by Larry Lounsbury

Created on: September 15, 2010   Last Updated: September 18, 2010

Elements of Myth

Like the other hero’s of ancient Rome and Greece, Cuchulain’ is proof that the Celts too had many heroic deeds. The birth of a Hero in many ways reflects on a nation’s deepest dreams and aspirations.

Water is a constant theme in the story of Cuchulain’s birth, and his former self known as Lugh. It is like a washing of the nations body, spirit and soul, as each myth seems to center on some aspect of how a hero became part of the very linage of every Celtic man, women and child. In one tale of Cuchlain ,  “The hero has both divine and mortal parents. In the instance of CuChulain there is multiple conceptions, accounting for the fact that he is both the son and reincarnation of Lugh and the son of Sualtran, a mortal,” (Ford,14) Some famous teaching dogmas of the druids were that of reincarnation. “They inculcate this: that soul are not annihilated, but pass after death from one body to another, and they hold to this by encouraging men to valor, through disregarding the fear of death,” (Squire,36).  At Cuchlain’s first birth, snowfall occurs, and then his death at Emain results in his miraculous appearance again in Deichtine’s drink. She dreams that night, and in her dream she learns from a man that she will bare a child from him, it was he who had lead her to Brug, and he had slept with her, the child that had died had been hers, and now she had him planted in her womb again, and his new name would be Setana, and that the unknown man was Lug mac Ethnenn, and that the foals should be reared with his son. One of the foals is called the Grey of Macha, which is supernaturally linked to the water. After Conchobor promises her as wife to Sualdam mac Roich, Deichtine is ashamed at being pregnant, but gets sick and vomits up the child and it spills away wit the sickness. She is virgin once again and gets pregnant by her new husband. The son she has is called Setana, and later he is given his new name Cuchulain because he kills the hound of Culann the smith. 

In many places in Celtic society it was considered an honor for the King to sleep with a husband’s wife in order to bare a son whom they can name to the kings genealogy. “Ulster grew to worship Conchobar. So high was their regard for him that every man in Ulster that took a girl in marriage later let him sleep the first night with Conchobor, so as to have him first in the family,"  (Kinsella,4). In many

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