Cú Chulainn (Cú Chulainn)

The hound of Ulster: a boy who killed a dog and took its job, and a warrior his own side had to cool in three vats of water.

He was born Sétanta. The name everyone knows he earned at about six years old, arriving late to a feast at the house of Culann the smith, who had already loosed his hound. The boy killed it, with a sling or with his bare hands depending on the telling, and when Culann grieved for the animal that guarded everything he owned, Sétanta offered to do the job himself until a pup could be reared. Cú Chulainn means the hound of Culann.

He is a creature of extremes and the literature does not pretend otherwise. In battle he undergoes the ríastrad, usually englished as the warp spasm: his body distorts, one eye sinks and the other protrudes, his hair stands and his shape becomes unrecognisable, and in that state he cannot tell friend from enemy. After one such rage the Ulstermen sent three vats of cold water to meet him. The first burst, the second boiled, and the third merely scalded.

His weapon is the Gáe Bolga, a barbed spear thrown with the foot that cannot be removed from a body without taking the body apart. He uses it on Ferdiad, his foster brother, at the ford in the Táin.

He is also bound by geasa that are designed to catch him. One forbids him to eat dog. Another forbids him to refuse hospitality. When he is offered dog meat by three hags on a road, the two obligations close on each other and he is finished either way. Wounded at the last, he tied himself upright to a standing stone so he would die on his feet, and his enemies waited until a crow landed on his shoulder before they would go near him.