Connla was the son of Cú Chulainn and Aífe Ardgeimm, identified in this text as the sister of his teacher Scáthach.
Cú Chulainn then approaches Connla, but Emer, his wife, warns him not to fight him, identifying the boy as "Conla, the only son of Aífe".
[4] Cú Chulainn rebukes her, saying that heroic deeds "are not performed with a woman's assistance", and that for the sake of the Ulaid, he would fight any intruder no matter who they were.
The earliest is a late Old Irish text, found in the Yellow Book of Lecan, which is the most well-known version and the source of the narrative above.
A later unknowing father-son element in the story occurs when he returns from Crete, having killed the Minotaur, and the failure to reveal himself leads to the father's death.
This he does with a lance tipped with the venomous spine of a stingray which could stand, as argued by Edward Petit,[11] as the inspiration for the deadly Gáe Bulg of Cú Chulainn made from the bone of a sea monster, the Curruid.
The story of Connla's death by his father's hand is related in the W. B. Yeats poem "Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea," first published in 1892.
[12] The poetic retelling differs in several respects from the original myth, including portraying Connla as the son of Emer and not Aífe.