An Chraobh Airgid
In bright, blustery light the long Cooley ridge rises across a shining bay above green pasture, white hawthorn, a smoking ring-fort and cattle with one dark bull.

Ulaid · Ulster

Cúailnge

The Cooley peninsula · Co. Louth

The home of the Brown Bull, between Carlingford Lough and Dundalk Bay.

Open it on the full site There it is marked on the map of the five fifths, where the road of a tale can be traced.

A mountainous peninsula in the north of Louth, with Carlingford Lough on one side and Dundalk Bay on the other. The Cooley Mountains run along it, and Slieve Foy is the highest of them. Its modern Irish name is Cuaille. In the Táin it is the country of Dáire mac Fiachna and his Brown Bull, harried by the host of Medb; and it was home to Cúailnge that the Brown Bull came at the end of the war, to die.

In the tales

  • Boann and the Secret Well Whoever looks into Nechtan’s secret well, his eyes burst. Boann walks three times round it to show it has no power over her, and the water rises.
  • The Cattle Raid of Cooley An argument in bed over who is richer ends in a war for a brown bull, and one young man holding a ford against all Ireland.
  • The Adventure of Nera On Samhain night a man goes out in the dark to tie a withe round a hanged man’s foot, and follows the host of the sídhe into the cave of Cruachan.

See also

Sources

Each tale above lists the sources it is retold from. Every source the site draws on is listed on the full site.