Eigse Paged 2004 - National University of Ireland

ENCOUNTER AT THE FORD 21
Then Medb went so that she was upon his chest with her thighs
around him, and so that the lough hid [them] then; 33 and jealousy
seized Ailill. Then Medb came [back] up.
Also present is Ailill’s brother, Lugaid the Blind Poet, and it is to
him that Ailill now speaks.
‘Is álaind a ndogní an dam, a Lugaid, 7 an eilit isin loch,’ ar
Ailill. ‘Cid nach gontar?’ or Lugaid 7 ní tuc urcor n-imraill
ríam. ‘Teilg-siu dún orchur foru!’ ar Ailill. ‘Impó m’agaid cuctha,’
or Lugaid, ‘7 tabrad gaí dam.’
‘It is beautiful, Lugaid, what the stag (dam) and the doe are
doing in the lough,’ said Ailill. ‘Why should they not be
killed?’ said Lugaid. And he never missed. ‘Make a cast at
them for us!’ said Ailill. ‘Turn my face toward them,’ said
Lugaid, ‘and let a spear be given to me.’
Lugaid then casts the spear, striking Fergus with a deadly blow as he
is still washing himself in the lough. 34 Not only is Fergus’s doom due
to a sexual encounter in the water, therefore: his dalliance with Medb
leads to his being identified as a dam, like the dam tuli bound by the
‘wanton woman’ in the impotence charm. 35
The risky conjunction of warriors, women and water appears in
yet another way in the literature. By entering into sexual relations
with a woman in a watery setting, it may be possible for a hero to
33
I differ here from Meyer, who translates co taircell-som in loch annsin as ‘then he
swam around the lake’: we should perhaps postulate haplography of earlier conda
taircell-som. The verb do-aircheil, do-airchella has two meanings, reflecting the two
stems which lie behind it: ‘hides, withdraws, takes away’; and ‘encompasses, contains;
hems in, confines’. Of these, only the first will readily yield sense in the present
context. For the second, DIL proposes an extended usage ‘goes round, makes a
circuit of’, but gives only two examples viz. the passage here under discussion, and
an instance from an anecdote in the Book of Leinster where co tairchellsatar relic 7
martra Petuir 7 Phóil is taken to refer to the circumambulation of relics in Rome (LL
ll 36489-90). While this parallel supports Meyer’s interpretation, it also seems legitimate
to take the verb in a better-attested meaning.
34
Aided Fergusa maic Roich, ed. Kuno Meyer in idem, The death-tales of the Ulster
heroes (Dublin 1906) 32-4 (my translation). There is an obvious similarity between
this story and the Norse legend in which the spiteful Loki prevails upon the blind
Hoðr to make a fatal cast at Baldr: Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and
Gylfaginning, ed. Anthony Faulkes (Oxford 1982) 45-6.
35
As Ranke de Vries has pointed out to me, something similar may be involved in
Acallam na Senórach (ed. Whitley Stokes, Irische Texte 4/1 (Leipzig 1900) 91-2): here
the water-woman Lí Ban massacres a herd of deer (fiada) who have run into the sea.