A sound before the warning
A terrifying cry wakes Cú Chulainn and sends him outside without his weapons. His wife brings his equipment, and Láeg arrives with the chariot after hearing the same disturbance. They follow the sound and encounter a strange vehicle drawn by a red, one-footed horse, with its pole passing through the animal's body. A red-clad woman rides while a man drives a cow nearby.
Cú Chulainn asserts responsibility for Ulster's cattle. The woman answers that this animal belongs neither to him nor to his friends. Their exchange quickly becomes a contest over authority: he demands why a woman speaks for the man, while she challenges his right to decide the animal's destination.
Source: The Apparition of the Great Queen to Cuchulain — Leahy translation · Táin Bó Regamna, literal translation: waking cry, Láeg, strange chariot and opening dispute
Names that do not give control
The strangers offer extravagant names that frustrate the hero's demand for a straightforward identification. He jumps into the chariot and threatens the woman with his spear. She claims to be a female satirist receiving the cow as payment for a poem. Leahy's edition marks the poem itself as omitted, so its precise wording cannot be recovered from this selected translation.
Suddenly the travelers, animal, and vehicle disappear. The woman is now a black bird on a nearby branch. Cú Chulainn recognizes that he has mishandled an encounter with a powerful being. She declares that his conduct will bring trouble, and connects the cow's breeding with the bull of Cúailnge to the coming cattle raid.
Source: The Apparition of the Great Queen to Cuchulain — Leahy translation · Táin Bó Regamna, literal translation: deceptive names, spear threat, satirist claim, omitted poem and bird transformation
A future battle argued in advance
The woman describes how she will interfere when Cú Chulainn meets an equal opponent. As an eel she will entangle his feet; as a wolf she will attack him; as a white, red-eared heifer she will lead cattle toward the fighting. He answers each threat with a promised injury and refusal of healing. Their confrontation ends in separation, not a completed duel.
The printed witnesses differ in the final naming: Leahy's notes distinguish Morrígan from a reading naming Badb. The prediction also does not provide a tidy timetable that should override every other account of the hero's life. This short prelude stages competing claims about his future, showing that heroic confidence and supernatural foresight remain in active argument.
Source: The Apparition of the Great Queen to Cuchulain — Leahy translation · Táin Bó Regamna, literal translation: eel, wolf and heifer threats, counter-threats, departure and final textual note
- Period / witness
- Medieval Irish prose and verse preserved in medieval and early modern manuscript witnesses; Leahy translation 1905–1906.
- Recording context
- This entry concerns the literary version named in its passages, transmitted by Christian-era Irish manuscript culture and translated by A. H. Leahy. Legendary settings are not dates of composition or evidence for a single pre-Christian canon.
A recording location is not necessarily a story’s origin. Dates of texts, copies, and translations answer different questions.
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These references support the explanation above. Rights and edition notes are recorded individually.
The Apparition of the Great Queen to Cuchulain — Leahy translation ↗
Anonymous Irish literary narratives; translated and arranged by Arthur Herbert Leahy (1857–1928) · Volume II, 1906; Project Gutenberg eBook released May 2004 and updated 29 June 2026
Edition & rights note