Chapter VI: From Finnabair Chuailnge to Conaille

Summary

The bull is hunted

In one version the armies divide at Finnabair Chuailnge and lay waste Cuailnge with fire. They bring in the women, boys, girls and cattle, and Medb says it is not enough: she does not see the bull. The herdsman Lóthar is summoned and says, trembling, that on the night the men of Ulster were laid low by their pangs the bull left with all his three score heifers. He is now in Dubchoire, the Black Cauldron, in Glenn Gat of the Osiers.

Medb orders a shackle of osiers between each pair of men, and that is how Glenn Gat, the Valley of Osiers, gets its name. They encircle the bull and drive him toward Finnabair. He sees Lóthar, attacks him in a fury and takes out his entrails on his horns. He charges the camp with his heifers, fifty heroes perish in his path, and he vanishes. No one can say where he has gone, to their shame. The herdsmen say he is back in Sliab Cuilinn, and the army ravages Cuailnge on the way there and does not find him.

The rivers rise

The River Cronn rises against them to the height of the treetops. In the morning the famous warrior Ualu shoulders a big flagstone so the water will not force him backward, and the river overwhelms him, stone and all. His grave on the roadway is Lia Ualonn, Ualu's Flagstone.

It is there that Cúchulainn kills Cronn and Caemdele in heroic fury. A further hundred warriors die, together with Roan and Roae, the two chroniclers of the Táin. One hundred and twenty-four kings die by his hand at the same river.

The army goes upstream to the source, where Medb calls them back. She chooses to cross the summit itself and mark their track forever as a mark of dishonour to Ulster. It takes three days and three nights of tearing up the earth to form the gap Bernas Bó Cuailnge. They spend a night in Glenn Dáilimda, at the place now called Botha after the huts they made. The river Colptha rises against them and carries a hundred charioteers toward the sea, at Cluain Carpat, the Chariot-Meadow. They follow it to its source and spend a night at Liasa Liac, named for the stone shelters built there for the calves. In Glenn Gatlach the river rises against them too, and from that time it is the river Gatlach, for the osiers they carried their calves in. They spend the night at Druim Féne in Conaille. Kinsella's note says the second version of the march begins here.

Fergus's sword

Other writers treat events differently. Here Medb divides the armies at Finnabair in Cuailnge. Ailill is to take half by the Midluachair road and she will go with Fergus by way of Bernas Bó Ulad. Fergus says that leaves them the difficult half, since they will have to cut a gap to get the cattle over the mountain. That is the origin of the name Bernas Bó Ulad, says this author.

Ailill takes his charioteer Cuillius aside and tells him to watch Medb and Fergus, who are so intimate he does not know why, and to bring him a sign. Cuillius finds the couple together at Cluithre, where they have lingered behind. Fergus's sword is laid down close by. Cuillius draws it out of its sheath and goes back to Ailill. He says the sign is that he found them sleeping together as Ailill thought. Ailill says fair enough, and the two grin at each other. He says Medb is justified, since she does it to keep Fergus's help on the Táin, and tells Cuillius to keep the sword under his chariot-seat with a piece of linen around it.

Fergus looks for his sword and says this is terrible. He tells Medb he must go into the wood and she should not be surprised if he is gone a while. She does not understand that the sword has vanished. He takes his charioteer's sword and cuts a wooden one from a tree, which is how Fid Mórthruaille, the Wood of the Great Scabbard, in Ulster got its name.

The armies meet in the plain and make camp. Ailill sends for Fergus to play fidchell, and when Fergus enters the tent Ailill starts laughing at him. They trade verses across the board of gold and silver men. Ailill jeers at Fergus for being wild without his weapon. Medb tells Ailill to hold his clownish words. Fergus says it is a pity they hack at each other with sharp words in the public gaze.

At the Cronn

At the Cronn Maine, one of Ailill's sons, asks to be sent out. Fergus tells him he is only asking to have his head knocked off by the boy with no beard, and asks to go ahead with the exiles to make sure there is no foul play against the boy. Medb answers him in verse and tells him to guard the cattle and halt the men of Ulster. Fergus tells her he has had enough of her talk and her harassment in the public gaze.

At a ford on the Cronn Cúchulainn tells Laeg the army is upon them. Cúchulainn calls on the waters, the air and the earth, and above all on the Cronn river, to fall to in the fight, and the water rears up to the treetops. The Maine, son of Ailill and Medb, goes out before all and is killed in the ford, and thirty horsemen of his company are overwhelmed with him. Cúchulainn kills another thirty-two in the water.

Lugaid and the exchange of troops

At that ford Lugaid mac Nois Allchomaig goes out with thirty horsemen to talk to Cúchulainn, who welcomes him and would share with him wild birds and salmon if there were any, with cress of the stream, marshwort and sea-herb. Cúchulainn asks if the hosts fear him, and Lugaid says they dare not make water in ones or twos outside the camp but go in twenties and thirties. Lugaid asks him to spare his own men and Cúchulainn agrees if they show a sign. Fergus's men must show one, and so must the healers, who must swear to watch over his life and send him food every night.

Ailill hears the whispering and wants his few men taken to the favoured tents, safe from flying flagstones and hurtling sods. Fergus asks, through Lugaid, to take Ailill and his three thousand among his own men, with an ox, a salt pig and a barrel of wine. Cúchulainn says it is all the same to him where Ailill goes. The troops mingle for the night, or for twenty or thirty nights, as some say. Even so Cúchulainn destroys thirty of Ailill's warriors with his sling.

Fergus warns that the men of Ulster will soon rise from their pangs and grind them to grit and gravel, and sets out east toward Cúil Airthir. Cúchulainn kills thirty at Ath Duirn, the Ford of the Fist, and thirty more before the tents are pitched. In the morning Cuillius is washing the bands of his chariot-wheels in the ford and Cúchulainn kills him with a stone, which gives Ath Cuillne, the Ford of Cuillius. Kinsella's note says Cuillius reappears late in the tale, when Fergus recovers his sword. They press on to Druim Féne in Conaille for the night, which is the second version of how they reached that place.