The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Cuchulainn’s first day under arms was the occasion of his full self-manifestation. There was nothing serenely controlled about this performance, nothing of the playful irony that we feel in the deeds of the Hindu Kṛṣṇa. Rather, the abundance of Cuchulainn’s power was becoming known for the first time to himself, as well as to everybody else. It broke out of the depths of his being, and then had to be dealt with, impromptu and fast.

The happening was again at the court of King Conchobar, the day Cathbad the Druid declared in prophecy of any stripling who that day should assume arms and armature that “the name of such an one would transcend those of all Ireland’s youths besides: his life however would be fleeting short.” Cuchulainn forthwith demanded fighting equipment. Seventeen sets of weapons given him he shattered with his strength, until Conchobar invested him with his own outfit. Then he reduced the chariots to fragments. Only that of the king was strong enough to support his trial.

Cuchulainn commanded Conchobar’s charioteer to drive him past the distant “Look-out Ford,” and they came presently to a remote fortress, the Dun of the Sons of Nechtan, where he cut off the heads of the defenders. He fastened the heads to the sides of the car. On the road back he jumped to the ground and “by sheer running and mere speed” captured two stags of the grandest bulk. With two stones he knocked out of the air two dozen flying swans. And with thongs and other gear he tethered all, both the beasts and the birds, to the chariot.

Levarchan the Prophetess beheld the pageant with alarm as it approached the city and castle of Emania. “The chariot is graced with bleeding heads of his enemies,” she declared, “beautiful white birds he has which in the chariot bear him company, and wild unbroken stags bound and tethered to the same.” “I know that chariot-fighter,” the king said: “even the little boy, my sister’s son, who this very day went to the marches. Surely he will have reddened his hand; and should his fury not be timely met, all Emania’s young men will perish by him.” Very quickly, a method had to be contrived to abate his heat; and one was found. One hundred and fifty women of the castle, and Scandlach their leader at the head of them, “reduced themselves critically to nature’s garb, and without subterfuge of any kind trooped out to meet him.” The little warrior, embarrassed or perhaps overwhelmed by such a display of womanhood, averted his eyes, at which moment he was seized by the men and soused into a vat of cold water. The staves and hoops of the vessel flew asunder. A second vat boiled. The third became only very hot. Thus Cuchulainn was subdued, and the city saved.^[12]

A beautiful boy indeed was that: seven toes to each foot Cuchulainn had, and to either hand as many fingers; his eyes were bright with seven pupils apiece, each one of which glittered with seven gemlike sparkles. On either cheek he had four moles: a blue, a crimson, a green, and a yellow. Between one ear and the other he had fifty clear-yellow long tresses that were as the yellow wax of bees, or like unto a brooch of the white gold as it glints to the sun unobscured. He wore a green mantle silver-clasped upon his breast and a gold-thread shirt.^[13]

But when he was taken by his paroxysm or distortion “he became a fearsome and multiform and wondrous and hitherto unknown being.” All over him, from his crown to the ground, his flesh and every limb and joint and point and articulation of him quivered. His feet, shins, and knees shifted themselves and were behind him. The frontal sinews of his head were dragged to the back of his neck, where they showed in lumps bigger than the head of a man-child aged one month.