The Tain

Filling the role of an archetypal king, Conchobor is presented as a formidable ruler of Ulster who is admired by his people, having earned his title when he stepped into the role for a year as a child (displacing Fergus mac Roich). He is born to Nes, a queen, and Cathbad, a druid, so he possesses both royal blood and mystical origins. Conchobor is one of three kings featured in the text (in addition to Ailill and Fergus), and he can be considered in contrast to the other rulers.

Conchobor is a more prominent figure in the stories included as a prehistory to The Táin than in the epic itself, figuring as a father figure who takes an early interest in Cúchulainn. He is often a problematic ruler, creating a conflict that ultimately drives Fergus’s defection to Ailill and Medb. His prideful attempt to keep Derdriu as his own, and his deception in his dealings with the exiled sons of Uisliu, leads to a tragic conflict that forces Fergus and many Ulster kinsmen into exile.

He can be seen as a foil to Cúchulainn, whose unshakeable sense of honor and fairness are emphasized as he essentially works to protect Ulster from the aftermath of Conchobor’s dishonesty. However, those who remain in Ulster are loyal to Conchobor, and while he is slow to rise against the invading Irish armies, when he does, his allies come quickly and eagerly, ready to follow him into battle for their families.

Medb of Cruachan is the queen of Connacht and wife of Ailill. She is the main antagonist of The Táin, and she is characterized as haughty, warlike, and deceptive, often using her sexuality, or the promise of her daughter Finnabair, as a tool for negotiation. Medb is an archetypal warrior queen, but she is also a flawed and complicated character. In the early pages of The Táin she is honest and forthcoming in her dealings. Medb wants to match her husband’s resources, to find parity in their marriage, hoping to borrow the Brown Bull without taking it by force. She is driven by the desire to balance her marriage to Ailill, as she has no bull in her holdings to match his bull Finnbennach. However, once she decides to invade Ulster to take the bull by force, her sense of honor and fairness seems to transform in pursuit of the prize.

From that point on, Medb serves as a foil, for her failures highlight Cúchulainn’s good traits and contrast with the leadership of Fergus and Ailill. She is so driven by her pride that she is willfully blind to the prophesies of those who warn that her pursuit of the bull will only end in slaughter. Reflecting early medieval views on marriage, she is flawed for her inability to submit to her husband’s authority, instead engaging all their allies in a losing battle to try to gain equality in her marriage. Her pride likewise makes her skeptical and dismissive. She rarely seeks truces with the Ulstermen, and when she does, she always undermines them with trickery. And while she boasts of being brave in battle, she is often pictured hiding behind her mercenary fighters or holding back. She is ultimately revealed to be prideful, dishonest, unfaithful, sexually manipulative, and cowardly—all flaws typically associated with female stock characters.

Fergus was the king of Ulster before Conchobor. He now lives in exile in Connacht. Fergus is one of the most complicated and dynamic characters in the epic, as his loyalties are split between his homeland in Ulster and Connacht, the land of his asylum. Fergus was exiled from Ulster under Conchobor’s reign after rebelling against his king when Conchobor manipulated the rules of hospitality and safe conduct. However, he freely gave up his rulership and does not seem to challenge that shift in power; his conflict with Conchobor is based on honor.

As such, with few exceptions, Fergus does everything he can to undermine the Irish armies and help Cúchulainn protect his homeland. He remains fiercely loyal to Ulster, despite his motivation to avenge the killing of the sons of Uisliu. Fergus is clever and cunning, often finding opportunities to pass along crucial information to Cúchulainn that undermines Medb and Ailill’s armies. He is repeatedly accused of leading the Irish armies on the longest route to Ulster, thereby delaying their advance and further exposing them to daily single-combat encounters with Cúchulainn, who slowly but surely destroys a third of their forces. He is far from a neutral go-between, but nonetheless he has sworn to help those who have given him shelter in his exile, and his conflict with Conchobor festers throughout the text.

Fergus often serves as a “translator” between the tribes and an intermediary between the bulls. For example, he helps Medb and Ailill better understand who they are fighting. This “translation” serves the reader as well; from the start, Fergus is the original storyteller of The Táin. While it is his ghost who transmits the epic to the poets of Ireland, many of the text’s passages are told from his perspective, most notably at moments of narrative exposition, like when he recounts Cúchulainn’s childhood or identifies each Ulster warrior.

Ailill is the king of Connacht and married to Medb. In many ways he is a stock character, as the king of an invading army who is overshadowed by his headstrong wife. However, he is depicted as having a head for strategy, finding ways to preserve the lives of his troops and avoiding unnecessary conflict. He also establishes truces that are often undone by Medb or unfortunate circumstance.

Medb says he is not a mean, fearful, or jealous man, and this seems to be true, for when he is informed that Medb and Fergus have become lovers, he does not react in jealousy but uses the opportunity strategically. Engaging Fergus in a game of fidchell, he shames the former king and lets him know he has disarmed him while he was distracted with Medb. However, Ailill prudently refuses to let this ruin their alliance and instead obligates Fergus to stay in their service. In another scene Ailill convinces Fergus to ask Cúchulainn to spare his men, and he forms an initial truce with Conchobor before the final battle. In sum, Ailill presents a more reasonable and shrewd contrast to Medb’s prideful and reactive leadership.

An archetypal goddess of war, the Morrígan appears sporadically to help or hinder the conflict between humans. She is a shapeshifter, appearing as a raven, a beautiful young woman, and an old crone. Her motivations are unknown, but she attempts to help Cúchulainn, offering him her love and resources. He does not realize it is the Morrígan, and when he spurns her, she tries to undermine him during single combat. However, their conflict is resolved when they both heal each other, and their relationship remains ambiguous.

Like the Greek gods who occasionally insert themselves into the mortals’ affairs, at certain moments in The Taín the Morrígan appears to chant a prophecy into the ears of the warriors or a warning to the Brown Bull himself, disturbing the peace and pushing the narrative in a new direction. In part, she serves to explain the unknowable to a premodern audience and to connect a cultural myth to supernatural origins.

Conchobor’s father, Cathbad is a druid who appears at critical moments in the text to offer a prediction or to affirm the importance of transitions in the text. Gifted as a seer, his role in the narrative is to add a sense of foreboding while simultaneously affirming the importance of the incident or the fate of any given character. He predicts Conchobor’s birth, and the tragic violence that will follow Derdriu’s life, just as he is there to affirm Cúchulainn’s arming and rise to greatness, but also his short life. As such, Cathbad continually links the epic to its mythological roots, tying it to a sense of otherworldly predestination and greatness.