Macha and the Curse of Ulster (Macha)

A woman made to race the king’s horses while in labour, whose curse is the reason the Táin happens at all.

Macha is at least three figures sharing a name, and the tradition does not reconcile them. There is a Macha who is one of the trio of the Mór-Ríoghain. There is a Macha Mong Ruadh, red-haired, given as the only woman in the list of high kings. And there is the Macha whose story explains the curse.

That one came to the house of a widower called Crunniuc, said nothing, and simply began keeping his house. His wealth increased. She told him only that he must not speak of her.

At the fair at Emain Macha, watching the king's chariot horses win, Crunniuc said aloud that his wife could run faster. The king sent for her. She was heavily pregnant and begged to be let wait until she had given birth, and the court refused, and the king threatened her husband's life.

So she ran, and she won, and at the finishing post she gave birth to twins and died. Dying, she cursed the men of Ulster: in their hour of greatest need, for five days and four nights, they would suffer the pains of a woman in childbirth, and that curse would fall on nine generations of them.

That is why, when Medb brings four provinces across the border for the brown bull, the army of Ulster is lying helpless and a seventeen year old is holding the ford on his own. Emain Macha, the capital of the Ulster Cycle, carries her name.