858
AN GAODHAL.
some distance south-east of Athlone, where the
Ulstermen routed their enemies, and drove them
in disorder over the Shannon into Connacht.
Meav, however, had taken care to secure her prize,
the Donn Chuailgne, by dispatching him to her
palace, at Cruachain, before the final battle, and
thus, notwithstanding the loss of number of her
best champions and warriors, she congratulated
herself on having the two greatest objects of her
expedition, namely, the possession of the Donn
Chuailgne, and the chastisement of Conor, her
former husband, and his proud Ulstermen, at the
very gates of the palace at Emania.
This wild tale does not, however, end here, for
it gravely informs us that when the Donn Chuail¬
gne found himself in a strange country, and among
strange herds, he raised such a loud bellowing as
had never before been heard in the province of
Connacht, that on hearing those unusual sounds,
Ailill's bull, the Finnbheannach or White-horned,
knew that some strange and formidable foe had
entered his territory, and that he immediately ad¬
vanced a full speed to the point from which they
issued, where he soon arrived in presence of his
noble enemy. The sight of each other was the
signal of battle. In the poetic language of the
tale, the province rang with the echoes of their
roaring, the sky was darkened with the sods of
the earth they threw up with their feet, and the
foam that flew from their mouths. Faint-haarted
men, women, and children had themselves in
caves, caverns, and clefts of the rocks, whilst even
the most veteran warriors but dared to view the
combat from the neighboring hills and emenincee
The Finnbheannach, or White-horned, at length
gave way, and retreated towards a certain pass
which opened into the plain in which the battle
raged, and where sixteen warriors, bolder than the
rest had planted themselves, but so rapid was the
retreat, and the pursuit, but not only were all
these trampled to the ground, but they were bur¬
ried several feet in it. The Donn Chuailgne, at
last, coming up with his opponent, raised him on
his horns, ran off with him, passed the gates of
Meav's palace, tossing and shaking him as he
went, until at last he shattered him to pieces,
dropping his disjointed members as he went
along. And wherever a part fell, that place re¬
tained the name of that joint ever after. And thus
it was (we are told) that Ath Luain, now Athlone,
which was before called Ath Mor, or Great Ford,
received its present name from the Fiennbhean¬
nach's Luan, or loin, which was dropped there.
The Donn Chuailgne, after having shaken his
enemy in this manner from his horns, returned in¬
to his own country, but in such a frenzied state
of excitement and fury, that all fled everywhere at
his approach. He faced directly to his old home,
but the people of the baile or hamlet fled, and hid
themselves behind huge masses of rock, which
his madness transformed into another bull, so
that coming with all his force against it, he dashed
out his brains and was killed.
I have dwelt, perhaps rather tediously, on the
history of this strange tale; but one of the ob¬
jects of this course of Lectures is to give to the
student of the Gaedhlic language an idea of the
nature of some of the countless ancient composit¬
ions contained in it; notwithstanding the extrem
wildness of the legend of the Bull, I am not ac¬
quainted with tale in the whole range of our liter¬
ature, in which he will find more of valuable de¬
tails concerning general and local history. More
of description of the manners and customs of the
people; of the Druidical and fairy influence sup¬
posed to be exercised in the affairs of men. Of
the laws of Irish chivalry and honor. Of the
standards of beauty, morality, valor, truth, and
fidelity, recognized by the people of old, of the
regal power and dignity of the monarch and the
provincial kings, as well as much concerning the
divison of the country into its local dependencies;
lists of its chieftains and chieftaincies. Many val¬
uable topographical names. The names and kinds
of articles of dress and ornament. Of military
weapons. Of horses, chariots, and trappings.
Of leechcraft, and of medicinal plants and springs,
as well as instances of, perhaps, every occurrence
that could be supposed to happen in ancient Irish
life. All of these details of the utmost value to
the student of history, even though mixed up with
any amount of the marvelous or incredible in poet¬
ical traditions.
The chief actors in this warfare are all well-
known and undoubted historical characters, and
are to be met with not only in our ancient tales,
but in our authentic annals also.
Tighernach (the most credited in our days of all
our annalists) mentions the Tain Bo Chuailgne,
and gives the age of Cuchulaidn as seventeen at
the time he followed the Tain, which is calculated
by O'Flaherty to have taken place about A. D.
39
As I have already stated, this tale may be
traced back to the first record to which we find
the name of Cuilmenn attached, but of which we
have now no means of fixing the precise date, any
more than the nature and character of its other
contents.
I have ventured to assign the compilation of the
Cuilmenn or Great Book of Skins, to an earlier
date than that of the Saltair of Tara, which was
compiled about the middle of the third, and the
Cin Droma Snechta, which has been traced to the
close of the fourth or beginning of the fifth cen¬
tury, and for two reasons among many others.
The first is, that the manner in which the Cuil¬
menn is spoken of, in the time of Senchann and
St. Colum Cille, implies a belief on their part that
the tale of the Tain had been written, in an au¬
thentic form, either in a separate volume, or into
this book, at or immediately after the occurrence
of the events so graphically related in it, and the
fact, as related, of St. Cirian writing the recovered
version of it, no matter from what source it was
obtained at the time, on the skin of his pet cow,
shows that this was done with the clear intention
of handing it down to posterity as nearly as poss¬
ble in the form as that in which tradition had
taught them to believe it had existed in the
Cuilmenn.
The second reason is, that, from the part which
is ascribed to Fergus in the conduct of the exped¬
ition, the frequent mention in the tale of his read¬
ing the Ogham writings, and using their charact¬
ers himself, and the pretended revelation of it at
his grave, to Senchan's pupil, in the one version,
as well as the recovery of it, according to another
account, at a great meeting of poets and eccleias¬
tics, said to have taken place at his grave, it ap¬
pears, to me at least, that there is sufficient ground
to warrant the conjecture, that in the times of Sen¬
chan and St. Colum Cille, it was generally believ¬
ed that Fergus was the original writer of the tale,
that it had been written by him, or by some ver¬
son, of his time, into a great book, and that this
book was at some subsequent period carried out
of the country, and this as we have said before,
probably, may have taken place in the early
