No one, whether an Irishman or a stranger, can look on the vast mound and vast earthen ramparts that mark the home of him whom the most trustworthy of Irish annalists, Tighearnach, calls fortissimus heros Scottorum, without feelings of indignation and shame—indignation at the way one of the greatest and most interesting monuments of Irish antiquity has been profaned, and shame that so little reverence for their country’s past should be found among the Irish people. If the Copts and Arabs of Egypt sell and uproot the antiquities of that country, they can, at least, say that they are not the descendants of the men who lived under the sway of the Pharaos; but those who have, in recent times, done most to obliterate and profane the most historic monuments of Ireland are the lineal descendants of the men who raised them. Nothing that ancient Irish monuments have suffered, and they have suffered a great deal, can exceed the wrong committed by him who built a horrible, modern, vulgar, gewgaw house on top of the dun of Cuchulainn! To show how utterly obtuse, and how unsympathetic with his country’s past the person was who built the vulgar structure on one of the most curious and interesting historic monuments in Ireland, he has actually engraved his name and the date of the erection of the house on its front wall! seeming to glory in the vandalism he committed. The legend on the wall says that the house was built in 1780 by a person named Patrick Byrne for his nephew.
CUCHULAINN’S DESECRATED DUN.
About a mile from the Dundalk railway station, crowning the summit of a hill that rises amid green fields and rich pastures, stands all that remains of the dun on which the wooden dwelling of Cuchulainn stood wellnigh two thousand years ago. Before it was partially levelled to build the gewgaw house that now stands on it, it must have been the finest monument of its kind in Ireland. It is quite different from the remains of Tara, Knock Aillinn, Emania, or Dinrigh. Those places were evidently intended to accommodate large numbers of people; but Cuchulainn’s dun was evidently that of one person or one family. It answered to the Norman keep that some lords of the soil built for their own private protection in later times. Cuchulainn’s dun was immense, and its remains are even still immense in spite of the way it has been ruined. It is yet over forty feet in perpendicular height, and, like most structures of its kind, is perfectly round. It has an area of over half an acre on its summit. The enceinte outside the central dun encloses fully two acres, and where it has not been levelled, is still colossal, being thirty feet high in some parts. The immense labour it must have taken to raise such a gigantic mound, and to dig such vast entrenchments on so high a hill, strikes one with astonishment. If it had not been ruined and partially levelled by the utterly denationalised and soulless person who built the vulgar structure on it, it would be the finest thing of its kind in Ireland, and would attract antiquarians from all parts of these islands and from the Continent.
The existence of this fort is another collateral proof of the general truth of what has been called Irish bardic history. It says that Cuchulainn lived at Dundealgan, or Dundalk, and there his dun is found. He can hardly be said to figure in what are generally known as Irish authentic annals. The “Annals of the Four Masters” do not mention him at all, although they do mention some of his contemporaries. Tighearnach, who lived in the eleventh century, is the only one of the Irish annalists who mentions him. His annals have not yet been translated or published; but the following passage occurs in them: “Death of Cuchulainn, the most renowned champion of Ireland, by Lughaidh, the son of Cairbre Niafer [chief king of Ireland]. He was seven years old when he began to be a champion, and seventeen when he fought in the Cattle Spoil of Cooley, and twenty-seven when he died.” Tighearnach makes Cuchulainn and Virgil contemporary. He and Queen Meave are the two great central figures in the longest and greatest prose epic in the Irish language, the Tain Bo Cuailgne, or Cattle Spoil of Cooley, which Sir Samuel Ferguson has made familiar to the English reader in his poem, “The Foray of Meave.”
Cuchulainn is the Hercules of Irish romantic history; but in spite of all the fabulous tales of which he is the hero, there cannot be any doubt that he was an historic personage, that his dwelling-place was on the dun that has been described, and that he lived shortly before the Christian era. The name Cuchulainn is a sobriquet; it means “the hound Culann.” This Culann was chief smith to Connor, King of Ulster. He had a fierce dog that he used to let out every night to watch and guard his premises, which were in the vicinity of Emania, the palace of the Ulster kings. Cuchulainn, who was nephew to Connor, was going to some entertainment at his uncle’s; but having been out later than usual, was attacked by Culann’s fierce hound. He had no weapon with which to defend himself save his hurling ball; but he cast it with such force at the dog that he killed him on the spot. Culann complained to King Connor about the loss of his great watch dog, and Cuchulainn, who was then only a boy of eight or nine years old, said that he would act as watch dog for the smith and be Culann’s hound, or dog. Whether he did so or not is left untold.
It is very curious that in all the romantic tales in which Cuchulainn figures, and in spite of his incredible strength and prowess, there does not seem to be a passage in any tract that has been translated about him up to the present where anything is mentioned about his size or stature. We are left under the impression that he was no bigger than ordinary men; and it may have been that he was not. Size and strength do not always go together. Some of the feats that he is said to have performed are utterly incredible; such as flinging his spear haftwise, and killing nine men with the cast; and pulling the arm from its socket out of a giant whom he was unable to get the better of with weapons. It is very natural that such impossible feats would, in a credulous age, be attributed to any one who was possessed of more than ordinary prowess. Things quite as impossible are found in the classics relative to Hercules. The Irish had just as good a right to relate impossibilities about Cuchulainn as the Greeks had to do the same about Hercules. But Cuchulainn figures in Celtic legend and romance in a manner in which Hercules does not figure in the legends of Greece, for the Irish hero was more of a ladies’ man than was the giant of the Greeks.
If Cuchulainn did not fill such an important place in what may be called classic Gaelic literature, the total ignorance about him in the very place where he was born and where he lived would not be such a national disgrace as it is. The mere remnant of Gaelic literature in which he is the central figure is immense. No other race in Europe would have so totally lost sight of a personage that was the hero of so many tracts and stories, and who was, besides, an historic character, and not a myth. Even sixty years ago, during the Ordnance Survey of Louth, the parties employed on it found that no one in the neighbourhood of Castletown, the modern name of the place in which Cuchulainn’s fort is situated, knew or heard anything about him. They were told by the peasantry that the fort was made by the Danes! Some said it was the work of Finn Mac Cool; but of the real owner of it, they knew nothing.
It is evident that the Irish monks of early mediÆval times were much more broad-minded and liberal than their countrymen of the same class of more recent years. It is to monks and inmates of monasteries that we owe nine-tenths of the Gaelic literature that has come down to us. They produced more books in proportion to their numbers than perhaps any class of men of their kind that lived in ancient times. They were sincere Christians, but, like patriots, they loved to record the deeds of their pagan ancestors. Just as soon as national decay set in they were succeeded by men of their own calling, who appear to have thought little worth recording except the works of saints, or at least of those who professed Christianity. If the monks of the early centuries of Christian Ireland were as narrow-minded as the Four Masters, we never, probably, would know anything about Cuchulainn, Queen Meave, Conall Carnach, or any of the heroes of pagan Ireland, round whom there is woven such a wondrous web of legend, romance, and song. Every patriotic Irishman should revere the memories of those liberal-minded monks who handed down to us the doings of their pagan forefathers. To show how much those men valued the literature, and loved to recount the exploits of their pagan ancestors, it will only be necessary to give the words of the dear old soul who copied the Tain BÓ Cuailgne, the great epic of pagan times, into the “Book of Leinster”: “A blessing on every one who will faithfully remember the Tain as it is [written] here, and who will not put another shape on it.”
Cuchulainn, above all men who figure in ancient Irish literature, seems to have been “grÁdh ban Eireann,” the darling of the women of Ireland. While yet in his teens, the nobles of Ulster came together to determine who should be a fitting wife for him. After a long search they found a lady named Eimir, accomplished in all the feminine education of the time; but her father, a wealthy chief or noble who lived near Lusk, in the present County of Dublin, did not like to give his daughter to a professional champion. Cuchulainn had seen her, and had succeeded in gaining her love. She was guarded for a year in her father’s dun; and during all that time, Cuchulainn vainly strove to see her. At last he lost patience and became desperate, scaled the three fences that encircled her father’s fort, had a terrible fight for her; killed three of her brothers; half killed half-a-dozen others who opposed him, and carried her and her maid northward in his chariot to his home in Dundalk.
Like all violent love, Cuchulainn’s love for Eimir seems soon to have cooled, for we find that a lady called Fann, the wife of Manannan MacLir, King of the Isle of Man, or some place east of Ireland, fell in love with him. She came to see her father, a man of rank and wealth, who lived somewhere on the east coast of Ireland. She eloped with Cuchulainn, and Eimir, finding that she and her erring husband were staying at Newry, in the present County of Down, followed him, attended by fifty maids armed with knives, in order to kill Fann. This lady, in spite of her errors, must have been an intellectual woman, for her speech when leaving Cuchulainn and going home with MacLir is very fine, and would be a credit to the literature of any language. The tract in which it occurs is in the Book of the Dun Cow, an Irish manuscript compiled in the eleventh century, and is entitled “The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn and only Jealousy of Eimir.” It was admirably translated nearly forty years ago by Eugene O’Curry, and was published in the long since dead periodical, the Atlantis. None but a few Celtic savants have ever read it. To the general public it will be absolutely new. Fann, finding that she must leave Cuchulainn, says:—
“It is I who shall go on a journey;
I give consent with great affliction;
Though there is a man of equal fame,
I would prefer to remain [here].
“I would rather be here
To be subject to thee without grief,
Than go, though it may wonder thee,
To the sunny palace of Aed Abrat.[16]
“Woe to the one who gives love to a person,
If he does not take notice of it!
It is better for one to be turned away,
Unless he is loved as he is loved.”
It seems that by some occult means it was revealed to Manannan MacLir that his wife, Fann, was in trouble between the jealous women of Ulster and Cuchulainn. So he came from the east to seek his eloped spouse. When Fann found out that Manannan had found her out, she utters the following very quaint, extraordinary, and touching rhapsody:—
“Behold ye the valiant son of Lir
From the plains of Eoghan of Inver,—
Manannan, lord of the world’s fair hills,
There was a time when he was dear to me.
“Even to-day if he were nobly constant,—
My mind loves not jealousy;
Affection is a subtle thing;
It makes its way without labour.
“When Manannan the Great me espoused
I was a spouse worthy of him;
He could not win from me for his life
A game in excess at chess.
“When Manannan the Great me espoused
I was a spouse of him worthy;
A bracelet of doubly tested gold
He gave me as the price of my blushes.
“I had with me going over the sea
Fifty maidens of varied beauty;
I gave them unto fifty men
Without reproach,—the fifty maidens.
“As for me I would have cause [to be grieved]
Because the minds of women are silly;
The person whom I loved exceedingly
Has placed me here at a disadvantage.
“I bid thee adieu, O beautiful Cu;
Hence we depart from thee with a good heart;
Though we return not, be thy good will with us;
Every condition is noble in comparison with that of going away.”
It would appear that Cuchulainn was as much distracted about Fann as she was about him; for when he found that she had gone home with Manannan MacLir, he became desperate, and the tale says, with extraordinary grotesqueness and apparent inconsequence, that “It was then Cuchulainn leaped the three high leaps and the three south leaps of Luachair; and he remained for a long time without drink, without food, among the mountains; and where he slept each night was on the road of Midhluachair.” But what good did the jumping do him, or why did he jump?Connor, King of Ulster, and the nobles and Druids of the province, had a hard time with Cuchulainn after Fann left him, as he seems to have gone downright crazy. The tale says that Connor had to send poets and professional men to seek him out in his mountain retreat, and that when they found him he was going to kill them. At last the Druids managed to give him a drink of forgetfulness, so that he remembered no more about Fann.
The death of Cuchulainn in the “Book of Leinster” is one of the finest things in ancient literature. It has not yet been fully translated, but a partial translation of it by Mr Whitley Stokes appeared in the Revue Celtique in 1876. An epitome of it here can hardly be out of place: When Cuchulainn’s foes came against him for the last time, signs and portents showed that he was near his end. One of his horses would not allow himself to be yoked to the war chariot, and shed tears of blood. But Cuchulainn goes to the battle, performs prodigies of valour; but at last he receives his death wound. Though dying, his foes are afraid to approach him. He asks to be allowed to go to a lake that was close by to get a drink. He is allowed to go, but he does not want a drink, he merely wants to die like a hero, standing up; for there is a pillar-stone close by, and he throws his breast-girdle round it, so that he might die standing up, and not lying down. His friend Conall determines to avenge his death. Here the literal translation is so fine that it must be given: “Now there was a comrades’ covenant between Cuchulainn and Conall—namely, that whichever of them was first killed, should be avenged by the other. ‘And if I be first killed,’ said Cuchulainn, ‘how soon wilt thou avenge me?’ ‘The day on which thou shalt be slain,’ says Conall; ‘I will avenge thee before that evening.’ ‘And if I be slain,’ says Conall, ‘how soon wilt thou avenge me?’ ‘Thy blood will not be cold on earth,’ says Cuchulainn, ‘when I shall avenge thee.’” Lugaid, the slayer of Cuchulainn, had lost his right hand in the fight. He goes south in his chariot to a river to rest and drink. His charioteer says, “One horseman is coming to us, and great are the speed and swiftness with which he comes. Thou wouldst deem that all the ravens of Erin were above him, and that flakes of snow were specking the plain before him.” “Unbeloved is the horseman that comes there,” says Lugaid. “It is Conall mounted on [his steed] the Dewy-Red. The birds thou sawest above him are sods from that horse’s hoofs. The snowflakes thou sawest specking the plain before him are foam from that horse’s lips and nostrils.” Conall and Lugaid fight, of course; but as Lugaid has but one hand, Conall has one of his hands bound to his side with ropes, so that he should have no advantage over his foe. They fight for hours, until at last Lugaid falls by Conall, and Cuchulainn is avenged. The tale winds up thus: “And Conall and the Ulstermen returned to Emain Macha (Emania). That week they entered it not in triumph. But the soul of Cuchulainn appeared there to the fifty queens who had loved him; and they saw him floating in his spirit-chariot over Emain Macha, and they heard him chaunt a mystic song of the coming of Christ and the Day of Doom.”
There are few views in Ireland more beautiful than that from the summit of the mound on which Cuchulainn’s mansion stood. It may not be so extensive as other views in the locality, but for beauty and variety it can hardly be exceeded. If admittance is obtained into the house that is built on the track of Cuchulainn’s, the view will be still finer. It is said by some that that house is haunted. It is to be hoped that it is; and that Cuchulainn’s ghost will drive away sleep from the eyes of every one of Patrick Byrne’s descendants who stop in it.
The ancient name of the country round Dundalk was Muirimhne; but it has not been called by that name for some centuries. It appears to have been the patrimony of Cuchulainn; for in the tale, in the “Book of the Dun Cow,” from which extracts have been given, Fann calls him, “Great chief of the plain of Muirimhne.” He, probably, or the clan of which he was the head, owned all that part of northern Louth where the land is level, and up to the foot of the Cooley hills. All the County Louth is fairly studded with ruins of one sort or another. It is one of the most interesting counties in Ireland in an antiquarian point of view. It contains the remains of nearly thirty castles in almost all stages of preservation. One of the finest of them is only a few hundred yards from the dun of Cuchulainn. It is not in the least ruined, but its architecture shows it to be one of the oldest castles erected by the Anglo-Normans in Ireland. Its style is almost exactly that of the castle at Trim, which we know was built before the end of the twelfth century. Like Dunsochly Castle, near Finglas, in the County Dublin, the one near Cuchulainn’s dun must have been inhabited at a comparatively recent date, for modern windows have been opened on its front. The only light that was admitted into those old castles was what came through the narrow slits in the walls, about three feet long and six or eight inches wide. These served the double purpose of letting in light and discharging arrows through them. It does not seem to be known by whom the very fine Norman Keep at Castletown, County Louth, was built. There are many larger castles of the same kind in different parts of Ireland, but there are not many of its age in such a good state of preservation. There is a church in the immediate proximity of the castle, and the exact date of its erection seems also unknown. It is in a state of almost utter ruin. The County Louth can boast of having been the birth-place of St Brigit. She was born at Fachart, only a few miles from Castletown, but it was in Kildare she spent almost all her life, and it was there she died and was buried.
There are few parts of Ireland more beautiful than the country round the ancient dun of Cuchulainn, and few parts less generally visited by tourists. Carlingford Loch is only a few miles from Dundalk, and except Clew Bay, and one or two others, there is nothing finer on all the coasts of Ireland. But the grandest and most striking scenery in this part of the country are the Mourne mountains in the County Down. There are higher mountain ranges in Ireland, but there are not any more bold, or more truly Alpine. Seen from the central parts of the County Louth, they and the Cooley mountains seem to form a continuous range of “sky-pointing peaks,” forming one of the finest, if not the very finest, mountain view in Ireland. The ancient name of the Mourne mountains was the Beanna Boirche. They were called the Mourne mountains from being in a territory anciently called Crioch Mughorna. It gave a title to Lord Cremorne, from whom, it is generally believed, the Cremorne Gardens in London derive their name. It has to be admitted that, in this instance, the Anglicised form of the name is the more euphonious.
The County Louth, and all that part of the County Down bordering on it, have not had their due share of attention from those who go in search of the picturesque and beautiful. Although the direct route between the two largest cities in Ireland, northern Louth and southern Down are not at all known as well as they should be. There are, even in Kerry or Connemara, few places in which finer views of mountain, bay, and plain can be had, and all within less than two hours by rail from Dublin or Belfast. And as for antiquities, no county of its size in Ireland possesses so many as Louth.
