Chapter IX: The Pact is Broken: The Great Carnage

Summary

The truce and the six

Ailill and Medb send Lugaid to ask Cúchulainn for a truce. He grants it, but says to have a man at the ford for him tomorrow. Medb has six paid soldiers of royal blood, six sons of kings of the Clanna Dedad, known as the three Dark-haired Ones of Imlech and the three Red-heads of Sruthar. They ask why they shouldn't all go against him together. They do, the next day, and Cúchulainn kills all six.

Medb's meeting

Medb is greatly troubled by the number being killed. She sends Traigthrén with a false offer of peace: Cúchulainn is to come unarmed to a meeting next day, and she will come alone, with only her troop of women. Cúchulainn says he will do as she asks. Laeg tells him to bring his sword, since a warrior without weapons is treated under the rule for cowards.

The meeting is on the hill Ard Aighnech, called Focherd today. Medb has set a trap there with fourteen of her own most skillful followers. They rise against him and throw fourteen javelins together. His skin is untouched, and even his armour. He turns and kills all fourteen. They are remembered as the Fourteen at Focherd, and as the warriors of Cronech, because they died in Cronech, near Focherd. Some believe Focherd takes its name from the opening words of the chant he makes afterward, "Fo ... cherd", the great skill of Cúchulainn.

Killing toward Delga

He falls on the army as it settles its camp and kills two named Dagrí, two named Anle and four named Dúngas. Later the same day five more fight him foul and he kills them single-handed. Fergus says they must stop breaking the rule of fair fight, and Cúchulainn does single combat until they reach Delga in Murtheimne, then called Dún Cinn Coros. The places where men fall are named for them, Fota's field and Salach's marsh among them. At Methe and Cethe he kills Foot, Fist and Palm, and Lust, Shame and Nothingness, three druids and their three wives.

Medb sends out a hundred of her own followers and he kills them all at the ford of Cét Chuile. Medb says it is a crime, this slaughter of her people. That gives the Crime of One Hundred, the Stream of Blood and the Ford of Cét Chuile. Then he pelts them from Delga until nothing living dares show its face past him southward between Delga and the sea.

Finnabair and the fool

Ailill offers Finnabair if Cúchulainn will leave the armies alone. Cúchulainn tells Lugaid he doesn't trust them, and Lugaid says it is the word of a king. Ailill's plan is to dress the camp fool as himself, with a king's crown, stand him at a distance, and send the girl with him. The fool Tamun, the Stump, is sent. Cúchulainn knows him by his speech, shoots a sling-stone through his head and knocks out his brains. He cuts off the girl's two long tresses and thrusts a pillar-stone under her cloak and tunic. He thrusts another up through the fool's middle. The two stones stand there still, Finnabair's Pillar-Stone and the Fool's Pillar-Stone. Ailill and Medb's people find them, and the story spreads through the camp. There is no further truce.

The man from the síde

The four provinces camp on Murtheimne Plain at Breslech Mór. Cúchulainn takes his place at the gravemound in Lerga. At sunset he sees the gold of their weapons flicker over the heads of the army. Rage seizes him. He shakes his shield, rattles his spears and screams, and demons and goblins answer. The Nemain stirs the armies and a hundred warriors fall dead of fright.

Laeg sees a tall fair man in a green cloak crossing the camp toward them, and no one notices him. He is Lug mac Ethnenn, "your father from the síde". He sings Cúchulainn asleep, cleans each wound and drops healing herbs into them. Cúchulainn sleeps three days and three nights. He has not slept since the Monday after Samain, except for an instant against his spear after midday.

The boy-troop

While he sleeps, Fiachna Fuilech says the boy-troop of Ulster should help him. Three times fifty sons of Ulster kings come down from Emain Macha carrying hurling-sticks, led by Follamain, Conchobor's son. Ailill sends out three times fifty warriors, and they all fall at one another's hands at Lia Toll. Only Follamain lives. He swears not to go home without Ailill's head and its gold crown, and the two sons of Bethc mac Báin, Ailill's foster-parents' sons, kill him.

Cúchulainn wakes crimson from head to foot, fit for a festival or an ale-house. Lug tells him what happened, and in his telling the boy-troop fought three battles and killed three times their own number. Cúchulainn says it is a shame he had not his strength. Lug will not stay: any deed done in Cúchulainn's company brings the glory to Cúchulainn.

Harness and fury

Laeg puts on his war-harness, including a mantle some say Simon Magus made for Darius king of the Romans, handed on to Conchobor, then Cúchulainn, then Laeg. He armours the chariot and horses with spears and spit-points, and casts a spell that hides them. Cúchulainn puts on twenty-seven tunics of waxed skin, so that his senses and brain will not burst their bonds at the onset of his fury, then his belts, aprons and weapons.

Then the warp-spasm takes him. His feet, shins and knees switch to the rear and his heels and calves to the front. One eye is sucked so deep into his head that a crane could not probe it out, and the other falls out onto his cheek. His cheek peels back until the gullet shows, and his lungs and liver flap in his mouth. A spout of black blood rises from his skull as high as a ship's mast.

The Sixfold Slaughter

He drives out in the chariot and kills a hundred, two hundred, up to five hundred, and does not think it too many for a first attack. Then he circles the army, the wheels sinking so deep that the earth thrown up makes a dyke as high as the wheels. He circles it three times, then three times more, and leaves the dead six deep in a ring, the soles of three to the necks of three. This is Seisrech Bresligi, the Sixfold Slaughter, one of the three uncountable slaughters of the Táin. Only the chiefs have been counted, and the chapter gives their names. He kills a hundred and thirty kings, and uncountable dogs, horses, women, boys and children. He leaves without a scratch on himself, on Laeg, or on either horse.