Ulster was the chief theatre of the Heroic drama. In that province, under the patronage of King Conchobar, arose the renowned order of knighthood which included such celebrities as Conall Cearnach, Cuchulinn, and the sons of Uisneach. Yet of all the knights of the Royal Branch, the second, above-named, was _facile princeps_, the most outstanding and representative man; in fact, a kind of demigod, round whom whole armies and many champions fatefully gyrated. _Fortissimus heros Scotorum_, says the Annals of Tighernach, “vii years was his age when he took arms, xvii when he was in pursuit of the ‘Táin Bó Chuailgné,’ xxvii when he died.” The Book of Ballymote, a later MS., gives him a much longer career, asserting that the year of the “Táin” was the fifty-ninth of Cuchulinn’s age, from the night of his birth to the night of his death. To get at once a direct and luminous glimpse into the literature of his cycle, we have only to follow this champion in his varied fortunes and exploits. And so we turn to the story of his extraordinary career, recognising that the Celtic imagination has here full play, untrammelled by the limitations of physical science or modern thought, and that in these rich and varied creations of fancy we have fact and fiction so intricately commingled that it is vain to try to differentiate between them. Some of the sagas tell us that Cuchulinn was supernaturally descended from the god Lugh. But later versions with more restraint affirm that his father’s name was Sualtam, his mother’s Dechtine, and that she was a sister of King Conchobar. When a boy he was known as Setanta, till he got the name Cuchulinn, which came to him in a manner quite characteristic and worthy of mention. Culand, a smith and Ulster retainer, it appears, had asked the king and his retinue to spend a night and a day with him. In response to this invitation “all the Ultonian nobles set out: a great train of provincials, sons of kings and chiefs, young lords and men-at-arms, the curled and rosy youth of the kingdom, and the maidens and fair-ringleted ladies of Ulster. Handsome virgins, accomplished damsels, and splendid fully-developed women were there; satirists and scholars were there; and the companies of singers and musicians, poets who composed songs and reproofs, and praising-poems for the men of Ulster. There came also with them from Emania, historians, judges, horseriders, buffoons, tumblers, fools, and performers on horseback. They all went by the same way behind the king.”