21.4.25

Bruchfast

Easter dinner

So there is another seven hours to go... 

I will complete reading the Táin and then do some writing. I can literally transcribe my writing over this time. I haven't had anything to drink for a week and honestly, i never thought about it till now. I notice I want to drink when I am really hungry and very stressed. I think that's about normal the idea of happy hour, although I do doubt if people back in the day were very stressed.

So far the Táin has been very interesting. It starts with Mebh of Connaught and her husband/consort arguing about who has more shite. 

It then comes down to these two bulls - a white and a brown one. Which are pretty much supernatural. So you know they aren't arguing about literal bulls, but about these mythical beings. Which were swinherds and are now in Taurus. Interestingly they also go through other transformations - they turn into eels, stags, dragons, etc... and finally they become maggots which are swallowed by cows and they become these bulls. Totally supernatural.

Into the age of the bull comes Cuchulainn who subverts all convention. It is really interesting... he is pure ego. He does not suffer from the pangs of childbirth, a generational curse, he has no regard for Mebh and Ailil nor Fergus McRoy. His only interest is pure egoic cholera and he has only loyalties to friends. He cares not for the glory nor the honour - he is solely fixed on the singular task of holding the boundary between the age of the Bull and the age of the individual.

Its interesting solely for that reason alone. But along with it, stitched into the landscape is the story of the Táin. The battle is fought every step of the way... how many ways can you lose your honour? How many ways can you keep a faith? How many ways can you be true to yourself?

Ciaran Carson breaks the story up into chapters... was it also broken into chapters? Guerilla Tactics? Surely that is an honour to the IRA during the Easter rising. It is so easy to see the story through the lens which we operate now... but for me, the story works in mythic time and it is about the incarnation of the human egoic being. We do battle with ourselves. The struggle is real.

It is also interesting that it takes place during Samhain. Who goes to war during the coldest months of the year? That's mad. Did Mebh think she was going to win a fight? The images of snow and muck and the shivering of the warriors. I do not know enough about the battle tactics of Iron Age warfare was like. Do I want to go down that rabbit hole? Surely there must be someone I can ask...I have asked... let's see what comes back. But the trails of Cuchulainn are fascinating. 

Would you kill your best friend...?