Sliab Fuait

Overview

Sliab Fuait is a mountain, and the road across it is the way into Ulster from the south. The boy Cúchulainn, setting out for Emain, is told by his mother that the way is hard: "Sliab Fuait blocks the way."

The text says plainly what it was used for. Every Ulster warrior took a day of guard duty there. Whoever came that way with poetry was looked after, and anyone else was fought. The result, as the text says, was that everyone was challenged and "no one slipped past to Emain unnoticed." When the boy arrives it is Conall Cernach's day. Conall wishes him victory, and Cúchulainn tells him to go back to the fort and let him keep watch for a while. On the way home with his spoils after his first fight he finds a herd of deer there and catches one alive, which the charioteer says is more than most men could do, then knocks down a flock of swans with stones.

The mountain turns up in older stories too. Conchobor's party chases enchanted birds across it with their chariots, and Cúchulainn, in a fever over Emer, is sent by Conchobor to collect all the herds about it, and comes back to Emain with every pig, wild deer and bird he could find, his anger gone.

During the raid it is the Connacht side that looks out from it. Mac Roth is sent north as far as Sliab Fuait to watch for Ulstermen following, and brings back news of one man in one chariot with silver-grey hair, which has Ailill asking whether it is Conchobor. Later, as Ulster rises, Mac Roth looks out from the Sliab Fuait road and sees the animals streaming out of the forest, then a thick fog with sparks in it. Fergus names one of the arriving warriors as Feradach Finn Fechtnach from the wood at Sliab Fuait.

Cúchulainn is told, before his fight with Ferdia, that Emer is waiting for him at Cairthenn in the Meadow of the Two Oxen at Sliab Fuait. He goes there that night and stays with his wife.

Kinsella notes that by the time the companies advance, in the sequence of episodes, Sliab Fuait has been left far behind.