Chapter I: The Pillow Talk

Summary

The talk on the pillows

The royal bed is laid out for Ailill and Medb in Cruachan fort in Connacht, and the two of them lie down and start to talk. Ailill says it is well for the wife of a wealthy man, and that Medb is better off today than the day he married her. Medb says she was well enough off without him.

She tells him who she was. Her father was Eochaid Feidlech, high king of Ireland, and she gives his descent back through eleven fathers. He had six daughters, Derbriu, Ethne, Ele, Clothru, Muguin and Medb, and she was the highest and haughtiest of them. She had fifteen hundred paid soldiers, all exiles’ sons, and the same number of freeborn men, and for each paid soldier ten more, and nine, and so on down to one. That was only her ordinary household. Her father gave her a whole province, the one ruled from Cruachan, which is why she is called Medb of Cruachan.

Kings came to woo her: Finn of Leinster, Coirpre Niafer of Temair, Conchobor of Ulster, Eochaid Bee. She would not go. She asked a harder wedding gift than any woman had asked, a husband without meanness, jealousy or fear. A mean man would shame her because she is so giving, a timid man because she thrives on trouble, and a jealous man because she never had one man without another waiting in his shadow. Ailill, she says, was the man she wanted. She brought him apparel enough for a dozen men, a chariot worth thrice seven bondmaids, and red gold the width of his face. Any shame done to him, she says, is hers to be paid for, because he is a kept man.

Ailill answers that he has two kings for brothers, Coirpre in Temair and Finn over Leinster, and let them rule because they were older. He took the kingship in Connacht, he says, “in succession to my mother Mata Muiresc, Mágach’s daughter,”, because he had never heard of a province run by a woman except this one.

Medb has called him “Rus Ruad’s other son”, the brother of Finn and Coirpre. Ailill names his mother as Mata Muiresc, Mágach’s daughter. The next chapter calls him one of Mágach’s seven sons. The text does not reconcile these.

The count

Medb says her fortune is greater. Ailill says no one has more property or jewels than he has. So the household goods are brought out to settle it, beginning with the lowliest: buckets, tubs, iron pots, jugs, wash-pails and vessels with handles. Then come the finger-rings, bracelets, thumb-rings and gold, and the cloth in every colour. The sheep are brought in from the fields and matched, and come out equal. The great ram leading Medb’s sheep, worth one bondmaid by himself, has a ram to match him in Ailill’s flock. The stallions match. The pigs are brought in from the woods and gullies, and Medb has one fine boar and Ailill has another. The cattle come in from the woods and wastes and are found equal too.

One thing is out of balance. In Ailill’s herd is a great bull called Finnbennach, the White Horned. He was a calf of one of Medb’s cows, and he refused to be led by a woman and went over to the king’s herd. Medb cannot find his equal in her own, and her spirits drop as though she had not a single penny.

The offer to Dáire

Medb calls her messenger Mac Roth and sends him to find a match for the bull anywhere in Ireland. He knows one, and better: Donn Cuailnge, the Brown Bull of Cuailnge, in Dáire mac Fiachna’s house in Ulster. Medb tells him to ask for the loan of the bull for a year and to offer fifty yearling heifers when it comes back. If the people of the country think badly of losing it, Dáire may come with the bull himself, and she will give him land on the Plain of Ai equal to his own, a chariot worth thrice seven bondmaids, and her own friendly thighs on top of that.

Mac Roth goes with nine messengers and is made welcome as Ireland’s chief messenger. Dáire is so delighted that he jumps for joy until the seams of his cushion burst. He says he does not care what the Ulstermen think and will take the bull to Connacht. The messengers are given rushes and fresh straw, the best food and the festive drink, until they are drunk and noisy.

What the messengers said

Two of the messengers talk. One says the man of the house is a good man, and the other agrees, but says Conchobor is better, and it was good of him to give them the bull, since it would have taken four strong provinces of Ireland to carry it off. A third man asks what they are arguing about, hears it, and says he would as soon see that mouth spout blood: they would have taken the bull anyway, with or without leave.

Dáire’s steward comes in with food and drink, hears this, puts the dishes down saying neither ‘Eat’ nor ‘Don’t eat’, and goes straight to Dáire. He says it was not a kingly thing to give up the Donn Cuailnge, and that the hosts of Ailill and Medb and the cunning of Fergus mac Roich would have had it without leave. Dáire swears that nothing leaves his house unless he chooses to let it go.

In the morning the messengers ask where to find the bull. Dáire refuses. Only that it is not his habit to murder messengers, he says, not one of them would leave alive. Mac Roth says that what messengers say into your food and drink hardly deserves notice, and that Ailill and Medb are not to blame. Dáire still will not give the bull this time, as long as he can help it.

The messengers return to Cruachan with the news. Medb says there is no need to polish the knobs and knots of it, and that the bull will be taken.