Scéla Mucce meic Da Thó

Scéla Mucce meic Da Thó, Scél Mucci maic Dáthó. Irish titles for a 9th-century Ulster Cycle story implying that enmity between Ulster and Connacht was of great antiquity; one of the few Ulster stories in which Cúchulainn does not play a role. A wealthy landowner of Leinster, Mac Da Thó [son of the two mutes (?)], has two animals that tickle his pride: a hound, Ailbe, with the ferocity of ten armies that defends his properties all by himself, and a tame boar that has been reared seven years and seven days on milk so that it may furnish a year-long feast. Interest in the hound prompts a bidding war between Ailill and Medb of Connacht and Conchobar mac Nessa. Mac Da Thó cannot choose between the offers. Medb and Ailill offer 160 prize cows with a prize chariot drawn by the two best horses in Connacht. Conchobar mac Nessa offers friendship, a military alliance, and cattle every year in perpetuity. With two such bellicose parties, Mac Da Thó fears to disappoint either. Following his wife's suggestion, he promises Ailbe to both Connacht and Ulster, if they will only come to claim it. By the time both arrive, Mac Da Thó has slaughtered his succulent pig, which takes sixty oxen to draw into Mac Da Thó's huge residence with seven doors and fifty beds.

The question of who should carve the pig dominates the rest of the story. Briccriu, the mischief-making adviser, suggests that the pig should be divided according to ‘battle victories’. One warrior after another claims the right to carve, but each has to yield to a rival with a stronger claim. The boasts and abusive retorts are among the liveliest dialogue in early Irish literature. Conflict is momentarily resolved when the Connacht hero Cet mac Mágach shames and taunts the pride of Ulster and is about to carve the pig himself. At this moment Conall Cearnach bursts in and challenges Cet to back away from the pig. He trumpets that he has never spent a day without slaying a Connachtman, never spent a night without plundering their property, and never slept without having a Connachtman's head beneath his knee. Cet responds that Conall may indeed be a better fighter but that his brother Anluan is greater still, if only he were present now. ‘But he is’, Conall roars, flinging Anluan's severed head on the floor, blood flowing from the mouth. Conall then proceeds to carve the pig, allowing the choice portions for himself, leaving only the forelegs to the westerners. Enraged, the men of Connacht attack those from Ulster, and soon the bodies are heaped upon the floor and blood flows through the doorway. In their departure the men of Connacht, seeing that Mac Da Thó's hound Ailbe has favoured the other side, split it in two, leaving the head on a yew tree.

The central motif of Scéla Mucce meic Da Thó dramatizes the contest for the champion's portion [Ir. curad-mír], an echo of the kind of competition Posidonius (1st cent. BC) described among the ancient Gauls.

Bibliography

See Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó, ed. Rudolf Thurneysen (Dublin, 1935, 1939);
‘The Story of Mac Datho's Pig’, trans. Kuno Meyer , in Hibernica Minora (Anecdota Oxoniensis) (Oxford, 1894), 51–64;
repr. in T. P. Cross and C. H. Slover (eds.), Ancient Irish Tales (New York, 1936), 199–207;
Cornelius G. Buttimer , ‘Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó: A Reappraisal’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 2 (1982), 61–73;
Arzel Even , ‘Histoire du cochon de Mac Datho’, Ogam, 5 (1953), 7–9, 50–4.