Cú Chulainn

The peasant visionaries that are, the landlord dualists that were, and the whole hurly-burly of legends.

Cuchulain fighting the sea for two days until the waves pass over him and he dies.

Colté storming the palace of the gods.

Osin seeking in vain for three hundred years to appease his insatiable heart with all the pleasures of fairyland, these two mystics walking up and down upon the mountains uttering the central dreams of their souls in no less dream-laden sentences, and this mind that finds them so interesting, are all a portion of that great Celtic phantasmagoria whose meaning no man has discovered nor any angel revealed.

Before a prosperous fishing season, a herring barrel appears in the midst of a storm cloud and at a place called Columbkille Strand, a place of marsh and mire, an ancient boat with St. Columba himself comes floating in from sea on a moonlit night, a portent of a brave harvesting.

They have their dread portents too.

Some few seasons ago, a fisherman saw far on the horizon renown by Hy Brasil where he who touches shall find no more labor or care, nor cynic laughter, but shall go walking about under shadiest baskedge and enjoy the conversation of Cuchulain and his heroes.

A vision of Hy Brasil forbodes national troubles.

Remember we talked about it like a steed? And gach was an old word for a spear.

Remember like the Gae Bulge in the Cú Chulainn story.

So ach is cock is doon sa.

And he's hoeing over to England.

Previous generations didn't have this, you know? Something shifted.

And I think that kind of That kind of generational sort of divide is what I really wanted to hone in on with this video in terms of using, you know, Aiairda, which is the Irish name for Ardy, which is the Ford of Ferdia, which is where Cú Chulainn and Ferdia fought at the culmination of the Taun.

So, like, I grew up in Ardy, so this story was etched in me, you know, from a young age.

And it was part of the, it's part of national folklore, really, you know, or mythology, really, more than folklore.

So she wanted to get her hands on this.

So that was the kind of greed piece, you know, um, Ulster was under the curse at the time, so the army couldn't fight.

So it fell to Cú Chulainn, who was semi-divine, so he wasn't affected by the curse, so he could fight.

So he defended Ulster from her and killed basically all her army.

Going to be telling stories, hand-pannin' poems.

And I'm going to tell the story of the death of Cú Chulainn because Clach na Fhar Mhór Cú Chulainn's standing stone that he tied himself into and faced his enemies standing up as he died is only 15 minutes away from Fionnuala so of course I want to tell that story so yeah Fionnuala and then the weekend after is the Ballymacraven Restoration Group they're having me to do an event similar again at Ennis Diamond check out my page for that it's a free event so please come along And then after that, I can't remember, I think there's something else.

Oh yeah, I'm doing a thing in Dublin on the 8th of October called Ideas on Tap.

It's like a kind of a talk and a question and answering thing afterwards in a pub somewhere.

A lot of people know about it.

It's older than the pyramids.

It's where the winter solstice sun enters the chamber, illuminates the chamber where Cú Chulainn was conceived or born or maybe both.

um by lou when the light went in and his mother had this uh mary mary style pregnancy and birth of an immaculate conception but new grange wasn't always the way it looks like now years ago the opw found it or discovered it or someone it was all overgrown and the stones that were on it aren't the same stones now so they refurbished the whole thing and put quartz crystal Stones all around.