Although the ancient Gaels were legendary story tellers, only a small fraction of their stories have survived to the present day. Most of these stories would have been written down for the first time sometime in the seventh or eighth century when the arrival of the church gave the Irish the Latin alphabet to use for their own language.
The Irish Mythological Cycles
None of these original manuscripts survive, however, many of those stories were then copied into later manuscripts from the middle-ages, and a few of those have survived down to the present day. In all, just over 150 of these ancient stories have been preserved, around half of which are grouped into the Ulster Cycle.
The Ulster Cycle
When German linguists unlocked the secrets of ancient Irish grammar in the early nineteenth century, they translated the ancient Irish stories (collectively called the Irish Myths) and grouped them into three categories, the Ulster Cycle, the Fenian Cycle, and the Mythological Cycle. Later a fourth grouping was added, the Cycle of Kings.
Containing 80 stories, the Ulster Cycle is the largest of the four and contains the stories of the Ulaid, the people who gave Ulster its name. This cycle also contains the stories of Ireland’s greatest legendary hero, Cúchulainn.
Cúchulainn
Cúchulainn is an ancient Irish hero who shares many similarities to the ancient Greek hero Heracles. Like Heracles, Cúchulainn is the son of a godly father and a mortal mother. Both possess superhuman strength which allows them to become the greatest warriors and athletes of their time. When Cúchulainn falls in love and proposes marriage, he is set a number of seemingly impossible tasks in the same vein as the task of Heracles.
However, the story (or more accurately stories) of Cúchulainn have an important underlying theme. When he is a young man, a druid gives Cúchulainn a choice, he can either have a long, happy and unremarkable life, or he can have a short life full of glory which will ensure that his name lives forever among the Irish. Cúchulainn obviously chooses the later, and so it became. He lived a short life full of martial glory, and his name is still remembered some two millennia later. It is a ideal adopted by many later Irish revolutionaries.
Táin Bo Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley)
The Ulster Cycle also contains the single longest piece of ancient Irish prose, the Táin Bo Cúailnge. Loosely translated as 'The Cattle Raid of Cooley’, this epic tale has been reconstructed from more than one source, but is still recognized as the greatest single work of ancient Irish writing. Although a fractured work, the story of the great cattle raid and its consequences stars Cúchulainn and has become for many the national epic of Ireland.
Source:
Celtic Myths by Bill Price, Pocket Essentials (2008).
