Donn Cuailnge

Overview

Where he came from

Before he was a bull he was a pig-keeper. Bodb, king of the Munster síd, and Ochall Ochne, king of the síd in Connacht, each kept a pig-keeper, and the two keepers were good friends who could take any shape. When people started saying one had the greater power, each put a spell on the other's pigs until they came home lean and wretched. Both were dismissed. They spent two years as birds of prey, two years as sea creatures devouring each other, then lived as stags, warriors, phantoms and dragons. Last they became two maggots. One got into the spring of the Cronn in Cuailnge, where a cow of Dáire mac Fiachna drank it. The other got into the well Garad in Connacht, where a cow of Medb and Ailill drank it. The text gives names for each stage, and for the bulls Finnbennach Ai and Donn Cuailnge, but never says which keeper became which bull.

He is dark brown, haughty, full of craft, with a curly brow and a thick strong neck. Thirty grown boys could take their place from his rump to his nape. A hero to his herd at morning, he is the beloved of his cows and a prop to husbandmen.

The reason for the war

Medb and Ailill count their property to see who has more, and everything matches except one bull. Finnbennach was a calf of one of Medb's cows, but he refused to be led by a woman and went over to the king's herd. Medb's messenger Mac Roth knows where to find his equal: Donn Cuailnge in Dáire's house. She offers a year's loan for fifty yearling heifers, and if Dáire comes himself, land on the Plain of Aí, a chariot and her friendly thighs. Dáire is so pleased he jumps until the seams of his cushion burst. Then the messengers get drunk and noisy. One says it was good of him to give them what four provinces would be needed to take, and another says they would have taken it anyway. The man in charge of Dáire's household carries this to him, and Dáire swears that nothing leaves his house unless he lets it go. In the morning he refuses to say where the bull is. Medb says he will be taken by force, and the army is called.

In the raid

The Morrígan sits on a standing stone in Temair Chuailnge and chants at him in bird shape, telling him enemies are gathering and that death is coming. He goes to Sliab Cuilinn with his heifers and his herdsman Forgaimen. He throws off the three times fifty boys who play on his back, kills two thirds of them, and tears up a trench in Marcéni. In another version Medb's herdsman Lóthar says he left on the night the Ulstermen fell to their pangs and lies in the Black Cauldron in Glenn Gat. Medb's men ring him with shackles of osier. He takes Lóthar's guts out on his horns, charges the camp and kills fifty heroes, then vanishes. Later Buide mac Báin brings a bull into the camp, with fifteen heifers round him and one herdsman, and the herd is driven over that herdsman, Forgaimen, until the hooves drive him into the earth. During the last battle Medb sends the Brown Bull to Cruachan the long way round, with fifty heifers and eight messengers.

How it ends

The day after the battle he meets Finnbennach at Tarbga. Bricriu is made judge and is trampled to death. The Brown Bull plants a hoof on Finnbennach's horn and holds it there until nightfall. Fergus takes a stick to his flank and calls him a quarrelsome old calf. He jerks his hoof back and breaks his leg, and the other bull's horn flies off to a mountain. They fight through the night and go round all Ireland. In the morning he comes past Cruachan with the mangled Finnbennach on his horns, and Fergus will not let the armies kill him. He heads for home, dropping Finnbennach's shoulderblade, loins and liver at places that are named for them, and dies at Druim Tairb. Ailill and Medb make peace with Ulster.