How Cú Chulainn Got His Name

When the boy who would become Cú Chulainn was small, he was called Sétanta. He lived with his mother in the country of the Ulstermen and grew up wanting to join the boy-troop of King Conchobar at Emain Macha. The other boys were older, and his mother said he was too young, but he set out one day on his own, with his hurley stick and his ball, and walked the long road to the king's court.

When he came to the playing field at Emain Macha, the boys of the troop were at their game. They had not been warned of him, and by the rule of the field, anyone arriving had to ask for protection before entering. Sétanta did not know the rule. He walked in. The whole troop, three times fifty boys, set on him at once. He stood his ground. He turned aside their throws with his stick, knocked their balls back at them, and would have hurt many of them if the king had not heard the noise and come down to see who this small stranger was.

Conchobar took him by the shoulder and laughed at his courage. He swore him into the troop. Sétanta played with them after that, and he was the best of them, and there was no game in which he was not first.

A while later, the king was invited to a feast at the house of Culann the smith. Culann was a craftsman who served the king and lived alone in his fort with a great hound that guarded his cattle and his gates. The hound was as big as a horse, with iron strength, and only Culann could control it. At night Culann would loose it on the courtyard, and the hound would kill any man who came in.

The king set out for the feast, and as he went past the playing field he saw Sétanta still at his game. "Come with me to Culann's feast, boy."

"I will follow you," said Sétanta. "I have not finished the game."

The king went on without him. He came to Culann's house, and they sat to feast, and Culann asked: "Is the company all here? Shall I loose the hound?"

"Yes," said Conchobar, forgetting the boy. "Loose him."

Culann let the great hound out into the yard.

Sétanta finished his game and came along the road in the dark, juggling his ball and his stick, whistling to himself. The hound saw him at the gate and rushed at him, jaws wide. There was no time to run. Sétanta caught his ball as the hound leaped, and threw it down the hound's open throat. The ball struck the heart through the inside, and the hound fell, choking, dying.

Inside the house they heard the hound's roar and then the silence. Conchobar remembered the boy and went pale. They all ran out with torches. They found Sétanta standing over the dead hound, unhurt.

Culann came up. He looked at his hound, lying still, and his face changed. "Welcome, boy, for your mother's sake," he said. "But this is grief to me. My hound was the guard of my cattle and the keeper of my house. He was my friend. You have killed him, and now I have nothing to keep my home safe by night."

Sétanta said: "Master Culann, give me a pup of the same breed. I will train him to be a hound like the one I killed. And until that pup is grown and ready to take his work, I myself will be the hound of your house. I will guard your cattle and your gates. I will sleep across your door. I will give back what I have taken."

Culann was moved. He accepted the offer.

The druid Cathbad was there, watching. He said in a clear voice for everyone to hear: "Then from this day let his name be Cú Chulainn. The Hound of Culann."

The boy bowed his head and took the name. He was no longer Sétanta. He was Cú Chulainn from then on, and he carried the name into all the things he would do, and into the great war for the brown bull, and into his death on the standing stone with the crows on him, far in the long story still ahead.