Cath Maige Tuired Cúnga

This is story from Ireland’s Mythological Cycle, called Cath Maige Tuired Cúnga. I first researched and told this story to hurlers at festivals in Kalamazoo and Pittsburgh.

The story tells of a hurling match several thousand years ago between two competing groups of warriors which preceded a great battle between them. The hurling match was almost a brutal as the battle.

You can read the story with the pdf link below.

The image at the top is of a modern hurling match. To the left is an artist depiction of a Fir Bolg warrior, one of the participants in the battle.

Below is a cairn of the type still near the battlefield site today. A cairn is a piles of rock, carefully placed and engineered to stand for centuries. It is said that the soldiers on each side left the battle at the end of the day, carrying a stone in one hand and the severed head of a foe in the other. These stones and skulls were placed on a cairn in remembrance of the battle.