Analecta Hiberniae, Fasciculus VIII
On the Conduct of a Man at Áth Fhir Diadh on the Night Preceding Combat, with Notes on a Damaged Verse
The fragment below, recovered loose from the binding of a larger Ulster Cycle compilation at Doire, presents what appears to be a preparatory account preceding the better-known combat between Fer Diad mac Damáin and Cú Chulainn as recorded in the principal recensions of the Táin Bó Cúailnge. The text is of modest philological interest; its chief curiosity lies in the suppression of the conventional martial preparation formulae one expects in comparable passages of the Ulster material — the ritual arming sequence, the charioteer's address, the enumeration of weapons — all of which are here absent in favour of what the present writer can only characterise as an unusual economy of register, perhaps attributable to an earlier stratum of composition than the surrounding material. The warrior's vigil before decisive combat is a convention well-attested in the classical tradition: one thinks of the ninth book of the Iliad, and Achilles at Phthia, ungovernable in his refusal of sleep, though the Irish treatment here is, as might be expected of material at this remove from the Continental influences, considerably more rude in its execution. The damaged verse presents difficulties the present writer has not attempted to resolve beyond establishing the triadic structure. The marginal annotation is pious in character, and the present writer finds nothing to remark in it.
Found loose in the binding of an Ulster Cycle compilation at Doire. The hand is consistent with the tenth century; the text is plainly older. A second hand, later, has supplied the title Fer Diad an Oíche Roimh an Áth. The fragment appears to precede the account of the combat at the ford; whether it once formed part of a longer sequence cannot be determined. A single further annotation appears three folios on, in what may be the same second hand; the present writer has not been able to attribute it with confidence. It does not appear again.
Fer Diad mac Damáin was of the Fir Bolg of Connacht. He had trained under Scáthach of Alba. There was no man in Ireland whose skin could not be pierced except his own. His foster-brother was Cú Chulainn. They had trained together under the same woman and known each other since before they were men.
But war had come to the island. Medb of Connacht had taken the Brown Bull of Cooley from the north and the men of Ulster lay under their weakness and could not rise. Cú Chulainn stood alone and held all that came against him one man at a time. He was of the north. Fer Diad was of the west. Between them lay a ford.
Medb sent her poets to speak against Fer Diad's name and Finnabair her daughter to soften him. He said no for three days. On the third day he said yes.
That evening he set his weapons in order. He sharpened what needed sharpening. He checked the stitching on his leather apron and found it sound. He ate what his people brought him and he lay down.
He did not sleep.
His people slept around him. The fire went low. He did not put wood on it.
He had not sent word to Cú Chulainn. There was no word to send. Cú Chulainn would know in the morning and the morning was close and there was nothing that could be said before it that would be worth the saying.
Before first light he rose. He washed his face in the river. He walked to the ford and stood at its edge and looked across at the far bank and turned back. He put on his armour.
His charioteer asked if he was ready.
He said he was ready.
The charioteer did not ask again.
He went to the ford. The water had no name then that men have kept.
Cú Chulainn was already there.
Atá omun and [...]. Tiagu [...] ocus ní [...]. Ní fil focal [...]
Post completorium scripsi, die Sancti Finniani, nive cadente. Membrana hic tenuis est. Exemplar vix legibile fuit in locis multis — quis scripsit illud? Paganum hoc, et tamen manus mea non cessavit. Deus miseretur animae meae.
Frater quidam in communitate nostra — nomen eius non dicam — per multas noctes anni praeteriti sic sedit. Vidi eum. Nihil dixi quia nescivi quid dicere. Mane surrexit et ad opus suum iit sicut semper.
Nondum scio si bene feci. Deus —
Footnote: The marginal annotation, in Hiberno-Latin of a type consistent with manuscripts of the Columban tradition, reads in translation as follows:
I wrote this after compline, on the feast of Saint Finnian, with snow falling. The skin of the vellum is thin here. The exemplar was barely legible in places — who wrote it? This is pagan matter, and yet my hand did not stop. God have mercy on my soul. A certain brother in our community — I will not say his name — sat thus through many nights of the past year. I saw him. I said nothing because I did not know what to say. In the morning he rose and went to his work as always. I still do not know if I did well. God —
The annotation ends at this point. The scribe appends a personal reflection of a type common in manuscripts of this provenance, and the present writer finds it of no particular significance beyond what it suggests of the copyist's temperament.
The combat referred to is that of the ford known as Áth Fhir Diadh, now Ardee in County Louth, which takes its name from this encounter and from this man; Meyer discusses the dinnseanchas tradition associated with the site at some length, and the present writer finds his account satisfactory though his dating of the relevant verse is, characteristically, too conservative.
The damaged verse resists restoration; the three surviving line-openings — atá omun, I go, there is no word — confirm the triadic structure one expects in verse of this period. The present writer notes that the verbal construction used for the fire's diminishment appears in elegiac contexts elsewhere in the Ulster material, where it is applied to the extinction of a household or a line; it is employed here in what is almost certainly a purely descriptive capacity, though the parallel is of the kind a careful reader of the period will observe. The phrase rendered as "there was no word to send" may reflect the warrior's formal acknowledgement that the truce period has concluded and negotiation is no longer possible, a convention attested in comparable passages of the Ulster material. The parallel with the vigil passages of the Iliad — particularly the ninth book, in which Achilles, having made his refusal, sits through the night with his decision already formed — is of that class of coincidences which comparative mythology accumulates without profit.