Like all violent love, Cuchulainn’s love for Eimir seems soon to have cooled, for we find that a lady called Fann, the wife of Manannan MacLir, King of the Isle of Man, or some place east of Ireland, fell in love with him. She came to see her father, a man of rank and wealth, who lived somewhere on the east coast of Ireland. She eloped with Cuchulainn, and Eimir, finding that she and her erring husband were staying at Newry, in the present County of Down, followed him, attended by fifty maids armed with knives, in order to kill Fann. This lady, in spite of her errors, must have been an intellectual woman, for her speech when leaving Cuchulainn and going home with MacLir is very fine, and would be a credit to the literature of any language. The tract in which it occurs is in the Book of the Dun Cow, an Irish manuscript compiled in the eleventh century, and is entitled “The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn and only Jealousy of Eimir.” It was admirably translated nearly forty years ago by Eugene O’Curry, and was published in the long since dead periodical, the Atlantis. None but a few Celtic savants have ever read it. To the general public it will be absolutely new. Fann, finding that she must leave Cuchulainn, says:—
“It is I who shall go on a journey;
I give consent with great affliction;
Though there is a man of equal fame,
I would prefer to remain [here].
“I would rather be here
To be subject to thee without grief,
Than go, though it may wonder thee,
To the sunny palace of Aed Abrat.[16]
“Woe to the one who gives love to a person,
If he does not take notice of it!
It is better for one to be turned away,
Unless he is loved as he is loved.”
It seems that by some occult means it was revealed to Manannan MacLir that his wife, Fann, was in trouble between the jealous women of Ulster and Cuchulainn. So he came from the east to seek his eloped spouse. When Fann found out that Manannan had found her out, she utters the following very quaint, extraordinary, and touching rhapsody:—
“Behold ye the valiant son of Lir
From the plains of Eoghan of Inver,—
Manannan, lord of the world’s fair hills,
There was a time when he was dear to me.
“Even to-day if he were nobly constant,—
My mind loves not jealousy;
Affection is a subtle thing;
It makes its way without labour.
“When Manannan the Great me espoused
I was a spouse worthy of him;
He could not win from me for his life
A game in excess at chess.
“When Manannan the Great me espoused
I was a spouse of him worthy;
A bracelet of doubly tested gold
He gave me as the price of my blushes.
“I had with me going over the sea
Fifty maidens of varied beauty;
I gave them unto fifty men
Without reproach,—the fifty maidens.
“As for me I would have cause [to be grieved]
Because the minds of women are silly;
The person whom I loved exceedingly
Has placed me here at a disadvantage.
“I bid thee adieu, O beautiful Cu;
Hence we depart from thee with a good heart;
Though we return not, be thy good will with us;
Every condition is noble in comparison with that of going away.”
It would appear that Cuchulainn was as much distracted about Fann as she was about him; for when he found that she had gone home with Manannan MacLir, he became desperate, and the tale says, with extraordinary grotesqueness and apparent inconsequence, that “It was then Cuchulainn leaped the three high leaps and the three south leaps of Luachair; and he remained for a long time without drink, without food, among the mountains; and where he slept each night was on the road of Midhluachair.” But what good did the jumping do him, or why did he jump?
Connor, King of Ulster, and the nobles and Druids of the province, had a hard time with Cuchulainn after Fann left him, as he seems to have gone downright crazy. The tale says that Connor had to send poets and professional men to seek him out in his mountain retreat, and that when they found him he was going to kill them. At last the Druids managed to give him a drink of forgetfulness, so that he remembered no more about Fann.
The death of Cuchulainn in the “Book of Leinster” is one of the finest things in ancient literature. It has not yet been fully translated, but a partial translation of it by Mr Whitley Stokes appeared in the Revue Celtique in 1876. An epitome of it here can hardly be out of place: When Cuchulainn’s foes came against him for the last time, signs and portents showed that he was near his end. One of his horses would not allow himself to be yoked to the war chariot, and shed tears of blood. But Cuchulainn goes to the battle, performs prodigies of valour; but at last he receives his death wound. Though dying, his foes are afraid to approach him. He asks to be allowed to go to a lake that was close by to get a drink. He is allowed to go, but he does not want a drink, he merely wants to die like a hero, standing up; for there is a pillar-stone close by, and he throws his breast-girdle round it, so that he might die standing up, and not lying down. His friend Conall determines to avenge his death. Here the literal translation is so fine that it must be given: “Now there was a comrades’ covenant between Cuchulainn and Conall—namely, that whichever of them was first killed, should be avenged by the other. ‘And if I be first killed,’ said Cuchulainn, ‘how soon wilt thou avenge me?’ ‘The day on which thou shalt be slain,’ says Conall; ‘I will avenge thee before that evening.’ ‘And if I be slain,’ says Conall, ‘how soon wilt thou avenge me?’ ‘Thy blood will not be cold on earth,’ says Cuchulainn, ‘when I shall avenge thee.’” Lugaid, the slayer of Cuchulainn, had lost his right hand in the fight. He goes south in his chariot to a river to rest and drink. His charioteer says, “One horseman is coming to us, and great are the speed and swiftness with which he comes. Thou wouldst deem that all the ravens of Erin were above him, and that flakes of snow were specking the plain before him.” “Unbeloved is the horseman that comes there,” says Lugaid. “It is Conall mounted on [his steed] the Dewy-Red. The birds thou sawest above him are sods from that horse’s hoofs. The snowflakes thou sawest specking the plain before him are foam from that horse’s lips and nostrils.” Conall and Lugaid fight, of course; but as Lugaid has but one hand, Conall has one of his hands bound to his side with ropes, so that he should have no advantage over his foe. They fight for hours, until at last Lugaid falls by Conall, and Cuchulainn is avenged. The tale winds up thus: “And Conall and the Ulstermen returned to Emain Macha (Emania). That week they entered it not in triumph. But the soul of Cuchulainn appeared there to the fifty queens who had loved him; and they saw him floating in his spirit-chariot over Emain Macha, and they heard him chaunt a mystic song of the coming of Christ and the Day of Doom.”
There are few views in Ireland more beautiful than that from the summit of the mound on which Cuchulainn’s mansion stood. It may not be so extensive as other views in the locality, but for beauty and variety it can hardly be exceeded. If admittance is obtained into the house that is built on the track of Cuchulainn’s, the view will be still finer. It is said by some that that house is haunted. It is to be hoped that it is; and that Cuchulainn’s ghost will drive away sleep from the eyes of every one of Patrick Byrne’s descendants who stop in it.
The ancient name of the country round Dundalk was Muirimhne; but it has not been called by that name for some centuries. It appears to have been the patrimony of Cuchulainn; for in the tale, in the “Book of the Dun Cow,” from which extracts have been given, Fann calls him, “Great chief of the plain of Muirimhne.” He, probably, or the clan of which he was the head, owned all that part of northern Louth where the land is level, and up to the foot of the Cooley hills. All the County Louth is fairly studded with ruins of one sort or another. It is one of the most interesting counties in Ireland in an antiquarian point of view. It contains the remains of nearly thirty castles in almost all stages of preservation. One of the finest of them is only a few hundred yards from the dun of Cuchulainn. It is not in the least ruined, but its architecture shows it to be one of the oldest castles erected by the Anglo-Normans in Ireland. Its style is almost exactly that of the castle at Trim, which we know was built before the end of the twelfth century. Like Dunsochly Castle, near Finglas, in the County Dublin, the one near Cuchulainn’s dun must have been inhabited at a comparatively recent date, for modern windows have been opened on its front. The only light that was admitted into those old castles was what came through the narrow slits in the walls, about three feet long and six or eight inches wide. These served the double purpose of letting in light and discharging arrows through them. It does not seem to be known by whom the very fine Norman Keep at Castletown, County Louth, was built. There are many larger castles of the same kind in different parts of Ireland, but there are not many of its age in such a good state of preservation. There is a church in the immediate proximity of the castle, and the exact date of its erection seems also unknown. It is in a state of almost utter ruin. The County Louth can boast of having been the birth-place of St Brigit. She was born at Fachart, only a few miles from Castletown, but it was in Kildare she spent almost all her life, and it was there she died and was buried.
There are few parts of Ireland more beautiful than the country round the ancient dun of Cuchulainn, and few parts less generally visited by tourists. Carlingford Loch is only a few miles from Dundalk, and except Clew Bay, and one or two others, there is nothing finer on all the coasts of Ireland. But the grandest and most striking scenery in this part of the country are the Mourne mountains in the County Down. There are higher mountain ranges in Ireland, but there are not any more bold, or more truly Alpine. Seen from the central parts of the County Louth, they and the Cooley mountains seem to form a continuous range of “sky-pointing peaks,” forming one of the finest, if not the very finest, mountain view in Ireland. The ancient name of the Mourne mountains was the Beanna Boirche. They were called the Mourne mountains from being in a territory anciently called Crioch Mughorna. It gave a title to Lord Cremorne, from whom, it is generally believed, the Cremorne Gardens in London derive their name. It has to be admitted that, in this instance, the Anglicised form of the name is the more euphonious.