This that follows is the Birth of Cormac grandson of
Conn.
From
the Book of Ballymote
Translated by Standish O'Grady, Silva Gaedelica V.II.
Art
son of Conn of the Hundred Battles went to fight the battle
of magh mucramha against Maccon. Westwards over Shannon he
marched with the general hosting of all Ireland, and the
night before the battle he passed as a guest in the house
of Olc Acha the smith. That night they had unpleasant
converse and ill speeches: Olc Acha saying to Art that for
his giving battle to Maccon there existed no reason more
convenient or litter than there was for his engaging Olioll
Olom’s son Eoghan; that as against the former his cause
moreover was bad, for that Lughaid [surnamed Maccon] had
certain rightful claims upon him. “What amount of children
leavest thou?" the smith enquired of Art, who answered: “I
know not of any but one son only.” “That is too little,”
the smith said: “this night wed thou my daughter, for it is
prophesied for me that from me some great dignity must
spring.” A thing which was verified, for a great dignity
Cormac son of Art son of Conn of the Hundred Battles was.
That night the king mated with Olc Acha’s daughter Etan,
and then it was that Cormac was conceived. Art told her
that she would bear a son and that he should be king over
Ireland. Then too it was that he imparted to her all secret
instructions for the boy’s behoof, and declared to her that
on the morrow he would be slain. [In the morning] he bade
her farewell, saying: “take thy son to his friend of
Connacht, to Lughna in Corann, there to be fostered "; and
as he had himself premised the king afterwards was killed
in the battle.
Accordingly Etan proved to be with child, and [in due time]
it occurred to her to repair to Lughna’s house in order
that in the same she should bring forth the offspring which
she carried. But so soon as she arrived within that country
her pains took her, she came down out of her chariot and
gave birth to a son. Her maid went off and pulled twigs,
which she strewed under her: hence fiodnacha or ‘twigs,’
‘brushwood,’ i.e. ‘Feenagh,’ in Corann. At the boy’s birth
a report as of thunder boomed through the air, and Lughna
upon hearing the sound uttered:-
“Noise-thunder-birth
of king..."
He went
on: “even so: the true prince’s son, Cormac son of Art, it
is that is born now; let us go to seek him, for to me it is
committed to keep him until he shall be fit to rule the
land.”
After her child-bed Etan, having first enjoined her maid to
mind the boy till they should be able to proceed, slept.
The maid too slept however, and a she-wolf coming to them
ravished the child to the spot in which were her whelps: to
the stone cave that is hard by craeibhech or ‘locus
ramosus,’ i.e. ‘Creevagh,’ at the achail in that which
to-day is sídh Chormaic or ‘Cormac’s sídh.' By-and-by the
woman started out of her sleep and, because she found not
her son, cried out lamentably. Here Lughna came up to her,
and asked them what they were about. The woman told him
all: that it was towards him she had been on her way, for
that to him it was intrusted to foster the child. Then
Lughna conveyed her to his dwelling and gave out that,
whosoever he should be that procured knowledge of and a
clue to the infant, he would grant his own prayer [i.e.
would let him name his own reward].
Now one Grec mac Arodh as he ranged the country of a day
came by chance over a cave, in front of which he saw
wolf-cubs gambol and among them a little urchin on his
hands [i.e. on all fours]. “Just so,” he said, and went off
to Lughna; then bound him to his terms if he should get him
the king’s son. To this Lughna assented, and hence were
given to Grec the lands on which the Grecraighe or
‘Grec-posterity’ are established: the guerdon of Grec’s
finding of Cormac. This done Lughna and he took. their way
to the cave, and by them boy and cubs both were taken out
of it; at which point Lughna prognosticating for him
uttered
“Conn’s
victorious representative I hail..."
In the
sequel that same boy was nurtured by Lughna, and none dared
to provoke him against his father’s enemies [i.e. against
Lughaid Maccon and his faction]. The lad verily was ‘a
pasture of the eyes’ of many: for form namely and for
vesture, for propriety and for proportion, for ready
speech, for gaiety, for comeliness, for pride, for fire,
for strength and for high spirit; and the name that was
conferred on him by Lughna was corbmac, just as Art had
left that it should be given to him.
Once upon a time Cormac and Lughna’s Sons: Ochomon and
Nathnach, were at play. He struck one of them and: “oh
dear,” cried the patient, “there has stricken me a fellow
whose clan and race are unknown, except that he is a
gentleman without a father!” whereupon Cormac in great
dejection sought out Lughna and recited to him how he had
been reviled. “That is not true,” his guardian said: “thou
art the very prince’s son, son of Art son of Conn of the
Hundred Battles, and for thee it stands foretold to hold
thy father’s helm; nor so long as he [that now sits there]
lords it in Tara will corn, or milk, or mast, or sea-fruit
[i.e. yield of fish] or seasons come aright. “Come we
therefore,” said Cormac, “that we may visit, and bide our
time in, our father’s house in Tara.” “Let us even go,”
Lughna answered.
Then the two went their way: Lughna, and Cormac accompanied
with his wolves, he having also a body-guard of kerne which
from the time of Eochaid Airemh to that present had been in
Corann; for it was they that slew Eochaid: too heavy a rent
namely that had been imposed on them. They are the firchúl
Bregh of to-day, [and are there] because that by way of
comradeship they came with Cormac thither.
So they held on till they gained Tara, where welcome was
accorded them and Cormac received on the footing of a dalta
[i.e. protégé and pupil]. At which time there was in Tara a
shehospitaller: Bennaidh, whose roaming sheep came and ate
up the queen’s crop of woad. The case was referred to
Lughaid [Maccon the king] for judgment, and his award was:
the queen to have the sheep in lieu of the woad. “Nay,”
Cormac said: “the shearing of the sheep is a sufficient
offset to the cropping of the woad; for both the one and
the other will grow again.” “That is the true judgment,”
all exclaimed: “a very prince’s son it is that has
pronounced it!" The one half of that house in which the
false judgment had been given slid down the steep declivity
[on which it stood], and will so abide for ever: whence
claenfherta Temrach or ‘the sloping mounds of Tara.’
Maccon’s rule in sooth was not good: the men of Ireland
warned him off therefore, and bestowed it on Cormac. After
which, and so long as Cormac lived, the world was full of
all good things. His wolves also Cormac continued to have
with him; and the reason of that great esteem which Cormac
bore to wolves was that wolves had fostered him.
By him was effected the renovation and decoration of Tara
as before him she never had been, in respect of both houses
and ramparts, and of all other edifices: both
laech-houses
and ladies’ bowers, and ‘houses of the earth’ [i.e.
underground storehouses, cellars, etc.]. Well off too
Ireland was during that king’s time: for the multiplicity
of her fish the river waters might not be forded, nor her
woods traversed easily for the exuberance of their mast;
while for the quantity of their honey which by reason of
his righteous rule was vouchsafed from heaven the
travelling of her plain countries was no ready matter. The
numbers of her wild creatures of the chase too were such
as, though they should have had nor tilth nor reaping,
would have comforted her people with meat in sufficiency.
So Cormac continued to reign in Tara, and by him in due
time was constructed the noblest building that ever was
erected there; nor though he was opposed by Ulster was he
ever divorced from his kingdom, but in the house of Speldn
the hospitaller died when in his throat there stuck a
salmon’s bone which had been kneaded up among the wheat
given to him [in the form of bread]. Such was the cause of
his death.
Now what Cormac bequeathed to his confidentials, and
enjoined on them, was this not to bury him in the
brugh,
because it was not one and the same god that he and they
that were sepulchred therein adored; but he prescribed his
burial in Rosnaree, with his face set eastwards to the
rising of the sun.
Finis.
SOURCE
Silva
Gadelica. ed.
and trans. Standish Hayes O'Grady. 1892. reprint: NY: C.
Lemma Publishing Corporation, 1970.