The pangs of Ulster

How it began

"The Pangs of Ulster" is one of the tales told before the Táin. A rich landlord, Crunniuc mac Agnomain, is living alone in the mountains when a woman walks in, settles down, puts the house in order without being asked, and sleeps with him. Nothing is ever lacking under her care. She tells him not to grow boastful or careless in anything he says at the fair in Ulster. At the fair the king's chariot and horses win, and the crowd says nothing could beat them. "My wife is faster," Crunniuc says.

He is taken before the king and the woman is sent for. She says she is full with child. The messenger says Crunniuc will die unless she comes. She comes, and her pangs grip her. She asks the crowd for help and a wait until her child is born, reminding them that a mother bore each of them. She cannot move them. She says a long-lasting evil will come out of this on the whole of Ulster, and gives her name as Macha, daughter of Sainrith mac Imbaith. Her name, and her offspring's, will be given to the place.

Then she races the chariot. At the end of the field she gives birth alongside it, to a son and a daughter. The name Emain Macha, the Twins of Macha, comes from this. As she gives birth she screams that all who hear it will suffer the same pangs for five days and four nights in their times of greatest difficulty. The text allows five nights and four days as well.

Who was caught

Every man of Ulster who was at the fair was afflicted, and nine generations after them. An Ulsterman in the pangs had no more strength than a woman on the bed of labour. Three classes of people were free: the young boys of Ulster, the women, and Cúchulainn. The affliction ran from the time of Crunniuc until the time of Furc, the son of Dallán.

What Kinsella says about it

A note says "noinden" means a novena, a period of nine days or other units, and that "ces noinden" means "the nine days' affliction." It adds that in the Táin, as will be noted, the period lasts from autumn until the beginning of spring. Scholars generally connect it with couvade, the note says, though it has also been suggested that a vegetation ritual is involved, representing winter death and spring rebirth. Kinsella uses "pangs" throughout.

The pangs in the war

The pangs are the reason one boy holds the fords. When Medb sets out, she brushes aside Fedelm's prophecy by saying Conchobor is suffering his pangs in Emain with all the rest of the Ulster warriors. Fergus sends a warning north, and the Ulstermen are still prostrate, all but Cúchulainn and his father Sualdam. The storyteller says Cúchulainn never slept from the Monday after Samain to the Wednesday after Imbolc. Conchobor, told of it in Emain, says the armies have been overrunning Ulster from the Monday at summer's end to the Monday at spring's beginning.

Fergus, telling Medb about Cúchulainn's boyhood, describes an earlier attack. The pangs never came to the women, the youths or anyone not from Ulster, and so not to Cúchulainn or his father. No one dared shed the blood of Ulstermen in that state. If they did, the pangs themselves would fall on them, or else decay, or a short life. Twenty-seven marauders broke into the rear enclosure while the men lay helpless. The boy-troop ran off, all but Cúchulainn, who killed nine of them with stones and a hurling-stick and took fifty wounds.

Lóthar the herdsman tells Medb that the Donn Cuailnge went off with his heifers on the same night the men of Ulster were laid low by their pangs.

During the single combats the Ulstermen are expected and do not arrive. Fergus says they will soon rise from their pangs and grind the army to grit and gravel, and later he is surprised they are so long recovering. Bricriu taunts Cúchulainn, down in the ford with Lóch, about the men of Ulster rising out of their pangs. Kinsella's note on the misthrown javelins at Bird Pass says this incident gives the first indication that the Ulstermen are beginning to rise. In a passage he omits, the pangs leave them once Cúchulainn agrees to let Medb and Ailill change position.

In chapter XII, "Ulster Rises from its Pangs," the pangs are coming to an end when Sualdam goes to Emain to warn Ulster. Conchobor says he cannot wait until the men of Ireland discover he has risen from his pangs. Mac Roth sees fog, lightning and a great wind on the plain. Fergus tells Ailill the men of Ulster have risen from their pangs, and that nobody from Greece and Scythia westward to the Orkney Islands can withstand them when their fury is roused.