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warrior queen of connacht · now serving http
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_( )_ <- maeve (allegedly)
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/ knocknarea · county sligo \
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>hello, traveller
You've reached a server named after Maeve (Medb, Méabh, roughly "mayv"), the queen at the center of the greatest epic of early Irish literature. She wanted a bull. Things escalated.
>the cattle raid of cooley, in six acts
- act i. In bed, Maeve and her husband Ailill compare their riches. He wins by exactly one bull.
- act ii. The only bull good enough to even the score is the Brown Bull of Cooley, in Ulster. Maeve raises an army.
- act iii. The men of Ulster are laid low by an old curse, so a teenage Cú Chulainn holds the fords alone, one duel a day, for months.
- act iv. Ulster finally wakes up. Huge battle. Fergus, Maeve's champion and lover, spares his old homeland.
- act v. The Brown Bull and Ailill's White-Horned Bull fight across all of Ireland. Brown wins, then drops dead from the effort.
- act vi. Nobody ends up with the bull. Classic.
>more things worth knowing
- seven sons, one name
- A druid foretold that "Maine" would kill King Conchobar, so she renamed all seven of her sons Maine. Just to be safe.
- a gate to the otherworld
- Near her royal seat at Rathcroghan is Oweynagat, the "cave of the cats", said to open into the otherworld at Samhain, the festival that became Halloween. Good timing for a visit.
- sovereignty in person
- Many scholars read Maeve as a former goddess of sovereignty: kings ruled by being joined to her. She went through quite a few husbands.
- the map is a crime scene
- As the Brown Bull ran home, bits of the White Bull fell off along the way, and the tale explains a list of Irish place names that way.
- death by dairy
- Yes, it's true: she was killed while bathing, by a lump of hard cheese flung from a sling. Some legends just commit.