Ulster

Overview

Ulster is the northern province, Ulaid in the Irish. The text says the province and its people take their name from Curir Ulad. Conchobor is its high king, and Emain Macha is where its men gather. Fergus mac Roich sold him the kingship, and the men of Ulster decided that what Fergus sold would stay sold. They came to worship Conchobor. Every man who married a girl let her sleep the first night with the king, and any man who gave him a bed for the night gave him his wife as well.

Its men all lie down at once. At a fair, Crunniuc boasted that his wife could outrun the king's horses. Macha, heavy with child, was fetched to the race, and she gave birth at the end of the field. As she did, she screamed a curse on everyone who heard her: the pangs of labour for five days and four nights, for nine generations. An Ulsterman in the pangs has no more strength than a woman on the bed of labour. Only the young boys, the women and Cúchulainn go free.

Fergus left Ulster for Connacht over the killing of Noisiu. Before morning Dubthach had massacred the girls of Ulster and Fergus had burned Emain, and three hundred Ulstermen had fallen. The exiles spent sixteen years making sure there was weeping and trembling in Ulster every night. When the Connacht army marches, Medb tells the poet Fedelm that Conchobor is suffering his pangs in Emain with all the Ulster warriors. The men lie prostrate, and Cúchulainn holds the border alone. Fergus sends a warning out of old friendship. Cúchulainn and his father Sualdam watch for the armies at Iraird Cuillenn, and Sualdam goes to Emain to cry the alarm. Nobody answers, since in Ulster no man speaks before Conchobor and Conchobor will not speak before the three druids. The cost is put plainly: for three winter months Cúchulainn kept the raiders out of Murtheimne Plain, and he is pierced in every part bigger than the tip of a rush.

When the pangs end, the men of Ulster come south in companies, and Fergus names them for Ailill as Mac Roth describes them. They rush naked to the last battle with nothing but their weapons. After the peace, they go back to Emain Macha full of their great triumph.