Ulster Cycle

The Ulster Cycle is a body of medieval Irish heroic legends and sagas featuring the heroes of the Ulaid, the people who gave their name to the province of Ulster, in the reign of their king Conchobar mac Nessa, and their enemies, particularly the Connachta under queen Medb and her husband Ailill. The longest and most important story is the Táin Bó Cuailnge or "Cattle Raid of Cooley", in which Medb raises an army to invade the Cooley peninsula and steal the Ulaid's prize bull, Donn Cuailnge, opposed only by the teenage Ulster hero Cú Chulainn. Other stories tell of the births, lives, loves and deaths of the characters, and the various conflicts between them.

The stories of the Ulster Cycle are written in Old and Middle Irish, generally in prose, interspersed with occasional verse passages. They are preserved in manuscripts of the 12th to 15th centuries, but in many cases are much older: the language of the earliest stories is dateable to the 8th century. The tone is terse, violent and mostly realistic, although supernatural elements intrude from time to time. Cú Chulainn in particular has superhuman fighting skills, the result of his semi-divine ancestry, and when particularly aroused his ríastrad or battle-contortion transforms him into an unrecognisable monster who knows neither friend nor foe.

In contrast to the majority of early Irish historical tradition, which presents ancient Ireland largely united under a succession of High Kings, the stories of the Ulster Cycle depict a country with no central authority, divided into local and provincial kingdoms often at war with each other. The civilisation depicted is a pagan, pastoral one ruled by a warrior aristocracy. Bonds between aristocratic families are cemented by fosterage of each other's children. Wealth is reckoned in cattle. Warfare mainly takes the form of cattle raids, or single combats between champions. The characters' actions are sometimes restricted by religious taboos known as geisa.

Elements of the tales are reminiscent of classical descriptions of Celtic societies in Gaul, Galatia and Britain. Warriors fight with swords, spears and shields, and ride in two-horse chariots, driven by skilled charioteers drawn from the lower classes. They take and preserve the heads of slain enemies, and boast of their valour at feasts, with the bravest awarded the curadmír or "champion's portion", the choicest cut of meat. Kings are advised by druids (Old Irish druí, plural druíd), and poets have great power and privilege. These elements led scholars such as Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson to conclude that the stories of the Ulster Cycle preserved authentic Celtic traditions from the Iron Age. Other scholars have challenged that conclusion, stressing similarities with early medieval Irish society and the influence of classical literature, but it is likely that the stories do contain genuinely ancient material.

References

• Tom Peete Cross and Clark Harris Slover (eds.), Ancient Irish Tales, 1936, pp. 127-129
• Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, The Oldest Irish Tradition: a Window on the Iron Age, 1964
• John T. Koch, "Windows on the Iron Age: 1964-1994", Ulidia, 1994, pp. 229-237

Further reading

• Thomas Kinsella (trans.), The Táin, Oxford University Press, 1969
• Jeffrey Gantz (trans.), Early Irish Myths and Sagas, Penguin, 1981
• Tom Peete Cross & Clark Harris Slover (eds.), Ancient Irish Tales, Barnes & Noble, 1936
• John T Koch & John Carey (eds.), The Celtic Heroic Age, Celtic Studies Publications, 2000
• Kuno Meyer (ed. & trans.), The Death-Tales of the Ulster Heroes, Dublin Institute for Advances Studies, 1906
• A H Leahy (trans.), Heroic Romances of Ireland, 2 vols, 1905-1906