Tochmarc Emire ("The Wooing of Emer") is one of the stories in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology and one of the longest when it received its form in the second recension (below).

It concerns the efforts of the hero Cú Chulainn to marry Emer, who appears as his wife in other stories of the cycle, and his training in arms under the warrior-woman Scáthach.

The tochmarc ("wooing" or "courtship") (along with cattle raids, voyages, feasts, births and deaths) is one of the 'genres' of early Irish literature recognised in the manuscript corpus.

[1] The earliest and shortest version is extant only as a copy in a late manuscript, the 15th/16th-century Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B 512, where it lacks the first part, beginning instead with the last riddle exchanged between Cú Chulainn and Emer.

He suggests that Cú Chulainn should train in arms with the renowned warrior-woman Scáthach in the land of Alba (Scotland), hoping the ordeal will be too much for him and he will be killed.

Scáthach teaches Cú Chulainn all the arts of war, including the use of the Gáe Bulg, a terrible barbed spear, thrown with the foot, that has to be cut out of its victim.

Leaving Aífe pregnant, Cú Chulainn returns from Scotland fully trained, but Forgall still refuses to let him marry Emer.

His extraordinary skills make him seem a threat, however, and because of a geis placed on him by his father, he refuses to identify himself, and Cú Chulainn kills him in single combat, using the Gáe Bulg.