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Queen Meave after hearing of this bull
sent her chief advisor to meet with Daire and buy the bull..The Connachtmen returned to Meaves fort at
Cruachan in county Roscommon and relayed what had happened in Cooley.
On hearing the news that the bull was still in Cooley and not in her
possetion Meave instantly set about making plans for war against Ulster.
The following days saw hundreds of warriors gathered around the royal
site of Cruachan, Meave had secured help from all of the chieftains
of Connacht as well as warriors from parts of Munster Leinster
and even Ulster. After the sons of
Usna had been killed by king
Conor Mac Nessa their old loyal friend
Fergus along with Ferdia and many more warriors fled
Ulster and joined
the ever increasing army in Connacht.
When
the army was battle ready queen Meave asked Fergus to lead her army
to the Cooley peninsula. After crossing the river Shannon they broke
for food and this is where one of the druids present had a prophesy.
He stated that he had seen a wild savage of a man protecting Ulster
single-handed and that his strength was that of a whole army. Later
that day Fergus couldn’t shake from his head what the druid
had earlier said, he knew who the lone guardian was and out of old
loyalties to Ulster sent messengers to warn the Ulstermen of the approaching
army from the west…no reply came back. All
the men of Ulster were now under an ancient curse, which saw them
suffer with the pangs of childbirth.
The
curse had been cast a long time before by a woman of the Otherworld
(The magical land of the ancient gods). Crunnchu a farmer from Ulster
had married this woman named Macha but was arrested one day at a gathering
at Emhain Macha when he stated that his dear wife could outrun the
kings two great horses. Macha who was pregnant and close to her time
to give birth was sent for and made race against king Conors two horses,
she won the race but at the end she gave birth to twins. After a traumatic
labour she cursed all the men of Ulster, their sons and their
sons that at their greatest need they would suffer the terrible pains
that was to kill herself that day. So while the army from Connacht
marched on Cooley all the Men of Ulster save Cu Chulainn who was still
a youth lay in terrible pain in their beds.
The
army marched on to the Cooley peninsula but Fergus still with loyalties
to Ulster led the army southwards into Meath and up along the
east coast. The forward scouts of
the western army came across a standing stone and on it was placed
a ring of wood with carvings of Ogham in it. When the rest of the
party arrived Fergus read the message stating
that a Geis had been cast against them by
Cu Chulainn. The Geis forbade
them from passing unless somebody in their company could carve a similar
piece of wood using one eye and one hand while standing on one leg!
No one in the massive army could carry out
this feat but they camped in a nearby forest.
The
following morning they
marched past the standing stone and on to Cooley. Later that day Cu
Chulainn met a group of scouts surveying the ford of a river. He
killed the scouts, then cut a giant forked pole and placed the heads
of the dead scouts on it and left it protruding
from the riverbed. When the following army reached the “Ford of the
forked pole” the sight of the impaled heads put a great fear into
them. Fergus read this again as another
Geis, it stated again they were not to pass
until the pole was removed from the water by one man using one hand,
just as it had been placed there. Fergus himself waded into the water
and after much struggling removed the pole from the river.
These
games Cu Chulainn played were designed to give the army of Ulstermen
time to recover from their terrible curse, but the games failed to
spare enough time and the army of invaders from Connacht split into
two groups and succeeded in devastating the territories of Muirthemne
and Bregia. Cu Chulainn fought many skirmishes killing the advancing
warriors in twos and threes and sometimes by the tens and it was then
they witnessed the fierce battle frenzy of the Hound of Ulster…Cu
Chulainn in his normal state was believed to be quite a slight figure
but his battle frenzy transformed him and stunned his foes.
“It sends
him into a state of violent shaking, his muscles stand out and
appear
to tremble, his whole body dilates and his head swells,
with one eye
sinking into his skull and the other stands out staring everything
that
moves, his mouth widens and foam streams from it and his giant heart
beats loudly
while a magical light shines from above his head”.
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