Táin Bó Cúailnge

Táin Bó Cúailnge, commonly known as The Táin or less commonly as The Cattle Raid of Cooley, is an epic from Irish mythology. It is often called "the Irish Iliad", although like most other early Irish literature, the Táin is written in prosimetrum, i.e. prose with periodic additions of verse composed by the characters. The Táin tells of a war against Ulster by Queen Medb of Connacht and her husband King Ailill, who intend to steal the stud bull Donn Cuailnge. Due to a curse upon the king and warriors of Ulster, the invaders are opposed only by the young demigod, Cú Chulainn.
The Táin is traditionally set in the 1st century in a pagan heroic age, and is the central text of a group of tales known as the Ulster Cycle. It survives in three written versions or "recensions" in manuscripts of the 12th century and later, the first a compilation largely written in Old Irish, the second a more consistent work in Middle Irish, and the third an Early Modern Irish version.
The Táin has been influential on Irish literature and culture. It is often considered Ireland's national epic.

Synopsis

The Táin is preceded by a number of remscéla, or pre-tales, which provide background on the main characters and explain the presence of certain characters from Ulster in the Connacht camp, the curse that causes the temporary inability of the remaining Ulstermen to fight and the magic origins of the bulls Donn Cuailnge and Finnbhennach. The eight remscéla chosen by Thomas Kinsella for his 1969 translation are sometimes taken to be part of the Táin itself, but come from a variety of manuscripts of different dates. Several other tales exist which are described as remscéla to the Táin, some of which have only a tangential relation to it.
The first recension begins with Ailill and Medb assembling their army in Cruachan; the purpose of this military build-up is taken for granted. The second recension adds a prologue in which Ailill and Medb compare their respective wealths and find that the only thing that distinguishes them is Ailill's possession of the phenomenally fertile bull Finnbhennach, who had been born into Medb's herd but scorned being owned by a woman so decided to transfer himself to Ailill's. Medb determines to get the equally potent Donn Cuailnge from Cooley to equal her wealth with her husband. She successfully negotiates with the bull's owner, Dáire mac Fiachna, to rent the animal for a year. However, her messengers, while drunk, reveal that Medb intends to take the bull by force if she is not allowed to borrow him. The deal breaks down, and Medb raises an army, including 3000 Ulster exiles led by Fergus mac Róich and other allies, and sets out to capture Donn Cuailnge.
The men of Ulster are disabled by an apparent illness, the ces noínden. A separate tale explains this as the curse of the goddess Macha, who imposed it after being forced by the king of Ulster to race against a chariot while heavily pregnant. The only person fit to defend Ulster is seventeen-year-old Cú Chulainn, and he lets the army take Ulster by surprise because he is off on a tryst when he should be watching the border. Cú Chulainn, assisted by his charioteer Láeg, wages a guerrilla campaign against the advancing army, then halts it by invoking the right of single combat at fords, defeating champion after champion in a stand-off lasting months. However, he is unable to prevent Medb from capturing the bull.
Cú Chulainn is both helped and hindered by supernatural figures from the Tuatha Dé Danann. Before one combat the Morrígan, the goddess of war, visits him in the form of a beautiful young woman and offers him her love, but Cú Chulainn spurns her. She then reveals herself and threatens to interfere in his next fight. She does so, first in the form of an eel who trips him in the ford, then as a wolf who stampedes cattle across the ford, and finally as a heifer at the head of the stampede, but in each form, Cú Chulainn wounds her. After he defeats his opponent, the Morrígan appears to him in the form of an old woman milking a cow, with wounds corresponding to the ones Cú Chulainn gave her in her animal forms. She offers him three drinks of milk. With each drink he blesses her, and the blessings heal her wounds. Cú Chulainn tells the Morrígan that had he known her real identity, he would not have spurned her.
After a particularly arduous combat Cú Chulain is visited by another supernatural figure, Lug, who reveals himself to be Cú Chulainn's father. Lug puts Cú Chulainn to sleep for three days while he works his healing arts on him. While Cú Chulainn sleeps the youth corps of Ulster come to his aid but are all slaughtered. When Cú Chulainn awakes he undergoes a spectacular ríastrad or "distortion", in which his body twists in its skin and he becomes an unrecognisable monster who knows neither friend nor foe. Cú Chulainn launches a savage assault on the Connacht camp and avenges the youth corps sixfold.
After this extraordinary incident, the sequence of single combats resumes, although on several occasions Medb breaks the agreement by sending several men against Cú Chulainn at once. When Fergus, his foster-father, is sent to fight him, Cú Chulainn agrees to yield to him on the condition that Fergus yields the next time they meet. Finally, Medb incites Cú Chulainn's foster-brother Ferdiad to enter the fray, with poets ready to mock him as a coward, and offering him the hand of her daughter Finnabair, and her own "friendly thighs" as well. Cú Chulainn does not wish to kill his foster-brother and pleads with Ferdiad to withdraw from the fight. There follows a physically and emotionally gruelling three-day duel between the hero and his foster-brother. Cú Chulainn wins, killing Ferdiad with the legendary spear, the Gáe Bolga. Wounded too sorely to continue fighting, Cú Chulainn is carried away by the healers of his clan.
File:Tain Bo Cuailnge Mural .jpg|thumb|right|Finnbhennach and Donn Cuailnge
The debilitated Ulstermen start to rouse, one by one at first, then en masse. King Conchobar mac Nessa vows, that as the sky is above and the Earth is beneath, he will return every cow back to its stall and every abducted woman back to her home. The climactic battle begins.
At first, Cú Chulainn sits it out, recovering from his wounds. Fergus has Conchobar at his mercy, but is prevented from killing him by Cormac Cond Longas, Conchobar's son and Fergus' foster-son, and in his rage cuts the tops off three hills with his sword. Cú Chulainn shrugs off his wounds, enters the fray and confronts Fergus, whom he forces to make good on his promise and yield before him. Fergus withdraws, pulling all his forces off the battlefield. Connacht's other allies panic and Medb is forced to retreat. Cú Chulainn comes upon Medb having her period. She pleads for her life and he not only spares her, but guards her retreat.
Medb brings Donn Cuailnge back to Connacht, where the bull fights Finnbhennach, kills him, but is mortally wounded, and wanders around Ireland dropping pieces of Finnbhennach off his horns and thus creating placenames before finally returning home to die of exhaustion.

Text

Oral tradition

The Táin is believed to have its origin in oral storytelling and to have only been written down during the Middle Ages.
Although Romanas Bulatovas believes that the Táin was originally composed at Bangor Abbey between 630 and 670 AD, there is evidence that it had a far older oral history long before anything was written down. For example, the poem Conailla Medb michuru by Luccreth moccu Chiara, dated to, tells the story of Fergus mac Róich's exile with Ailill and Medb, which the poet describes as having come from sen-eolas. Two further 7th-century poems also allude to elements of the story: in Verba Scáthaige, the warrior-woman Scáthach prophesies Cú Chulainn's combats at the ford; and Ro-mbáe laithi rordu rind, attributed to Cú Chulainn himself, refers to an incident in the Boyhood Deeds section of the Táin.
The high regard in which the written account was held is suggested by a ninth-century triad, that associated the Táin with the following wonders: "that the cuilmen came to Ireland in its stead; the dead relating it to the living, viz. Fergus mac Róich reciting it to Ninníne the poet at the time of Cormac mac Faeláin; one year's protection to him to whom it is related."
Various versions of the epic have been collected from the oral tradition over the centuries since the earliest accounts were written down. A version of the Táin was taken down in Scottish Gaelic by folklore collector Calum Maclean from the dictation of Angus Beag MacLellan, a tenant farmer and seanchaidh from South Uist, in the Outer Hebrides. A transcription was published in 1959.

Manuscripts

Despite the date of the surviving manuscripts, a version of the Táin may have been put to writing already in the eighth century.
Táin Bó Cúailnge has survived in three recensions. The first consists of a partial text in Lebor na hUidre, a late 11th-/early 12th-century manuscript compiled in the monastery at Clonmacnoise, and another partial text of the same version in the 14th-century manuscript called the Yellow Book of Lecan. These two sources overlap, and a complete text can be reconstructed by combining them. This recension is a compilation of two or more earlier versions, indicated by the number of duplicated episodes and references to "other versions" in the text. Many of the episodes are superb, written in the characteristic terse prose of the best Old Irish literature, but others are cryptic summaries, and the whole is rather disjointed. Parts of this recension can be dated from linguistic evidence to the 8th century, and some of the verse passages may be even older.
The second recension is found in the 12th-century manuscript known as the Book of Leinster. This appears to have been a syncretic exercise by a scribe who brought together the Lebor na hUidre materials and unknown sources for the Yellow Book of Lecan materials to create a coherent version of the epic. While the result is a satisfactory narrative whole, the language has been modernised into a much more florid style, with all of the spareness of expression of the earlier recension lost in the process.
The Book of Leinster version ends with a colophon in Latin which says:
An incomplete third recension is known from twelfth-century fragments.