a drink from it."

"We will give you leave to do that, they said, if you will come back to us after.”

“I will bid you come for me if I am not able to come back myself, said Cuchulain.”

“Then he gathered up his bowels into his body, and he went down to the lake. He drank a drink and he washed himself, and he returned back again to his death, and he called to his enemies to come and meet him.”

“There was a pillar-stone west of the lake, and his eye lit on it, and he went to the pillar-stone, and he tied himself to it with his breast-belt, that way he would not meet his death lying down, but would meet it standing up. Then his enemies came round about him, but they were in dread of going close to him, for they were not sure but he might be still alive.”

"It is a great shame for you," said Erc, son of Cairbre ( King of Leinster) , "not to strike the head off that man, in revenge for his striking the head off my father."

“Then Lugaid came and lifted up Cuchulain's hair from his shoulders, and struck his head off, and the men of Ireland gave three heavy shouts, and the sword fell from Cuchulain's hand, and as it fell, it struck off Lugaid's right hand, so that it fell to the ground. “

“Then they cut off Cuchulain's hand, in satisfaction for it, and then the light faded away from about Cuchulain's head, and left it as pale as the snow of a single night.”


Ownership of the big lad

The closing decades of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th, saw writers revisiting Celtic mythology, creating stories and plays about romantic figures in the past, such as Cuchulain.

The dramatic events of many centuries ago, became the substance for creative literary minds: Cuchulain's desperate battle with his son has been revived in the final moments of Yeats's On Baile's Strand , and more recently the oaths of allegiance to Cuchulain, sworn by the McCourt brothers to their father in Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes. At the other end of the spectrum, Marvel comics` canine superhero ‘Irish Wolfhound’, is based on the Hound of Ulster. Listed under his talents are edged weapons and Irish folklore, so he probably isn’t much of a match for Spiderman!

© BBC 2003
Thousands of years of history can easily be reduced to symbolism. An armalite or political slogan in place of the warrior's sword, has often been the image portrayed of Cuchulain when the darker side of Northern Irish history is painted on the gable walls of the province.

The mythical warrior has long been established in republican circles as one of its celebrated icons. Oliver Sheppard's bronze statue in O'Connell Street, Dublin, commemorates the Easter Rising of 1916, when Irish nationalists organised an armed rebellion against British rule in Ireland.

However, the suitability of an Ulster warrior defending the north from invading armies from the south has been questioned by some ranks of Irish nationalists. The reason behind the worship seems to be linked more to the period in history – pre modern Britain, than the story itself.


Added to this, historical revisionism is rife among Northern Irish protestants, as they search for their historical identity. Cultural societies, such as the Ulster Heritage Society, and genealogical research are more popular then ever.

Cuchulain is a mantle of resilience against invaders, depending on who you class as invaders. To some, he has been the ‘ancient defender of Ireland’ for many years. For others he is now the symbolic ‘protector of the province’. For most, he is a dramatic and heroic character who lived, loved and died in a passionate manner…even if we can`t pronounce his name.

[Laeg]

Thanks for that Irishuna, There are a lot of different stories re his where his death took place And he means different things to different people. The loyalists of Ulster look at him as their great defender against the ''hosts of Ireland'' Yet he was an idol of Patrick Pearse.

Yes, different things to different people.

[SeamusAlba]

If Ulster nationalists were smarter in their pr, theyd promote Ulster Gaelic culture as their badge of cultural specificness rather than having to resort to belittling their Gaelic past. ive heard that Donegal Irish is nearer to Scottish Gaelic than standard Irish and traditionally the ethnic title for Irish Gaelic speakers was surely Gaels and not Irish, so theyd have more semantic material to play with. If for instance, a Northern Irelander has a reaonabky legitemate grievance with the religious element in a united Irish constitution, then they could argue that case from a less anti cultural perspective. In reality, that plays a part Im certain, in the reasons why at least some of the ill will to the term Irish has developped amongst people whose ancestors at various periods would have had opposing reactions to the term (an obvious one for someone from Ireland!) and it could be possible for an Ulster region to have federal opt out clauses on various aspects of being in an Irish state, so they wouldnt lose face by closer union (and possibly full union) eventually taking place, as their argument could legitemately shift focus to the nub of some of the worries that may or may not be a realistic problem but are believed to be a danger to freedom from religious government by many in the Britsh ruled part of Ulster.

Perhaps Cuchulain could be reappropriated to be seen as the defender of flexible thought from blinkererd stubbornness?

[wullie m]

The problem of Ulster is a bit like Schleswig-Holstein. Lord Palmerston claimed that only three people really understood it, Prince Albert who is now dead, a German Professor who went mad, and himself, and he had forgotten. Marvelous people, pity about the politics. wullie