Tailtiu

Overview

Tailtiu is a place the armies come to on their march after the marrow bath at Smirommair. Kinsella lists it as Teltown. The text does not say how far it lies from the other camps, and Kinsella's note on Mag Clochair says that that plain is much further north than Tailtiu and that the oddity is down to the switching of versions.

Three times fifty of Ulster's charioteers attack the armies as they move toward Tailtiu. They kill three times their own number and are all killed. Roi Arad, the Battlefield of the Charioteer, is the name of the place, because a charioteer and his company fell there on the Táin Bó Cuailnge.

Then the armies see a great stone hurtling toward them one evening from the east and another from the west. The two meet in the air and fall over the camps of Fergus and Ailill. It goes on until the same hour the next day, while the armies sit with their shields over their heads and the plain fills with stones. This is where Mag Clochair, the Stony Plain, gets its name. The two throwers are Cúroi mac Dáiri, who had come to help his own people and stopped at Cotail, and Munremur mac Gerrcinn, who came from Emain Macha to help Cúchulainn and stopped opposite him at Ard Roich. Cúroi knew there was nobody in the armies who could stand against Munremur. The armies ask them to stop, and they make a pact. Cúroi goes home and Munremur goes back to Emain Macha, and Munremur does not come again until the day of the Battle.

Kinsella's notes print another version, which he left out of the main text. There Tailtiu itself is the scene. Amargin has a vision in the land of Tailtiu, starts up out of his dream, and none dares show his face against him there. Cúroi comes with his army to fight Cúchulainn, but thinks it dishonourable to attack a worn and wounded man with an army, so he and Amargin pelt each other and the stones meet in the air. Cúroi asks Amargin to leave off the Táin at Tailtiu. He does, and Cúroi promises not to march with the armies. But Cúroi follows them anyway, and Amargin turns his left board toward Tailtiu and Ráith Airthir and begins casting at them again. This is the third uncountable thing on the Táin, the number of his dead. His son Conall Cernach stays and supplies him with stones and javelins.

When Conchobor rises from his pangs and sends Finnchad to summon the chieftains of Ulster, one of them is Ailill son of Amargin from Tailtiu.