(In this post, I continue to link directly to the CODECS page for the texts that I discuss. Full bibliographical information for different editions and translations as well as other sources mentioned can be found there, along with direct links to online editions and translations, where available. Discussions of any particular Old/Middle Irish words will link directly to eDIL, the online edition of the Dictionary of the Irish Language.)

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Medb, Queen of Connacht, is one of the most famous and important characters in the Ulster Cycle.  Her extended family is also very important, although not quite so famous. Her father is Eochaid Feidlech, brother of the Eochaid Airem who marries Étaíne in Tochmarc Étaíne “The Wooing of Étaine.” She also has numerous siblings, although some are mentioned more often than others. The three Find Emna, Eithne, and Clothra are fairly well-known because they and their children play important roles in other stories, but additional siblings are sometimes mentioned, including in the text known both as Ferchuitred Medba “The Husband Portion of Medb”¹ and Cath Boinde “The Battle of the Boyne.”  Cath Boinde was edited and translated in 1906 by Joseph O’Neill. Ferchuitred Medba was edited in 1913 by Kuno Meyer, but not translated.

The story starts with Eochaid Feidlech taking the kingship of Ireland. There is some discussion of his ancestry, and then his children are listed. First, we are told that he has four sons.  The three Find Emna (who seem to be triplets) are named first, and we are given a brief summary of how they conceived Lugaid Ríab nDerg (Lugaid of the Red Stripes) with their sister the night before they attacked their father in the battle of Druim Criaid, during which they were killed by him.  Which sister is not specified, but Clothra is named in other accounts of Lugaid’s conception. The fourth brother is Conall Anglonnach, and we are told that he is the ancestor of the Uí Conaill in the land of Fer Brega.  The text then says that Eochaid Feidlech had many children and goes on to list six daughters. First is Ele, after whom Bríg Ele in Leinster is named.  We are told of her marriages and her son Máta mac Sraibgend and grandson Ailill mac Máta.  Mugain is listed next as wife of Conchobar and mother of Glasne mac Conchobar.  Next Eithne is described as wife of Conchobar and mother of Furbaide mac Conchobar. The story of Furbaide’s birth is told, including how Eithne drowned and Glas Berramain was renamed for her.  Clothra is next, and we are told that she is mother of Cormac Conn Longes, unless Ness, mother of Conchobar is.  Conchobar is not mentioned here, but we know that Cormac is his son.  The fifth sister is Derbriu “after whom are named the pigs of Derblinne.” Finally, Medb is named and identified as another wife of Conchobar, and we are told how she left him because of pride and went to Tara to join the king, her father.

Each of the siblings is associated with their husbands, children, and/or descendants, except for Derbriu.  The main point of this passage is to point out that four of Eochaid Feidlech’s six daughters were given to Conchobar in marriage, and the story goes on to explain why: Eochaid Feidlech killed Conchobar’s father Fachtna Fathach in battle and gave his daughters to Conchobar as restitution.  Ele and Derbriu alone are not given to Conchobar, but Ele was married twice, and her story is still important for this text because she is the grandmother of Ailill, who is Medb’s final husband.  Derbriu alone is introduced in a way that is disconnected from concerns about family and genealogy and from the main narrative of the text. 

Also, what is the story behind the pigs of Derblinne being named after Derbriu? 

I didn’t know anything about it when I first came across this reference, and finding the answer was quite interesting, so I thought I would share what I learned.  Of course I went straight to Google to find out about these pigs, and once I had convinced Google that I was indeed searching for “pigs of Derblinne” and NOT “pigs of Dublin,” as it seemed convinced I intended, I didn’t find much at all.  I was reading Kuno Meyer’s edition of Ferchuitred Medba at the time, but had I instead been reading Joseph O’Neill’s edition and translation of the Cath Boinde version of the text, I might have done a bit better. For one thing, that text refers to the “pigs of Deirbriu” rather than the “pigs of Derblinne,” which gets more hits on Google, but more importantly O’Neill provides the following explanatory note about these pigs and Deirbriu herself:

“For these pigs, see LL. 165 a 35, 167 a 30, Rennes Dind., p. 47 (Stokes’ Ed.). They were the sons of Oengus mac Ind Óc, and the foster-children of Deirbriu. They seem to be connected with the fairy pigs (of the Firbolg?) which came out of Croghan, and which no one could count. The Manners and Customs of Hy Fiachra, p. 26, contain verses ascribed to Torna Eigeas, and addressed to the great red pillar-stone at Roilig-na-riog, stating that under it lie the three sons of Eochaid, and their sister ‘Derbriu Dreac-maith’.” (177nf)

By “The Manners and Customs of Hy Fiachra,” O’Neill seems to mean the text from the
Book of Lecan edited and translated by John O’Donovan in The Genealogies, Tribes, and Customs of Hy-Fiachrach, Commonly Called O’Dowda’s Country (1844).² There, on p. 27 and 29 (Irish text p. 26 and 28) can be found the following verses, as translated by O’Donovan:

The three sons of Eochaidh Feidhleach, the fair,
Are in thy mound, as I boast,
As also is Eochaidh Aireamh feeble,
Having been slain by the great Maol.

The prince Eochaidh Feidhleach is
Beneath thee, and Derbhre of goodly aspect,
And Clothra, no small honour to thee,
And Meadhbh, and Muireasg.

O’Donovan identifies this Muireasg as “daughter of Hugony Mor, monarch of Ireland. A.M. 3619,”³ but given the placement of this name at the end two quatrains about the family of Eochaid Feidlech, I do wonder if this might instead be connected to Ailill or his mother Máta Muiresc.  While Ferchuitred Medba says that Ailill has a patronym and his father is Máta mac Sraibgend, other texts disagree. Goire Conaill Chernaig i Crúachain ocus Aided Ailella ocus Conaill Chernaig states that Ailill has a matronym and his mother was Máta Muiresc. Interesting as these verses are though, they say nothing of Derbriu’s pigs.

To answer the question of “what (or who) are the pigs of Derblinne?” we must turn to the dindshenchas.  The Dindshenchas Érenn “Dindshenchas of Ireland” is a very large and complex corpus consisting of different collections of both prose and verse (or metrical) items. Each item or “article” is a story explaining how a different place received its name and is called the Dindshenchas of that place, i.e. the Dindshenchas of Emain Macha explains how Emain Macha got its name. Some articles also contain information about what the place was named before, and some offer different stories about the current place name. The relationship between the different collections is complex, to say the least.  Charles Bowen’s article “A historical inventory of the Dindshenchas” has been a significant and very helpful piece of scholarship since its publication in 1975/6, but we now have the wonderful new book Dindshenchas Érenn (2023) by Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, which I cannot recommend enough.  A full study of all the references to the pigs of Derblinne in all the different versions of the dindshenchas would be fascinating, because there are certainly some differences between the prose and metrical passages that refer to them. For the moment though, I will mostly refer to the prose Rennes dindshenchas, which was edited and translated by Whitley Stokes in 1895 and 1896.  This collection is called the Rennes dindshenchas because the manuscript in which it is found is in a library in Rennes.

The main story is found in the Dindshenchas of Duma Selga (#71 p. 471 in Stokes’ edition).  It tells us that Derbrenn (a different form of the name Derbriu) was the first love of Óengus, of Aislinge Óenguso “The Dream of Óengus” fame.  Óengus is a prominent member of the Túatha Dé Danann, the son of the Dagda and Boand, and in Aislinge Óenguso he requires Medb’s help in winning another woman, Cáer Iboromeith. There is no mention of Derbriu in that text. The Dindshenchas of Duma Selga says that the pigs were Derbrenn’s foster children. Their mother was Dalb Garb “Dalb the Rough” and she put a spell on her three sons and their wives to transform them into pigs. Her motivation for doing this is not stated.  The sons were called Conn, Find, and Fland when they were human, and their wives were called Mel, Tregh, and Tréis. When they were transformed into pigs, the men were called Froechán, Banbán, and Brogarbán and the women were called Cráinchrín, Coelchéis, and Treilech.  Óengus arranged for the pigs to be put into the care of Buchet, the hospitaller of Leinster, who is the subject of the story Esnada Tige Buchet “The Songs of Buchet’s House.”  The pigs remained with Buchet for a year, but then Buchet’s wife decided that she wanted to eat Brogarbán.  She gathered dogs and warriors and went to hunt him, but the pigs escaped and fled to Óengus at the Brugh (na Bóinne), known to be his home in other stories, including Tochmarc Étaine and Aislinge Óenguso.

Óengus tells the pigs that he cannot help them until they have “shaken the Tree of Tarbga and eaten the salmon of Inver Umaill,” and so they go on to Derbrenn in Glascarn and hide with her for a year. They shake the Tree of Tarbga, but when they go to Inver Umail they are hunted again. This time it is not Buchet’s wife who comes after them though, it is Medb.  During the hunt all the pigs are killed except for Brogarbán. It’s not clear what happens to him. It’s possible that Medb hunting these pigs is why O’Neill suggested the connection with the pigs of the Cave of Crúachan (Croghan), which she also hunts.  In the account of that hunt in Cath Maige Mucrama “The Battle of Mag Mucrama” though, there is no suggestion that these are the same pigs and they are very specifically uncountable, whereas there are definitely six of the pigs of Derblinne.  The Dindshenchas of Mag Mucrama (#71, p. 470), which tells the same story also does not connect the pigs at Mag Mucrama to the pigs of Derblinne.

There are a few other references to these pigs in the dindshenchas.  The Dindshenchas of Loch Néill (#73, p. 473) is about Niall son of Enna Aignech who was the leader of brigands in the time of Conall Cromderg. He went hunting the pigs of Drebrenn (yet another spelling!), which are said to have come out of the síd of Collomair. He eventually found them in the forest of Tarbga (trying to shake a tree, no doubt). The pigs were then hunted until they came to a lake where Niall and his dogs drowned, thus the lake received the name Loch Néill.   The version given in the metrical dindshenchas is a bit more exciting and makes more direct reference to Drebrenn’s involvement here. In Gwynn’s translation:

Drebrenn out of her evil heart sent
a baneful drove in the shapes of red swine:
from Collomair — a noisy strife —
the hoary-bristled drove held its way.

The pigs later go on to eat the mast of the oakwood of Tarbga before moving on to drink from the lake. Here it seems that Drebrenn deliberately sent the pigs out to destroy Niall (Nel, in this version).

The Dindshenchas of Mag Corainn (# 77, p. 477) says that Corann was the harper of Dían Cecht, son of the Dagda, and that Corann or Mag Corainn was named for him, but it also says that the place was named Céis Coroinn after Coelchéis, the fifth of Drebrenn’s swine, who reached that place when they were being hunted and died there. The Edinburgh dindshenchas, which combines prose with poetry, links the two stories though, saying again that Corann was Dían Cecht’s harper, but also that “out of his harp he summoned Caelcheis, one of the swine of Drebrenn. Northwards it ran with (all) their strength of running, their hounds following them as far as Céis Coraind.” 

Finally, there is the interesting case of the Dindshenchas of Belach Conglais (# 35, p. 421), in which Glas, master of the hounds to Eterscél and his son, Conaire Mór, hunts a wild pig.  Glas, his hounds, and the pig are all killed at a certain pass (belach) which is then named after them.  There is no mention here of the pigs of Derblinne, but as Stokes points out in his note on this article, the metrical version of the Dindshenchas of Belach Conglais is different. In the metrical version, according to Stokes “it appears that there were more pigs than one, that they were fashioned by magic (mucca delbda druidechta), and that, in fact they were the Red Swine of Drebrenn (mucca derga Drebrinne).”  Just as the independent narrative texts don’t have all the answers, neither does any particular version of the dindshenchas. Only by consulting all versions of all of these different stories can we begin to approach a sense of Derbriu’s story, and the same can be said of the Ulster Cycle as a whole.

One of the things I find fascinating about all of this is that from a single reference to the pigs of Derblinne in Ferchuitred Medba/Cath Boinde, we find a whole complex of related texts by simply following the narrative thread from the Dindshenchas of Duma Selga to Aislinge Óenguso and Esnada Tige Buchet, and other dindshenchas including those of Belach Conglais, Loch Néill, and Mag Coroinn, and maybe even Cath Maige Mucrama, if we accept O’Neill’s suggestion that these are the pigs that came out of the Cave of Crúachan (although I don’t think I would at this stage).   Of course, if one’s starting point is the dindshenchas instead of Ferchuitred Medba, then that very elliptical reference to this narrative complex no doubt seems perfectly clear. In Dindshenchas Érenn, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf provides an appendix linking independent narrative texts to Dindshenchas tales. She says that “It is not to be viewed with any claim to completeness, but rather as a call to arms to investigate these literary connections further” (122).  In the story of the pigs of Derblinne (or Deirbriu or Derbrenn or Drebrenn) we get just a hint of the richness and complexity of these connections, and of just how much more there is for us to discover.

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Next week I will be starting a series of posts about the earliest version of Aided Chon Roí “The Violent Death of Cú Roí.”  There are a few English translations of the later and longer version of the story, but as far as I can tell no English translation of the earlier version has ever been made available. My first post will provide a translation of the text, and then I’ll have a few posts discussing certain aspects of it that I find particularly interesting.