Page 49 - Demo

Chapter two 49
clers tell time and again how these noble qualities of the Red Branch Knights were always cherished by the warriors of Erin from those far-lung times downward.
As we now know, Cúchulainn was the most famed of the Red Branch Knights; he em- bodied all the aforementioned qualities and as a result he is the leading and most heroic igure in the Ulidian Cycle.
A foster-son of King Conor mac Nesssa, Cúchulainn was not the warrior’s original name, it was Setanta. The story is told how when he was still a boy, Setanta was attacked by the ierce guard-hound of Culan, chief blacksmith and weapon-maker for the Red Branch Knights; but having driven his silver sliothar, his hurling-ball, down the throat of the animal, he next seized the hound, a jaw in each hand, before tearing him asunder. Then, pitying the bereaved Culan he vowed: “Do not grieve, O Culan, I shall henceforth be your hound”. Hence his better-known name of Cúchulainn-‘The Hound of Culan’.
Cuchulain Slays the Hound of Culain”, illustration by Stephen Reid from Eleanor Hull’s The Boys’ Cuchulain, 1904
The story further tells that following this episode, when he arrived at the king’s court to commence training for the Red Branch Knights, the young Cúchulainn found the other trainees playing hurling on the green. Having taken with him from home, his red-bronze hurling stick and his silver sliothar, which he had earlier retrieved from the hound’s throat, the youngster joined the other trainees, and so out played them all, that from then on the attention of the King and his court was drawn to him.