Hound of Ulster
BY ALPER ÖZKAN (MSN/PhDII)
Right…as promised, this week will be on Celtic mythology. And since it's downright shameful to write about Celtic mythology without mentioning Cu Chulainn (who really is more of an Irish hero, but I think you'll prefer him to the body-switching hijinxes going on in Welsh mythology proper), let's get him out of the way first:
Son of a mortal woman and the Irish god of light, young Setanta's adventures begin at the tender age of seven, when he kills a giant monster of a dog, gets into trouble with the blacksmith who owned the beast and promises to take over the dog's functions (such as what? barking at trespassers, burying bones in the backyard, marking territory with urine?) until he can train a suitable replacement -- his more famous name, Cu Chulainn, is derived from this incident and means "hound of Culann," Culann being the blacksmith in question. He then hears from a druid that taking up arms on a particular day will bring him untold glory and goes on to do just that (since taking up arms is exactly the sort of thing dogs do), unaware of the second part of the prophecy -- this glory will come at the cost of a short life. Having become a warrior of Ulster, he is sent to train under the warrior-sorceress Scathach (whose name is related to that of the Norse goddess Skadi, and by extension Scandinavia -- both mean "shadow" or "shadowy") and learns how to wield the Gae Bulg, sleeps with the sorceress, defeats her rival, sleeps with her too and, just for good measure, also sleeps with Scathach's daugher before returning to his homeland. You can't really blame him, though, since by then he knows that his life will be very short and probably figures that he might as well leave a few offspring behind.
Which doesn't really work that well, because he later slays his son by accident (manslaughter is a reflex action to Cu Chulainn at this point, and he only learns the warrior he has killed is his son after it's too late). In any case, then comes the Cattle Raid of Cooley (the Irish “Iliad,” with bulls instead of Helen), where some queen becomes obsessed with the bull Donn Cuailnge (which used to be human, like most famous animals in Celtic mythology) and tries to capture it...by declaring war on Ulster. This is a smarter move than might be expected, since Ulster is under a curse that renders its men unable to fight -- they are literally suffering labor pains, because an earlier king of Ulster had forced a heavily pregnant woman to race with his horses (I wish I were kidding), and the woman, with her dying breath, cursed the Ulstermen to experience what she felt at the time of their greatest need. Cu Chulainn, with his divine lineage, turns out to be immune, and holds off the opposing army by challenging their champions to single combat (even killing his foster brother after a long and grueling battle that required the use of Gae Bulg, Cu Chulainn's famous spear, which produced countless prongs inside its victims and embedded itself into the flesh so thoroughly that it had to be cut out after battle) until the curse is lifted and Ulster manages to mount a counterattack.
And then they notice their bull has been missing all along. Oops. (Still not bad as the Achaeans, though, since those clowns got lost and ended up sacking Mysia, thinking it to be Troy.)
After many an adventure (and sleeping with pretty much every princess in Ireland at the time), though, Cu Chulainn finally meets his end after breaking his geasa -- mythical oaths, briefly mentioned in my last column, that can grant great power but also bring ruin to the user when broken. Cu Chulainn had two that proved to be his own undoing: He could not eat dog meat (since he considered himself a dog and wasn't too big on cannibalism), and he could not refuse food offered by a woman. When offered dog meat by an old lady, he has no choice but to break one of his oaths, and is killed in a duel shortly thereafter -- but even after his death, his lifeless corpse is able to cut off the arm of his killer. His death was also foreshadowed when he spurned the Morrigan, the Irish triple goddess associated with death and crows (she tries to seduce him; he refuses and later responds by breaking her back, which is kind of curious because he had no qualms against sleeping with absolutely anyone prior to this encounter). And since Cu Chulainn is the topic at hand, his warp-spasm should not go unmentioned (and in fact I believe I did write about it before): In midst of battle, Cu Chulainn is consumed by such a fierce rage that one of his eyes starts hanging out of its socket by the optical nerve, the other vanishes inside his skull, his hair becomes a forest of vicious spikes, his joints crack and pop as his feet move to his back and his heels to his front, his mouth peels back to his cheeks, his liver and lungs can be seen flapping in his gaping maw and he starts emitting a poisonous mist that destroys anything in his path. He can no longer tell friend from foe in this state, and needs to be thrown into three barrels full of water to calm down (the first two barrels, unable to contain his rage, boil the instant he touches them).
I suppose this will suffice for Cu Chulainn (though he is featured in many other stories, and I haven’t even fully recounted his own tale), but Irish mythology features many other fun accounts, such as a king who, in the heat of battle, gets injured by a calcified brain (a war trophy, because disembodied heads and flayed scalps are clearly inferior to brains simmered in lime) that embeds itself in his skull and cannot be removed. Living for seven years with two brains in one head, the king finally meets his end when he is told about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which makes him so angry that the foreign brain explodes out of his skull and the reopened wound kills him. I may return to such stories later on, but I'm afraid I'm out of space for now.
P.S. It appears that UNAM, my current institution, is now accepting graduate applications. Boasting top-notch synthesis and characterization equipment, multidisciplinary research teams with broad ranges of expertise, an extensive collaboration network and a graduate student who is in dire need of assistance with his current projects (please help), UNAM is an excellent opportunity to further your research career (publications in Nature group journals are not uncommon, and I know one PhD student, now graduated, with an h-factor of nine), and I strongly urge you to apply if you are interested.
(This goes double for MBG students, since they will be easier to convert to my cause.)