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Updated: May 15, 2025
Thus, we have the feeling, even with regard to the Táin Bó Cúalnge, that what has come down to us is rather the rough-shaped material of an epic than a completed design.
It was in her desire to surpass her husband in wealth that she sent the combined armies of the south and west into Ulster to carry off a famous bull, the Brown Bull of Cooley, the only match in Ireland for one possessed by her spouse. This raid forms the central subject of the Táin Bó Cúalnge.
Then he put the iron inlaid breast-plate on his horses, so that they were covered from forehead to fore-foot with spears, and points, and lances, and hard points, so that every motion in this chariot was war-near, so that every corner, and every point, and every end, and every front of this chariot was a way of tearing."* *The Cattle Raid of Cualnge, by L. W. Faraday.
The songs of the bards were songs of battle; the great Irish epic of antiquity was the Táin Bó Cúalnge, or Cooley Cattle-raid, and it is full of combats and feats of strength and prowess. High character meant high pride, always ready to give account of itself and strike for its ideals: "Irritable and bold", as one historian has it.
It seems likely that the Red Branch cycle of tales, including the epic tale of the Táin or Cattle-spoil of Cualnge, which has gathered round itself a number of minor tales, had some basis of historical fact, and arose in the period of Ulster's predominance to celebrate the deeds of a band of warlike champions who flourished in the north about the beginning of the Christian era.
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