This seat of his government, the traditionary site of which is still marked by an extensive prehistoric entrenchment called Navan Fort[196], near Armagh, was the centre of an Ulster that stretched southwards as far as the Boyne, and round its ruler gathered such a galaxy of warriors as Ireland had never seen before, or will again. They called themselves the “Champions of the Red Branch”; there was not one of them who was not a hero; but they are all dwarfed by one splendid figure—Cuchulainn, whose name means “Culann’s Hound”. Mr. Alfred Nutt calls him “the Irish Achilles”[197], while Professor Rhys would rather see in him a Heracles of the Gaels.[198] Like Achilles, he was the chosen hero of his people, invincible in battle, and yet “at once to early death and sorrows doomed beyond the lot of man”, while, like Heracles, his life was a series of wonderful exploits and labours. It matters little enough; for the lives of all such mythical heroes must be of necessity somewhat alike. If Achilles and Heracles were, as some think, personifications of the sun, Cuchulainn is not less so. Most of his attributes, as the old stories record them, are obviously solar symbols. He seemed generally small and insignificant, yet, when he was at his full strength, no one could look him in the face without blinking, while the heat of his constitution melted snow for thirty feet all round him. He turned red and hissed as he dipped his body into its bath—the sea. Terrible was his transformation when sorely oppressed by his enemies, as the sun is by mist, storm, or eclipse. At such times “among the aërial clouds over his head were visible the virulent pouring showers and sparks of ruddy fire which the seething of his savage wrath caused to mount up above him. His hair became tangled about his head, as it had been branches of a red thorn-bush stuffed into a strongly-fenced gap.... Taller, thicker, more rigid, longer than mast of a great ship was the perpendicular jet of dusky blood which out of his scalp’s very central point shot upwards and then was scattered to the four cardinal points; whereby was formed a magic mist of gloom resembling the smoky pall that drapes a regal dwelling, what time a king at nightfall of a winter’s day draws near to it.”[199]