Cú Chulainn and Aífe
At a Glance
- Central figures: Cú Chulainn, champion of Ulster; Scáthach, the warrior-woman of Alba who trained him; and Aífe, Scáthach’s rival and the fiercest woman-warrior in the world.
- Setting: The land of Alba (Scotland), at the fortress of Scáthach on the Isle of Skye, and the territory held by Aífe beyond the Bridge of the Cliff; from the Ulster Cycle of Irish tradition.
- The turn: Scáthach forbade Cú Chulainn from fighting Aífe, but he disobeyed and met her in single combat, defeating her through a trick that exploited the one thing she loved most.
- The outcome: Aífe yielded and gave three conditions of peace; she later bore Cú Chulainn a son, Connla, whom Cú Chulainn would one day kill without knowing him.
- The legacy: The son Connla, sent to Ireland under three gessa that ensured his silence, became the instrument of one of the Ulster Cycle’s most terrible griefs - a father killing his only son at the shore.
Scáthach had given him a sleeping draught. She mixed it into his drink the night before the war-band marched out against Aífe, because she feared for him - not that he lacked skill, but that Aífe was something apart from other fighters, and Cú Chulainn was still young, still learning. The draught should have kept him down for a full day. He burned through it in an hour. He rose, armed himself, and followed the war-band’s tracks through the Glen of Peril.
The Bridge of the Cliff
Cú Chulainn had come to Alba to train under Scáthach, the woman who taught warriors what no one else could teach them. Her fortress sat at the edge of the world, and the only way to reach it was to cross the Bridge of the Cliff - a narrow span that bucked and threw anyone who set foot on it. A man would step onto one end and the middle would rear up like a horse’s back and fling him into the rocks below. Cú Chulainn had tried three times before he made the salmon-leap, launching himself from one end to the other in a single bound, landing on the far side with his feet together.
Scáthach had recognized what he was. She trained him in the feats no other student had mastered - the thunder-feat, the sword-edge feat, the feat of the chariot-wheel, and above all, the gáe bolga, the barbed spear thrown from the fork of the foot that opened into thirty points inside a man’s body. No one survived it. She gave him this weapon because she saw he would need it, and she was not wrong, though its first true use would not come in Alba.
But Scáthach had an enemy. Her name was Aífe, and she held the lands beyond the Glen of Peril. The two women had been at war longer than the students could remember, and the stories said they had once been close - sisters, some claimed, or foster-sisters, which in Ireland amounted to the same thing. Whatever bond had broken between them, it had broken completely.
The Challenge
Aífe came with her war-band and Scáthach marched out to meet her. Scáthach had drugged Cú Chulainn precisely because she knew what Aífe could do. Aífe had already killed or maimed every champion who had faced her. She fought without hesitation and without the usual courtesies.
When Cú Chulainn caught up with the war-band, the fighting had already begun. Scáthach’s two sons were in combat with Aífe’s people and losing ground. Cú Chulainn stepped into the line beside them and asked who Aífe was.
The woman at the center, one of the sons told him. The one who has not drawn her sword yet.
Cú Chulainn called out to her across the field. He challenged her to single combat. Aífe looked at him - this boy, this student - and accepted.
The Trick at the Cliff’s Edge
Before they fought, Cú Chulainn asked Scáthach’s son a question.
What does Aífe love most in the world?
The answer came without hesitation: her chariot-horses, her charioteer, and her chariot. These three things she valued above all else.
Aífe met him on open ground. She was as good as Scáthach had feared. She shattered his sword at the hilt with a single stroke so that nothing remained but the grip in his hand. He was disarmed, and she moved to finish him.
Cú Chulainn shouted: Look - her chariot has gone over the cliff! The horses and the charioteer are down in the gorge!
Aífe turned her head. It was less than a heartbeat, but Cú Chulainn seized her, gripped her by the breasts and the thighs, threw her over his shoulder, and carried her back to Scáthach’s camp. He put her on the ground with his knife at her throat.
Life for life, she said.
He gave his terms. Three things: she would make peace with Scáthach and never again take arms against her; she would stay that night in Scáthach’s camp; and she would bear him a son.
Aífe agreed to all three.
The Son Under Gessa
They lay together. Before Cú Chulainn left Alba to return to Ulster, he gave Aífe a gold ring and told her what to do when the boy was old enough. She was to send the son to Ireland, to find his father. But the boy was to travel under three gessa: he must not turn back for any man; he must not refuse a challenge from any man; and he must not tell any man his name.
Cú Chulainn spoke these conditions as though they were protections. They were not. They were a locked door with no key on the inside.
Aífe bore the son and named him Connla. She raised him in Alba, trained him in arms as she herself had been trained, and when he was seven years old she put the gold ring on his thumb and sent him across the sea to Ireland.
The Shore at Dundealgan
Connla landed on the coast of Ulster. The boy stood on the beach, small and armed, and would not give his name. Conchobar mac Nessa sent warriors to challenge him. Connla defeated every one of them without killing any, pinning each to the sand with precise, restrained throws. The men of Ulster had never seen a child fight like this.
Conchobar sent for Cú Chulainn.
Cú Chulainn came down to the shore. He saw a boy standing among fallen warriors, a gold ring on his thumb. He did not recognize the ring. He challenged the boy. The boy could not refuse - his geis forbade it. He could not speak his name - his geis forbade that too.
They fought in the surf. The boy was extraordinary, but Cú Chulainn was Cú Chulainn. When the fight turned against the child, Cú Chulainn cast the gáe bolga. The barbed spear opened inside the boy’s body and he fell in the shallow water.
Cú Chulainn knelt beside him. The boy held up his hand. The gold ring was on his thumb.
I am Connla, the boy said. If I had five years more, I would have conquered the world for you.
Cú Chulainn carried his son’s body up the beach and laid him before the men of Ulster. He told them the boy’s name. No man spoke. For three days, the tradition says, no calf was allowed near its mother in Ulster, so that the lowing of the separated cattle would stand for the grief that Cú Chulainn could not voice.