Scáthach

Overview

The island

Scáthach is a woman of Alba, called the Shadowy One, and she is also a prophetess. Her pupils lodge in a camp, and her fort stands on an island across the Pupils' Bridge, which is low at each end and high in the middle. No sooner does anyone step on one end than the other flies up and throws him on his back. When Cúchulainn crosses it with the warp-spasm and the salmon-leap and breaks her gate with his spear, she says this is someone who has had his full training somewhere.

She sends her daughter Uathach to see who he is and tells her to take him to bed if she wants, and says "I can see he pleases you." When Cúchulainn hurts Uathach's finger overpowering her, Cochar Cruibne, one of Scáthach's soldiers, rushes him. Cúchulainn cuts his head off. Scáthach mourns the soldier. Cúchulainn says he will take on the dead man's deeds and duties and be her champion.

Three promises

Uathach tells him where to find her mother, resting under the big yew tree where she is teaching her sons Cúar and Cat. Cúchulainn gives his salmon-leap up to her, stands with his feet on the two edges of her weapon-chest and puts his sword to her heart. He tells her death is hanging over her. She will give him any three things, the three highest desires of his heart, if he can ask them in one breath. He asks for thoroughness in his training, a dowry for his marriage, and tidings of his future. He gets all three.

Aife

She gives him a sleeping draught and ties him up to keep him out of her war with Aife, in case anything happens to him. It lasts him one hour, where it would last another man twenty-four. He kills three of Aife's soldiers alone. Next morning Aife's three warriors challenge her two sons to the rope of feats and she sighs, not knowing what will come of it. She dreads Aife as the hardest woman warrior in the world. Cúchulainn joins her sons on the cord and kills the three.

When Aife challenges her to single combat, Scáthach tells Cúchulainn what Aife holds dearest: her two horses, her chariot and her charioteer. He uses it. Aife is beaten, and one of her three desires to Cúchulainn is hostages for Scáthach and that Aife never attack her again. Scáthach and her army go home with the hostages.

What she taught

His training is done: the apple-feat, the thunder-feat, the feats of the sword-edge and the sloped shield, the sickle-chariot, the trussing of a warrior on spear-points, and the gae bolga. At parting she chants through the Light of Foresight. She tells him he will be alone, ringed by envy, that cattle will be stolen out of Breg, that a white-horned bull will roar against the brown bull of Cuailnge, that he will be one against an army, and that Medb will fight with Ailill.

Her other pupil

Years on, Emer reminds Cúchulainn of Scáthach's strict warning as he goes down to the boy on the strand, and he kills the boy with the gae bolga, which the text says she taught to no one but him.

On the Táin, Ferbaeth is chosen by Ailill and Medb as their man of strength because he had the same training from Scáthach as Cúchulainn. Cúchulainn begs him by their common foster-nurse not to fight him, and Ferbaeth says he has promised Medb.

Ferdia has been taught by her and by Uathach and Aife. At the ford the two remember what they learned together, Cúchulainn does feats that he learned from no one, not Scáthach, Uathach or Aife, and her name comes up in his laments. When Scáthach cried that Germán Garbglas was coming, her pupils went out to meet him, took Germán alive, and she bound them in a blood pact of friendship. She awarded two shields, one to each. Cúchulainn calls them two foster-sons of Scáthach, and calls her the good foster-mother whose name is most honoured.