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The Deep Dive Anthology

Yeats

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"Cú Cúchulainn's Fight with the Sea"
"Cú Cúchulainn's Fight with the Sea"
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

A man came slowly from the setting sun,

To Emer, raddling raiment 1 in her dun 2,

And said, 'I am that swineherd 3 whom you bid

Go watch the road between the wood and tide,

But now I have no need to watch it more.'

Then Emer cast the web upon the floor,

And raising arms all raddled with the dye 4,

Parted her lips with a loud sudden cry.

That swineherd stared upon her face and said,

No man alive, no man among the dead,

Has won the gold his cars of battle 5 bring.'

'But if your master comes home triumphing

Why must you blench 6 and shake from foot to crown?

Thereon he shook the more and cast him down

Upon the web-heaped floor, and cried his word:

'With him is one sweet-throated like a bird.' 7

'You dare me to my face,' and thereupon

She smote with raddled fist 8, and where her son

Herded the cattle came with stumbling feet,

And cried with angry voice, 'It is not meet

To idle life away, a common herd.'

'I have long waited, mother, for that word:

But wherefore now?'

'There is a man to die;

You have the heaviest arm under the sky.'

'Whether under its daylight or its stars

My father stands amid his battle-cars.'

'But you have grown to be the taller 9 man.'

'Yet somewhere under starlight or the sun

My father stands.'
'Aged, worn out with wars

On foot. on horseback or in battle-cars.'

'I only ask what way my journey lies,

For He who made you bitter made you wise.'

'The Red Branch camp in a great company

Between wood's rim and the horses of the sea.

Go there, and light a camp-fire at wood's rim;

But tell your name and lineage to him

Whose blade compels, and wait till they have found

Some feasting man that the same oath has bound.' 10

Among those feasting men Cú Cúchulainn dwelt,

And his young sweetheart close beside him knelt,

Stared on the mournful wonder of his eyes

Even as Spring upon the ancient skies,

And pondered on the glory of his days;

And all around the harp-string told his praise,

And Conchubar, the Red Branch king of kings,

With his own fingers touched the brazen strings.

At last Cú Cúchulainn  spake, 'Some man has made

His evening fire amid the leafy shade.

I have often heard him singing to and fro

I have often heard the sweet sound of his bow.

Seek out what man he is.'

One went and came.

'He bade me let all know he gives his name

At the sword-point, and waits till we have found

Some feasting man that the same oath has bound.'

Cú Cúchulainn cried, 'I am the only man

Of all this host so bound from childhood on.

After short fighting in the leafy shade,

He spake to the young man, 'Is there no maid

Who loves you, no white arms to wrap you round,'

Or do you long for the dim sleepy ground,

That you have come and dared me to my face?'

'The dooms of men are in God's hidden place,'

'Your head a while seemed like a woman's head

That I loved once.' 11

Again the fighting sped,

But now the war-rage in Cú Cúchulainn woke,

And through that new blade's guard the old blade broke,

And pierced him.

'Speak before your breath is done.'

'Cú Cúchulainn I, mighty Cú Cúchulainn's son.' 12

'I put you from your pain. I can no more.'

While day its burden on to evening bore,

With head bowed on his knees Cú Cúchulainn stayed;

Then Conchubar sent that sweet-throated maid,

And she, to win him, his grey hair caressed;

In vain her arms, in vain her soft white breast.

Then Conchubar, the subtlest of all men,

Ranking his Druids 13 round him ten by ten 14,

Spake thus: 'Cú Cúchulainn will dwell there and brood

For three 15 days more in dreadful quietude

And then arise, and raving slay us all.

Chaunt in his ear delusions magical 16,

That he may fight the horses of the sea.' 17

The Druids took them to their mystery,

And chaunted for three days.

Cú Cúchulainn stirred,

Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard

The cars of battle and his own name cried;

And fought with the invulnerable tide. 18
Summary
Yeats's poem “Cú Cúchulainn's Fight with the Sea,” is based upon an ancient Irish myth. The plot of the poem is a boy is instructed by his mother to stand watch to wait for his warrior father Cú Cúchulainn to return home from battle. The son hears of his father’s victory in battle, but Cú Cúchulainn never returns. He also hears that his father is eloping with another woman. The son tells his mother and his mother tells him to find Cú Cúchulainn and camp on the outskirts of his encampment and wait for someone to inquire his name. She tells him to tell his name only to a man willing to fight him, who lies under the same oath. His father hears of this and goes to fight the man not knowing that it is his own son. The father ends up killing his son and hears his name upon his death, that he was his own son. Cú Cúchulainn is devastated and druids are sent to cover him in spells which cause him to wrestle with the sea.

Background:
This poem was written in 1892 and is a retelling of a story recorded in Irish mythology. Yeats thought that Irish history and mythology was incredibly important for Irish citizens to know. The retelling of the myth through poetry allowed for modern readers to come in contact with ancient Irish myths in a more accessible way. Yeats often chose to create retellings of Irish myths for the foundation of his poems. He created his own interpretations of a particular myth and often made significant changes. Yeats wrote several poems and other works that were based upon Irish mythology, particularly the Fenian Cycle and the Ulster Cycle. There are four cycles in Irish Mythology, the Mythological Cycle, the Ulster Cycle, the Fenian Cycle, and the Historical Cycle. Each of the cycles focus on different central characters and different points of Irish history. This poem has been likened to be an inverted version of the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex. In Oedipus Rex, a son kills his father and marries his mother. In Yeats's, “Cú Cúchulainn's Fight with the Sea,” the father ends up killing his son, who is sent by his wife to kill his father. In both, the murderer unknowingly kills his own kin. In both of the stories, the son’s fates are predicted at birth.Yeats also chose to change Cú Cúchulainn's wife’s name from Aoife to Emer. Scholars are uncertain as to why Yeats may have chosen to change her name. This change creates an interesting twist to the retelling of the myth. There is another myth in relation to Cú Cúchulainn called “The Only Jealousy of Emer.” Some suggest that choosing to use Emer instead of Aoife for Cú Cúchulainn's wife highlights the jealousy that we witness from Emer towards her husband who is eloping with another “sweet-throated woman” in the poem.

The Author
Yeats had a deep interest and love for fairy stories, Irish history, and Celtic mythology. Growing up, Yeats’s Mother read Yeats and his siblings fairy stories and Irish folktales. Early in his writing career, he collected fairy stories in the cottages of his hometown in Sligo. He was interested in traditional forms of poetry rather than free verse, which most of the poets of his day were experimenting with. Yeats was also deeply interested in mysticism, spiritualism, occultism, and astrology. He once wrote, “the mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.” Just a few years before writing this poem, he joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Around the same time, he also helped to found a club of London-based male poets, who met regularly in a tavern in London to share their writings.
Why read the poem?
W.B. Yeats is one of Ireland’s most famous poets and is also known for being a prominent English poet. Some of his best known poems include "The Lake of Innisfree", "A Prayer for my Daughter", and "The Wild Swans at Coole". Although these are Yeats's better known poems, some of his other lesser-known poems, such as "Cú Cúchulainn's Fight with the Sea", gives readers a chance to engage with Irish mythology and history in a way that his other poems do not. His poem "Cú Cúchulainn's Fight with the Sea" also displays a different style of Yeats's writing than his later poetry. His early poetry resembles traditional forms that resemble Ancient Irish bardic poetry and Homeric poetry. This poem offers readers a glimpse of a modern writer employing ancient poetic forms.

Notes
1. Clothing colored by red dye
2. A stone built fortified settlement in Ireland or Scotland, a kind built from the late Iron Age to the Early Middle Ages. The word is a frequent place name element in Scotland and Ireland.
3. The son is never given a name in the poem. He only reveals himself as Cú Cúchulainn’s son at the end of the poem. He is only referred to as ‘swineherd.’ Some scholars suggest that the fact that he remains nameless throughout the poem refers to his father’s abandonment. It could also point to the idea that Cú Cúchulainn’s family line would remain nameless because he ended up killing his only heir.
4. Some scholars think that her being covered with red color dye is meant to resemble blood, which will be spilt between her husband and son.
5. Chariots used for war
6. Blench means to flinch from fear or pain.
She says if your father has won all of the battles, why are you so distraught?
7. He’s referring to a harlot woman whom Cú Cúchulainn her husband has been with.
8. She shook her fist covered with red dye.
9. The word ‘taller’ could mean stronger, nobler, bolder.
10. The son is waiting until some other man who is bound by the same oath to fight him.
11. He’s talking about the boy’s mother. Cú Cúchulainn does not call his wife by name and seems to view her as a thing from the past.
12. He killed his only heir and therefore ended his own lineage.
13. Druids were priests, magicians, or soothsayers in the ancient Celtic religion.
14. Ten is a symbolic number mysticism. It is the number of sefirot. It represents the completion of a cycle. Yeats studied Mysticism.
15.  The number three is also a symbolic number in mysticism. The number represents the life cycle of birth, life, death.
16. The king commanded that the druids cast a chant on Cú Cúchulainn.
17. In classical mythology, horses are asscoiated with the sea. In the original Irish myth from which this poem was inspired, Cú Cúchulainn was given two supernatural horses which couldn’t be tamed by anyone. The horses appeared to him in water and he chased them all over Ireland and tamed them.
18. He fought with the sea. Some think that the sea represents Cú Cúchulainn's subconscious mind. The word invulnerable means impossible to harm or damage.

Sources
Bodsworth, Roxanne. “Changing the Story, Transformations of Myth in Yeats’ Poem “Cú Cúchulainn's Fight with the Sea”” https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1118&context=mythlore
Other Resources
Link to the Poem
http://www.csun.edu/~hceng029/yeats/yeatspoems/CuchulainsFight
BBC Radio Lecture on "Yeats and Mysticism"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzOq5j8gAvY&t=513s
"Mythologies," by William Butler Yeats- includes a collection of more of Yeats's work based on Mythology
https://books.google.com/books/about/Mythologies.html?id=9l0nhDgZPYwC