Cath Maige Mucrama

Cath Maige Mucrama (Battle of Mag Mucrama), an Old Irish saga concerning a battle fought on a plain to the southwest of Athenry, Co. Galway. It is preserved in the 12th-cent. Book of Leinster. Lugaid mac Con of west Munster has gone into exile following a previous defeat. Intent on vengeance, he returns with a great army and defeats the forces of Art, King of Tara, and Eogan, King of Munster.

Irish title for a narrative known in English as The Battle of Mag Mucrama and part of the Cycle of the Kings. The work has been described by one commentator as a political scripture, a mixture of genuine history with symbolic fiction, whose function is to propagandize rather than to entertain. Lugaid mac Con, returned from exile, defeats the kings of Munster (his own brother Eógan (3)) and of Tara, and himself becomes the king of north and south. On the night before the battle, in which both men are slain, Art mac Cuinn fathers Cormac mac Airt, one of the most famous kings of early Ireland, and Eógan (3) fathers Fiachu Muillethan, the first of the Eóganacht kings. Mag Mucrama is located west of Athenry, Co. Galway.

Bibliography

• the most recent edition of text by M. O'Daly, “Irish Texts Society”, vol. 50 (London, 1975)