Cú Chulainn's birth

At a Glance

• Central figures: Deichtine, sister of King Conchobar mac Nessa; Lugh Lámfada of the Tuatha Dé Danann; and Sétanta, the boy who would become Cú Chulainn.
• Setting: Ulster, in the kingdom of Conchobar mac Nessa - the royal fort at Emain Macha and a strange house that appeared and vanished on the plain.
• The turn: Deichtine followed a flock of birds that lured the warriors of Ulster to a dwelling at the edge of the otherworld, where she bore a child fathered by Lugh.
• The outcome: The child Sétanta was born, fostered among the nobles of Ulster, and given the name Cú Chulainn after he killed Culann’s hound and took its place.
• The legacy: The birth marked the entry of the greatest warrior of the Ulster Cycle into the mortal world - a hero whose name would be bound to the defense of the province until his death.

The birds came in a flock so dense they darkened the fields around Emain Macha. Nine chariots went out after them - Conchobar’s own, and those of his best men, with Deichtine driving for her brother the king. The birds stayed always just ahead, moving south across the plain in pairs linked by silver chains, and no horse could close the distance. By nightfall the hunting party was deep into country none of them recognized, and snow was coming.

They found a house where no house had been before. A small place, newly built, lit from inside. A man stood in the doorway and welcomed them as though he had been expecting the king of Ulster for some time.

The House on the Plain

The man was tall and carried himself like someone who did not need to explain who he was. He brought them inside, and the house - which had looked small from the road - held all of them, their horses, their hounds, and a table laid with food that did not diminish as they ate. The host’s wife was in the back of the house, heavy with child, and during the night she gave birth. At the same hour a mare tethered outside foaled twin colts.

Conchobar’s men drank and slept. In the morning the house was gone. No walls, no doorposts, no hearth-stones. They stood on open ground with the snow still falling around them. The birds were gone too. What remained was the woman - Deichtine - holding a newborn boy, and beside her the two foals, still wet.

The warriors looked at one another and said nothing useful. They brought the child and the foals back to Emain Macha.

The Death and the Dream

Deichtine nursed the boy herself, but he sickened. Whatever illness took him was quick and absolute. The child died, and Deichtine’s grief was of the kind that does not permit speech. She went days without eating. When she finally drank water from a copper cup, she swallowed something with it - a small creature, too small to see, that slipped down her throat.

That night Lugh came to her in a dream. He stood in the room as clearly as any living man and told her what had happened. The house on the plain had been his. The child had been his son. And now the boy would come again - she was already carrying him. He had entered her with the water she drank, and this time he would live.

Lugh told her to call the child Sétanta.

The Quarrel Over Fostering

When it became clear that Deichtine was with child and no mortal father could be named, talk went through Emain Macha like smoke through thatch. Conchobar silenced most of it by giving his sister in marriage to Sualtam mac Róich, a steady man and a good one. Whether Sualtam believed the story about Lugh is not recorded. He raised no objection.

The boy was born, and immediately the nobles of Ulster began arguing over who would foster him. Fostering was the hinge of the Ulster system - the child sent out to be raised in another household came back bound by ties as strong as blood. Every lord in the province wanted Sétanta.

Sencha the judge claimed the right, being the wisest man at court. Bláí the hospitaller said the boy should grow up learning generosity. Fergus mac Róich, the former king, offered his own household and his sword-arm as guarantee. Amergin the poet said no one but a poet could raise a child properly. The argument threatened to go on through winter.

Conchobar settled it. The boy would not go to one household. He would go to all of them. Sétanta would be raised at Emain Macha under the combined fosterage of the finest men in Ulster - warrior, judge, poet, and king together. No child in the province had ever been given such a rearing.

Culann’s Hound

Sétanta grew fast and showed early what he was. At seven he was already outrunning the boy-troop at Emain Macha and beating them at hurling with a casual ferocity that unsettled the older boys.

One evening Conchobar rode out to a feast at the forge of Culann the smith. He passed the playing field where Sétanta was driving a ball against a dozen opponents and called to the boy to come along. Sétanta shouted back that he would follow when the game was done.

Conchobar arrived at Culann’s hall and forgot about the boy entirely. When Culann asked if all the king’s party had come, Conchobar said yes. Culann loosed his hound - a massive animal, fierce enough to guard the whole district alone. It patrolled the yard in the dark.

Sétanta came up the road with his hurley stick and his ball. The hound hit him at a run. The boy drove the ball down the animal’s throat and, when it choked, seized it by the hind legs and broke it against a pillar stone. He was still standing over the carcass when the men came out of the hall.

Culann looked at his dead hound and his face went white. That dog had been his protection, his livelihood, the guardian of his herds and his forge. Without it he was open to every raider in Ulster.

Sétanta, seven years old, streaked with the hound’s blood, looked at the smith and said he would take the dog’s place. He would guard Culann’s house and herds until a pup could be raised and trained to replace the one he had killed.

Cathbad the druid was there. He heard the boy’s offer and spoke.

From this day your name is Cú Chulainn - the Hound of Culann.

The boy accepted it. He never used the name Sétanta again. The two foals born on the night of his first birth grew into the horses that would pull his chariot - the Grey of Macha and the Black of Sainglend - and they carried him from that day until the day all three of them died together.