Ulster (Northern Ireland and Ireland) -- Description and travel
All the story of Cuchulain's hero-feats can be read in Lady Gregory's
admirable version, _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_; but Cuchulain's fort you
can see for yourself. It stands close to the town of Dundalk, visible
from the railway, a flat-topped mount, surrounded by a trench some
thirty feet deep, with a steep outer rampart surrounding this in its
turn. The whole is now tree-covered. Mr. Tempest, an antiquary of
Dundalk, whose exertions have saved this monument from the spade and
plough, thinks that he has identified, a couple of miles south of
Dundalk, the place where Cuchulain died. Cloghafarmore, the "Big Man's
Stone", at Ratheddy is one of the "standing stones" found through
Ireland, as through other Celtic countries, and tradition identifies
it with the pillar to which Cuchulain made his way from his last
fight. For ninety days, he and his charioteer Laeg, and his pair of
horses, Black Sanglain and the Grey of Macha, had harassed and held
back the host of Ireland, destroying champion after champion, singly
or by groups, in fights at each ford, and raining missiles upon the
main body with marvellous sling-throwing; but at last, encompassed and
at bay, he had got his death-wound with his own charmed spear, which
passed through the bodies of nine men in its last flight from his
hand. When, flung back at him by Lugaidh, last survivor of the sons
whose father Cuchulain had slain, it had ripped his body open, the
wounded warrior, holding his bowels together with one hand, staggered
to this pillar stone, and bound himself to it by his scarf, so that
even in death and defeat he might still stand upright. So he stood
propped, while the Grey of Macha, loosed from its harness, defended
him with teeth and hoof, letting none approach, till men saw that on
the hero's shoulder a raven had lighted. "It is not on that pillar
birds were used to settle", said one of his foemen. Then the grey
horse knew that life had ebbed away, and she left the body to its
despoilers. But the man who struck off Cuchulain's head, and took it
with him, had his own head struck off by a comrade of the Red Branch
before he reached the plains of Liffey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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