Murtheimne Plain

Overview

Murtheimne Plain is where Cúchulainn comes from, and everyone in the story knows it. Kinsella's text never fixes it against the rest of the country, but it puts Delga, Focherd, Breslech Mór and Ath Da Ferta in it, and Sualdam's house, Ráith Sualdaim, stands on it.

Cúchulainn is reared here. In the pre-tale he is handed to Amargin and Finnchaem and brought up at Imrith Fort on the plain, and Fergus later tells Medb he grew up in his father's and mother's oaken house on it. When the boy kills Culann's hound he promises to guard the whole plain until a new pup is grown. He keeps to it. Dubthach sees a man coming to guard Murtheimne's herds, and Fedelm's vision of the blond man puts him in the line of Cúchulainn of Murtheimne. When he faces the army at the Cronn he calls on the river to save Murtheimne, and the water rears up to the treetops.

Connacht knows what it is worth. Ailill offers him a piece of Ai Plain as big as the whole of Murtheimne, or his own plain back with twenty-one bondmaids and payment for what has been destroyed. He would have to take service under Ailill for either. Medb tries the same measure on Ferdia, a chariot, harness for a dozen, and land the size of Murtheimne. Neither offer works.

After the search for the bull in Cuib, Cúchulainn turns back toward the plain to defend his beloved home. There he breaks the pact of single combat on Medb's side and the four provinces of Ireland settle down at Breslech Mór, the place of their great carnage. In the Sixfold Slaughter and what follows he kills one hundred and thirty kings, as well as an uncountable horde of dogs, horses, women, boys, children and rabble. Not one man in three of the survivors escapes without a smashed thighbone, head or eye. He leaves without a scratch on himself, his helper or either of his horses.

Sualdam hears the cry of his son from his house on the plain and goes to Emain to say that Cúchulainn kept the armies out of Murtheimne Plain and Crích Rois for three winter months. At the end of the Táin the Brown Bull sets his brow against the hill at Ath Da Ferta on the way home, and the place in Murtheimne is called Etan Tairb, the Bull's Brow.