Chapter VII: Single Combat

Summary

Mac Roth's offers

Cúchulainn goes on harassing the army from the hill Ochaine, killing a hundred men on each of the three nights they stay there. Ailill says the army will melt away at this rate. He offers a part of Ai Plain as large as Murtheimne, the best chariot at Ai and harness for a dozen men, or Cúchulainn's native plain with twenty-one bondmaids and compensation for what they have destroyed. In return Cúchulainn is to take service under Ailill, who is more worthy of him than the half-lord he serves now.

Mac Roth, who can circle the whole of Ireland in a day, carries the message to Delga. A heavy snow falls that night and turns all the provinces of Ireland into a snow-white plain. Laeg sees a herald coming. Cúchulainn is squatting haunch-deep in the snow, stripped, picking his shirt. Mac Roth asks whose servant he is and is told Conchobor mac Nesa, and gives him the message. Cúchulainn would not sell his mother's brother for another king.

Mac Roth returns with the noblest women and all the milkless cattle of the plunder, if Cúchulainn stops using the sling at night. Cúchulainn refuses: if the bondwomen are taken the freewomen will have to take to the grinding-stones. Then they offer to leave him the bondwomen and the milch cows. He refuses again: the men of Ulster would sleep with the bondwomen and beget slavish sons, and would eat the milch cows in winter.

Mac Roth asks if anything will do. Cúchulainn says there is, but he will not say what, and he will agree if anyone can find who knows his mind. Fergus knows. Cúchulainn will fight them one by one in the ford, and no cattle will be taken from the ford for a day and a night after each combat. It will gain him time until help comes from Ulster, and Fergus is surprised the Ulstermen are so long recovering from their pangs. Ailill says it is easier to lose one man a day than a hundred a night.

Etarcomol

Fergus goes to Cúchulainn with the proposal. Etarcomol, son of Eda and Léthrenn, a foster-son of Ailill and Medb, follows him. Fergus would rather he stayed away, for fear of strife, but gives him protection as long as he does not insult Cúchulainn while he is talking.

Cúchulainn is playing buanbach with Laeg when they arrive. Laeg describes a great dark man with a sword as big as a boat's rudder. Cúchulainn says it is a big empty rudder: it is his friend Fergus, and the thing in his scabbard is a stick. He has heard that Ailill caught Fergus off guard when he slept with Medb, stole his sword and gave it to his charioteer, and that a wooden sword was put in the scabbard. He greets Fergus and offers him salmon, wild birds, cress and a drink out of the sand. Fergus says they have not come for food, hears the answer and leaves.

Etarcomol stays staring. He calls Cúchulainn a fine lad for graceful tricks with wooden weapons. Cúchulainn says that for Fergus's sake he will not kill him, or his bowels would be ripped out and his quarters scattered from his chariot to the camp. Etarcomol says he will be the first to come against him tomorrow and goes off. At Methe and Cethe he decides he cannot wait and turns back. Laeg reports the chariot coming with the left chariot-board turned against them, and Cúchulainn says he cannot refuse that.

At the ford Cúchulainn cuts the sod from under Etarcomol's feet so that he falls flat with the sod on his belly, and tells him to go away. Etarcomol says he will have Cúchulainn's head or leave his own. Cúchulainn pokes at his armpits with his sword so that the clothes fall down and the skin is untouched. He shears off his hair as neat as a razor, again leaving the skin unscratched. The stubborn fool persists, and Cúchulainn strikes down through the crown of his head and splits him to the navel.

Fergus sees his chariot passing with one man in it and goes back in fury, saying Cúchulainn has disgraced him and must think his cudgel very short. Cúchulainn answers in verse and stoops humbly while Fergus's chariot circles him three times. Fergus pierces Etarcomol's two heels with a spancelring and drags him behind his chariot to the camp. On rocky ground the halves of the body split apart, and on level ground they join again. Medb calls it brutal treatment for the unfortunate dog. Fergus says he was an ignorant whelp to pick a fight with the Hound of Culann. They dig a grave, plant a memorial stone, write his name in ogam and make his lamentation. Cúchulainn murders no more that night with his sling.

Nadcranntail

Medb says Cúchulainn has no match in Ireland unless Cúroi mac Dáiri comes, or Nadcranntail. One of Cúroi's people in the tent says Cúroi has done enough in sending his men. Maine Andoe goes to Nadcranntail, who will not come unless they give him their daughter Finnabair. Medb says he can have her if he goes against that man there.

Next morning Nadcranntail takes nine spears of holly, charred and sharpened. Cúchulainn is in the distance catching birds. Nadcranntail throws a spear and Cúchulainn toys with its point in mid-air, his bird-catching never faltering, and does the same with the next seven. As the ninth is flung the birds fly off and Cúchulainn speeds after them, stepping from point to point of the flying spears. To everyone it seems he is running away. Nadcranntail says so, and Medb says a true warrior came and a cowardly sprite vanished.

Fiacha mac Fir Febe goes to protest for Fergus and the men of Ulster. Cúchulainn says Nadcranntail carried no real weapons and he does not kill unarmed men. He will wait between the hill Ochaine and the sea.

In the morning Cúchulainn flings a cloak about himself and, without noticing, about a great standing stone as big as himself, so that it settles upright beside him. Nadcranntail comes with his weapons in a wagon and says Cúchulainn seems different from yesterday, and he cannot take a little lamb's head back to the camp or behead a beardless boy. Cúchulainn says that is not him and sends him to look behind the hill. He runs to Laeg and has a false beard made. Nadcranntail says this is more like him, a fight with rules. They agree on thrown spears with no dodging, except upward. Nadcranntail casts and Cúchulainn leaps on high, and the spear strikes the standing stone and shatters in two. Nadcranntail says he has dodged. Cúchulainn says he is free to dodge his the same way, and throws his spear up on high so that it drops into Nadcranntail's skull and pins him into the earth.

Nadcranntail says Cúchulainn is the best warrior in Ireland. He has twenty-four sons in the camp and asks to tell them about the treasure hidden in his head and then come back to be beheaded. Cúchulainn agrees. In the camp they ask for the head of the Warped One and he tells them to wait. He returns and flings his sword at Cúchulainn, who leaps on high, swells with fury as when he faced the boy-troop in Emain, springs onto the rim of Nadcranntail's shield and strikes his head off. He strikes him again through the neck to the navel and Nadcranntail falls in four sections. Cúchulainn chants that Nadcranntail is no more and he could meet a third of Medb's men at this moment.