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Baleful Eye, he is fostered as a child by two other heroes with somewhat exaggerated attributes.
The first, Ferghus mac Roich, has the strength of 700 men and a prodigious appetite. He can
consume seven pigs, seven deer, seven cows and seven barrels of liquor at one sitting – and he
requires seven women at once to satisfy him. When Ferghus is killed, while bathing with Queen
Medb and thus temporarily distracted, another hero, Conall Cernach, takes over as Cú Chulainn’s
foster-father.
Conall is the great champion of Ulster, who boasts that he never sleeps without the head of a
Connachtman (severed presumably) resting beneath his knee. After foster-parenting like this, no
wonder the boy grows up to be a super-hero. Naturally he is brave, beautiful, strong and
invincible, and his chariot, helpfully, possesses an invisibility blanket to be used in the heat of
battle. His weapons too are magical. His barbed spear, Gae Bulga, never wounds, only kills. In the
war between Ulster and Connacht precipitated by Queen Medb’s cattle raid, he kills vast numbers
of her soldiers single-handed. His technique in battle is to transform himself into a berserk demon.
His body spins round within his skin, his hair stands on end and one eye disappears into his head
while the other bulges enormously. Small wonder his enemies are driven mad with terror.
Cú Chulainn is destined for a short though glorious life. By accidentally eating dog flesh one
day, he breaks a vow that he made when a young man. His power drains away at the height of
battle, his weapons fall at his feet and the Morrigan, a coven of divine destroyers, perch on his
shoulder in raven form. Realizing he is no longer invincible, the Connachtmen pluck up the courage
to approach and cut off his head.
As well as powerfully portraying the intense rivalries in early Ireland, the myths and heroes of
the Ulster Cycle still exert their effect today. It is no coincidence that a bronze statue of Cú
Chulainn, cast in 1916, the year of the Easter Rising, stands today in the hall of Dublin’s main Post
Office, which was itself the principal battleground of the Rising and the place where the
Republicans held out for longest against the British. Myths are powerful things. And they often
contain more than a grain of truth. But as well as these rich origin myths, there is an abundance of
solid, archaeological evidence of Ireland’s past.
The first signs of human occupation in Ireland are at Mount Sandel, situated on a bluff
overlooking the River Bann in County Antrim. The site at Mount Sandel has all the signs of
containing a substantial dwelling, with large numbers of round holes dug into the ground. Though
these holes were filled by debris long ago, their outlines are clear. These are post-holes and they
were dug to hold in place the wall timbers of a house. The wood itself has long since rotted, but the
holes remain and, from their arrangement, the outline shape of the building can be made out. The
house was round and, from the angle of the post-holes, the timbers were inclined inwards,
suggesting a structure resembling a large tent 5.5 metres in diameter. Unsurprisingly, nothing
remains of the roof, but plenty of later structures are known where the space between the roof
timbers was covered by skins, twigs and reeds and there is no reason to think Mount Sandel was
any different. Within the house there is a large square hole, probably a central hearth, and outside
there are further pits, probably used for storage.
The large numbers and the variety of food remains found at Mount Sandel certainly suggest that
it was used as a base camp throughout the year. There are hundreds of salmon bones, which show
that the site was occupied in the summer when the salmon, fresh from the sea, pushed upstream to
their spawning grounds. Huge numbers of hazelnuts and the seeds of water lilies, wild pear and