Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

176 Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race[210]the first glimpse they have caught of their persecutor.The Battle-Frenzy of CuchulainA number of scattered episodes now follow. The host ofMaev spreads out and devastates the territories of Bregia andof Murthemney, but they cannot advance further into Ulster.Cuchulain hovers about them continually, slaying them by twosand threes, and no man knows where he will swoop next. Maevherself is awed when, by the bullets of an unseen slinger, asquirrel and a pet bird are killed as they sit upon her shoulders.Afterwards, as Cuchulain's wrath grows fiercer, he descends withsupernatural might upon whole companies of the Connacht host,and hundreds fall at his onset. The characteristic distortion orriastradh which seized him in his battle-frenzy is then described.He became a fearsome and multiform creature such as never wasknown before. Every particle of him quivered like a bulrushin a running stream. His calves and heels and hams shifted tothe front, and his feet and knees to the back, and the musclesof his neck stood out like the head of a young child. One eyewas engulfed deep in his head, the other protruded, his mouthmet his ears, foam poured from his jaws like the fleece of athree-year-old wether. The beats of his heart sounded like theroars of a lion as he rushes on his prey. A light blazed abovehis head, and “his hair became tangled about as it had been thebranches of a red thorn-bush stuffed into the gap of a fence....Taller, thicker, more rigid, longer than the mast of a great shipwas the perpendicular jet of dusky blood which out of his scalp'svery central point shot upwards and was there scattered to thefour cardinal points, whereby was formed a magic mist of gloomresembling the smoky pall that drapes a regal dwelling, whattime a king at nightfall of a winter's day draws near to it.” 148Such was the imagery by which Gaelic writers conveyed theidea of superhuman frenzy. At the sight of Cuchulain in his148I quote from Standish Hayes O'Grady's translation, in Miss Hull's“Cuchullin Saga.”