cattle

The Cattle Raid of Cooley

Queen Maeve was a fine warrior, she could out-drink and out-fight all of her warriors. She was known for her unlimited sexual capacity. No King of Connacht could rule without her as Queen and her sexual union with these favored men created heroes and rulers alike.

She was complete and whole unto herself and no King of Connacht could rule without her as Queen. The major myth involving her, The Cattle Raid of Cooley, is cited as being one of the most popular myths in Irish literature.

Queen Maeve of Connacht was a valiant warrior as well as a powerful sorceress. She ruled her husband Ailill with a hand of iron. She kept her lovers in the palace itself and Ailill was never heard to complain. One morning, however, as the couple lay late in bed, Ailill crossed his wife.

"Good is the wife of a good man," he observed. "True," replied Maeve. "And what brings that to mind?" "You are a better woman now than when I married you," Ailill said. There was a short and furious silence. "I was good before I ever had to do with you," snapped Maeve.

And so began the famous pillow talk that led to the death of thousands of Ireland's greatest warriors. Maeve and Ailill, comparing their virtues, soon came to quarrel over whose possessions were richer. They compared their separate properties-their jewels and silks, their herds and flocks, even their pots, tubs, buckets and jugs and the score was even.

But Ailill had something that Maeve lacked-a mighty white bull called Finnbennach. The bull's power and ferocity were unmatched in Ireland, with only one exception. At Cooley in Ulster dwelled the Donn, a great brown bull said to be able to sire fifty calves in a day. Maeve became determined to have the great bull of Cooley for her own to best her husband.

The tale begins thus trivially, but the two bulls were no mere herd animals. Maeve was tampering with things she should have left alone. The bulls were lords, protectors of the people and of the fertility of the herds. Long ago, the bulls had human shapes, it was said.

The white bull had been a servant of the sidhe-the faery princess-of Connacht, the brown bull of the sidhe of Muenster. While they were in their human forms, a rivalry developed between them and in their raging, the two began to shift in shape. The pair were seen as ravens, prophesying war, then later, they were seen as water beasts, devouring each other.

At last, in the form of water serpents, they were swallowed by cows which subsequently gave birth to the two finest bulls in Ireland-Finnbennach and the Donn of Cooley. When the two enchanted bulls were safe apart in separate provinces, Ireland flourished. What Maeve was planning, however, would wreak havoc.

When the bull lords fought, death stalked the land. But in her pride and greed, Maeve cared nothing for the danger. She decided to steal the Donn of Cooley. Maeve consulted a woman of the sidhe about the fate of her troops, and the woman said she saw Maeve's men covered with crimson blood.

Undaunted, Maeve paid little heed to this. She knew that the men of Ulster lay under a curse. Generations before, a faery woman of Ulster, then in her last month of pregnancy, had been forced by a drunken mortal to race on foot against a team of horses.

The race ended at the hill where Conchobar's fortress later stood. The woman had won the race and there on the hill, among the jeering warriors, she gave birth to twins. The woman's name was Macha and the birth gave the hill its name: Emain Macha, which, in Gaelic, means "Macha's Twins".

In her final shame and agony, Macha laid a fate on the men of Ulster. For nine generations, at certain times of great danger, the men would be prostrated with the weakness of child-birth, so that they could not defend themselves, until the weakness passed, hence leaving Ulster vulnerable to invasion.

So, Maeve's armies drove north and east until they came to a place known as Ardculin, at the very border of Ulster. They found a pillar stone, marking the boundary. Around it was a twisted oak sapling, and on the sapling was carved Cuchulain's name and a message to the Ulster men with Maeve: if they crossed the border that night, it said, then they would die at sunrise.

In the darkness, the invaders heard the thundering of horses' hooves, the creak of chariot wheels and the slapping of harnesses. Before they could group and turn for the battle, Cuchulain was upon them. Scouts and outriders died. At daybreak all along the track ahead, Maeve's warriors would find the dripping heads of their comrades, spiked to the branches of the tress.

Hundreds upon hundreds of Maeve's army died. Death came close to Maeve herself, where she stood in her own chariot, flanked by her generals. With derisive accuracy, during one attack, an iron ball from Cuchulain's sling killed the golden bird that sat upon the Queen's shoulder. Day after day Maeve sent her champions against Cuchulain and day after day they died.

While they fought, Maeve sent a detachment racing north to Cooley and took the fabled Donn, and the bull was brought into her own camp. But no one man could get past Cuchulain at the ford. It was whispered that Cuchulain's strength was such that the Morrigan-the death-lustful war goddess-came to him in the night, scarlet-haired and robed in scarlet.

She offered herself to him, but Cuchulain refused her. Raging, the Morrigan tried to hamper him in battle by taking the form of an eel in the ford and twisting around his legs as he fought. Cuchulain slashed at the creature and blinded it. The battles continued for some time, until Cuchulain came upon Maeve in the battlefield. She was almost alone.

Her chariot was shattered, her golden hair was crusted with blood and her face blackened with dirt. On her knees, she begged Cuchulain for safe conduct. He gave it, and that was a mistake. As for the cause of the war, Maeve took the Donn of Cooley with her upon her retreat, but she had no pleasure from it.

She had eight messengers lead the bull to Connacht. This they managed to do, however, the Donn of Cooley got scent of the white bull Finnbennach, and there was no holding it. The great bulls broke free of their chains and shook the earth with their charging. All who were near enough to see the battle died, for the bulls trampled them to red pulp upon the ground.

The last time the brown bull Finnbennach was seen in Maeve's country where his great horns were flecked with the flesh of the white bull, the Donn of Cooley. When Finnbennach arrived in Cooley, a madness came upon it; it killed the people it could find and trampled the fields.

Then it sank to the ground and died. In its rage, its heart burst. Thus ended the war, with death and destruction, starvation and pain. Maeve had returned to Connacht, defeated. Beaten and shamed, she stayed there. But Maeve and those with her had vengeance in their hearts. And they would seek the mighty Cuchulain, the champion of Ulster.