Hello and welcome to the final part of our six part series on Heroes. Last week, we spoke about Oisin Mac Fionn of the mighty Fianna. Today, we will be finishing off with Cú Chulainn - the legendary mighty warrior. This is the story of Morrígan’s encounter with Cú Chulainn in battle.
The Goddess Morrígan first encountered Cú Chulainn while he was defending the province of Ulster from Queen Mebh and her army. The legend says that Morrígan fell in love with Cú Chulainn, and one day, she tried to seduce him to fall for her. She approaches him, disguised as a young woman, claiming to be the daughter of a king, and she offers him her eternal love. Despite the Goddess’ obvious beauty, Cú Chulainn refused her advances.
His refusal outraged Morrígan, so she set out for revenge against him. She uses her ability to shape shift to attack him in different animal forms while he’s in combat.First, she changes herself into an eel. This allowed her to swim up and trip him in the ford, but Cú Chulainn fought back. He manages to punch the eel; breaking her ribs.
Morrígan comes back again, this time as a wolf. She stampedes cattle across the ford in an attack, but Cú Chulainn is faster than her and he blinds her eye with a sling stone. Finally, she appears as a cow at the head of the stampede. As a cow, she riled up the stampede and got them to attack the ford. Again, Cú Chulainn fought back and injured her leg with another sling stone. This forces Morrígan to accept her defeat, or so we think.
After Cú Chulainn finally defeats Lóch, the Goddess appears before him as an old woman milking a cow. Perhaps if he wasn’t so exhausted, he might’ve noticed that the old woman had injuries almost identical to the ones he had caused the animals.Not sensing the danger that he was in, Cú Chulainn stopped to speak to the old woman. Thankful for his company, the old woman offers him three sips of milk.
After he finishes his drink, he blesses the woman. What Cú Chulainn didn’t realise was that in doing so, he cured the Goddess of all of her injuries, restoring her to full strength. The Morrígan didn’t attempt to engage Cú Chulainn in battle - she had already outsmarted him and tricked him into healing her.
Now Cú Chulainn encountered the Goddess once more before the warrior’s death. He was en route to another great battle when he found a woman scrubbing armour covered in blood. At this time, this was seen as a bad omen to encounter before battle. Brushing it off, Cú Chulainn passed the woman and continued to confront his enemy in battle. During the battle, he was brutally wounded. With the last bit of energy he had, he used some twine to tie himself to a nearby boulder, in a last attempt to frighten off any enemy. A crow landed on his shoulder, and it is said that he finally drifted to sleep for good. Morrígan was well known for transforming into a crow...could this have been her final attack? Maybe we’ll never know!
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