Place-names and the route of the Táin

Kinsella says that one of the major elements of the Táin is its topography. It is often enough justification for the inclusion of an incident, he says, that it ends in the naming of some physical feature, and certain incidents seem to have been invented merely to account for a place-name.

The story stops to name things

Cúchulainn carries Emer off over the ramparts of a fort and kills a hundred men at a ford on the way. Emer says that was a great deed. "Glondáth, Ford of the Deed, will be its name forever," he says. Further on he deals the pursuing army mortal blows on a place called the White Plain, and Emer tells him he has made a hill of bloody sods. After this it is called Crúfóit, Sod of Blood. At the next ford he chases the pursuers back and forth with the sods flying this way and that from his horses' hooves, and so it is called Ath Imfóit.

The habit is the same in the Táin proper. Cúchulainn kills Medb's squirrel with a sling-stone as it sits close to her neck, and the place is Méthe Tog, Squirrel Neck. He kills a pet bird sitting by Ailill's neck, and the ford is Bird Neck Ford. When the army builds stone shelters for its calves, the place is Liasa Liac. When the satirist Redg asks for Cúchulainn's javelin and gets it through the head, Redg calls it a stunning gift, and the ford is Ath Tolam Sét, the Ford of the Overwhelming Gift.

Medb herself is not spared. She tells Fergus she will die if she cannot relieve herself, and Fergus takes over the shelter of shields at the rear of the army while she does it. The place is called Fual Medba, Medb's Foul Place, ever since. Kinsella's note says the name is literally "Medb's Urine". Cúchulainn finds her there and holds his hand.

Kinsella names the outstanding example. The final battle is treated very casually, while the story follows the mortally wounded Donn Cuailnge around Ireland, naming the places as he goes. The bull leaves a shoulderblade at Finnlethe, his loins at Ath Luain, "the Ford of the Loins", and a liver at Tromma, and he falls dead at Druim Tairb, "the Ridge of the Bull".

The text does not always settle on one story. Imroll Belaig Eóin, the Miscast at Bird Pass, is named for two javelins that hit the wrong men, but "some say" it got its name later, after the Ulstermen rose from their pangs. Some say the army went to Ath Meislir, where Cúchulainn killed six of the host, and others say Ath Taiten, where the six were six Dúngals of Irros. A passage quoted in the notes explains Mag Mannachta, "the Plain of Mann's Death", by reading the name as "Mann echta". Kinsella's note on Tarteisc calls it "a typically tortuous derivation" and adds that Thurneysen suggests "water-thirst". His note on Lethan, the man Ath Lethan is said to be named for, says Lethan is apparently an invention, since Ath Lethan simply means "the broad ford".

Kinsella adds that this is not confined to the Táin. Early and medieval Irish literature has a whole class of topographical works, including prose tracts and poems of enormous length composed by the professional poets, who were expected to recite from them on demand.

Which places can be found

Much of the action is the movement of the Connacht armies across Ireland and back and forth over the country that makes up part of present-day County Louth. Kinsella says some of the names can be identified with certainty and others are unidentifiable. They have been replaced by English names over the years, or are merely descriptive words that might apply to any number of places, or are the result of a storyteller's or scribe's rationalisation or fantasy. Many others, short of complete certainty, can be identified with reasonable confidence. The Táin's sense of place is on the whole much more realistic than its sense of place-names and their origin, and it is possible to follow the route in all its essentials.

The maps in the book were specially drawn by Don Farrell, with help from Professor John V. Kelleher and Mr. Gene C. Haley of Harvard University, whose findings Kinsella says are not yet final. The events in Cuailnge may be followed on the Irish Ordnance Survey one inch map No. 71.

The itinerary in chapter II

At the start of the march the text gives its own itinerary, a list of places the army passes through. Its descriptive phrases are translations of the names: Tuaim Móna is "the peat ridge", Ord is "the hammer", Indiuind is "the anvil", Ochtrach is "the dung heap", Slechta is "where they hewed their way". Kinsella's note says the march of the armies described in the text differs considerably from this itinerary. His introduction says it matches the route of the maps only in parts, and was ignored in preparing them.

The route list

Kinsella gives a list of equivalents so that a reader can tie the route to a modern map. Names are in his spelling, equivalents as he prints them.