A speaker who refuses his terms
The woman in the extraordinary chariot answers Cú Chulainn's demand about a cow and rejects his assumption that he may judge its movement. His objection that the man should speak exposes another contested authority. She controls the exchange through misleading names and the claim to be a satirist receiving payment. Her power initially operates through speech as much as through transformed appearance.
Source: The Apparition of the Great Queen to Cuchulain — Leahy translation · Táin Bó Regamna, literal translation: cow dispute, names and satirist claim
A threat in several bodies
After the vehicle disappears she appears as a black bird and predicts the circumstances of a coming conflict. The eel, wolf, and heifer are forms she says she will take to interfere with the warrior's combat. These are prospective threats in this episode. Turning all of them into actions already completed would erase the dialogue's tense and its role as a prelude.
Source: The Apparition of the Great Queen to Cuchulain — Leahy translation · Táin Bó Regamna, literal translation: bird, calf prophecy and future animal interventions
A name with a visible textual qualification
Leahy's final note distinguishes a reading naming Morrígan from one naming Badb. The entry retains that qualification instead of deriving an entire fixed divine family from the difference. The selected narrative supports a powerful, antagonistic relationship with Cú Chulainn and a connection to the cattle raid; it does not, on its own, define every aspect of a universal war goddess.
Source: The Apparition of the Great Queen to Cuchulain — Leahy translation · Táin Bó Regamna, literal translation: final departure sentence and accompanying manuscript 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.
Explore time & place →Read the sources
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