Monthly Archives: December 2024

Medb’s Family and Problems in the Timeline of the Ulster Cycle

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I think that Medb’s death might be the last major event in the narrative timeline of the Ulster Cycle.  Her death is the subject of its own story Aided Meidbe “The Violent Death of Medb.”  One of the interesting features of this story is that it seems to cover most of the timespan during which the main events of the Ulster Cycle occur.  It begins with the introduction of Find and his three sons: Conall Anglonnach, Eochaid Airem, and Eochaid Feidlech, who is Medb’s father.  Eochaid Airem is a central figure in the text Tochmarc Étaíne “The Wooing of Étaín,” where he is the mortal husband of Étaín before she is reclaimed by her previous husband, Midir of the Túatha Dé Danann.  Within the chronology of the Ulster Cycle, the earliest period of narrative deals with the enmity between Eochaid Feidlech and Fachtna Fathach, sometimes known as the father of Conchobar mac Nessa, king of Ulster.  The conflict between these two is described most fully in the text Cath Leitrech Ruidhe “The Battle of Leitrech Ruidhe,” during which Fachtna Fathach is killed and Eochaid Feidlech takes his place as high king of Ireland.  In a later battle, the Ulstermen attack Eochaid Feidlech and defeat his forces. He is required to pay éric or compensation to Conchobar for the death of his father.

Part of this compensation involves four of Eochaid Feidlech’s daughters being given to Conchobar: Medb, then Clothra, then Eithne, and finally Mugain, who is Conchobar’s main wife in the Ulster Cycle.  These four marriages are also mentioned in Ferchuitred Medba “Medb’s Selection of Husbands,” which tells us that Mugain was the mother of Conchobar’s son Glasne, Eithne was the mother of his son Furbaide, and Clothra was the mother of his son Cormac Conn Longes, although it is also suggested that Cormac’s mother might actually have been Conchobar’s own mother Ness.  Ferchuitred Medba also describes the sequence of events by which Medb became queen of Connacht and took Ailill as her husband.

Most of the Ulster Cycle tales concern the period during which Conchobar is king of Ulster and Medb and Ailill rule Connacht, and several stories deal with the period after Conchobar’s death.  Medb’s death is one of the last, if not the last, event within the internal chronological sequence of the Ulster Cycle.  Aided Meidbe also describes some of the complex history between Conchobar and Medb’s family as well as some of the details of the lives of Medb’s siblings. It describes how Clothra bore her son Lugaid Ríab nDerg to her three brothers, the Find Emna, who conceived him with her the night before they went to war against their own father and were killed.  According to this text, Clothra had a second son, Furbaide Fer Benn, who was born by caesarean after Medb killed her.  In most other sources, however, Furbaide is named as the son of Eithne rather than Clothra. 

My suggestion that Medb’s death is the last event of the Ulster Cycle is mainly based on the relative chronology.   The story of Medb’s death includes the story of the birth of two of her nephews: Lugaid Ríab nDerg and Furbaide Fer Benn.  Lugaid’s death is not mentioned in this text, but by following the stories of a series of deaths, beginning with his, and the resulting acts of vengeance that follow these deaths, we can determine a rough chronology for several stories.

Lugaid’s death is described in Aided Derbforgaill “The Violent Death of Derbforgaill,” in which he dies of grief upon seeing the mutilated body of his wife Derbforgaill, who had been tortured by the women of Ulster out of jealousy.  The deaths of Derbforgaill and Lugaid are avenged by Cú Chulainn, who traps 150 queens of Ulster in a house and burns it down around them.  Cú Chulainn’s own death takes place in the text Brislech Mór Maige Muirthemne and he is avenged by Conall Cernach, with whom, we are told, he had sworn a pact of mutual vengeance.  Although Conchobar is not present for the action in this text, Ulster is referred to as “Conchobar’s province,” and so I take it that he is still alive and his death takes place after Cú Chulainn’s.

Conall Cernach, we know, outlives most of the other Ulstermen, as does Fergus mac Róich. Both are involved in the conflicts over succession that follow Conchobar’s death and which are described in Bruiden Da Choca “Da Coca’s Hostel” and Cath Airtig “The Battle of Airtech.”  Both were in exile in Connacht following Conchobar’s betrayal of the sons of Uisliu in Longes mac nUislenn “The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu,” and both return to their exiles in Connacht before their deaths. Fergus’ return takes place in Cath Airtig, and his death is described in Aided Fergusa meic Róich “The Violent Death of Fergus mac Róich.”  Ailill’s jealousy over Medb’s ongoing affair with Fergus causes his brother Lugaid Dalléces, who also declares himself to be Fergus’ foster-brother, to kill Fergus while swimming with Medb.  Ailill’s own death and that of Conall Cernach are described in Goire Conaill Chernaig i Crúachain ocus Aided Ailella ocus Conaill Chernaig “The Maintenance of Conall Cernach in Crúachan and the Violent Deaths of Ailill and Conall Cernach.”1 Following the deaths of Conchobar and Cú Chulainn, Conall Cernach finds himself old and infirm and alone, and so decides to go to Ailill and Medb because he thinks they alone have the resources to support him.  They welcome him, and Medb takes him into her household. Ailill, meanwhile, is carrying on an affair behind Medb’s back and she instructs Conall Cernach to kill him, which he is happy to do as vengeance for Fergus. Ailill survives long enough to identify Conall Cernach as his killer, and Conall himself is then also killed. Medb is present for all of these events.

Based on these stories of death and vengeance, we can identify the following order of deaths:

Lugaid Ríab nDerg < Cú Chulainn < Conchobar < Fergus < Ailill < Conall Cernach < Medb

Medb’s death comes about when Furbaide Fer Benn sees her bathing and asks who she is. When he learns her identity, he uses a piece of cheese as a sling-stone to kill her in vengeance for his mother, who, according to Aided Meidbe, was Clothra and had been killed by Medb. 

Since he outlives Medb, we can add Furbaide to the above chronology of deaths:

Lugaid Ríab nDerg < Cú Chulainn < Conchobar < Fergus < Ailill < Conall Cernach < Medb < Furbaide Fer Benn

The problem comes when we take the story of Furbaide’s own death into account. Furbaide’s birth and death are both related in the Dinnshenchas of Carn Furbaide. Here, his mother is Eithne, described as daughter of Eochaid Feidlech and wife of Conchobar mac Nessa. Clothra’s druid tells her that she will be killed by the son of her sister.   At this time, Eithne is traveling to Crúachan from the east (presumably from Emain Macha) in order to give birth. Clothra sends her son Lugaid Ríab nDerg to kill her. He drowns her and cuts Furbaide from her body.  When he is older, Furbaide kills Clothra in order to avenge his mother Eithne, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Clothra’s druid. This stands in contrast to Aided Meidbe, in which he killed Medb in order to avenge his mother Clothra.  Lugaid then kills Furbaide in order to avenge Clothra.  This puts Furbaide’s death before Lugaid’s and makes Furbaide both the first and final death in the chronology above, which is clearly impossible. 

Discrepancies such as which of Eochaid Feidlech’s daughters is Furbaide’s mother and which of his aunts he kills to avenge her death are not uncommon in the Ulster Cycle. Conchobar is said to be the son of the druid Cathbad in some texts and the son of Fachtna Fathach in others.  Some texts give the name of Cú Chulainn’s mother as Deichtine and others Deichtire, and she is sometimes Conchobar’s own daughter, but elsewhere the daughter of Cathbad and sister of Conchobar.  Conall Anglonnach is sometimes named as a son of Eochaid Feidlech and elsewhere as his brother. In Serglige Con Culainn “The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulainn,” Cú Chulainn’s wife is named sometimes Emer, as is common, but sometimes Eithne Ingubai.  The extent to which any of these discrepancies actually affect the overall storyline of the Ulster Cycle varies.  The question of Conchobar’s paternity has more far-reaching implications than, for example, his exact relationship to Deichtine/Deichtire. If Cathbad is his father, then among his half-sisters is Findchóem, mother of Conall Cernach, and in Findchóem Conchobar shares a half-sister with his own eventual killer Cet mac Mágach.  If, on the other hand, Conchobar is the son of Fachtna Fathach, then we have an explanation for his marriages to four of the daughters of Eochaid Feidlech.  There is no one explanation for these variations and discrepancies.  Some have come about due to the complex histories of the texts as we have them. Some may be simply mistakes or come about as a result of scribes trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. Some are likely due to experimentation in the reworkings of familiar materials. The result is an Ulster Cycle corpus that is rich, complex, and quite far from presenting a unified account of its storyline.

It’s probably fair to say that most modern audiences are familiar with the idea of alternate timelines thanks to major movie franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Trek.  This is hardly a new feature of storytelling though, and medieval and ancient narrative systems offer many examples of alternate timelines. In a 2023 article called “Deirdre and the Story-World of the Ulster Cycle,” I explored some of the alternate versions of the story of Deirdre in the Ulster Cycle and compared this with some of the alternate versions of the story of Helen of Troy.  Everyone who is at all familiar with Helen’s story knows the version that involves her being taken to Troy by Paris, which launches the Trojan War.  There is another version of the story though, found in sources like Euripedes’ Helen, in which Helen never actually went to Troy. Instead, an εἴδωλον (eidōlon) or image of Helen was created by Hera and sent in her place.  Even in the versions of the story in which Helen truly does go to Troy, the portrayals of her actions and motivations vary considerably, with her sometimes working with the Trojans against the Greeks and sometimes helping the Greeks against the Trojans.

There is certainly dialogue between these different versions.  According to Plato,2 the poet Stesichorus was blinded for having said that Helen went to Troy, and his sight was restored when he recanted.  Plato states that Stesichorus, unlike Homer, was able to reclaim his sight because he knew the cause of his blinding, whereas Homer did not. Here we find the two versions of Helen’s story contrasted, with Homer’s version, in which she went to Troy, condemned.  Similarly, some of the accounts of Conchobar’s birth in which Fachtna Fathach is his father make reference to claims that Cathbad was his father and declare them false.  Far from posing a problem for storytellers and audiences, these variations seem instead to offer them opportunities. As I wrote in my article: “these variations can strengthen the audience’s attachment to the characters as well as increase their engagement with the story-world.”  Plurality or multiformity or variation are common properties of complex narrative story-worlds, and thinking about these kinds of issues maintains the audience’s interest in the stories and allows them to engage with the different aspects of the stories and versions of the characters in ways that are personal and unique to them.

These kinds of variations are just one of the things that a modern reader of the Ulster Cycle corpus might find challenging and disorienting.  It’s not just about conflicting information in different versions of stories, but also the absence of information.  There is no clear starting point for reading the Ulster Cycle because each text makes reference to and depends on information given in other stories, even if it’s just about who the characters are and how they are related to one another.  Writing about Greek myth, Sarah Iles Johnston has said that “There is no such thing as a Greek mythic character who stands completely on his or her own; he or she is always related to characters from other myths, and the narrators take some pains to tell us that (and, one assumes, to invent such relationships when they need to).”3

There is no text that can “introduce” the Ulster Cycle and its characters, because no text operates independently or is intended as a “beginning.”  It is also true that no story or text is intended to be experienced only once. It is by reading the stories repeatedly in a cyclic fashion rather than once in a linear one that a reader gains the knowledge needed to appreciate and understand the nuances of each individual story.  You still have to start somewhere, of course, and for at least some modern readers I do think that starting with a reasonably linear approach guided by the internal chronology of the main storyline of the Ulster Cycle might work.  If Medb’s death is the end of the narrative timeline of the Ulster Cycle, then Conchobar’s birth is probably the beginning.  These two events, Conchobar’s birth and Medb’s death, seem to bookend the storyline of the Ulster Cycle.  While we have one version of Medb’s death, there are several different stories about Conchobar’s birth. When my next series of blog posts starts in the new year, I will start by discussing some ideas about a reading order for the Ulster Cycle and I will  publish a translation of the story of Conchobar’s birth as preserved in the Yellow Book of Lecan and the Book of Ballymote, since I think this makes an excellent starting point for reading the Ulster Cycle and it is not currently available in English.

This will be my last post for this year. My next series of posts will start some time in February or March, and I’ll begin with a return to the question of the chronology of the Ulster Cycle, especially from the perspective of how to approach developing a reading order.

For anyone who can’t get enough of the Ulster Cycle stories and other wonderful medieval Irish stories, I really recommend the podcast Guth: Reading Irish Myths and Legends with Dr. Emmet Taylor, which is available on Spotify.  This podcast is a chance to hear translations direct from the medieval Irish texts themselves rather than modern retellings of the stories, along with some discussion of current scholarship about the stories.  It is an absolute must for anyone interested in medieval Ireland and Irish myth and literature.

  1. Goire in this title is sometimes translated as “Cherishing,” but the meanings provided by eDIL “attending, caring for, maintaining,” or in a legal sense “care, attendance, maintenance of parents, foster-parents, etc. by a son, etc.” seems more appropriate. [↩]
  2. Phaedrus 243a. I cite the translation of C. Emlyn-Jones and W. Preddy in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Plato’s Lysis, Symposium, Phaedrus (2022). [↩]
  3. 2015. “The Greek Mythic Story World.” Arethusa 48 no. 3 (Fall), 293. [↩]

Version 2 of Aided Chon Roí “The Violent Death of Cú Roí”: A Translation

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A few weeks ago I posted a translation of the Egerton 88 version of Aided Chon Roí “The Violent Death of Cú Roí.” As I pointed out in the introduction to the translation, there are three different versions of this text. The Egerton 88 text is considered to be the oldest and Rudolf Thurneysen dated it to the 8th or 9th century, and so this is called “Version 1.”  This version of the text had only previously been translated into German, and so I wanted to make an English translation of the text available. The third version of the text is the longest version, and the one most people are familiar with. It has been translated into English by R.I. Best (1905) and by Maria Tymoczko (1981) in Two Death Tales from the Ulster Cycle. A translation of this version can also be found in T. P. Cross and C.H. Slover’s Ancient Irish Tales (1936). As far as I can tell though, Version 2 of the text, preserved only in MS Laud Misc. 610 and edited by Kuno Meyer in the 1883-5 volume of Revue Celtique, has never been translated at all.  (Although as CODECS notes certain passages were translated into German in Thurneysen’s edition and translation of the Version 1 Egerton 88 text.)

The second version is sometimes described as a “fragment” of the third version because it seems to contain a subset of that text. I would not consider it a fragment, however, as it does contain a coherent narrative. It begins by explaining why the Ulstermen had to kill Cú Roí and then goes on to explain how they did it. It offers far fewer details than Version 3, but nonetheless offers the full plot of the story.  What the second version mainly does is serve as an introduction to the poem Brinna Ferchertne, which immediately follows it in the manuscript. Brinna Ferchertne itself has been translated several times, and I will link to a translation of it at the end of this post so that readers can go on to read everything that Laud Misc. 610 has to offer about the death of Cú Roí.

What brought the Ulaid to kill Cú Roí?  It is not hard to explain. It was in revenge for violating Cú Chulainn regarding Bláthnait, daughter of Mend or Poll1 mac Fidaig, who was taken at the siege of the men of Falga, and regarding the three red-eared cows of Iuchna or Echde, and regarding the three men of Ochain, that is, three birds that were on the ears of the cows, the red-eared cows, when they used to yield (milk) into the cauldron. For they did not yield without it, that is, the cauldron was before them and until the birds were on their ears singing to them.  For it is the cauldron that used to take the duty of a calf to them. Thirty oxen was the content of that cauldron, and its fullness every time is what was milked from them. From which Cú Chulainn sang:

There was a cauldron in the fort,
calf of three cows.
Thirty oxen in its mouth
was not a burden to it.

They used to visit that cauldron
– it was a pleasant undertaking.
They did not leave him,
until they left him full.

There was much of gold and silver in it
– it was a pleasant find.
I took that cauldron
with the daughter of the king.

Cú Roí said to the woman, when he saw the Ulaid in the morning coming towards his fortress to him through the mist of the morning: “Isn’t that a host?”

“It is not a host,” said the woman, “but herds of cattle.”

From which Cú Roí sang:

If they are herds, and so that they are herds, 
they are not herds of thin cows.     
There is a little man who carries a sharp blade
on the back of every single cow.

Then she urged sleep upon him, so that at that time she poured the milk of the red-eared cows into the stream, for that was the signal that she made to Cú Chulainn. That is, when the fortress was open and the man slept, she would pour the milk of the red-eared cows into the stream. It was done thus.  From this is Findglais named.

The Ulaid went and they killed Cú Roí in his bonds after he was bound by her, and they burned the fortress.  From which a certain seer said:

Who is the youth who kindles
at the side of the fortress of Cú Roí?     
If the son of Dáre were alive,
he would not burn together along with it.

From Samain until the middle of Spring, the slaughtering of the Ulaid increased, and a third on each side of the host was lost.

(The poem Brinna Ferchertne follows here. I link directly to the translation of Kuno Meyer on the CELT (Corpus of Electronic Texts) website.)

When I started this blog a few months ago, I hadn’t really intended to spend so much time on Aided Chon Roí, but I found there was so much to say that I didn’t want to move on.  There is still so much more to say, but I am now going to move on to some other things.  One of the things I love about the Ulster Cycle is that we do have these alternate versions of stories or specific events, and sometimes they contradict each other in very interesting ways. In my next post, I’ll be looking at some stories involving Medb and her extended family (her siblings and nephews) and how there are some alternate narrative timelines in play that are entirely incompatible.

  1. In Version 1, Bláithine is Conchobar’s daughter, and in Version 3 and in the Dinnshenchas of Finnglais, Bláthnait is the daughter of Mend, whose patronymic is not provided. In a note on his edition and translation of Version 3, Best points out that in the Book of Lecan version of the Dinnshenchas of Finnglais, Bláthnait’s father is named as Midir. It is not clear who Poll is or where the confusion about Bláthnait’s paternity comes from. [↩]

Cú Roí Tricked into Revealing the Secret of His External Soul

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Cú Roí appears throughout the Ulster Cycle as a fearsome warrior with supernatural powers. He is one of the few who is a match for Cú Chulainn, and in Version 3 of Aided Chon Roí he not only defeats him but humiliates him by driving him into the ground up to his armpits, cutting off his hair, and rubbing dung on his head.  In Version 1 of Aided Chon Roí, we are told that he is also essentially invincible because his soul is hidden in a golden apple that is itself hidden in a salmon that only appears every seven years. To kill Cú Roí, the apple must be cut with Cú Roí’s own sword.  Cú Roí has even further protection because this knowledge is a secret known only to him – at least until he reveals it to his wife Bláithine.

Cú Roí is not the only nearly invincible warrior in medieval Irish literature. Cú Chulainn himself is normally almost impossible to defeat due to his semi-divine and supernatural nature.  When he is finally killed, it is after he is weakened by being tricked into breaking his gessi, and killing him requires a special spear that is made over the course of seven years by working on it only one day each year.  In fact, Cú Roí is one of only a few warriors to ever present Cú Chulainn with a real challenge.  Among the others are Loch mac Mo Femis, whom the Morrígan herself identifies as the warrior who is Cú Chulainn’s equal in every way, and Cú Chulainn’s own beloved foster-brother Fer Diad. Against these two, Cú Chulainn is forced to resort to his special weapon the gae bolga. Fer Diad and Loch gain their near invulnerability as a result of having a horn-skin, a skin that cannot be penetrated by any weapon.  They are not the only warriors to have this particular defense.

In Aided Cheltchair maic Uthechair “The Violent Death of Celtchar son of Uthechar” we meet Conganchnes son of Dedad, whose name is a compound of congna “horn, antler” and cnes “skin.” Conganchnes is identified as Cú Roí’s brother, although based on his name he might also be Cú Roí’s uncle, since Cú Roí is named in this text as Cú Roí son of Daire son of Dedad.  Conganchnes is laying waste to Ulster in order to avenge Cú Roí, and we are told that “Spears and swords did not affect him but glanced off him as from horn.”  Celtchar is given the task of getting rid of Conganchnes, and he employs his daughter Níab to find out how this can be accomplished.  Níab is given to Conganchnes so that she can trick him into revealing how he can be killed.  Conganchnes tells her: “Put spits of red-hot iron in my soles and through my shin-bones.”  Níab passes this information along to Celtchar and tells him also to put a sleep-spell on Conganchnes and to bring a great host with him. This is done and Conganchnes is killed.

Níab’s role here is essential in defeating Conganchnes, and it is significant that she didn’t just learn his secret, she tricked him into revealing it himself.  Bláithine plays the same role in Cú Roí’s story. In a previous post on Cú Roí’s hidden soul, I talked about the Motif-Indexes as useful tools to help find parallels for particular stories, and I pointed out that we have here an example of motif K975 “Secret of Strength Treacherously Discovered.”  There are a few other related motifs that could be considered here, including K778 “Capture Through the Wiles of a Woman” and K2213.4.1 “Secret of Vulnerability Disclosed by Hero’s Wife,” but in Cross’ Motif-Index of Medieval Irish Literature there are only references to the stories of Cú Roí and Conganchnes.  Although not an Irish story, Cross’ Motif-Index does also contain a reference to a discussion of the story of Lleu Llaw Gyffes in the medieval Welsh Mabinogi.

In Math uab Mathonwy “Math son of Mathonwy,” the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi,Lleu is cursed by his mother Aranrhod to never receive a name or weapons unless she is the one to give them to him, and finally to “never have a wife from the race that is on this earth at present.”1 Lleu’s uncle Gwydion tricks his sister into naming and arming her son, but the problem of the wife is slightly more complex. Gwydion and his own uncle Math are both powerful sorcerers, and together they make Blodeuedd out of plants.  As a woman not of any race on earth, she can be Lleu’s wife.  Lleu is then given land to rule. When Lleu leaves Blodeuedd alone for a time, she encounters Gronw Pebr and falls in love with him. The two conspire to kill Lleu, but first must determine how he can be killed.  Blodeuedd pretends that she is concerned that Lleu will be killed, and to reassure her Lleu tells her that he is very difficult to kill indeed. We find here a parallel for the statement in Version 1 of Aided Chon Roí that Cú Roí told Bláithine the secret of his external soul “through his sincerity in order to comfort her distress.” Blodeuedd eventually persuades Lleu to tell her the full details of what would be involved in killing him.  Lleu, “gladly,” tells her the following:

“It is not easy to kill me with a blow. You would have to spend a year making the spear that would strike me, working on it only when people were at Mass on Sunday. … I cannot be killed indoors,’” he said, “nor out of doors; I cannot be killed on horseback, nor on foot.” (60)

Blodeuedd is still not satisfied and asks Lleu how exactly he can be killed, given these conditions. Lleu explains how it can be done.

“By making a bath for me on a riverbank, and constructing an arched roof above the tub, and then thatching that well and watertight. And bringing a billy-goat,” he said, “and standing it beside the tub; and I place one foot on the back of the billy-goat and the other on the edge of the tub. Whoever should strike me in that position would bring about my death.” (60)

Blodeuedd, quite rightly, points out that this would be an extremely easy position to avoid, but once the special spear has been prepared, she asks Lleu to demonstrate this position to her, and he agrees.  Once the appropriate staging has been set up, Lleu gets himself into this very difficult position and Gronw launches the spear at him.  In spite of all this preparation, Lleu manages to escape by transforming himself into an eagle and, with the help of his uncle Gwydion, he is eventually able to take vengeance against Gronw and Blodeuedd.

The most famous story of this type is certainly the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah. Samson has extraordinary strength and is in love with Delilah. His enemies, the Philistines, pay Delilah to discover the source of his strength so that he can be weakened, subdued, and captured. She asks him to tell her the secret to his strength three times. First, he tells her that he should be tied up with fresh bowstrings that have not dried, then he says that he should be tied up with new, unused ropes, and finally he tells her that his hair should be braided into a loom.  Each of these things is done, but when he is attacked, he is clearly unweakened and he is able to defeat his attackers and escape any harm.  Delilah confronts him each time, calling him a liar. After the third time, she accuses him of lying about loving her and continues to demand the truth. Finally, he tells her that if his head is shaved, then he will lose his strength. This is done and Samson is weakened and captured. Delilah receives her payment, and no further mention is made of her. Samson’s hair begins to grow back while he is imprisoned and, having regained some of his strength, he is able to pull down a temple, killing himself along with everyone else inside it.  Unlike Cú Roí, Conganchnes, and Lleu, Samson clearly knew that Delilah was revealing his secrets to his enemies and can hardly have been surprised when she did it for the fourth time when he had finally told her the truth about the source of his strength.

These stories are often framed as the betrayal of a secret, but is there really any betrayal involved?  Delilah was paid to learn Samson’s secret and he gave it to her freely, knowing the consequence.  Níab was sent by her father to learn the weakness of a man who was slaughtering her people. She certainly owed no loyalty to Conganchnes.  Blodeuedd, as Lleu’s wife, can certainly be said to have owed him her loyalty, but I can only feel sorry for her.  Created for the sole purpose of being Lleu’s wife, she had no experience at all of the world or of other people or even of herself as a living person before being given to him.  She was likely only minutes old!  It is not hard to imagine her learning of human experiences by watching the other people in Lleu’s court, witnessing the lives and loves of the servants and others around her, wondering what her own life might have been like had she been born a human woman instead of created out of plants only to belong to Lleu, who may have seemed more like her jailer than her husband.  And then one day, while Lleu is gone, Gronw Pebr arrives and for the first time she experiences all the excitement of first love and sees a chance to live for herself, if only for a time. Unable to put herself back in her prison once she has had a taste of freedom, she makes the terrible decision to kill her husband. Clearly, she should have just run off with Gronw and not plotted her husband’s murder, but this is a story about Lleu, not Blodeuedd, and so the focus must remain fully on him.  For a medieval audience, Blodeuedd’s betrayal is probably quite clear and unforgivable, but for modern readers I suspect it is far less so.

What of Bláithine?  What loyalty did she owe to Cú Roí?  It is only in this account of Cú Roí’s death that Bláithine learns and reveals the hidden secret of his invincibility, but in every version of the story, Bláithine, elsewhere called Bláthnait, helps Cú Chulainn and the Ulstermen to kill Cú Roí. In the longest version of Aided Chon Roí (Version 3), Bláthnait, along with the cows, three birds, and the cauldron, is taken by Cú Roí after the siege of the Men of Fálga2 because he did not receive his fair share of the prizes taken during that raid.  In this text, Cú Chulainn is said to have loved Bláthnait even before she was taken during the siege.  It is not clear whether Bláthnait returned Cú Chulainn’s affections, but once he contacted her at Cú Roí’s fort, she willingly conspired with him.  In Brinna Ferchertne “Ferchertne’s Dream-Vision,” however, Cú Roí is said to have taken Bláthnait from Cú Chulainn, who then spent a year in silence searching for her until he finally discovered her whereabouts and realized that it was Cú Roí who had taken her.  In this version of the story, it seems fair to say that Bláthnait’s loyalty was to Cú Chulainn, from whom she was taken against her will.  In all the other accounts of Cú Roí’s death, Bláthnait participates in her own rescue by binding Cú Roí to a bed with his own hair and then pouring milk into the river so that it runs white as a signal to Cú Chulainn that it is safe to attack. She also steals Cú Roí’s sword and throws it out the window to Cú Chulainn so that it can be used against him.

Version 1 of the story offers a different view of these relationships, however, and a different motivation for Bláithine to act against Cú Roí.  In Version 1 of the story, Bláithine is taken by Echde Echbél but declares that she loves Cú Roí.3 Cú Roí retrieves her from Echde, but when the Ulstermen refuse to give her to him as promised, he is forced to take her for himself. There is no suggestion of a love triangle with Cú Chulainn here, and Bláithine’s loyalty should be with her husband, whom she seems to have chosen for herself.  What persuades her to act against him is Cú Chulainn telling her about “his doings for the sake of the Ulstermen and her father, in order that she would betray the man.”  Cú Roí frequently opposes the Ulstermen, and Cú Chulainn appeals to Bláithine’s loyalty to her father and to her people, persuading her to work against their enemy, although he is also her husband. Bláithine’s conflicting loyalties and the tension between her love for her husband and her duty to her father give her story far more depth than motifs about treachery, unfaithful wives, and the wiles of women might suggest.

My next post will be the last in this series about Aided Chon Roí. Since, as far as I can tell, no translation of Version 2 of Aided Chon Roí has ever been published, I will provide one with minimal commentary.

  1. Davies, Sioned, trans. 2007. The Mabinogion. 58. [↩]
  2. The story of this siege appears in the short text Forfess Fer Fálgae “The siege of the men of Fálga,” an old and difficult text. I am not aware of any published translation of it. [↩]
  3. In my translation of this text, which follows Thurneysen’s edition of the text, it is instead Cú Roí who declares his love for Bláithine.  I discuss the question of the correct reading of this passage in an addendum to my translation.  Ultimately, I believe that the correct reading is that Bláithine declares her love for Cú Roí, and not the other way around. [↩]

An Addendum to My Translation of Version 1 of Aided Chon Roí

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While reading P.L. Henry’s 1995 edition and translation of Amrae Chon Roí, I noticed that in a footnote (180 n. 7) he suggests a different reading of a passage from Version 1 of Aided Chon Roí.  The passage in question is close to the beginning of the text and it has a significant impact on our understanding of the relationship between Bláithine and Cú Roí.

Thurneysen gives the following reading of the passage:

Con·diacht (?) Bláithine ingin Conchobuir, conda·bert dia daim.  Nos·car si ind ammait ⁊ in corrguinech Cú Roí mac Dáire.

He translated this passage into German as follows:

Er verlangte Blathine, Conchobar’s Tochter, und führte sie mit ihrem Willen weg. (Doch?) liebte sie der Hexenmeister und Zauberer Cú Roí, Dare’s Sohn.

I translated this passage into English as:

He asked for Bláithine daughter of Conchobar, and he brought her away by her consent. The witch and sorcerer Cú Roí son of Dáre loved her.

(The “he” in question here is Echde Echbél, who came to Emain Macha and asked that Bláithine be given to him.)

Henry, however, offers the following reading of these lines:

Con[d]ieth Blaithini, ingen Conchobuir. Con·epert dia daim: “Noch carus-[s]a in [n-] ammait ocus in corrguine[ch] Con Roi…”

He gives the following as a translation:

He brought away B., C.’s daughter. She said of her own accord: “But I have loved the wizard and sorcerer Cú Roí…”

The sense of the first few words remains the same – that Echde Echbél took Bláithine, Conchobar’s daughter, away from Emain Macha. In the next sentence, however, Bláithine either goes with Echde of her own free will, although Cú Roí loved her, OR Bláithine declares of her own free will her love for Cú Roí.  This offers two very different perspectives on Bláithine’s relationships with Echde Echbél and with Cú Roí.  So which is the correct reading?

R.I. Best produced the following transcription of the passage, in which he attempted to reproduce the text as it occurs in the manuscript without editorial interference:

conieth blaithine .ī. ɔcħ ɔdept̅ diadhaimh nō̇ carusa inamuψ ⁊ in corrguine ɔruio m̅ daire.

We are very fortunate that so many medieval Irish manuscripts are now digitized and freely available to view online.  This text is found only in one manuscript, Egerton 88, where this passage occurs starting at the end of the second line in the first column of folio 10r.  Looking at the manuscript, I have very little to add to Best’s transcription.  He has used <h> in conieth, blaithine, and dhaimh where the manuscript uses the punctum delens (a dot above a letter), but that is an unambiguous symbol – an <ṁ> indicates a lenited m, pronounced something like English v, and the standard transcription for this is <mh>. 

The first verb form in the manuscript is conieth.  Thurneysen and Henry both insert a <d>.  Thurneysen emends this to con·diacht and reads it as a form of con-dïeig “asks, seeks, demands.”  Henry instead reads it as con·dieth and translates it as “brought away.” I am not certain which verb he had in mind here.

There are certainly forms of con·dïeig that show assimilation of the d to the preceding n, so things like condaigi and connaigi both exist, and the nn can be also simplified to a single n in forms like conatig and conaitech.  Thurneysen’s reading here seems reasonable, although I do wonder if conieth could be a form of the verb con·éitet “goes with, accompanies, yields to.”

Regardless of the exact verb, the sense of the passage is clear. Bláithine is given to Echde and goes with him.

The next sentence or clause begins with a verb that Thurneysen takes as conda·bert and Henry as con·epert.  Both start with co “so that, until” with following nasalization.  Thurneysen gives the feminine infixed pronoun da next, and this is the object of the following verb, which is a form of the verb beirid “brings, carries, takes, etc.” Thus: “he brought her.”  Given this reading, the following words dia daim “by her consent/assent/will” suggest that Echde took Bláithine and Bláithine was willing and agreed to this.

Henry instead reads the verb as epert, a form of the verb as·beir “speaks, says,” thus “she said of her own accord.” He takes the remainder of the sentence as direct speech, and it consists of Bláithine’s freely given declaration of her love for Cú Roí. 

The manuscript here has ɔdept̅. The use of ɔ for con is standard, and the line over the t indicates the need to expand the word. Both Thurneysen and Henry expand –er– here.  The question then is the –dep-.  The use of p for b in Thurneysen’s reading is not a problem here, as this is not unusual and occurs again just a few lines after this, where the form as·mberar appears as amp̅ar, with the line over the p expanded as -er- again.  For Thurneysen’s reading to be correct, we must take the e as an a.  For Henry’s reading to be correct, we must explain the d.  Henry ignores it, but one possibility is that it is a third singular neuter infixed pronoun.  We might then translate cond·epert as “so that she said it.” Neuter infixed pronouns are often “fossilized,” however, meaning that they are present but no longer have any force or meaning and are best simply ignored in translation.

The following words can help with the determination of which of these two options is best.  First the manuscript has nō̇, which Henry expands as noch “but, however, and yet” and Thurneysen as nos:  the preverb no, used with imperfect verbs, and the feminine infixed pronoun s, indicating that “her,” Bláithine, is the object of the following verb.  That verb is presented in the manuscript as carusa. Taken as is, we have caru, the first singular present indicative active of the verb caraid “to love,” with -sa the first singular emphasizing pronoun agreeing with the subject of the verb. This is how Henry reads this verb, and since a first person verb indicates direct speech, epert is a good reading for the preceding verb. Thurneysen instead emends carusa to car si, with car the preterite and perfect (or past tense) third singular of the verb and si the third singular feminine form of the emphasizing pronoun, here agreeing with the object of the verb. My inclination is to take the manuscript at face value, especially where the reading is so clear. 

The crucial question, of course, is who is the subject of the verb “to love” and who is the object?  Thurneysen takes Cú Roí as the subject and Bláithine as the object: Cú Roí loves Bláithine.  Henry instead takes Bláithine as the subject (and speaker) and Cú Roí as the object: Bláithine loves Cú Roí.  On this point, the manuscript is entirely clear: ɔruio must be read conruio, or Con Ruí, not Cú Roí. Cú is the nominative form, used to indicate subject, and Con is the accusative, used to indicate object. Con Roí cannot be the subject of the verb, and therefore this passage is telling us that Bláithine loved Cú Roí, and not the other way around. Of course, given that he twice pursued her, first to reclaim her from Echde Echbél and then to claim her from the Ulaid when they reneged on their promise to give her to him, it is safe to say that the feeling was mutual.

We could therefore translate the passage as follows:

He asked for Bláithine, daughter of Conchobar, and she said it of her own accord: “However, I love the sorcerer and magician Cú Roí.”

I do find it slightly strange that Bláithine is described as speaking with her own assent though.  Here the manuscript again offers an alternative.  Both Thurneysen and Henry emended the manuscript reading from dia dhaimh to dia daim.  The difference between mh and m is merely a spelling variation. The difference between dh and d, however, is a grammatical one. In dia we have a form of the preposition de, di “from, etc.” with a possessive pronoun. If that pronoun is feminine, then we have “from her, by her” and dia daim is the correct reading. If, however, that pronoun is masculine, then we have “from his” and we would expect lenition on the following consonant: dia dhaim. Given that this is what the manuscript has, we might be better off reading this as “from his assent” or “according to his will.”  We might then translate this passage as:

He asked for Bláithine, daughter of Conchobar, and she said (it): “According to his will. However, however I love the sorcerer and magician Cú Roí.”

That is, she will follow Echde’s will, but she loves Cú Roí.  In the manuscript there are no quotation marks, and so it is for the editor to determine where the direct speech begins here. I do also think that if conieth is a form of con-éitet, then the following is also possible:

Bláithine, daughter of Conchobar, yielded (to him), and she said (it): “According to his will. However, I love the sorcerer and magician Cú Roí.”

In other versions of the text, Bláithine, elsewhere called Bláthnait, loves Cú Chulainn rather than Cú Roí, and he loves her in return – this is what drives her to help Cú Chulainn to kill Cú Roí. In this version, however, she does love Cú Roí, and Cú Chulainn gains her assistance by appealing to her loyalty to her father and to her people. This is only one sentence, but it is crucial to the plot and offers another significant difference between this story and other versions of Aided Chon Roí.