Cormac mac Airt (Cormac mac Airt)

The model king of Irish tradition, reared by a she-wolf, who gave his name to a book of advice still quoted.

Cormac mac Airt is the king Irish tradition holds up as the standard, and the Cycles of the Kings is largely built around figures like him: not gods, not heroes of a warrior band, but kings, some legendary, some probably real, remembered for how they ruled.

The birth story is the usual mixture. His father Art was killed in battle before he was born, his mother gave birth alone, and the infant was carried off by a she-wolf and reared among her cubs until he was found. Whether this is older material or a borrowing from Rome by way of monastic learning is not settled.

His reputation rests on judgment. The story that makes it is a dispute brought before the sitting king, Lugaid, about a flock of sheep that had eaten a queen's woad. Lugaid ruled that the sheep were forfeit. The young Cormac said no: the wool of the sheep for the crop of the woad, since both would grow again. The judgment was so obviously right that the wall of the house fell down on the side of the false one, and Lugaid gave up the kingship.

Tecosca Cormaic, the Instructions of Cormac, is a text of advice attributed to him, and it reads like it was written by somebody who had met politicians. Asked what is best for a king, it answers with a list that puts firmness without harshness and generosity without extravagance near the top.

He is said to have died choking on a salmon bone.