Cathbad

Late in the night a man wakes thirsty and sends his wife to the river. She brings back a cup, strained through her veil. He asks for a light, looks into the water, and sees two worms turning in it. Then he draws his sword and tells her to drink it herself.

The man is Cathbad, and this is how the greatest king of Ulster was conceived, or at least how one old book says he was. The woman is Ness, daughter of Eochu Yellow-heel, and she has good reason to do what she is told. She has seen that sword before.

Cathbad did not begin as the grey counsellor of a royal hall. The tale of Conchobar’s birth, kept in a late medieval manuscript and first put into print by Kuno Meyer in the 1880s, introduces him as a man from the south of Ulster with two trades. He had the learning of a druid and he led a roving war-band of twenty-seven. He was also very strong. One night the band fell on a house where twelve men were feasting and killed every one. Those twelve were the foster-fathers of a king’s daughter, a girl so mild she was called Assa, the easy one. Nobody could tell her who had done it. So she armed herself, gathered twenty-seven fighters of her own, and went raiding up and down the country in search of the killer. People stopped calling her Assa. They called her Ní-assa, the one who is not easy, and the name wore down into Ness.

She found him by accident, and at the worst moment. She had gone alone to swim in a pool in the wilds, with her clothes and her weapons on the bank. When she looked up, a man was standing between her and her spear with a bare blade in his hand. She asked for her life. He gave it on three conditions: peace between them, her friendship, and herself as his wife for as long as he lived. She said yes, because the other choice was to be killed. It is not a love story.

Her father gave the couple land beside a river named Conchobar, and there the business of the cup took place. Ness drank twice and swallowed a worm each time. Her pains came on while the two were travelling, and Cathbad, who could read a day the way a farmer reads a sky, told her that a child born the next morning would be a king whose name would be known across Ireland for ever. Ness sat down on a flat stone at the river’s edge and held on through the night. In the morning the boy arrived with a worm gripped in each fist and tumbled straight into the water. Cathbad hauled him out, named him for the river, and chanted a poem over him about the man he would be.

Another telling, kept in the Book of Leinster, is shorter and has no sword in it. Ness is sitting outside Emain Macha when the druid walks by. She asks what the hour is good for. For getting a king on a queen, he says. She looks about, sees no other man, and takes him indoors. A third tradition gives the fatherhood to a king named Fachtna and leaves Cathbad to raise the boy. Whichever is right, the old storytellers call Conchobar his son without fuss.

By the time of the great tales he is settled at Emain Macha, the king’s seat, teaching. The picture comes from the Táin Bó Cúailnge. On a bright morning he stands on the grass to the north-east of the fort with his students around him, eight of them in one version and a hundred in another, going through the lore of lucky and unlucky days. One pupil asks what this day is good for. Cathbad answers that a boy who takes up arms today will have a name that outlasts the island, and a short life. On the far side of the fort a seven-year-old drops his hurley stick and his ball. He has heard every word. He runs to the king, breaks fifteen sets of weapons in his hands until he is given the king’s own, and when Cathbad is fetched to explain himself the boy says one day of fame would be enough. That boy was Cú Chulainn.

His other famous reading was made on a woman’s body. The Ulstermen were drinking at the house of the king’s storyteller, whose wife was heavy with child, when a scream came from inside her womb and brought every warrior to his feet. Cathbad laid his palm on her belly and felt the child stir under it. He said it was a girl, that she would be called Derdriu, that she would have fair hair and grey-green eyes, and that Ulster would bleed for her. The warriors wanted the baby killed. Conchobar decided to keep her for himself instead, which is how the prophecy came true.

A later version of that story gives Cathbad a worse part in it. When the sons of Uisneach are fighting their way out of Emain with Deirdre, the king begs his druid to stop them and swears no harm will come to them. Cathbad raises a sea. It rolls around the three brothers on dry ground, cold and thick, until they are swimming where they stand and their weapons slip from their hands. Then Conchobar has them killed. Cathbad curses Emain and declares that no one of that king’s blood will hold it again.

So his powers are those of his office. He knows the worth of a day, the future of a child, the right name for a thing. He can work an illusion strong enough to drown armed men in a field. His rank is real too: in the Táin it is forbidden for an Ulsterman to speak before the king, and forbidden for the king to speak before his druids. When a frantic messenger rides in shouting that the province is being robbed, the hall sits in silence until Cathbad chooses to ask what the noise is about. He then remarks that a man who shouts at a king deserves to die. The messenger’s horse rears a moment later and the rim of his own shield takes off his head.

What he cannot do is make anyone listen, or change what he sees. He foretold Deirdre and was overruled. He foretold a short life and a child ran towards it. In the late tale of Cú Chulainn’s death he hides the hero in a valley where no sound can reach, then walks beside him pleading when the hero rides out anyway. He told the truth and it did no good.

Later genealogies make him the grandfather of half the heroes of Ulster through his daughters. The surviving tales do not record his death.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Cathbad in Irish mythology?

Cathbad is the chief druid of Ulster in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. He serves at Emain Macha, the court of King Conchobar mac Nessa, and is usually said to be Conchobar’s father. He is best known for his prophecies about Conchobar, Deirdre and Cú Chulainn.

Is Cathbad the father of Conchobar mac Nessa?

Most tellings say yes. In the tale of Conchobar’s birth, Cathbad forces Ness to become his wife, she drinks river water with two worms in it, and the boy is born holding a worm in each hand. Another tradition says King Fachtna was the father and Cathbad raised the child.

What did Cathbad prophesy about Cú Chulainn?

Cathbad told his pupils that any boy who took up arms on a certain day would win lasting fame but have a short life. The young Cú Chulainn overheard him and went straight to the king to ask for weapons. The story is told in the boyhood deeds section of the Táin Bó Cúailnge.

What did Cathbad prophesy about Deirdre?

Cathbad foretold Deirdre’s fate before she was born. When the unborn child screamed in the womb, he laid his hand on her mother’s belly and said the girl would be called Derdriu, would be very beautiful, and would bring bloodshed on Ulster. King Conchobar ignored the warning and kept her to be his wife.

What powers does Cathbad have?

Cathbad can tell which days are lucky, foretell the future of an unborn child, and work enchantments. In a later version of the Deirdre story he raises a phantom sea around the sons of Uisneach so that they drop their weapons. He also outranks the king in speech, since the king of Ulster may not speak before his druids.

Related Entries

Cú Chulainn, Deirdre, Medb, Ailill mac Máta, Donn Cúailnge (The Brown Bull of Cooley), Gáe Bolg (Gáe Bulga), Scathach, Morrigan, Lug, Merlin, Taliesin, Gwydion, Math Fab Mathonwy