Ulster Cycle
[2] It focuses on the mythical Ulster king Conchobar mac Nessa and his court at Emain Macha, the hero Cú Chulainn, and their conflict with the Connachta and queen Medb.
The Ulster Cycle stories are set in and around the reign of King Conchobar mac Nessa, who rules the Ulaid from Emain Macha (now Navan Fort near Armagh).
Cú Chulainn in particular has superhuman fighting skills, the result of his semi-divine ancestry, and when particularly aroused his battle frenzy or ríastrad transforms him into an unrecognisable monster who knows neither friend nor foe.
Unlike the majority of early Irish historical tradition, which presents ancient Ireland as largely united under a succession of High Kings, the stories of the Ulster Cycle depict a country with no effective central authority, divided into local and provincial kingdoms often at war with each other.
[8] Along with the Lebor Gabála Érenn, elements of the Ulster Cycle were for centuries regarded as historical in Ireland, and the antiquity of these records was a matter of politicised debate; modern scholars have generally taken a more critical stance.
[11] They take and preserve the heads of slain enemies,[12] and boast of their valour at feasts, with the bravest awarded the curadmír or "champion's portion", the choicest cut of meat.
These elements led scholars such as Kenneth H. Jackson to conclude that the stories of the Ulster Cycle preserved authentic Celtic traditions from the pre-Christian Iron Age.
[14] Other scholars have challenged that conclusion, stressing similarities with early medieval Irish society and the influence of classical literature,[15] while considering the possibility that the stories may contain genuinely ancient material from oral tradition.
J. P. Mallory thus found the archaeological record and linguistic evidence to generally disfavour the presence of Iron Age remnants in the Ulster and Mythological Cycles, but emphasised the links to the Corlea Trackway in the earlier Tochmarc Étaíne as a notable exception.
[16] It is probable that the oldest strata of tales are those involving the complex relationship between the Ulaid and the Érainn, represented in the Ulster Cycle by Cú Roí and the Clanna Dedad, and later by Conaire Mór.
It was observed a century ago by Eoin MacNeill[17] and other scholars that the historical Ulaid, as represented by the Dál Fiatach, were apparently related to the Clanna Dedad.
[21] William Butler Yeats wrote a series of plays – On Baile's Strand (1904), Deirdre (1907), The Green Helmet (1910), At the Hawk's Well (1917), The Only Jealousy of Emer (1919) and The Death of Cuchulain (1939) – and a poem, Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea (1892), based on the legends, and completed the late John Millington Synge's unfinished play Deirdre of the Sorrows (1910), in collaboration with Synge's widow Molly Allgood.
